Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) will almost certainly face questions — from the moderator, or from Vice President Mike Pence — during Wednesday’s vice presidential debate about her position on the future of the Supreme Court.
Harris, who is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is opposed to the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
She has also refused to say whether she agrees with some Democrats’ calls to “pack” the Supreme Court — by expanding the number of seats, and filling them with liberal justices. (She, like Biden, has called such questions a “distraction.)
And Harris has also defended former Vice President Joe Biden’s refusal to divulge his list of potential Supreme Court nominees.
Biden has promised to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court, though he has refused to indicate who his candidates would be. Harris even declined to tell the NAACP who might be on the list: “There are so many [black women who could serve on the Court] — I’m not going to name any names — that Joe Biden will create his list at the appropriate time.”
Harris’s most important contribution to the Supreme Court debate thus far has been her controversial attempt to smear Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing in 2018.
She insinuated that Kavanaugh was linked to Russian collusion — a claim so absurd that she was mocked by both of the major newspapers in her home state, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times. Harris also drew criticism for a deceptively-edited video in which she falsely suggested Kavanaugh opposed birth control.
Harris was not yet on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017, when Justice Neil Gorsuch faced confirmation. But she joined Democrats in filibustering him, prompting Republicans to end the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees (former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) had set the precedent by ending the filibuster for executive appointees and lower court nominees in 2013).
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that the debate was Tuesday. It is scheduled for Wednesday, October 7.
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