Pete Buttigieg Wants to Pack Supreme Court With 13 Justices
The Court has had 9 seats since 1869, and every serious attempt to alter that number has been understood as an effort to capture the Court for political ends
Former Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg went on Fox News Friday to pitch a plan that would hand politicians four new seats on the Supreme Court and to argue that the institution needs to be fundamentally restructured.
Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network called out what Buttigieg is really doing, including the clip of him making his case on Fox News.
Pete Buttigieg is doubling down on his proposal for Supreme Court "reform" by calling for court packing in an attempt to undermine the Court.
The Democrats are upset that this Supreme Court isn’t a forum to impose its radical agenda. pic.twitter.com/pA6gG8tza1
— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) July 24, 2026
“The legitimacy of the Supreme Court is, I believe, the lowest it’s ever been in the eyes of the American people. It’s come to feel like a nakedly partisan institution. We could do some things about that. At a minimum, term limits so that you know for each presidential term how many Supreme Court appointments are going to go with it. I also think we would be better off with a court that has something like 13 justices that would match the number of districts that we have in the federal system, and ideally appoint them in a way that isn’t so partisan.”
There is an immediate factual problem with Buttigieg’s pitch. The federal system does not have 13 districts. It has 94 federal judicial districts and 13 appellate courts; 12 regional circuits and the Federal Circuit. Buttigieg confused the district courts with the appellate circuits while arguing for a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s highest court.
That error is not even the biggest problem with the proposal.
Increasing the number of justices from nine to 13 is court packing, regardless of how Buttigieg dresses it up. The Constitution does not set the size of the Court, so Congress technically has the power to change it, but the Court has sat at nine seats since 1869, and every serious attempt to alter that number has been understood as an effort to capture the Court for political ends.
Buttigieg also endorsed term limits and expressed interest in a so-called “balanced bench.” Under one version of that plan, the Court would expand further still, to 15 members. Five seats would be tied to Democratic appointments, five to Republican appointments, and those ten justices would then unanimously select five more. The effect would be a court designed by politicians, for politicians.
Buttigieg hedged that he is not committed to any single proposal. He was less equivocal about the stakes, warning that the country faces a choice between “reform” and “catastrophe” if confidence in the Court keeps falling.
The Fox News appearance was not a one-off. It fits a pattern.
On July 12, speaking at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Liberty and Justice Celebration, Buttigieg called for the Electoral College and demanded a Supreme Court that he considers more “legitimate.”
“We need to immediately get to work to build something better, like a political system where everyone’s vote counts the same, and the person who gets the most votes wins the election. We need a Supreme Court that is legitimate and trustworthy in the eyes of the American people.”
He also called for a constitutional amendment to curb political spending in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.
Buttigieg is widely regarded as a likely 2028 presidential candidate. He is building his platform around the proposition that the constitutional order, the Electoral College, an independent Supreme Court, and existing campaign finance law need to be restructured to produce results he prefers.
Calling that “reform” does not make the power grab any less obvious. It just gives it a better-sounding name.
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He is a loser with zero accomplishments. He has garnered attention only because he is gay.
“He is a loser with zero accomplishments.”
That’s not true. As mayor of South Bend, he allowed the violent crime rate to soar, and he presided over some of the most racist development plans ever.
He allowed the pothole problem to fester too which is why he was called Pothole Pete.
Buttgig: “The more men, the better!” (Sounds of breathing heavily).
Gay Communist.
Buttigieg says the Supreme Court is a nakedly partisan institution that has too many conservatives. His solution is to put four liberal justices on the court to permanently swing it the other way.
He’s especially big on the “naked” part.
and swinging the other way
Buttgig: Pack a court, pack a bum. All in a day’s work for me.
Call their bluff. Do it NOW! And then sit back and watch them scream.
That Buttigieg is vaguely in the running for POTUS 2028 is beyond disturbing. Prior to appointment as a no show job as Secretary of ???, he had been a so-so mayor of a medium sized town.
This is POTUS material these days?
It worked with Obama, I guess. I have yet to hear a coherent description of what a “community organizer” does?
He recruits a political street army.
It’s a newfangled term for “ward heeler”.
A loudmouth bum without a job, but gets a paycheck.
Are you kidding? Ward heelers work hard for their livings; if they don’t deliver the votes they don’t get paid.
“he had been a so-so mayor of a medium sized town”
He was the mayor of Whoville. It was during his tenure that the Grinch stole Christmas. You can easily tell he’s a Who when he turns sideways.
look who the DemocratSocialists got elected as mayor of NYC,
I’m not laughing. My hair, what’s left of it, is turning grey – rapidly.
Exactly what I was thinking. Trump should name all the democrats proposing to increase the court size, thank them, say he is doing just that, and nominate the requisite number to fill the positions.
He can propose it; he can’t just do it himself. And of course he can’t nominate anyone to fill the positions until they’ve been created. But he can say whom he plans to nominate if and when Congress passes the increase, and watch the circus erupt.
precisely. It would be worth the popcorn to watch the show.
Almost better than the 4th of July!
“Buttigieg confused the district courts with the appellate circuits while arguing for a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s highest court.”
When you’re a Democrat, you’re not expected to know anything beyond what you want.
“Pete Buttigieg wants to pack the Supreme Court…”
Don’t pretend that we don’t see what you’ve done there, Ben.
But instead of calling you out, we applaud you for your ridicule.
This jerk deserves it.
His last name and the word “pack” make me cringe….
My thoughts exactly
You unpacked that in a way that even a caveman can understand it.
Who cares what this fudge packer wants?
Not satisfied taking 9, this pervert wants 13?
In order to “build back better” you have to destroy what exists. This has been and is how progressive tyrannical governments work. These folks are not creators, they are confiscators.
