Below is my column in the Hill on moments of honesty after the recent Democratic victories in California, Virginia, New Jersey, and New York. In the euphoria that followed, Democratic politicians and pundits admitted that they intend to pursue radical changes, including packing the Supreme Court, once they retake power.
Here is the column:
“In vino veritas.” The Roman proverb — “In wine, there is truth” — reflects the fact that people are often at their most honest when they’ve had a few.
Elections can have the same effect for some to become drunk on even the prospect of power. Partisans can blurt out their inner thoughts with shocking frankness.
That was the case this week as Democratic luminaries discussed plans to retake power and then fundamentally change the constitutional system to guarantee they will never have to give it up again.
It turns out that winning votes in three blue states and a blue city in an off-year election can be quite intoxicating. It is easy to dismiss it as the talk of chest-thumping, bar-room blowhards about whom they were going to thump. But there is a truth in the bravado.
Citing election results, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) seemed to bounce with elation in declaring that “the Democratic Party looks powerful for the first time all year.” In a moment of remarkable candor, Murphy explained his desire to continue the shutdown, admitting deep concerns about the midterm elections if Democrats reopen the government.
It is the same logic as randomly shoving people at a bar to impress one’s date.
Of course, extending the shutdown will harm millions and cost billions. But there are more lasting plans afoot if some of these partisans are to be believed.
Others were proclaiming their plans not only to retake power but never to lose it again. That means weakening the greatest single check on power: the Supreme Court. The talk of court-packing had died down after Democrats lost both houses of Congress and the White House. Now, after the elections last week, such talk is back with a vengeance.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder was telling anyone who would listen this week, suggesting that once Democrats take control, they intend to keep it permanently.
Holder explained on a podcast: “[We’re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power, if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.” When asked about the priority in wielding that power, Holder declared that the court was hopelessly broken and had to be fundamentally changed: “It’s something that has to be, I think, a part of the national conversation in ‘26 and in ‘28, ‘What are we going to do about the Supreme Court?’”
In other words, the court, as we know it, has got to go. While some on the left are questioning the very need for a Supreme Court or calling for it to be simply defied or “dissolved,” others want it to be stacked with political activists, like some state supreme courts are.
The problem has long been the focus of liberal academics planning for sweeping changes to the system. Many have called for the elimination of the Senate filibuster to force through measures making Puerto Rico and D.C. states with the addition of four new senators. Others want election and immigration “reforms” viewed as favoring Democratic campaigns.
That, however, leads them back to the inconvenient Supreme Court.
Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.” However, he warned that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.” Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur.
This week, Democratic strategist James Carville laid out the step-by-step process of how the pack-to-power plan would work.
“I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen,” he said. “A Democrat is going to be elected in 2028. You know that. I know that. The Democratic president is going to announce a special transition advisory committee on the reform of the Supreme Court. They’re going to recommend that the number of Supreme Court justices go from nine to 13. That’s going to happen, people.”
Carville returned to explain that court-packing will now be as inevitable as Democrats taking power. “That’s going to happen to you,” he said. “They’re going to win. They’re going to do some blue ribbon panel of distinguished jurists, and they are going to recommend 13, and a Democratic Senate and House is going to pass it, and the Democratic president is going to sign it, because they have to do an intervention so we can have a Supreme Court that the American people trust again.”
So, with the legislative and executive branches in their hands, some Democrats are planning to decapitate the judicial branch — just in time for the 250th anniversary of our revolution.
After all, as Holder explained, it is all about “the acquisition and the use of power.”
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of the bestselling book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Holder is a poor excuse for an American.
As are you. At least he doesn’t hide behind an anon name.
…..says ‘anonymous’. 👀🤦🏻♂️
Anonymous says:
As are you. At least he doesn’t hide behind an anon name.”
Pot🫕meet Kettle🫖 ….. I love it here🐕🐾🐕 626 to the 911 RESCUE.
American you say!
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“We the People of the United States…secure the Blessings of Liberty TO OURSELVES and OUR POSTERITY….”
