On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) added his voice to expand the Supreme Court to a “baker’s dozen,” or thirteen members to allow Democrats to add justices who agree with him and Democratic members on how the law must be interpreted. In the meantime, as discussed earlier, court packing is being pushed as the new litmus test for any Democratic candidates. Clyburn’s “baker’s dozen” is a telling description of an effort to bake in partisan views on a Court expanded to create an instant liberal majority. In defending this hostile takeover of the Court, Clyburn bizarrely insisted that the failure to do so might lead to a return to antebellum conditions when blacks were being given fewer rights than whites.
When asked by host Kristen Welker whether he supports the call of former Vice President Kamala Harris to pack the Court, Clyburn responded:
“Yes, I do. I think that we are in a position now that calls for some significant actions taken by the Congress and we ought to expand. Thirteen is a pretty good number. A baker’s dozen would be a good number to have on the court. And I would hope we would get people on the Court who will follow the constitutional underpinnings of this great nation of ours.”
Clyburn then made the sensational claim that, without taking over the Court, blacks could be returned to virtual slave conditions. He added:
“The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments have been interpreted different ways over the years. And we had in the Warren Court an interpretation of those amendments that I thought would be set for the future of the country. We have now a Supreme Court that has decided to reverse course and take this country back, I say, to those rulings of Justice Taney that said that no black man has any rights that a white man must respect.”
So, while recognizing that interpretations have evolved, Clyburn now demands a takeover of the Court because he disagrees with the current interpretations. It was fine when interpretations aligned with his views, but opposing viewpoints are intolerable and warrant packing the Court with reliable liberal votes. Other Democrats have demanded packing the Court to reverse immigration rulings.
The unhinged rhetoric reflects the importance of taking over the Court by Democrats who view the institution as a barrier to carrying out a radical agenda, including proposals that are considered unconstitutional. Liberal professors and pundits have identified a court takeover as essential to, as one law professor put it, guaranteeing that the Democrats never lose another national election. As former Attorney General Eric Holder and Democratic strategist James Carville have made clear, it is about power and guaranteeing its retention.
Of course, these figures know that it will take a great deal to get Americans to trash core institutions and values. Polls have long shown that a majority of citizens oppose efforts to pack the Court. FDR’s infamous court-packing plan in the 1930s has been widely panned in history, but is now being used as a model by many Democrats to achieve short-term political goals.
In order to overcome this fealty to our constitutional system, citizens must be very angry or very afraid. That is why the rage rhetoric is increasing as we approach the midterm elections. In the last election, the prediction was the imminent end of democracy. Now it is the return to slavery conditions in the United States.
One can disagree with the Court without suggesting that these justices are effective racists or want to return the nation to pre-Civil War slavery conditions. The suggestion that the Court would return this country to the Dred Scott period from before the Civil War is deeply offensive to the conservative justices, including Justice Clarence Thomas, who is African American. It is an absurd suggestion and shows contempt not just for the Court but for Black voters.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Hopefully, in early 2028, the incoming Democratic administration will a) invoke the fine ancient Roman practice of damnatio memoriae, and chisel DJT from the records; and b) find a means to seize his entire real estate holdings, demolish Trump Tower, turn Mar-a-Lago into a VA centre, and build data centres on all his golf courses 🙂
I’m sure that Professor Jonathan Turley will agree with me that the time has come to pack our Supreme Court with the foremost Constitutional scholars listed below.
But not only are they the foremost Constitutional scholars, they are also wise, judicious, balanced, unbiased, and clear, level-headed legal thinkers.
1. Hasan Piker
2. Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed
3. Debbie Dingell
4. Rashida Tlaib
5. Ilhan Omar
6. Cory Bush
7. Bernie Sanders
8. Graham Platner
9. James Talarico
10. Claire Valdez
11. Darializa Avila Chevalier
12. Angela Nixon
13. Kamala Harris
Estovir, why are you anonymous for this jokey post? Why not just use the name ‘Estovir’?
In fact, you could just stick to ‘Estovir’ and ditch all your puppets. But then we’d see your name 100 times per day. So I guess your puppets disguise that constant activity.
Oh right, lucky number 13 hasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hades. How about a black cat as our national totem. lol
Yes, please finish the ballroom but next time leave the old structure in place until it collapses. Those buildings are ruin. Get a new capitol. How about Miami.
