High time to reform the highest court in the land

Recently, I wrote to you about the Republican Party's latest plan to further pack the Supreme Court with two potential vacancies if Donald Trump is re-elected president this November.

We're all painfully aware of how politicized our nation's judicial system has become.

What was once a forum for thoughtful debate and decisions based on precedent, science, and the rule of law has descended into a political arm of the Republican Party, thanks to the far-right judges and justices chosen by Trump and his buddies in order to legislate from the bench and strip the American people of their fundamental freedoms.

It's high time to reform the highest court in the land, which is why I've introduced comprehensive and sweeping legislation to overhaul our nation's judiciary, and restore much-needed confidence in our country's legal system.

My bill would bring much-needed reform to our nation's judicial system in a number of ways. Here are a few essential components – for both the Supreme Court and lower courts across the country:

• Expand the Supreme Court from 9 to 15 over the course of 12 years. The staggered timeline would ensure that the additional justices are chosen by potentially three different presidential administrations, not just one.
• Establish a new process for Supreme Court nominations that are not reported out of Senate committee within 180 calendar days to be automatically placed on the Senate calendar. This would help ensure that we avoid what happened with Merrick Garland's nomination under President Obama.
• Increase the number of circuit courts to 15 and return to the practice of assigning one Supreme Court justice to oversee each circuit.
• Expand the number of Circuit Court and District Court judgeships to improve access to justice.

While we are all laser-focused on pushing back against Donald Trump's extremism this November, I'm not losing sight of something equally important: protecting our courts from the likes of Donald Trump or any other future wannabe dictator who wants to hijack our legal system to rip away our constitutional rights.

The stakes have never been higher in a presidential election. But this is another example of why we need to elect progressive Democratic leaders up and down the ballot so we can pass ironclad laws into place that will protect the rights of the American people, not undermine them.

I'm going to continue working as hard as I can in Washington to make this legislation the law of the land.

More soon,

Ron