President Joe Biden has warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against pursuing judicial reform — after his own administration considered a radical proposal to pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices.
The Times of Israel reports that Biden “raised his concerns with the judicial overhaul being advanced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government during a ‘candid and constructive’ phone call” on Sunday.
The article fails to note that Biden entertained his own, far more radical, proposals to change the U.S. judiciary after Democrats grew irate at the increasingly conservative composition of the Supreme Court after 2018.
For months, Democratic Party presidential candidates pushed proposals to “pack” the Supreme Court by adding four extra seats, then having the president nominate left-wing justices whom the Senate would confirm.
Biden dropped his former objections to such ideas and promised to consider them. He appointed a commission to consider the idea of court-packing, among other reforms, and it delivered its draft final report in 2021.
The commission warned that the benefits of packing the court were “uncertain.” However, Democrats — led by then-House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) — had already introduced legislation on the idea.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) speaks to reporters outside of a closed door meeting with Former White House counsel Don McGahn and the House Judiciary Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on June 04, 2021 in Washington, DC. Don McGahn, a witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, was first subpoenaed by the committee two years ago but was blocked from appearing by the White House. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Ironically, Nadler has led Democrats in objecting to Israel’s judicial reforms. (He was joined by Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, who claims to be pro-Israel when campaigning among Jewish constituents in his district.)
Biden has not yet extended an invitation to the newly-elected prime minister to visit the White House — a common courtesy extended to foreign leaders, especially to democratically-elected leaders of close U.S. allies.
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). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.