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When leftists aren’t able to achieve their desired political, policy, and ideological outcomes, they often target any institution perceived to be standing in their way. Nothing is safe or sacred.
Their targets for “reform,” a preferred euphemism for burning down institutions and rigging the rules on behalf of power-driven ends, have included the Senate, the Electoral College, and the judiciary.
They drone on about defending “democracy” and resisting “authoritarianism,” but much of this posturing is pure projection. They vow to blow up the system to “save” it, but the goal isn’t preserving democracy or any other high-minded-sounding objective. It’s securing power and control, which they view as their birthright. Anything obstructing that power and control must be a flaw in our institutional structure, you see, so that structure must be eliminated or manipulated — sorry, “reformed” — until they get their way.
The truly radical project of court-packing is fast becoming a mainstream view, if not a litmus test, on the Left. Lawmakers with presidential ambitions are demanding “reforms” to the Supreme Court, with several openly calling for the addition of four seats.
Why four, you ask? Well, after decades of progressive supremacy, especially on social and cultural fronts, the court now features a 6-3 conservative-leaning and constitutionalist majority. This is the product of many years of hard work by the conservative legal community, forged through hard-fought election victories and bruising confirmation battles. Every step of the way, leftists have been the aggressors in these fights, but conservatives persevered and adapted — finally attaining a long-sought majority through legitimate means, within the rules. So-called progressives hate it. They feel entitled to their desired outcomes, so this court is a problem.
Adding four seats would theoretically allow Democrats to turn a legitimate 6-3 conservative majority into an illegitimate 7-6 progressive majority, overnight. Presto. “Progressives” will whine about the Antonin Scalia vacancy and alleged GOP hypocrisy on the Ruth Bader Ginsburg vacancy, but they can thank Democrats for both of those results.
This banana republic madness would destroy the court’s authority and would bring about a bona fide constitutional crisis. Its proponents don’t care. They want what they want, and they seem willing to do literally anything to get it. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) just posted a call for court-packing extremism. In addition to pushing Supreme Court term limits, which would likely require a Constitutional amendment, Khanna echoed a growing roster of other congressional leftists in insisting upon action to “expand the court from 9 to 13 Justices, now.”
Now? Is Khanna asking the current Republican majorities and President Donald Trump to implement a 10-3 conservative Supreme Court majority? Of course not. The “now” bit is just activist agitation language.
What he means, naturally, is that Democrats should expand the court if and when they attain the levers of power to implement such an extreme course of action. This version of the chant doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue:
What do we want?
Court-packing!
When do we want it?
As soon as we have a governing trifecta, but definitely not before!
“Now,” therefore, was just a filler word to mindlessly complete the chant. It was plainly not intended to be taken literally, which gives the whole game away. If it were a few back-benchers rattling this particular saber, that would be concerning, but not urgently alarming. The real red flag here is the endorsement of this extremism by “old guard,” Clintonite Democrats such as James Carville, and an apparent embrace of similar “reforms” by the party’s two most recent presidential nominees.
Former President Joe Biden announced his version of a proposal in the waning days of his relevance, just after he was forced out of the 2024 race — just prior to Democrats nullifying their entire primary election, as soon as their giant lie about their incumbent’s mental fitness imploded on a debate stage. The woman who replaced him in that race, and who lost the election, recently told allies that her party should consider court-packing.
“Look, this is a moment where there are no bad ideas, a ‘no-bad-idea brainstorm’ is what I’d like to call it,” former Vice President Kamala Harris said. “And in that no-bad-ideas brainstorm, we talk about what we need to do and think about doing around the Electoral College. We talk about the idea of Supreme Court reform, which includes expanding the Supreme Court.”
She also mentioned another popular leftist power-grab fantasy: “statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C.” What is significant about this tepid half-hug of adding Supreme Court seats and U.S. senators, which is the one and only purpose of the ‘statehood’ scheme, is that Harris is not a leader. She follows the blowing winds within her coalition, often belatedly. She is a lagging indicator. If it’s finally occurring to her that “golly, maybe we need to pack the Supreme Court,” that means that the horse has been out of the intellectual barn for some time. Again, this institution-wrecking radicalism is already a mainstream stance within her wider tribe. It’s fast-approaching “requirement” status, joining anti-Israel fanaticism.
And in spite of Harris’s less-than-snappy “no bad ideas” slogan, court-packing is a profoundly bad idea — as is state-adding, also known as Senate-packing. If this Rubicon is crossed, the opposing side will have no choice but to retaliate at the very first opportunity, even if these moves would be aimed at ensuring solidified, quasi-permanent power for the Left. Republicans would have no choice but to add new red states, and thus GOP senators. They’d expand the Supreme Court again, further crushing the legitimacy of the institution.
This is a path to ruin. It is frightening that it’s becoming something of a consensus in many leftist quarters. And none of it is about any sort of noble cause or true “reform.” It’s about seizing and entrenching power, as evidenced by the reality that they never dreamed of such appalling actions when they were consistently winning. It’s ends-driven destruction. Both parties should stiff-arm the braying of elements of their respective bases and reject the elimination of the legislative filibuster. They should reject adding states for partisan advantage. They should absolutely reject court-packing.
DAVID HARSANYI: THE LEFT’S ATTACK ON COURTS IS MEANT TO DESTROY THE CONSTITUTION
Our moment demands fortifying institutions against fleeting passions, not the opposite. Pushing our republic and system of governance to the brink with such courses of action would be profoundly, and perhaps irreparably, reckless. The sane litmus test should be forswearing these horrific, short-sighted, country-endangering misadventures. The poison of an endless “Flight 93” electoral mindset should be defused, not vindicated and ratcheted up.
If any influential Democrats actually believe in “country over party” as anything other than a cynical slogan about the Republicans and Trump, saying “no” to this is the bare minimum.