THE MOST EFFECTIVE ARGUMENT AGAINST TRUMP'S BRIBE

This is an empty promise, but I worry that it might sway some voters:

President Donald Trump pledged Wednesday to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections, an extraordinary gambit to reverse his party’s sagging fortunes in November....

“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” Trump said during the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump Dividend.”

That's from AP, which calls the plan "dubious" in its headline, as does The New York Times. Politico calls it "a hot mess of a half-baked midterm promise." The Daily Beast seems to be the only mainstream news outlet that included the word "bribe" in its headline. ("Desperate Trump Offers Brazen Cash Bribe in Bonkers Speech").

Raw Story notes that this promise appears to violate a number of federal laws:

“The primary legal threat is 18 U.S.C. § 600, which criminalizes promising government benefits made possible by Congress as a reward for supporting a political party,” wrote Thomas Logan, a U.S.-Asia relations specialist and strategist, in a social media post on X.

“Tying the money to GOP control fits § 600 far more closely than a standard tax-cut pledge. Vote-buying statutes like 18 U.S.C. § 597 and 52 U.S.C. § 10307(c) also apply. While defenders would argue this is a policy platform rather than a bribe, the explicit transaction creates real legal risk.”

Political writer Mona Burns called Trump’s promise an outright “bribe,” noting that violation of 18 U.S. Code § 597 is “punishable by fine or imprisonment of not more than one year,” and political scientist Danny Krikorian argued that the president’s pledge opened a “legitimate” legal question.

“Trump explicitly tied a massive cash benefit to Republican electoral victory. That creates a legitimate §600 question,” Krikorian wrote Thursday in a social media post on X.

But experts cited by the Times say that it's all legal.

Jessica Levinson, who teaches election law at Loyola Law School at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said that Mr. Trump’s statement did not seem too far afield from a promise to lower taxes.

And Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Mr. Trump’s promise was protected speech under the First Amendment, pointing to Brown v. Hartlage, a unanimous Supreme Court decision from 1982 that struck down the application of a Kentucky law preventing candidates from making monetary promises in return for votes. Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote in the court’s opinion that “so long as the hoped-for personal benefit is to be achieved through the normal processes of government, and not through some private arrangement, it has always been, and remains, a reputable basis upon which to cast one’s ballot.”

Of course, this will never happen, even if the GOP succeeds in holding both houses of Congress. Trump loves to promise big payouts that never materialize.

Since becoming president again, Trump has promised: -$5000 stimulus checks via "DOGE dividend" -$2000 stimulus checks via "tariff dividend" -$1000+ checks via "savings" from expiring ACA subsidies -$5000 "dividend" if Rs win midterms No checks have been issued www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-magi...

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— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) September 9, 2026 at 10:33 PM

Every news outlet reports that this would require congressional approval, and that's true under the law. But we live in a post-rule-of-law America. If Trump wants to do something that requires congressional approval under the law, he just does it. The Republican-controlled Congress sits on its hands and lets him do it. But he doesn't want to do this. He just wants to make the empty promise.

This would be a massive budget-buster, as Bloomberg notes:

There are approximately 240 million adult citizens in the U.S., according to the U.S. Census Bureau, meaning that the payments could cost about $1.2 trillion.

If the president followed through on such a plan, it would likely worsen inflation by further boosting consumer spending and supporting higher prices, which are already elevated due to the war in Iran. The dividend, if not paired with revenue-raising measures, would also exacerbate a rise in longer-term borrowing costs for the U.S. government, which have been rising partially on fears that the federal debt is growing unsustainably.

I think a small but significant number of voters might be swayed by this -- and in a moment when Democrats appear to lead many key races by one- or two-point margins, that could be enough to give Republicans several wins. So I think Democrats need to take this seriously.

They should call it a bribe, whether or not it legally is -- common sense tells us that's exactly what it is. You can already see Democrats carefully avoiding the b-word.

DNC Rapid Response director Kendall Witmer called out Trump’s latest election stunt.

“Donald Trump and Republicans are once again offering empty promises to Americans,” Witmer said in a statement. “The only people reaping the benefits of Trump’s economy are himself, his family, and his ultra-rich elite donors. Meanwhile, working families get nothing except sky-high receipts at the grocery store and the pump, unaffordable healthcare premiums, and wages that aren’t keeping up with inflation.”

