A House subcommittee held a hearing on left-wing calls to pack the U.S. Supreme Court with liberal activists on Thursday. And unsurprisingly, not a single House Democrat in attendance condemned such a radical proposal.
Hosted by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet, lawmakers heard testimony from several legal specialists about Democrats’ ongoing efforts to undermine SCOTUS. As indicated by its title (“Court Packing: A Threat to the Supreme Court’s Legitimacy”), the hearing was supposed to examine how the left is using such efforts to push for stacking the court with left-wing activists who will rule on issues in their favor.
While House Republicans and their witnesses kept to the topic and underscored how packing the Supreme Court would undermine the rule of law and the legitimacy of the institution, the subcommittee’s Democrats couldn’t help themselves. Not only did every single leftist representative in attendance decline to disavow packing SCOTUS, these members went out of their way to further slander the high court’s conservative justices, misrepresent its rulings, and peddle outright falsehoods.
In his scrambling rant, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., laughably claimed that the “far right” in America has created a “corrupt United States Supreme Court that too often works for the corporations, the billionaires, and the oligarchs at the expense of the American people.” The congressman — who once espoused fears that the island of Guam would “capsize” if too many people were on it — also took aim at the conservative legal movement and what he called the high court’s “MAGA supermajority” before then mischaracterizing several of the court’s key rulings.
While referencing the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and the made-up “constitutional right” to abortion, for example, Johnson claimed the conservative majority has “decimated reproductive freedoms that generations of women fought to secure.” The congressman notably declined to mention Roe‘s unsound legal reasoning and how the Dobbs decision returned the power to decide abortion laws to the people and their elected representatives.
Johnson later regurgitated his bizarre claim that the court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision prohibiting race-based gerrymandering has placed America in an era of “Jim Crow 2.0.” In closing, he telegraphed Democrats’ plans to “do something” — including, seemingly, adding justices — to the Supreme Court once they retake power.
Ranking Member and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., similarly misled viewers about the Supreme Court’s work and spewed false talking points aimed at undermining its legitimacy.
The Democrat congressman spent a great deal of time whining about Senate Republicans’ decision to hold deceased Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat open until after the 2016 election, which led to President Trump appointing Justice Neil Gorsuch to the post. He also complained about Republicans’ subsequent move to fill deceased Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat with Justice Amy Coney Barrett before the 2020 election.
In an apparent bid to justify Democrats’ court-packing gambit, Raskin laughably claimed these decisions amount to “court-packing,” and that those seats were “stolen” by the GOP. He also grossly (and falsely) argued that the court’s Callais decision and rulings upholding a colorblind Constitution “returned [the country] to the historic baseline of political white supremacy.”
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., similarly did not condemn efforts to pack the Supreme Court but instead spent her time peddling bogus smears against Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
In pushing back on Democrats’ hatchet job, Republican congressmen like Jim Jordan listed off the numerous ways in which leftists have threatened and sought to destroy the Supreme Court due to their disagreement with its rulings. He pointed out the leaking of the Dobbs majority opinion, the Biden Justice Department’s refusal to prosecute left-wing demonstrators trying to intimidate the conservative justices, the assassination attempt against Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the smears against Thomas and Alito, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s threats against Gorsuch and Kavanaugh — all of which he said is meant to lay the foundation for Democrats’ bid to pack the court.
“Why did they do it? To concoct some basis for packing the court. And now they’re saying it again,” Jordan said. “They’re all talking about it. … ‘We gotta pack the court.’ Why? Why? ’Cause they don’t like the decisions that this good court is giving this country.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
