Ruth Bader Ginsburg once warned her own party against expanding the Supreme Court.
Ed Markey heard that warning and decided to ignore it completely.
What Markey demanded on live television this week would stun even Ginsburg herself.
Markey Says Republicans "Stole" Two Seats And Wants Four New Ones To Fix It
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., sat down for an interview this week and said the quiet part out loud.
He was asked whether Democrats were seriously considering expanding the Supreme Court.
His answer left no room for spin.
"The Republicans stole two Supreme Court seats in 2016 and 2020," Markey said.
He is not some backbencher venting on cable news.
Markey wrote the bill.
He told the host the fix is simple: add four seats, bring the court to 13 justices, and hand Democrats the 7-6 majority he insists is rightfully theirs.
Not a majority based on winning elections or nominating candidates the public actually supports.
A majority he insists should already exist – as if the last three presidential elections never happened.
Markey is talking about Merrick Garland, the nominee Senate Republicans declined to advance in 2016 during an election year.
He is also talking about Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed in the weeks before the 2020 election.
Both moves followed the Senate's own rules.
Neither one was a theft.
Elections have consequences, and Donald Trump won two of the three elections that shaped this court.
Markey is not the only Democrat talking this way.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has already warned the conservative justices Trump nominated that they would pay a price for their rulings.
Threatening sitting justices and rewriting the size of the court to overrule them is not a difference of legal opinion.
It is an attempt to bully the bench into ruling the way Democrats want.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Already Told Democrats Not To Do This
Here is the part Markey would rather his audience forget.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the most celebrated liberal justice in modern history, was asked about court-packing schemes back in 2019.
She called the idea a "bad idea."
Ginsburg's reasoning was simple.
She said adding justices would make the court look partisan.
She was not talking about Republicans doing it.
She was talking about her own side.
Markey is now doing exactly what one of the most respected liberal jurists in American history told Democrats not to do.
That is not a policy disagreement.
That is a senator overruling Ruth Bader Ginsburg from beyond the grave because he did not like the outcome of the last three presidential races.
Democrats Have Tried This Before And It Cost Them The House
This is not a new play, and it did not work the last time Democrats ran it.
Franklin Roosevelt tried to expand the Supreme Court in 1937 after justices blocked pieces of his New Deal agenda.
His own Senate Judiciary Committee, controlled by his own party, killed the idea and branded it a reckless abandonment of constitutional principle.
The backlash did not stop there.
Democrats paid for it at the ballot box in the very next midterm election.
Voters saw a president trying to rig the umpire and punished his party for it.
Markey is betting Americans in 2026 have forgotten that lesson.
He is not alone.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has said he considers every option open when it comes to reshaping the court.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib has pushed her own version of court reform on social media.
Democratic strategist James Carville said back in April that if his party wins full control of Washington, expanding the court should happen immediately.
This Is About Power, Not Fairness
Markey wants Americans to believe this is about restoring balance.
It is not.
Balance would mean accepting the outcome of elections his party lost.
Instead, Markey wants Congress to manufacture a Democratic majority on the bench by brute force, because the current court keeps ruling in ways he does not like.
This same court just sided with Idaho and West Virginia on keeping men out of women's sports.
It struck down federal limits on how much a political party can spend coordinating with its own candidates.
Markey is not angry about stolen seats.
He is angry that Republicans nominated justices who actually apply the Constitution instead of ruling the way he wants.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg understood the danger of turning the Supreme Court into a rubber stamp for whichever party happens to hold power.
Ed Markey does not.
Sources:
- Fox News Staff, "Democratic senator claims GOP 'stole' two SCOTUS seats in 2016, 2020, calls for expansion," Fox News, July 2026.
- Chuck Grassley, "Democrats Revive FDR Court-Packing Scheme to Rig the Supreme Court," Office of Sen. Chuck Grassley, June 2026.
- Olivia Waxman, "The History of FDR's Court-Packing Plan," Time, October 2019.
- Katelyn Caralle, "Democrats Trying To Repeat History With FDR Court-Packing Ruse," The Federalist, June 2026.
