The continued existence of the Supreme Court is safe as long as there is a Republican in the White House. But as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) reminded us this week, every vote for a Democrat in the House and Senate this year will help lay the groundwork for the institution’s eventual eradication should Democrats ever regain control of the presidency, the House, and the Senate.
Speaking at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Atlanta, Jeffries called the Supreme Court a “subsidiary” of President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement and promised “dramatic Supreme Court reform” if Democrats take power.
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Jeffries did not detail what “reform” he had in mind, but the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), has proposed legislation to expand the court to 13 justices, just enough to allow a would-be Democratic president to give her party a majority on the court. Similar legislation has been endorsed by Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Tina Smith (D-MN), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has also endorsed expanding the Court, but has not explicitly mentioned the number 13.
More importantly, both the Democratic Party’s most recent presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, and one of its most prominent rising stars, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), have explicitly endorsed expanding to 13 justices. The Democratic Socialists of America, of which Ocasio-Cortez is a member, goes further: Its current national program calls for replacing the Supreme Court with a judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.
Democrat complaints that the Supreme Court has become a “subsidiary” of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement are false — a shabby pretext for making it a subsidiary of the Democratic Party — and their court-packing solution is a threat to our constitutional order.
Trump has won important victories before the Supreme Court during his second term, such as limiting district judges’ authority to impose nationwide injunctions. The court has also strengthened presidential authority over independent executive agencies and allowed the administration to proceed with significant parts of its immigration and government-reorganization agenda while litigation continues. Those rulings have undoubtedly helped Trump govern.
But the same Supreme Court has also delivered some of the most consequential defeats of Trump’s second term. It struck down his sweeping use of emergency powers to impose global tariffs, rejected his attempt to restrict birthright citizenship, and blocked his effort to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Those decisions did not involve peripheral administration policies; they stopped central pieces of Trump’s economic, immigration, and executive-power agenda.
Whatever Democrats may think of the court’s conservative majority, a judicial body willing to invalidate some of Trump’s signature policies can hardly be described seriously as a “subsidiary” of the MAGA movement.
That independence is precisely what Democrats would put at risk by packing the court. The Supreme Court can restrain presidents only if its composition is not adjusted whenever the party in power dislikes its decisions. If Democrats add four seats to create an immediate ideological majority for themselves, Republicans would have every incentive to add yet more seats when they next control Washington, and nothing would prevent the cycle from continuing.
The court would cease to function as an independent branch of government and would instead become an extension of electoral politics, with constitutional precedent changing whenever a new congressional majority had enough votes to manufacture a new judicial majority. That would not reform the Supreme Court. It would destroy the system of checks and balances that the court exists to preserve.
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Historically, such a radical change would require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate, but Democrats plan to get rid of that institution, too. The last time two senators defied the most radical elements of the Democratic Party and voted with Republicans to preserve the filibuster, they were run out of the party. The memories of Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) will make it harder for any Democrat to put country over party should Democrats regain control of that chamber.
The Democratic establishment has repeatedly shown itself unwilling or unable to resist the party’s activist Left. Ideas that begin with socialists and the Left fringe become Democratic priorities soon enough. Court packing is well along that path. If Democrats regain unified control of Washington, voters should expect the destruction of an independent Supreme Court to be near the top of their agenda.
