Kamala Harris is calling to expand the Supreme Court and make the popular vote decisive in presidential races, structural changes that would tilt national power toward Democratic strongholds.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris used a recent appearance on the Baby, This is Keke Palmer podcast to argue that the Supreme Court needs more justices and that the popular vote “has to matter” in choosing presidents. Newsweek reported the remarks after the episode dropped on Tuesday.
Harris also backed statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico if their residents want it. She left open whether she will run for president in 2028, saying the 2026 midterms come first.
The pitch lands as Democrats still face a 6-3 conservative majority on the Court built during President Donald Trump’s first term. That majority has delivered major rulings on abortion, voting rules, and presidential power. Harris framed expansion as a way to restore what she called the Constitution’s spirit.
"I believe that we need to expand the Supreme Court."
She added a longer explanation of the goal.
"We need more justices on the Supreme Court so that we can have a court that actually reinforces the spirit and principles behind the Constitution of the United States."
The Constitution does not lock in the number of justices. Congress has changed the Court’s size before. The bench has sat at nine since 1869. New seats would be filled by presidential nomination and Senate confirmation, the same process that put Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett on the Court under Trump.
Trump flagged the threat months earlier. In a July Truth Social post he warned that Democrats were openly planning to expand the Court, linking to coverage of a resolution from Black, Hispanic, and progressive caucus chairs that included “enacting structural changes” to the judiciary. The same impulse has already drawn pushback, including when Collins rejects Supreme Court expansion after another Democrat floated extra seats.
Public opinion remains split. A September Marquette Law School poll found 53 percent of adults favored increasing the number of justices while 47 percent opposed it. Support broke sharply by party: 68 percent of Democrats backed expansion, compared with 35 percent of Republicans and 56 percent of independents.
Harris did not specify how many seats she wants or how quickly she would add them. The practical path is simple legislation if Democrats regain Congress and the White House. That reality is why the idea keeps surfacing whenever the Court issues decisions the left dislikes, a pattern also visible when voters spar over packing the Supreme Court as activists push past nine justices.
On presidential elections, Harris said the popular vote “has to matter.” She did not lay out a concrete plan. Changing the system would require either a constitutional amendment, two-thirds of both chambers of Congress plus ratification by three-quarters of the states, or the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, under which states totaling at least 270 electoral votes agree to award their electors to the national popular-vote winner.
A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found 63 percent of Americans preferred a popular-vote system while 35 percent wanted to keep the Electoral College. Eight in ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents backed replacement. Republicans split the other way: 53 percent favored the current system and 46 percent preferred a national popular vote.
Democrats won the national popular vote in seven of the eight presidential elections from 1992 through 2020. Trump then won both the popular vote and the Electoral College in 2024. The sudden enthusiasm for scrapping the College after that result fits a longer pattern of rewriting election rules when outcomes disappoint, the same impulse on display when a judge keeps New Hampshire’s ban on college IDs at the polls and blocks a change that would have eased voting for a younger, more Democratic-leaning group.
Harris tied the Court and election talk to another structural goal: statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico if residents want it. Both moves would add reliably Democratic senators and Electoral College votes. She offered no timeline or legislative vehicle.
On her own future, the former vice president stayed noncommittal when Palmer asked about another White House run.
"I haven’t decided. I haven’t decided yet. I will, I promise."
She put the near term in clearer terms.
"’28 don’t matter if we don’t do ’26 right."
Early polling still shows her leading a hypothetical Democratic field. A RealClearPolling average through October 6 had Harris at 26.4 percent and California Gov. Gavin Newsom at 14.4 percent. A Financial Times/Focaldata poll conducted October 3, 6 put her at 30 percent and Newsom at 15 percent. Prediction market Polymarket, as of early Friday morning, told a different story: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York at 17 percent, Newsom at 15 percent, Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia at 14 percent, and Harris at just 7 percent to win the nomination.
Those numbers underscore the unsettled state of the party after 2024. Internal friction over her last campaign remains a live issue, including the way Democratic candidates split over Kamala Harris’s campaign support as factions argue over what went wrong.
Harris’s package, more justices, a popular-vote presidency, and two new states, would permanently shift the balance of federal power. The Court has operated with nine members for more than 150 years. The Electoral College is in the Constitution. Adding states is irreversible once done. Each proposal surfaces most loudly after Republican wins or conservative rulings, not as neutral good-government theory.
Trump’s first-term appointments produced a Court willing to reverse precedents the left treated as untouchable. Democrats answered with talk of packing the bench rather than winning the next election and confirming their own nominees under the existing rules. The same logic drives the Electoral College fight: change the map when the map no longer delivers.
Newsweek reached out to the Office of Kamala Harris for comment outside regular business hours and did not report a response. Harris left the podcast without attaching numbers, timelines, or draft bills to any of her ideas. The direction, however, was plain. When institutions produce outcomes Democrats dislike, the institutions themselves become the target.
Americans who prefer stable rules over moving goalposts now have a clear preview of the next Democratic governing agenda.