Democrats have been hellbent on packing the Supreme Court for years.
A reporter asked Ro Khanna what happens if Republicans do it first.
He froze – and what came next tells you everything about what Democrats actually believe.
The Question That Stopped Him Cold
On Sunday, Kristen Welker did something the mainstream media rarely does to a Democrat.
She applied his own logic to his own party.
Khanna had gone on Meet the Press to attack the Supreme Court's voting rights ruling, calling the six-justice conservative majority a "Dred Scott court" – comparing legally confirmed justices to the antebellum ruling that declared Black Americans weren't citizens.
He then laid out his plan: expand the Court from nine justices to thirteen once Democrats regain power.
Welker asked the obvious follow-up.
Republicans control the White House, the Senate, and Congress right now – what stops them from doing the exact same thing first?
Khanna didn't answer.
He pivoted back to attacking the ruling.
Fox News contributor Joe Concha called it out on Fox News Live: "This is the type of thing that only works one way."
The Double Standard Khanna Built
Khanna has been calling for court expansion publicly since at least May 12, posting on X that the next Democratic White House should "expand this morally bankrupt Court from 9 to 13."
On Meet the Press, he added his justification – thirteen justices to match the thirteen federal circuit courts.
Democrats call this "depoliticizing" the judiciary.
What it actually is: adding four seats timed precisely to flip a Court that keeps ruling against them.
Concha named it plainly: "Right now, President Trump, Republicans in Congress and the Senate – since they have majority power in each of those places – can easily say 'great, you're saying we should expand the court, let's do that by six judges and we'll add six more conservative justices.'"
Khanna had no answer because there isn't one.
If expanding the Court is legitimate reform when Democrats want four liberal seats, it's legitimate reform when Republicans want six conservative ones.
The only difference is who benefits.
https://x.com/TVNewsNow/status/2059070064662286616“>https://x.com/TVNewsNow/status/2059070064662286616
Democrats Have Run This Play Before
This is not new strategy from the left – it's a 90-year-old instinct that surfaces every time Democrats lose at the Supreme Court.
In February 1937, Franklin Roosevelt proposed adding one new justice for every sitting justice over age 70, which would have given him up to six immediate appointments.
His own party killed it.
The Democratic-controlled Senate voted 70-20 to strip the court-packing language from the bill.
Three-quarters of the senators who voted to kill it were Democrats.
The Senate Judiciary Committee – controlled by Democrats – called it "an invasion of judicial power such as has never before been attempted in this country."
Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg – nominated by Bill Clinton, reliably liberal – said FDR's plan was "a bad idea" and warned that extra justices would make the Court look "partisan."
That was the left's own standard for 85 years.
Ro Khanna is now running the same play and calling it reform.
What Khanna's Silence Actually Admitted
Here's what the freeze on national television revealed.
Democrats don't want a balanced Court – they want a Court they can never lose.
Thirteen justices with four new Democratic appointees locks in a 7-6 liberal majority through every future Republican president and every piece of America First legislation that reaches the docket.
That's not a check on power.
That's eliminating the check.
Concha warned where this ends: "Most Americans won't like this in general where you're doing it solely for political reasons, solely for power and not because you think it will better the country."
The Senate Democrats of 1937 understood that.
Khanna, standing in front of a national audience on Sunday, couldn't defend his own proposal when a single follow-up question came.
It was never about fixing the Court.
It was always about controlling it.
Sources:
- Bryan Llenas and Joe Concha, "Democrats Revive Push to Pack Supreme Court," Fox News, May 25, 2026.
- Ro Khanna, X post, @RoKhanna, May 12, 2026.
- Grabien News, transcript of Ro Khanna on Meet the Press, May 24, 2026.
- Kerry Byrne, "FDR's Effort to Pack the Supreme Court Failed Badly," Fox News, July 22, 2022.
- Republican National Lawyers Association, "Today in History: Senate Rejects FDR Court Packing Scheme," July 22, 2021.