Call it a bribe, and also use the argument that will hit home the most with ordinary Americans, given the fact that this will cost more than a trillion dollars: This money isn't coming from Donald Trump and the Republicans. It's coming from your children. It's money the government doesn't have. Trump will have to borrow the money, and your children and grandchildren will be paying interest on the trillion-dollar debt for the rest of their lives.

That's the message: Donald Trump ruins everything he touches, and his only response to his failures is to bribe you to forget all about them, using money that isn't his. It's your children's and grandchildren's money he's bribing you with. Say it. Say it every day.

IF TRUMP IS HATED, WHY AREN'T THE POLLS PREDICTING MORE DEMOCRATIC BLOWOUTS?

I saw this chart at Reddit. The numbers appear to be accurate.

In many states, Democratic Senate candidates are running more than ten points better than Kamala Harris did in 2024. Some or all of these candidates could win in states that have been widely regarded as red.

But if red-state Democrats are running a dozen or so points better than Harris, why aren't purple-state Democrats doing the same thing? In addition to the less-than-spectacular numbers being put up by the Democratic Senate candidates in Michigan, Maine, and Minnesota, why does Democrat Chris Pappas have only a two-point lead in the New Hampshire Senate race, according to the Real Clear Polling average? Harris beat Trump in New Hampshire by 2.78%. Why isn't New Hampshire's Democratic Senate candidate trouncing the Republican in what seems like a very Democratic year?

You could argue that this comes down to "candidate quality." Pappas is running against John E. Sununu, whose father and brother were both popular New Hampshire governors. In Maine, Troy Jackson is an unpolished speaker who was a replacement for primary voters' overwhelming favorite, Graham Platner. In Minnesota, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan needs to outrun the corruption scandal that brought down Governor Tim Walz. And in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed has been demonized by both the GOP and members of his own party.

But shouldn't there be some Democrat who's about to win a landslide in a purple state? Maybe it will be Jon Ossoff in Georgia or Roy Cooper in North Carolina, but so far, I see only one huge win developing for Democrats in purple America: Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro currently has a lead of more than twenty points in his reelection bid.

I keep thinking about the late-June New York Times poll of Maine, in which respondents said they preferred a Democratic Senate to a Republican Senate by a double-digit margin (54%-42%), but also gave Graham Platner, who was still running at the time, a lead of only two points over Susan Collins. Sure, Platner was a special case -- but it's as if voters in some states don't see that the way you get a Democratic Senate is by electing Democrats.

I think a major problem is that Democrats don't tout the Democratic Party -- progressives attack it from the left, while moderates brag about bipartisanship and wear their Democratic affiliation almost apologetically.

And Democrats don't attack the Republican Party.

This seems absurdly simple, but: Republicans talk *all the time* about how Democrats are bad. Not this or that individual Democrat, but the party, the ideology, the very idea of Democrats. Democrats almost never do this about Republicans. Not in a coordinated, concerted way.

— David Roberts (@volts.wtf) September 5, 2026 at 3:17 PM

This was the ideal year for Republican-bashing: not only is the Republican president wildly unpopular, but every Republican is his enabler, apart from a few who are hounded out of the party if they don't enable him.

You might not like Hasan Piker, or agree with him about the appeal of leftist policies, but I nod in agreement when I hear him attack Democrats' calls for "a strong Republican Party":

No, I want no Republican Party. I'm going to be very honest with you. I want an ineffective, feckless, weak -- kind of like the Democratic Party is currently. I want the Republican Party to be like that. I want a Republican Party that is utterly dominated and humiliated in broad daylight that people are embarrassed to say that they're voting for a Republican. That is the reality that I want.

Whatever you think of this, it's true that in large swaths of the country, the Democratic Party "is utterly dominated and humiliated in broad daylight" and "people are embarrassed to say that they're voting for a" Democrat. This could have been a year when Democrats expanded the much smaller area of the country in which the same is true for Republicans. We should have given more people in the heartland a new narrative to consider: not "Republicans are the go-to party, but this particular Republican president is so uncharacteristically bad that I'm considering a totally counterintuitive vote for a Democrat, which I'm sure I'll never repeat," but "Actually, Republicans suck in so many ways that I can't understand why everyone around here likes them." I think there are a lot of soft supporters of the GOP who would be receptive to that message.

Even if Democrats are highly successful this year, two years from now they'll wish they discredited the GOP more, because Donald Trump won't be on the ballot. Meanwhile, they're doing fine now, but they could be doing better.

