Screenshot reading: The obvious rejoinder to this argument is this: if you do this, won’t the Trumpist party just do the same thing in the other direction the next time they have a trifecta? Well, maybe they will. I’m okay with that. Because if that happens the general rounds of adding new members will lead to a general diminution of the power and centrality of the Supreme Court generally. That’s a feature rather than a bug. The point of a Supreme Court is to create a venue to settle constitutional disputes and interpretations of statute law. It’s not meant to be and shouldn’t be a Guardian Council running the country through a menu of made-to-order cases. Its posture should be reactive and characterized by restraint. From a liberal or Democratic perspective you probably want a Court that will vindicate the rights of the marginalized or those excluded from power as well as be a break-glass backstop for the constitutional order. Clearly it’s not serving the first purpose (though some of that would be the legitimate outcome of elections). The last eight months demonstrates that it refuses to serve the second either. There has never been a clearer break-the-glass moment in the face of wild aggrandizements of executive power in American history. Far from acting to keep the executive within the bounds of the Constitution, the Court has gone out of its way to grease the skids for an autocratic takeover, even running interference against lower court Republican judges trying ...