OPINION:
By voting against a proposed constitutional amendment to permanently fix the number of Supreme Court justices at nine, its size for the past 157 years, Democrats have signaled that once in power, they will expand the court and destroy democracy with it.
No one expected passage of the amendment, which requires a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate. Rather, it was a way to show that Democrats are determined to pack the court.
Every Democratic representative but one voted against the amendment. The most popular court-packing scheme calls for increasing the number of justices to 16. If Democrats control the presidency and Senate in 2029, that is exactly what they will do.
Since the first Trump administration, liberals have seethed over the fact that the court now has a 6-3 constitutionalist majority. Sometimes the court rules in conservatives’ favor, on matters such as abortion and gun ownership. At other times, it does not rule in conservatives’ favor, as on the issue of birthright citizenship.
No one on the right starts bellyaching about the unfairness of it all and demanding that the court be enlarged to achieve the results they want.
If they do expand the court to 16, it will allow the next Democratic president to appoint seven Supreme Court justices in the mold of Ketanji Brown Jackson.
When Republicans are back in power, perhaps they will expand the court further. Eventually, the Supreme Court will come to resemble China’s National People’s Congress in size.
The larger it gets, the less effective the court will become. Soon, there will be no checks on the other branches of government, and we will be well on the way to the end of democracy in America.
The framers of the Constitution intended the Supreme Court to act as a brake on the elected branches of government. With the court constantly in flux, it will become less and less effective in that regard.
Given the craziness of the Democratic Party, which increasingly is in the hands of the Democratic Socialists of America, there will be no restraint on enacting its agenda, including socialized medicine, open borders and voting by noncitizens.
Republicans must let voters know what the stakes are this year.
A Democratic majority in Congress in 2027, followed by a Democratic victory in the 2028 presidential election, would make the Constitution irrelevant by eliminating the ultimate arbiter in the Supreme Court.
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