COMPETITIVE AUTHORITARIANISM, BUT FOR BELIEF SYSTEMS

The tone of this Fox story is objective, but the report is meant to delight Fox's audience:

The Texas Board of Education gave final approval to changes to the state's high school social studies curriculum, a controversial move that will impact how students are taught about Islam and Christianity....

The board approved language asserting that "radical Islam" motivated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks rather than taking a more narrow focus on the terrorist groups involved in the attack.

The material also requires students to study early Islam through Prophet Muhammad's "brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes," the "normalization of slavery" and the taking of female captives as "harem slaves."

An earlier Texas Tribune story notes:

The GOP [board] members voted against eliminating the word “brutal,” as suggested by their colleague, Will Hickman.

They did not revive a previously deleted expectation that schools teach about Muslim contributions to algebra and astronomy.

The Tribune story adds this:

Students testified earlier in the week that the decision to instead portray Islam as violent will cause significant harm to them and their classmates.

“I feel attacked, as if my religion doesn’t belong,” Habiiba Quresh, 15, told board members. “I shouldn’t have to defend my religion in the middle of history class because of one sentence someone on this board wrote.”

These changes have been in the works for years. It doesn't surprise me that the GOP-majority board (currently 11-4) approved them this year, at a moment when the state Republican Party's main message appears to be "Booga-booga! There are Muslims under your bed!" The anti-Muslim bigotry in the state is so flagrant that even The New York Times took notice last month.

I've had doomer thoughts about where this is leading, in Texas and eventually in a future GOP-led America: first to Nuremberg laws that exclude Muslims from professions and neighborhoods, and then eventually to camps and genocide, or at least ethnic cleansing. Bo French, the GOP candidate for Texas railroad commissioner, certainly talks that way -- the Times story I've linked quotes a tweet in which he wrote, “I won’t rest until every Muslim is gone.”

That nightmare future is certainly possible (and certainly possible for other groups: trans people and eventually everyone in the LGBTQ community, non-whites, socialists, Jews, eventually Democrats). But there's another possibility that seems more likely.

Most Texas Republicans seem not to want to drive Muslims out of the state, exclude them from professions, or take away their right to vote. Instead, they seem to want to declare as official policy that Muslims are second-class citizens by definition. Texas doesn't seem to want to prevent Muslims from running for office -- it just wants non-Muslim children to grow up believing that Muslims should never hold office (and to believe, presumably, that no politician who embraces Muslims as full citizens should hold office either).

The difference between what the Nazis did to Jews and what Texas Republicans are doing to Muslims seems analogous to the difference between pure authoritarianism and what Professor Steven Levitsky calls "competitive authoritarianism."

In competitive authoritarian regimes, multiparty elections are held regularly and are hard-fought affairs. However, the “playing field” is uneven: control of the media, abuse of state resources, coercion, and/or limited fraud give incumbents an unfair advantage over the opposition. Because elections are not free and fair, these regimes are not democratic. Yet neither are they fully authoritarian.

In Texas, you still have freedom of religion, but if you're a Muslim, the government has mandated that the education system defines your religion as dangerous and "brutal." You can run for office in Texas, but Texas wants to mold citizens who will never vote for you.

This isn't exactly Frank Wilhoit's portrayal of conservatism as the belief that "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." If you're a Texan who's a Muslim (or a member of some other suspect group), the law won't force you out of a profession or off a ballot. Instead, it will work to ensure that you're always seen by the majority culture as "less than."

I think the future of Republicanism is competitive cultural authoritarianism in many areas. The New York Times reported this over the weekend:

The Trump administration is moving to allow married couples with a stay-at-home spouse to collect child care subsidies, a policy championed by Vice President JD Vance, using funds from a federal program intended to assist working parents....

The change would create the only federal subsidy to pay parents to stay home and raise their children, one of the most significant efforts to date by the Trump administration to harness federal funds to promote a traditional view of families.

To do so, officials are seeking to use a Health and Human Services Department fund that was created in the 1990s to help low-income and working-class parents afford child care so they could work or go to school.

Under the draft new rule, parents who stay home with their children could benefit from the program, which typically provides about $9,000 per child each year, potentially reshaping which families get federal child care money.

The move could end up redirecting money away from working parents and their child care providers, causing some to raise their rates or even close, critics said, potentially worsening what many experts say is a child care crisis in the country.

