RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 3 sourcesFormer Democratic presidential nominee calls for major reforms to America’s institutions but says she has ‘not made a decision’ on whether to launch another bid for the Oval Office
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Former Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has called for two more states to be added to the union and for the expansion of the Supreme Court as she mulls another run for the White House.
Harris, 61, the ex-California attorney general and senator, was former president Joe Biden ’s deputy during his single term in the Oval Office before running in his stead against Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, narrowly losing.
She has remained involved with Democratic politics since that disappointment and told the National Urban League conference in Nashville, Tennessee, she had plenty of ideas for resolving the problems of the United States.
“We must allow for a real conversation about revisiting certain things,” Harris told her audience .
“For example, I know this is going to be controversial coming from me in particular, we need to revisit the Electoral College ,” she said, alluding to the fact that she lost it to Trump by 312 votes to 226 – as well as the popular vote by 49.8 percent to 48.3 percent.
“We need to revisit the point of expanding the court to 13 justices like we have 13 district courts,” Harris continued. “We need to revisit, if they so want, statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C .”
The Supreme Court has only nine justices, a chief justice and their nine associates, and, currently, a clear right-leaning political bias as three of its judges were nominated by Trump, which an expansion would help to dilute.
Puerto Rico, meanwhile, is presently designated a U.S. territory and D.C. is a federal district, meaning that neither is entitled to a state’s rights, despite the pivotal role both locations play in American life and culture.
Trump has likewise talked about expanding the union during his second term, regularly imploring Canada to become the 51st state, a gesture that has been angrily rebuffed by the U.S.’s neighbor to the north.
Elsewhere in her address to the NUL, Harris said had “not made a decision” on a potential 2028 presidential run.
“I am fully, sincerely, focused on these midterms,” she told the audience, nodding to her campaigning efforts on behalf of such candidates as James Talarico, who is running for the Senate in Texas against the Lone Star State’s scandal-blighted attorney general Ken Paxton.
The former vice president also stressed the importance of “having an agenda that is about turning out the vote in the greatest numbers we have ever seen so that… in this environment where they are cheating, we will be too big to rig.
“It means being ruthless. They are ruthless. We need to be ruthless, too. And by that, I do not mean cruel. That is not our nature.
“By that, I do not mean breaking the law. That is not what we do. But I do mean we must be uncompromising.”
Harris – who last year wrote a memoir about the short time she had to prepare to face Trump, entitled 107 Days – was speaking in a moment in which voters now routinely express buyer’s remorse over the Republican’s return to power.
Voters often tell pollsters they disapprove of his wayward war with Iran and handling of the economy as his approval ratings sag.
The president is widely felt to have failed to deliver on his promise to create a new “golden age” of wealth and prosperity for Americans, which could come back to bite his party in November’s midterms, potentially handing control of the House of Representatives and even the Senate to Democrats.
If that were to happen, Trump would face the prospect of spending his final two years in the Oval Office as a lame duck, his legislative agenda frustrated on Capitol Hill and the threat of investigation hanging over what remains of his presidency.
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