That’s what Democrats do. If you can’t win elections on good sound common ideas, they CHANGE the RULES or just, CHEAT.
President Trump should issue an EO saying the Supreme Court permanently has nine justices. Someone with standing should challenge it, and Scotus should uphold it, interpreting Article III, Section 1 as now requiring exactly nine. Then it would require a constitutional amendment to alter that.
#WeAreEstovir
He has no standing to issue such an Executive Order, you clueless moron, just as he has no standing to issue most of his executive orders, which are even more scandalous than Biden’s autopen pardons.
Apparently the oldmanfromkansas is not aware of the concept of the separation of powers.
Presidential executive orders have no effect outside the Executive branch. That is why they are called EXECUTIVE orders.
Presidential EO’s are directives to officers and agencies of the Executive branch ONLY, and cannot be used to regulate anything outside the direct control Executive branch.
And this guy claims to be an attorney !!
What a dimwit !!!!
Wrong. While executive orders are directives to officer and agencies of the Executive branch, President Trump could still issue an EO stating that “the Supreme Court permanently has nine justices” and that “the Executive branch will only recognize the decisions of the properly confirmed nine Supreme Court justices”.
What oldmanfromKansas was suggesting was that if President signed such an EO, someone with standing might then feel compelled to challenge it, after which, the SCOTUS would ultimately uphold it.
It’s laughable when clueless submorons project their own inadequacies and deficiencies onto people with IQs at least 60% greater than them, calling them “dimwits”. LOL!
Wrong. You are the clueless moron, projecting your own subcretinesque idiocy onto someone far superior to you. The concept of “legal standing” actually only applies to parties who file lawsuits in court, not to the president who issues executive orders. President Trump always has the baseline authority or capacity to sign and issue an executive order. And that power comes from the U.S. Constitution or from federal statutes passed by Congress.
President Trump does not need to prove “standing” to issue an order when he acts in his official capacity as head of the executive branch. Instead, “standing” is a requirement for outside individuals, states, or groups who want to sue the government to stop an executive order.
What you’re probably trying to say–if you had any brains–is that Federal courts can strike down or block an executive order if they find that the president overstepped his constitutional or statutory authority.
Absolute bollocks. You are Justice Alito and I claim my five dollars. Read Robert’s dissent on the latest outrageous judgement, the bit about separation of powers. No President has any lawful “baseline” authority to issue executive orders regarding the composition of the Supreme Court, just as he has no authority, say, to alter the composition of Congress or interfere in any manner whatsoever with States regulating elections. Terribly sorry if that buggers up your hopes for a Thousand Year Reich, better burn down the Reichstag old bean.
I’m laughing, that idea has several problems. lol
Old Man is Estovir and he even notes it on his posts. Like, “Yeah, I’m Estovir, man of a hundred names”.
Well, SCOTUS, by refusing to stop Trump’s destruction of the East Wing on the ridiculous grounds of “standing” – if a vandal is unlawfully destroying public property, then any group of citizens can rightfully say they are being hurt by it – has probably guaranteed that it will be reformed once Trump loses the mid-terms, certainly after a Democrat win in 2028. Of course, by then Turley will probably be trying to pretend that he was a Democrat all along as no-one wants to hear from a partisan hack with hair-dye and a shit-eating grin on Fox.
You’re just bummed that there won’t be a less secure place. You were inspired when Cole Thomas Allen tried to assassinate Trump, and now you’re losing hope that a similar attack might succeed in the future. It must suck to be you.
How would a ballroom protect Trump, you idiot? Is it going to include an indoor golf course? Is it going to host the Correspondent’s dinner? Is it going to host a political rally of mouth-breathing MAGA fools? It would be irrelevant for every real and imagined assassination attempt that Trump has experienced. It must suck to be as stupid as you…
There’s underground bunkers in case of bunker busters and tunnels leading elsewhere. Thats a classy helipad.
There already are bunkers at the White House. And how many assassins in even the USA with its sacred Second Amendment have bunker busters or the means to deliver them anyway? Idiocy.
Shame on Barrett for allowing this nonsense. Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito are all utterly compromised and worthless hacks, but if Barrett had stood alongside Roberts…
Have all repub States gerrymandered to get as many reps as possible? How’s it adding up? Most are registered independent. How will that fall out? Calif is sending 53 dem reps to the House and 2 repubs? I’d say that’s a problem in fair representation.
