Elissa, this is precisely the problem. For decades, conservatives watched the Supreme Court interpret broadly worded constitutional provisions in ways they believed departed dramatically from the Constitution’s text, history and original meaning. They hated plenty of those decisions. They attacked the reasoning. They developed competing theories of constitutional interpretation. They elected Presidents who promised to appoint different kinds of judges. That’s how the system works. Now the Court has a majority more receptive to textualism and originalism, and Democrats suddenly act as though someone broke the fucking machine. You can hate Dobbs. You can think the Court is dead wrong on guns, affirmative action, administrative power, presidential authority or anything else. Fine. Make the legal argument. Win elections. Confirm judges when vacancies arise. Persuade people that your interpretation is better. But losing the jurisprudential argument doesn’t make the institution corrupt. And that’s where this Democratic campaign against the Supreme Court becomes so transparently political. The Court reaches decisions Democrats dislike and suddenly it is “illegitimate.” It needs to be “cleaned up.” Its structure needs to change. Justices need term limits. Its size gets floated for expansion. The institution itself becomes the villain. Apparently the Supreme Court works properly only when Democrats approve of its decisions. There is nothing corrupt about originalism. There is nothing illegitimate about textualism. They are mainstream theories of legal interpretation whether you agree with them or not. And there is something particularly absurd about politicians portraying judges as dangerous because those judges begin constitutional analysis with the words actually contained in the Constitution rather than treating the document as an invitation to discover whatever additional constitutional commands five Justices believe ought to exist. Then you give away the game yourself. You don’t merely propose prospective 18-year terms and make some detached academic argument about institutional design. Nope. You tell everyone exactly what your plan buys you: Thomas and Alito are over 75, so in January 2029 - jackpot - two immediate Supreme Court vacancies. At least you saved everyone the trouble of pretending not to understand the objective. Article III’s protection of judicial tenure isn’t some dusty “relic” the Framers accidentally left lying around. Judicial independence was deliberately designed to insulate federal judges from political retaliation and pressure when politicians don’t like their decisions. And your response to a Court whose constitutional methodology you dislike is to announce that it needs to be “cleaned up,” change the rules governing its membership, and then brag about which two Justices your new rules would immediately replace. That’s not a subtle contradiction. If anything here is politically corrupt, it’s the effort to delegitimize an independent Supreme Court because Democrats no longer like its decisions. Disagree with Thomas and Alito all you want. Tear apart their opinions. Argue that originalism is garbage. Elect Presidents and Senators who will appoint and confirm Justices who share your philosophy. That’s constitutional government. But “we aren’t winning at the Supreme Court anymore, so let’s change the Supreme Court” is something else entirely. The Court didn’t become corrupt when Democrats lost control of its jurisprudential direction. Instead, you are ensuring we all know who is corrupt here: you and your party.