Democrats just lost at the Supreme Court again.
Now Cory Booker wants to blow up the institution that beat them.
He called it a reform plan – but buried inside is a scheme to strip two specific conservative justices of their seats and hand the replacements to a Democrat president.
The Senator Who Cried Corruption
Booker went on Meet the Press Sunday morning and called the Supreme Court a "cancer" corroding America's body politic.
He said municipal court judges in New Jersey doing what Supreme Court justices do would "be let out in handcuffs."
He demanded 18-year term limits – specifically designed so every newly elected president automatically gets two seats on the Court.
Think about what that means.
Booker doesn't want a fair court.
He wants a Democrat court.
The tell is in the timing.
The Supreme Court just ruled to limit Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act – a ruling Booker and his party hated.
Within days, Booker was on NBC declaring the entire institution corrupt and demanding structural changes that would hand Democrats immediate control of multiple seats.
That's not a reform agenda.
That's a power grab dressed up in ethics language.
FDR Tried This and Democrats Ate Him Alive
Here's what Booker won't tell you.
Democrats have been trying to manipulate the Supreme Court for nearly 90 years – and their own party keeps stopping them.
Franklin Roosevelt tried this exact play in 1937.
He'd just won a landslide reelection.
He had massive congressional majorities.
He was furious that the Supreme Court kept striking down his New Deal programs.
So he proposed packing the Court with six new justices – enough to flip the majority overnight.
His own Senate Judiciary Committee called the plan "a needless, futile and utterly dangerous abandonment of constitutional principle."
Seven of the ten senators who signed that report were Democrats.
Roosevelt's own Vice President gave the plan a thumbs down from the Senate floor.
The Senate voted 70-20 to kill it.
Democrats torched their own president's scheme because they understood something Cory Booker apparently doesn't – the moment you weaponize the Court for short-term political wins, you destroy the institution's ability to protect you when you're not in power.
FDR lost that fight badly, and it was the last time a president asked Congress to change the number of Supreme Court seats.
Booker is dragging his party back into that same ditch.
The Constitutional Problem He's Hoping You Miss
Booker's 18-year term limit plan has a problem that no amount of television time can fix.
It's almost certainly unconstitutional.
Article III of the Constitution says federal judges "shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour" – which Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 78 means lifetime tenure.
The Constitution Center cited multiple Supreme Court precedents establishing that the "good Behaviour" clause is "the practical equivalent of life tenure."
One constitutional law expert put it simply: everyone agrees that stripping a justice's seat after a fixed term would be unconstitutional.
Booker knows this.
His own bill accounts for it by moving justices to "senior status" on lower courts after 18 years – a workaround that has never been tested before the Supreme Court and legal experts say is constitutionally shaky.
Here's the real plan hiding behind the constitutional gymnastics.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have both served more than 18 years.
Under Booker's scheme, they'd be immediately eligible for removal from active service and replacement.
Two conservative seats, opened overnight, handed to whatever Democrat happens to be sitting in the White House.
That's not reform.
That's regime change at the judiciary.
They Don't Want a Fair Court They Want Their Court
Booker's core argument is that the Supreme Court suffers from a "crisis of legitimacy."
What he means is that the Court keeps ruling in ways Democrats lose.
They lost on the Voting Rights Act.
They lost on abortion.
They lost on guns.
They lost on immigration.
Every time conservatives win a case on the merits, Democrats declare the institution itself corrupt and demand structural overhaul.
Notice they never proposed term limits when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was running out the clock at 87 years old, refusing to retire under Obama because she wanted a Democrat to replace her.
Notice they never called the Court a "cancer" when it was striking down Trump's policies.
Democrats have no answer for that, so they're targeting the institution itself.
And now that they've lost the White House, lost the Senate, and lost the argument on the merits – they want to change the rules.
FDR's own party told him no.
The American people should tell Booker the same.
Sources:
- "Booker: Supreme Court Needs 'Massive Reforms,' Including Term Limits," Breitbart, June 21, 2026.
- Meet the Press Transcript, NBC News, June 21, 2026.
- "FDR's 'Court-Packing' Plan," Federal Judicial Center, fjc.gov.
- "Can Congress put term limits on Supreme Court Justices?" WUSA9, wusa9.com.
- "Can Congress enact Supreme Court term limits without a constitutional amendment?" National Constitution Center, June 2024.