This is pure Orbanism -- favoring married couples over non-married couples and single parents, favoring couples with stay-at-home mothers over single parents.

This is the future that Republicans want: a government thumb on the scale on their behalf and against any group they don't like. With that unlevel playing field, they'll probably allow the unfavored to live here as nominal full citizens, just as long as they can use the unfavored as political punching bags and keep them and their advocates out of power forever.

OFF FOR THE WEEKEND

This should be the last trip for a while. See you on Tuesday. Happy Labor Day.

FETTERMAN ISN'T DOING HIS JOB, BUT HE'S DOING EVERYTHING HIS REPUBLICAN FANS THINK A POLITICIAN SHOULD DO

This Wall Street Journal story (free to read here) won't hurt John Fetterman at all in the eyes of his current fanbase:

... behind closed doors, the first-term senator shows little interest in doing the job beyond cultivating relationships with conservative media figures and advocating for Israel, according to interviews with more than a dozen former staffers and lawmakers, as well as text messages and other internal records.

For example?

One morning in June, three paralyzed military veterans in wheelchairs from rural Pennsylvania arrived at the office of Sen. John Fetterman for a long-awaited meeting to discuss legislation that would improve their care.

Fetterman’s staff greeted them with bad news: The Pennsylvania Democrat had to cancel. He’d told his staff he may have eaten something bad and wasn’t feeling well, according to people familiar with the matter.

Less than an hour after his staffers met with the veterans in his place, Fetterman walked into his office, showing no signs of illness. He had an appointment he didn’t want to miss, he told staff: an interview on Fox News to discuss Israel and the war in Iran.

Another example?

Last September, when an aide told Fetterman that officials with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, known as CHOP, wanted to meet because they were worried about Medicaid cuts, he was dismissive.

Also:

In April 2025, veteran Pennsylvania state lawmaker Anthony Hardy Williams brought a busload of constituents to Washington from Eastwick, a poorer, flood-prone neighborhood in Philadelphia, to meet with their representatives in Congress and discuss Trump administration cuts to a grant program that had helped the area.

Fetterman was the only one who refused to meet with them, Williams said in an interview. At one point, they saw Fetterman walking the halls and yelled, but he didn’t acknowledge them, according to Williams.

Fetterman isn't just failing to stay in touch with his constituents:

Last May, several media reports highlighted Fetterman’s paltry attendance record at Senate hearings.... At that point, records transcripts show, Fetterman had skipped 11 of the 12 full hearings that year of his assigned committees—Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture.

Nevertheless, Republicans in his state love him:

In Pennsylvania, Fetterman’s shifting politics and public stances have led to a once unthinkable outcome in recent polling by the New York Times: He is more popular among Republican voters than the state’s Republican senator, Dave McCormick.

In that poll, Fetterman's favorable rating among Pennsylvania Republicans is 73%.

And why not? Sure, Fetterman seems to do nothing all day except go on cable news programs and bash Democrats, while burnishing his Israel-right-or-wrong credentials. He doesn't do the work. He just talks trash. A vile recent example:

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is raising the stakes for Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed, offering the Senate hopeful up to $100,000 if he hosts a rally about 9/11.

“I’m offering $50,000 for you to do a rally with Hasan Piker on 9/11, the anniversary, and you can all explain to people why America deserved that 25 years ago,” Fetterman said on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom on Wednesday.

But that's everything the hardcore Republican base wants from politicians. They don't like government. They don't expect politicians to do anything. All they want their pols to do is make liberals howl. They vote based on who will make their enemies the angriest and hurt them the most.

Polls show that the GOP's soft supporters are abandoning the party, but the hardcore base is still loyal because Donald Trump, in particular, still makes Democrats furious. Fetterman does the same thing. And that's really all his Republicans fans ask.

TRUMP'S MIDTERM "STRATEGY" IS TO THROW MONEY AT TOTALLY RANDOM STATES

A few days ago, CNN reported this:

The Department of Homeland Security is planning a surge in its efforts to investigate voter fraud in select states starting Tuesday....

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has accelerated efforts to make the department a central force in President Donald Trump’s hunt for purported widespread election fraud.

That's chilling -- but what are the "select states" DHS is focusing on?

Offices in nine states are expected to take investigative action from early September to mid-October, according to the guidance. Those states include Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York and Connecticut.