As time wears on I’ll miss Isaac Perlman, Arthur Reubenstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Albert Einstein, Walter Lewin, Robert Frost and Shakespeare, too.
Courts have delayed the mifepristone suit, DJT can proceed with ballroom.
It isn’t a fine world for American patriots. The US is a fine nation and our fathers’ honorable. Don’t let it get you down but find good work among the ruins.
Can anyone imagine objecting to a ballroom after monuments were toppled and defaced. File it all under bizarre.
An extraordinary article about an extraordinary American: Justice Clarence Thomas.
How Justice Thomas Played the Long Game and Won
Thomas’ life story is the stuff of legend. He grew up in the most abject poverty imaginable in Jim Crow-era rural Georgia. English was not even his first language. He overcame all that, in addition to his onetime wavering faith and even an infatuation with Malcolm X and the Black Power movement, to become one of the greatest conservatives in American history.
But here’s the thing: Thomas never forgot where he came from.
It is well known that, inside the Supreme Court building, Thomas is the personal favorite justice. That’s true for the justices themselves, it’s true for the law clerks, and it’s even true for the janitors. Thomas is the justice who will talk NASCAR with the court security guard (he’s a big fan of the sport), and he is the justice who will regale law clerks with funny stories from years gone by — with his signature, boisterous laugh.
The one topic Thomas will not talk about, because it would offend his old-school Southern manners, is himself.
In a nation short on exemplary role models, Thomas fills the void. He would never dream of saying so himself, but Thomas is an American hero and the nation’s most inspiring man.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2026/08/28/clarence_thomas_played_the_long_game_he_won_154452.html
Esto, why did Anita Hill lie? What was she thinking? Did you witness the scandal for Thomas among the white folk of the time period? This was a time period of The Dick Van Dyke Show with twin beds because men and women could not be seen in the same bed publicly? Imagine for a moment what Hill said broadcast nationwide was porn to white folk. You do know that, right? I like Thomas’ forthright common sense. What was Hill thinking?
Today’s piece by Turley simply confirms that he is nothing more than a political hack, for hire to the highest bidder.
In recent years Turley has complained about the small size of SCOTUS, and has made repeated demands to increase the size to 19 justices.
Here is what he has written. Everything below are verbatim excerpts from articles written by Turley himself, including from an article in 2017 on this very blog.
“Our highest court is so small that the views of individual justices have a distorting and idiosyncratic effect on our laws. The deep respect for the Supreme Court as an institution often blinds us to its flaws, the greatest of which is that it is demonstrably too small. Nine members is one of the worst numbers you could pick — and it’s certainly not what the founders chose. The Constitution does not specify the number of justices, and the court’s size has fluctuated through the years. It’s time for it to change again.”
“I believe that many of the court’s problems come back to its dysfunctionally small size. This is something that countries with larger high courts manage to avoid: Germany (16 members), Japan (15), United Kingdom (12) and Israel (15). France uses 124 judges and deputy judges, while Spain has 74. These systems have structural differences, but they eliminate our concentration-of-power problem.”
“While the best number is debatable, I believe that a 19-member court — roughly the average size of a circuit court — would be ideal. Appellate circuits are often divided between liberal and conservative judges. Yet it is rare that one or two of those judges consistently provide the swing votes on all issues when they sit as a whole. Appellate courts of this size have proved to be manageable while allowing for more diversity in their members. More important, the power of individual judges is diluted.”
“We treat institutions such as the Supreme Court as inviolate. However, the framers not only gave us a brilliant system of government but the ability to improve it to better meet contemporary demands. The respect that most of us hold for the court should motivate us, not deter us, from reforming it. Just as the philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham called for “the greatest good for the greatest number,” sometimes the greatest good can be found in the greater number.”
The hypocrisy is astounding!!
There are many other op-eds on this theme written by Turley that appear in other forums, but I can only list 2 links.
https://captimes.com/news/opinion/column/jonathan-turley-why-high-court-should-have-19-not-9-justices/article_c3cbd198-d076-56a9-a01a-a85aac92333b.html
https://jonathanturley.org/2017/02/02/how-to-really-change-the-supreme-court-three-reforms-that-could-make-for-a-bigger-and-better-court/
Not only has Turley advocated for a 19 justice SCOTUS, he has done so for the exact same reasons as Clyburn. That is, the court came down with a narrow 5-4 decision with which he personally disagreed.
