{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=37B1C9B3-0204-4BD2-B3E4-DC1FB8036C93", "Biden Administration Condemns Court-Packing Abroad While Entertaining It Themselves", "2021-10-21", "2021", "2021-10", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Mitch McConnell", "M000355", "www.mcconnell.senate.gov", "mcconnell", "https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding court-packing:\n\n\u201cEarlier this week, during a trip to South America, Secretary of State Blinken said that, \u2018undermining the independence of the courts,\u2019 and \u2018packing courts\u2019 were among \u2018the ways that democracies can come undone.\u2019\n\n\u201cHis warning was apparently directed to neighbors in our hemisphere. But ironically, his own fellow Democrats here in Washington D.C. apparently need the same lecture.\n\n\u201cLast week, President Biden\u2019s much-ballyhooed commission tasked with studying potential changes to the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court issued its first findings. And in some corners of the radical left, there was predictable disappointment that it had not more explicitly fed the flames.\n\n\u201cBut let\u2019s be clear: the mere creation of this commission was itself a clumsy act of political thuggery against judicial independence.\n\n\u201cAnd what it did seem to support \u2013 slapping term limits on Supreme Court justices \u2013 is no less of a radical affront to the principles on which the Court was established.\n\n\u201cMadam President, curtailing the tenure of our nation\u2019s seniormost judges is such an obvious threat to judicial independence, it\u2019s literally been warned about since our nation\u2019s founding.\n\n\u201cAlexander Hamilton didn\u2019t mince words in Federalist 78. He warned that the judiciary is, \u2018in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches; and that as nothing can contribute so much to its firmness and independence as permanency in office, this quality may therefore be justly regarded as an indispensable ingredient in its constitution.\u2019\n\n\u201cAn indispensable ingredient, Madam President. Alexander Hamilton on life tenure for judges.\n\n\u201cOur founders insisted on it because they knew that the branches of government with the powers to write and execute laws would be tempted to undermine the branch that could exercise nothing but its judgment.\n\n\u201cAnd to an alarming degree in recent years, we\u2019ve seen Democrats in both the executive and the legislature succumb to exactly this temptation.\n\n\u201cFrom the brazen amicus brief from a group of our Senate colleagues warning the Court to \u2018heal itself\u2019 lest it be \u2018restructured\u2019\u2026\n\n\u201cTo the bizarre verbal threats issued by the Democratic Leader on the steps of the Court, naming Justices who would \u2018pay the price\u2019 for failing to rule the way he wanted\u2026\n\n\u201cTo the pseudo-academic commission the President created to consider re-animating the ugly cadaver of court-packing that his party last tried 80 years ago.\n\n\u201cMadam President, these are nonsense responses to a non-existent problem.\n\n\u201cThe real problem is the shameful depths to which Democrats are apparently willing to stoop in pursuit of brute power. As I\u2019ve said before, sensible people of all political stripes have an obligation to condemn this behavior.\n\n\u201cBut the most embarrassing condemnation of these tired tactics?\n\n\u201cOur founders saw it all coming, centuries in advance.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:24:51Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=37B1C9B3-0204-4BD2-B3E4-DC1FB8036C93"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 3.401725087314844, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}