Why? Why those? Of the nine states mentioned, only Georgia has a tight Senate race. Why not Ohio or Texas, for instance? Sure, they're red states, and Trump wants to pretend that (imaginary) voter fraud by non-citizens is a blue-state problem. But in that case, why Missouri?

Yesterday, CNN reported this:

President Donald Trump’s extremely well-heeled political operation has begun an advertising campaign ahead of the 2026 midterm elections that Republicans have been eagerly awaiting.

But the first offerings focus on something decidedly unpopular: Trump himself.

The new ads from Securing American Greatness, the nonprofit arm of the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc., seem to confirm reporting from the Atlantic and Trump’s recent comments suggesting the campaign will largely focus on Trump rather than the Republicans in Congress who will be on the ballot this fall.

The ads really are all about Trump, as I'll show below. But before we get to the ads themselves, let's look at where Trump's PAC is spending money to run them.

Per data from tracking firm AdImpact, the spots have begun running in major media markets like New York, Washington, DC, Chicago and Philadelphia....

Why? Why those markets? Again, not one of these markets has a tight Senate race. It's possible that ads running in the New York City TV market, to take one example, will influence voters in tight races outside the city. The Cook Political Report lists three New York races that are close, either "Lean D" or "Toss Up."

But there are no key races in or around Chicago. So what are these people doing?

We knew the ads would primarily glorify Trump, but it should have been possible to feed his ego and remind pro-Trump voters, Hey, if you love the big guy, get out and vote for Republicans in November. These ads say nothing about Republicans in Congress.

One of the spots, titled “Toughest Guy,” looks exactly like an ad that could be run for one of Trump’s campaigns. It features UFC President Dana White praising Trump’s toughness, followed by Trump delivering high-minded lines about the primacy of America.

“We will be prosperous. We will be proud. We will be strong, and we will win like never before,” he says.

The ad doesn’t even allude to Congress or the Republican Party.

That's this one:

Here's the new ad from Trump's political operation — it's all about Trump. pic.twitter.com/7dRL5tHvsj

— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) September 2, 2026

The second ad, “Tax Cut Prices,” is a little more conventional in that it focuses on things Republicans in Washington have done — at least some of which congressional Republicans were involved in.

“We gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security, the largest tax cuts in American history,” Trump says in the ad. “The price of eggs is down 60%. I took prescription drugs from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest. We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs so that no one’s prices will go up.”

The narrator then concludes: “He’s fighting for you every day. Help him finish the job.”

Several of the claims in the ad are false or misleading, including on Social Security taxes, prescription drug prices and making data centers provide their own power.

But it’s also worth noting that some of them — including the latter two — didn’t even involve legislation from Congress. They were executive actions.

I don't think normies pay enough attention to the details of what happens in Washington to distinguish the items that happened because of congressional action from the ones that came about because of presidential edicts. The key here is that the ad never makes an explicit connection between Trump and Republicans in Congress. It's all about him.

And here's another pro-Trump ad from Securing American Greatness that began airing nationally today. pic.twitter.com/wY3eNpCZOv

— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) September 2, 2026

They're just taking the old man's money, creating ads that make him feel good about himself, and spending money on them the fastest way possible, by buying ad space in the most expensive media markets.

As for the states Homeland Security is focusing on, I throw up my hands. Why those states? Your guess is as good as mine.

The people planning Trump's midterm speaking tour appear to be doing a better job of focusing it on contested races. NBC reports:

President Donald Trump pledged Wednesday to hit the campaign trail for Republican candidates in 35 races this fall in the lead-up to the November midterm elections....

Trump cited a few of the races he expects to travel for, including Sen. Dan Sullivan’s re-election bid in Alaska....

He added that he’ll also travel to Texas and stump for state Attorney General Ken Paxton....

Several of the Republicans at the White House for Wednesday night’s event in the Rose Garden face competitive races, including Reps. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin, Tom Barrett of Michigan and Mike Collins of Georgia.

Yes, those are key races. The Senate candidates are struggling in the polls. House members Van Orden and Barrett are on Cook's list above, and Collins is running to unseat Senator Jon Ossoff.

Trump spoke about all this as if he actually understand the point of the exercise:

Trump said he’s not aiming to stump for shoo-in candidates.

“If you’re leading by 40 points and you’ve been there for 25 years,” he said, “please don’t ask me to come to your area and make a speech, right?”

This reads like one of those pronouncements Trump makes because someone just explained it to him, and now he wants us to think he understood it all along because he's really smart, unlike the rest of us.