– Preamble of the Actual American Founders
*. If, drunk with sight of power we loose wild tongues without thee in mind…
Such boasts the gentiles make and lesser men without the law.
…lest we forget, lest we forget
~ Rudyard Kipling
“Recessional”
PT , an offering of great beauty is Kipling’s poem.
Packing the court sounds like the start of a civil war.
Agree
Turns out many Democrats have managed to move left of Lenin.
God cure their wicked little hearts.
It appears God is sending us aliens on a mothership with ETA Christmas 2025.
Will the Aliens Be Here by Christmas?
https://www.thefp.com/p/will-the-aliens-be-here-by-christmas
Hopefully they will zap Washington DC however, we will be OK since Santa will come to our rescue
If I recall correctly, the Democratic party, before they broke away becoming the Confederate States of Anerica, proposed making Cuba and Nicaragua states to increase their political power.
We know FDR threatened to increase the number of Supreme Court justices to strongarm the Supreme Court into supportung his expansion and his socialization of the Federal government.
Should Trump and Republicans adopt similar tactics in increasing the number of Supreme Court justices and support counties dissatisfied with their State governments breaking away and forming new States?
The Republican Justices, unlike the Democrat appointees, would go by the words of the Constitution and not allow this to be done by Democrats and/or Republicans. Unfortunately, the Democrat progressive appointments would go along with whatever the Democrats in Washington want them to do.
I have never heard of the addition of two states before, but it would have allowed extension of slave power, so It would have accomplished a goal that many later Confederates would have applauded. I am sort of OK with the idea of increasing the Supreme Court to just ten members, thus requiring at least six to overrule and making a majority a larger amount. I would hope that this would require more attention to each other’s viewpoints, more moderate holdings, yes longer court consideration of issues, and more compromise. It is far from apparent, however, that the present court is disdained by anyone other than those who loved the court for the decades when it was under liberal hegemony. And oddly, no one dragged justices into court for the flags their spouses flew or even showed up on their porches with instruments of death. I guess the left just cares more for the Constitution, right? Bill Hill, Salem, VA
Increasing the number of justices is constitutional, but odious if done for partisan purposes. If we don’t want the Dems to do it we must not do it ourselves. However if it’s all-out war then go for it.
Likewise Congress can admit new states to the Union without anyone else’s consent, so long as they are not formed from existing states. But what you propose, allowing parts of existing states to break away and form new states, is something Congress CANNOT DO without the consent of the state legislature they’re breaking away from. It’s beyond Congress’s power. And why would the state legislature ever consent to this?
“Democratic luminaries discussed plans to retake power and then fundamentally change the constitutional system to guarantee they will never have to give it up again.”
In other words, Democrats planning to finalize the transformation of the Democratic Party into the Anti-Democratic Party.
Packing the Supreme Court to ensure certain results will itself result in even greater packing to reverse those results when the other party regains power, which it will sooner or later unless the new Anti-Democratic Party succeeds in abolishing the Constitution or rendering it meaningless and in the process turning the country into a single-party Leftist dictatorship. I don’t even want to contemplate the violence that would accompany such an effort.
The Supreme Court might have problems, and the lower federal courts need considerable reform, but packing courts because you are unhappy with case outcomes is not the answer.
You are whispering into the hurricane.
The “Democrat” Party (in name only like: German Democratic Republic – East Germany) is the Communist Party. There are still too many American citizens that are in denial of this and wallow in their cognitive dissonance because they just can’t bring themselves to believe this could have happened in the United States.
Most of those refusing to acknowledge and accept reality are of the Babyboom Generation because they grew up at a time that America / Americans stood up and defended the foundational principles of our country.
The Babyboomers alive today are the only ones who can save the United States and stop the tidal wave of Communism that is now giving visible and explicit signs of its imminent destruction of the U.S. Constitution and thereby the United States itself, ‘courtesy’ of the ‘Democrat’ Party.
The generation behind them is Gen X and it is the smallest generation of the four whose members have reached adulthood and remain an active voting bloc.