In 2012 he wrote a piece decrying the 5-4 decision that allowed Obamacare to stand. He stated that he was opposed to Obamacare and that the case was wrongly decided. He advocated a solution of increasing the size to 19 justices.
Here is what he said. The following are verbatim excerpts.
“Once again, many important decisions were the result of a court of one – 5-4 decisions, with “swing Justice” Anthony Kennedy deciding the issue for the nation. Healthcare is just one of a litany of cases that are reshaping the country in an image dictated often by just five members of the court. This has included sweeping changes in the political process from the Bush v Gore decision in 2000 (where the supreme court effectively chose the next president), to the Citizen’s United case (where the court struck down campaign finance limits for corporations).”
“While I support national healthcare, I have long opposed Obamacare on federalism grounds – denying states their constitutionally protected authority over such matters. Most experts are now predicting that the conservatives will likely carry the day in striking down critical parts of the law, or the law in its entirety. Despite being on the expected winning side of that particular case, I still believe that it is wrong for such a small group of jurists to make the decision for the country as a whole. In my view, the supreme court is demonstrably and dangerously too small.”
“Ever since the supreme court rested at nine members, we have repeatedly had problems of 5-4 splits, with one or two swing justices dictating the outcome of cases. With the increasing longevity of justices, such divisions have become stagnant and bitter. We often find ourselves captive to the idiosyncratic views of a couple of justices’ views on privacy, or federalism, or free speech.”
“Our experience with larger courts, both domestically and internationally, suggests that there is a better model for our highest court. Our respect for the court as an institution should not blind us to its flaws. It is time to reform – and expand – the US supreme court.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/27/bigger-better-supreme-court-reform
HYPOCRISY !!!!
^ Chinese communist propaganda AI slop
Are you suggesting that Turley’s pearls of wisdom, quoted above, are “Chinese communist propaganda AI slop”? Heavens!
The motive, anon, speaks for itself.
Trump is assuming power over the postal service that the Constitution does not grant.
This does not show respect for the Constitution.
This should concern the Constitution lovers.
Can you cite a clause in the Constitution that Trump has violated? No, because if you could, you would have already. Pathetic dweeb, idiot, dunce, moron.
I think the post office has an insecure chain of handlers. He’s regarding election security as he should. He’s being diligent and lawful.
are they being sent return receipt and certified by thumbprint and signature by a certified witness?
Thanks to Trump, thousands of people have lost their jobs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_federal_mass_layoffs
Anonymous,
Yes, you’re right. And guess what. The federal government still is working as well as it was working before the layoffs.
Stephen B Benisch Esq. Is Estovir.
thanks to the obama regime millions have died…
The MAGA movement does not like black people.
George is dismayed that slaves got their freedom.
Trump has fired black people.
Clyburn’s concerns are valid.
You just turn a blind eye to them.
Clyburn’s concerns are not valid. They are the childish expression of a man whose party has lost Presidential elections and thus the right to nominate Justices whose views he approves of. Solution: win a few more Presidential elections, at which point ‘your guy’ will pick the Justices. And by the way, if your side can ‘pack the Court’ with an additional four Justices, can the next Republican Administration move the number to 17? Just wondering. At some point, we might have to move the Court to the new Ballroom!
Perhaps Clyburn approves of the Republican Congress and Senate packing the Court now? Will someone please ask him if he’d approve President Trump choosing 5 more Justices before his term is up.
Trump rejects the freedom conferred by the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights in the here and now.
He has a very poor grasp of the founding principles.
Biden respected the peaceful transfer of power. The same can’t be said of Trump and his mob of J6ers.
Anonymous,
Have you forgotten the assassination attempts on the lives of President Donald J. Trump and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh … the “mostly peaceful protests” that burned courthouses, police stations, and business districts … the Jew-hating mobs on Ivy League campuses … the torching of Tesla cars and factories … the armed takeover of the center of Seattle a/k/a CHAZ a/k/a/ CHOP … and Chuck Schumer’s mob threatening Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh with “you will pay the price … you won’t know what hit you”?