Trump's ad people and his Homeland Security secretary didn't make a similar effort. They're just doing stuff wherever because the old man wants them to do something. They're not bothering to target their efforts because the old man doesn't realize that's important unless someone reminds him.

Well, at least he'll make his speeches in the right battlegrounds. Of course, the speeches will be all about himself -- his greatness, his grievances. He won't even mention the names of the people he's campaigning for. But at least they won't waste money sending him to Connecticut.

MAYBE THE SUPREME COURT SHOULD HAVE FEWER SEATS (AND OTHER THOUGHTS ABOUT A FIGHT I DON'T TRUST DEMOCRATS TO WIN)

This past Sunday, Congressman Jim Cyburn brought the notion of Supreme Court reform into the Democratic mainstream.

“Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker asked Clyburn if he agreed with former Vice President Kamala Harris’s request for court expansion in an interview.

“Yes, I do,” the South Carolina Democrat said. “I think we are in a position now that calls for some significant actions taken by the Congress and we ought to expand, and 13 is a pretty good number. A baker’s dozen, it would be a good number to have on the court.”

The party's leaders usually recoil in horror whenever a Democrat or progressive proposes a major shakeup like this, so Clyburn's statement represents a real change in the party establishment's thinking.

House Speaker Mike Johnson subsequently announced a plan to have the House vote on a constitutional amendment fixing the size of the Supreme Court at nine justices. This is pure theater -- a constitutional amendment needs to pass both houses of Congress by a two-thirds vote, after which it needs to be ratified by three quarters of the state legislatures. That's not going to happen.

But this is just an early effort on Republicans' part to persuade Americans that what the GOP prefers is what the Founders would have preferred and what Democrats want is evil, weird, and un-American.

If Democrats hold both houses of Congress and the White House after the 2028 election, they'll have every right to change the makeup of the Court, the size of which is not specified in the Constitution. They can do it simply by passing a law.

But if they get serious about this, there'll be a massive propaganda camapign against it. The entire right will be opposed, and portions of the "liberal" media will undoubtedly join in. (Already, MS NOW has published an opinion piece headlined "Rep. Jim Clyburn’s Supreme Court Plan Isn’t Worth Discussing.") Democrats will need to out-message Republicans on this, and I hope they're up to the task. Some of what I'm seeing from the liberal commentariat right now seems to assume a nerdish understanding of the federal judiciary that most Americans simply don't have.

13 justices for the 13 districts has got to be the throughline; the age limits, senior status and rotations can roll into that. THIRTEEN JUSTICES FOR THIRTEEN DISTRICTS. MARCH.

— bskwitter.bsky.social (@bskwitter.bsky.social) June 25, 2026 at 8:39 PM

How many Americans know there are thirteen federal courts of appeals? If you're going to go in this direction, you'll need to start by doing some education. Well-educated Democrats often forget that ordinary Americans don't have the knowledge base they have. They can't win this fight in the court of public opinion unless they recognize how much ordinary Americans know.

Democrats could counter the suggestion that we need to stick with nine justices by saying that if you really want to do this the Founders' way, we should have only six justices, the way we did at the beginning, in 1789. If Republicans are such defenders of tradition, why don't they want that?

The key point Democrats need to make -- and make over and over again until all of America understands it -- is that the number of justices on the Court has changed several times in our history.

We're in the mess we're in because Republican presidents have appointed 15 of the last 20 Supreme Court justices. That's created a Court that's far to the right of the American public. I don't know whether Democrats want to stress that point, because to a large extent it's just luck of the draw. (Jimmy Carter had no vacancies to fill during his four-year term in office, and Joe Biden had only one, but Trump -- partly because Mitch McConnell refused to hold a vote on Merrick Garland in 2016 -- had three in his first four-year term.) But it still suggests how out of whack this Court is, and I think it's worth bringing up.

For sheer vindictiveness, I'd like Democrats to pass a law reducing the Court to six justices, with the (Democratic) president in charge at the law's enactment being given the discretion to remove three justices of his or her choosing. (Presumably the choice would be the three appointed by a president who went on to be convicted of dozens of felonies.)

But that's not a serious proposal. I think Democrats need to settle soon on a set of reforms and settle on a campaign built on talking points that explain why this is a reasonable thing to do and not a violation of the Constitution or federal law. They mustn't let themselves get outmessaged.