While Gen X grew up and came of age during the Reagan administration and the ending of the Cold War and are arguably the last of the most traditionally patriotic Americans who were still taught positive American History and American Civics, they are, by far, to small of a generation to be able to effect any bulwark against the Leftist Boomers, Leftist Millennials and Leftist Gen Z without Divine Intervention.
May God forgive our laziness in thought and deed and protect and preserve the grand Republic of the United States of America.
I know others have said this, but it’s time for a constitutional amendment fixing the number of Justices at 9. That would have bipartisan support. Even left-wing Justice RBG agreed that that’s the right number. The Constitution should not be so hard to amend. It should be harder than passing legislation, but not so hard as it is now.
As for the commenter who suggested legislation alone can fix the problem, no it can’t. Even if such a law was passed by Congress, a Dem majority with Dem POTUS can get a new law enacted which repeals that law and then increases the number of Justices.
Well, I won’t be here to give my sage advice, just celebrated my 95th birthday. But keep in mind that Obama and the Democrats want to substantially change the most successful nation on earth. For what purpose? Think about it.
Happy Birthday! And keep on giving your sage advice!
Me either, Texas. Why? Money. That’s all. Grab as much as you can and run.
I firmly believe they heartily desire the complete and total destruction of the Constitution and the United States of America.
They want 13? They think that’s a good idea? Republicans should beat them to it. Add 4 more constitutional conservatives for a 10-3 majority.
OT: We should all take the time to thank the EIGHT Democrats (only five were needed?) who joined Republicans to end the shutdown without any benefit of extended Obamacare. This is the type of conciliatory effort needed by parties to get things done around here.
We need more of that. on both sides.
Unfortunately, MEDIA headlines are emphasizing/focusing on those who would discredit and belittle the eight courageous Democrats (the “traitors.”). How sad that it is being reported that all eight are either retiring or not running in next election.
The recent changes in the Democratic party make it clear that their talk of ‘defending democracy’ is an out right lie. What they truly want is a socialist police state in America and with their allies, world wide. Democratic politicians routinely call for murdering anyone who disagrees with them and they have formed an alliance with followers of Islam who are trained form birth to murder or enslave all ‘nonbelievers’, all hallmarks of vicious ‘wanna be’ tyrants. I am not a huge fan of Trump but did vote for him three times because the alternatives presented by the Democrats were in my view absolutely disgusting. And yes, of course they want to pack or eliminate SCOTUS since it stands in their way of turning America into a left wing dictatorship.
The Supreme Court must be corrected squarely back onto the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Every justice who concurs with a decision that does not represent the “manifest tenor” of the Constitution must be impeached and convicted.
Two of the most evidently deviant cases are Texas v. White and Dobbs v. Jackson—secession is not prohibited and is the very essence of the 10th Amendment, while Dobbs obliterated the preposterous and wittingly corrupt Roe v. Wade.
SNAP is not close to “general Welfare” nor are all of the “individual and specific welfare” charity programs of the welfare state.
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“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what [their powers] forbid.”
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
Yet another post about how bad it is that Ds are chatting about doing what the Rs have already done. The court is packed now. It will of course take court packing to get the traitorous MAGAs off the court.
The Rs did not pack the Supreme Court. They won elections and were able to replace retiring Judges.
And the MAGAs on the court will be retired when the leave, willingly or not. I am hoping for not, more fun.
You don’t have enough ‘fun’ in the bank to cash the check your mouth is writing.
You are sick
The Communists advocating violence
Don’t try to speak truth to him
You clearly do not or are unable to understand what ‘court packing’ means.
It means the creation out of thin air of additional seats on the Supreme Court.
The Republicans did not do that. They followed the Constitution AND the Senate Rules as singularly amended by…..wait for it!…….Sen. Harry Reid (D)!! A Democrat!!!!!
This is just alarmist BS. How Dems ever going to get 60 votes in the Senate to expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court? What a waste of a column — unless the point is simply to agitate and provoke by cherry-picking the most fanciful, outrageous musings of the opposition party.
