'It’s over' for Republicans if Harris wins and kills Senate filibuster.

Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) isn't optimistic about how Republicans will fare if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the November election and Democrats keep control of the Senate.

According to Semafor, McConnell is particularly worried about Harris' stated goal of abolishing the filibuster. The vice president called for an end to the procedure in order to pass legislation restoring abortion rights taken away after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The Kentucky Republican told the outlet that the finality of ending the filibuster would mean there's little Republicans could do to stop Democrats' agenda.

"What I concluded is, whenever they think it’s getting in the way of something they really want to do, they’re going to break the rules,” McConnell said. “And once you do it once, it’s over.”

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana), who is one of the red state incumbents Democrats are spending large sums to reelect this year, said he wanted to reform the filibuster instead of eliminate it outright. And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) would only say the next session of Congress — which gavels in on January 3, 2025 — would discuss the possibility. However, McConnell insisted it's safe to assume that Democrats are largely supportive of Harris' position, given that she's now openly running on it.

“They’re all committed to it now, because Chuck has made them take a public position. Every Democratic challenger, I’m told, running for the Senate is taking the same position,” McConnell said. “I think they fully intend to do it if they can.”

Currently, the filibuster allows for the minority party in the U.S. Senate to effectively kill any bill that can't garner 60 votes from the 100-member body. Any member under current rules can invoke "cloture," which requires a bill to meet the 60-vote threshold before it can get a full up-or-down vote in the body. As Senate.gov records show, McConnell is the far-and-away leader on invoking the procedure, with the number of cloture motions roughly doubling after he became the Republican leader in 2007.

Democrats, who control the Senate with a slim 51-49 majority, could kill the filibuster on a party-line vote by invoking what's referred to as the "nuclear option." That involves any member raising a point of process to override a standing rule. The filibuster is never mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, so senators could eliminate it at any time. However, in the most recent session of Congress, Sens. Joe Manchin (I-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona) made it clear they would oppose efforts to kill the filibuster.

Additionally, numerous other bills Democrats have been itching to pass could become law with a simple majority. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) unveiled legislation on Thursday that would add six new seats to the Supreme Court, create two new judicial circuits, make it more difficult for the Court to strike down laws passed by Congress and implement a binding code of ethics on current Supreme Court justices.

This isn't the first time McConnell has sounded the alarm about what a Harris administration would do. He said previously that if Harris were to win and Democrats eliminated the Senate filibuster, they could feasibly grant statehood to both Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, which he warned would give Democrats an additional four U.S. senators "in perpetuity."

“If they get those two new states and pack the Supreme Court, they'll get what they want," McConnell continued. "By the way, on packing the Supreme Court ... you may know this already. It's unconstitutional."

No it's not:

The Supreme Court was originally intended to have one justice per court circuit. We now have 13 circuits (1st through 12th plus the Federal Circuit). Each circuit is supposed to be administered by 1 Supreme Court Justice ... So we should have 13 justices at this time. (The Judiciary Act of 1869 expanded the court from 7 to 9 - because the number of circuits had increased from 7 to 9.)

District of Columbia Circuit — Chief Justice John Roberts
First Circuit — Justice Stephen Breyer
Second Circuit — Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Third Circuit — Justice Samuel Alito
Fourth Circuit — Chief Justice John Roberts
Fifth Circuit — Justice Samuel Alito
Sixth Circuit — Justice Elena Kagan
Seventh Circuit — Justice Elena Kagan
Eighth Circuit — Justice Neil Gorsuch
Ninth Circuit — Chief Justice John Roberts
Tenth Circuit — Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Eleventh Circuit — Justice Clarence Thomas
Federal Circuit — Chief Justice John Roberts

Roberts currently administers 4 circuits, Alito administers 2, Kagan administers 2, Sotromayor administers 2. So it's high time the court had 13 members instead of 9. The Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1982 increased the number of circuits from 12 to 13, so we're at least 42 years late in expanding the court.