The Left's Attack on Courts Is Meant To Destroy the Constitution!

David Harsanyi on May 15, 2026

The story plays out the same way virtually every time.

Democrats, egged on by the increasingly powerful progressive base, push some obviously unconstitutional scheme that they contend is needed to preserve "democracy."

The courts inevitably knock down the ploy.

Frustrated, Democrats ratchet up the anger, promising to "reform" the judiciary that stands in their way.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) recently argued on the House floor that the next Democratic White House "does not need a court reform commission like some college seminar. We need action. We need term limits for Justices. We need to expand this morally bankrupt Court from 9 to 13."

Do we? Great, let's do it today.

Republicans run both houses and the White House, after all. They could pack the court right now. According to Khanna, there's nothing procedurally or constitutionally improper about it. Indeed, it's imperative. Surely, the congressman isn't proposing that one party should be empowered to operate under a different set of rules than the other?

The contemporary leftist is a consequentialist with no limiting principles.

After the Virginia Supreme Court stopped the Democrats' unconstitutional gerrymandering scheme, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), now the favorite 2028 Democratic Party presidential prospect in a number of polls, claimed that the court "didn't overturn a map" but "overturned an election."

"The power of the American people that should be the ultimate check on all three branches," she declared.

In any other age, vocalizing illiterate nonsense about our system of governance might be an embarrassing career-ending flub. Today, it's the norm among progressives.

At this point, I'm not even sure most of her audience understands why this crass majoritarian argument is un-American.

Then again, none of the Left's political objections to the court are grounded in anything resembling a legal argument.

Progressives grouse about "lawless judges" because they make no distinction between failing to get their way and criminality. Democrats never even bother to mention the Constitution in their critiques of the Supreme Court. Which is weird, considering that the court's most vital responsibility is to uphold it.

After the court upheld the Voting Rights Act, ensuring that Louisiana could not create race-based districts as the law demands, Khanna, for instance, claimed that "moral light" of the court had been "extinguished." Which is just gibberish.

The Left's case for "reform" centers around the specious idea that the court is failing because it doesn't adhere to their political vision or the vision of the fleeting majority.

History has shown that one of the first propositions of authoritarians is to destroy any judicial system that upholds the law. Which is why Democrats want to overturn state constitutions as well.

"We're going to have to explore judicial reform state by state and at the federal level," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries recently said, proposing a nationwide takeover of the courts. " ... Everything should be on the table as far as I'm concerned."

They mean everything.

One of the ideas being thrown around by Democrats is to have the Virginia General Assembly lower the mandatory retirement age for Virginia's Supreme Court from 75 to 54, the age of the youngest current justice, then replace the entire court with leftists who will rubber-stamp the most radical gerrymandering scheme in the history of the republic.

For decades, Democrats have made a mockery of confirmation hearings, smearing originalist justices as sexual predators and radicals to preemptively discredit their decisions.

For years, progressive activist groups propped up by wealthy activists have been cooking up imaginary scandals about justices and laundering them through faux journalistic operations.

No leftists have ever offered a scintilla of genuine evidence that any of the "conservative" justices have altered their judicial philosophy or approach for any personal benefit.

There is no "lawlessness." There is an ideological disagreement.

If Democrats end up packing the court, it will devolve into another partisan branch as each party adds new justices until the institution is useless.

Term limits would immediately be struck down as unconstitutional: Article III bestows lifetime appointments on justices to shield the high court from the vagaries and fleeting pressures of political debate -- and from demagogues like Khanna.

Not every institution in American life needs to reflect fleeting mainstream opinions (though progressives overestimate their popularity, anyway.) Moreover, the court's disposition should be conservative. Something needs to buttress against the recklessness of majoritarianism. The Founders were clear on this.

All this Democratic drama is just a transparent attempt to circumvent the constitutional order. And it is unlikely any Democrats care enough about the Constitution to stop it.

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David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books -- the most recent, "How To Kill a Republic," available now. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on X @davidharsanyi.

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