Dems merely need 51 votes to do away with the filibuster in the Senate. Once that is done, a simple majority can expand the Supreme Court.
They won’t need 60 votes. They will end the filibuster.
Knowing that this is the plan, why not help the Dems out? End the filibuster now. Expand the Supreme Court to 13 members and have DJT fill the four new seats.
It won’t be hard when the surviving MAGAs are banned from office under 14A3S after the war.
You don’t get banned after wars you win.
You assume the leftists will win. Good luck with that. Nobody wins in that scenario except the Chinese.
Wars are won based on reality and facts. Not delusions, wishful or magical thinking. That will be the biggest fight leftists will have to win, their battle against reality.
If you Soviet Democrats try your FAFO Civil War… you’ll all be at room temperature after that war is over.
If you aren’t already a Leftist you are the type of American that has guffawed all along as the Left continues to lead, push and drag the United States as far Left as they can.
pbinca says: This is just alarmist BS. How Dems ever going to get 60 votes in the Senate to expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court?
First you Democrats use your simple majority to eliminate the filibuster. Then you only need your simple majority to expand SCOTUS and then add states to the country. That’s simple.
Want to take this embarrassing moment to explain your last moment of shyting your bed when you said young American adults should only be allowed to exercise their Second Amendment rights while in the presence of an approved “mature adult” to serve an apprenticeship under?
You are a Cheap Fake Kalifornication.
“In Vino Veritas”
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Symposium
The Greek word symposion (or symposium) breaks down into two parts: syn- meaning “together” and pínein meaning “to drink.”
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symposium
noun
1a: a convivial party (as after a banquet in ancient Greece) with music and conversation.
1b: a social gathering at which there is free interchange of ideas
2a: a formal meeting at which several specialists deliver short addresses on a topic or on related topics
2b: a collection of opinions on a subject
A convivial party indeed!
Tyranny
OK, time for the right to enlarge the court and pack it with right thinking jurists. Do away with the filibuster now, pass a bill to enlarge the court and make a new process in the bill that makes it difficult to change the size of the court or add term limits to the supremes without a super majority.
The first part can be done, but the second part is literally impossible without a constitutional amendment — which in turn is impossible without bipartisan support. No bill can “make it difficult to change the size of the court”, nor can any bill “add term limits to the supremes”, with or without a supermajority.
I can make a good case that the Supreme Court needs to have 15 members.
I can make a good case that the Supreme Court needs to have 15 members.
I can make a good case that the voltage on your next electroconvulsive treatment session needs to be increased by 15 μV
😉
I am perfectly open to increasing the number of justices, as well as the idea of 18-year terms that I’ve seen floated. But I will not accept either part implementing it instantly, by fiat, installing a large slate of their own justices all at once.
They don’t care what you think….(cue: evil laughing of Democrats/Leftists/Communists)
I’ve seen proposals that the increase occur at the rate of one Associate Justicce per 4 years. This avoids the appearance of so-called court-packing.
It is clear that the number of so-called emergency dockets rulings shows the necessity of some increase, enough so that accepted cases are heard and argued by a panel of the whole. Losing parties could then have a final appeal, rarely granted, to the court as a whole.
IF they don’t get their way they change the rules or cheat… how typical of liberals.
That’s civil war talk!
I believe if the Federal, State, or Local Governments gets too far out of control there will be a new Civil War starting with vigilantes. We are seeing Judicial and DA activity that leaves most criminals free or out quickly. In Federal Judicial activity they are active against the President acting like a coup. Voting in many areas are not clearly just for citizens and they should be on one day and results in that one day only for citizens with Voter ID. This is leading to a break down in society that the Democrats are pushing but citizens will ultimately fight against.
OK, let’s work on solving these specific problems you raise.
How is Civil War going to improve anything? You can’t predict the outcome. And once people with guns taste the power it gives them, how are you going to ever get them to disarm and go back to meritocratic argument?
Wait? Now the MAGAs are against coups? Tell that to Babbitt the Traitor.