Progressivism doesn’t build anything. It just destroys and puts low-quality imitations in place. Nothing new. Nothing beneficial. Destruction for the sole purpose of destruction.
Like the East Wing. <grdc>
I don’t give a crap about the East Wing, it’s of no use to me.
You know what I do use? Fossil fuels, my gas stove, my local cops, the old health plan I could afford, and a border secure from hostile invasion.
It was of no use to a lot of people. Of all the people who lamented its demolition and claimed they would miss it, maybe a handful were truthful. Most people who used the East Wing will never miss it, barely even notice it’s gone.
Most people who complained about the East Wing’s demolition did so only because they thought they’d caught Trump in a lie. Trump had said the work would not affect the White House itself, that it wouldn’t even touch it, and here he was, caught in a blatant lie. How could he say the White House wouldn’t be touched, and yet utterly demolish an entire wing?
What most of them had no idea of, because they’d never actually seen it, is that the East Wing was an outbuilding, not part of the White House itself. Thus Trump’s promise was exactly correct and fulfilled to the letter. The East Wing was demolished; the main building was not touched.
The elephant in the room on this SCOTUS expansion just as with ending filibuster is that the d/prog gonna do just that when they eventually gain Congressional majorities. There’s no realistic baseline choice of ‘keep things as is’ (aka conservative) v ‘ overturned Apple carts/change for sake of change. Both of those are coming like it or not. The real question is will GoP elders sit back meekly, refuse to be proactive while they possess majorities and let the d/prog ram these inevitable changes through on their terms or bite the bullet and do it on their own terms? Pretty sure the GoP establishment will fail to be proactive and will concede to the d/prog.
It won’t matter either way. Because the Republicans don’t have the conservative, constitutional principles they used to have, it doesn’t really matter if they win. (Unless we can change the sorts of people we get in there.)
Well that’s not entirely true for a couple reasons. First just getting legislation to the floor for a vote changes the equation for the rino/establishment, go along get along types b/c now its an up/down on the record vote either For or Against legislation. Where that legislation has broad public support like say the SAVE Act (consistent 80%+ support across all Americans) then they gotta decide to get on the train or get run run over. Much more difficult to try and explain refusal to give the people what they want than to be able to obfuscate behind Senate procedural rules, blame ‘DC swamp’ and other excuses that disappear on a floor vote for passage of legislation.
Second your premise presumes there hasn’t already been an awakening/understanding that Senators from Red States sometimes have a voting record far less ‘conservative’ than their constituents want. It’s one thing for Susan Collins in a lean Blue State like Maine to demure. Quite another for a.Senator from a +5 or greater Red State to do so. I’d argue that the examples of both Cornyn TX and Cassidy LA losing their primary election contests this year demonstrates that the ‘conservative’ electorate is now willing to punish Senators who campaign one way then get to DC and ‘evolve’.
Finally I’d caution against framing the issue as ‘Republicans don’t …’ be the issue isn’t ‘Republicans’ in general but rather a clique of Republican elected officials who are obstructionist towards policies the GoP base wants/supports b/c they are really not Republicans at heart but rather see themselves as independent institutionalists more concerned with not losing access to DC cocktail party invitations or making a tough vote that might disrupt the flow of large donor campaign funds and sinecure jobs for their relatives.
The whole point of this idiotic manuever is to provide the ignition point for the next Civil War.
I won’t disagree with your statements.
I will say that the party leadership (not the politicians, necessarily, but the party folks) is where a lot of the problem lies, IMO. Which is why I say “Republicans don’t…”.
If the Dem’s want SCOTUS expanded, the Republicans should do it now.
The only thing Pete is packing is fudge. If Thune had any balls he would get rid of the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court with another 10 conservative justices in the Alito/Thomas mold.
The trouble is finding them without getting swindled… plus, assuming the guy who is finding them really wants to find them in the first place.
You’ll be very unhappy if we get rid of the filibuster now
Democrats will eventually get back in power as the pendulum swings and then they can pass all their wacky legislation with no Republican filibuster
Trump should announce he is going to take butt-plugs advice and pack the Supreme Court.
Booty jig isn’t even proposing things he came up with. These are standard retread talking points from the left.
Why doesn’t the interviewer ask him, “Why don’t we just expand it to 13 seats RIGHT NOW?”
And then watch him squirm.
/Beavis and Bu**head laughing/
Hehe. He said “Buttigieg” and “pack”. Hehe. Huhuhuh.
Get the democrats to oppose expanding the Supreme Court with this one neat trick:
Trump proposes expanding the court so he’ll get a chance to nominate four or five new justices.
Expanding the court will instantly be transformed from “improving the legitimacy of the court” to “a brazen, unconstitutional, immoral, racist, homophobic, transphobic, literally fascist power grab”.
True. But has there EVER been a time Democrats were deterred from a power grab because they were accused of hypocrisy?
They are shameless about gaining power for good reason. The budget is several $TRILLIONS. With that much at stake, fair play and demonstrating consistent principles are a secondary concern.
This is talking.point number 1 for liberals. It didn’t work for their pathetic hero FDR and its not going to work now.
He doesn’t even try to explain how 13 justices will improve the quality of court opinions. Good grief, make a minimal effort to sell it. Otherwise it comes off as a purely partisan power grab – which, of course, it is.
The reality is that a small percentage of SCOTUS opinions are decided along partisan lines. My impression is that the women nominated by Democrat presidents vote as a bloc far more than the gender diverse Republican nominated justices.
Yes, that’s what happens when you view the court as a superlegislature instead of the highest court.
What we really need is a Constitutinal Amendment to take it back to 5. No need to fire anyone, just let natural attrition run its course.
Sadly, I don’t believe we could pull that off in this political climate.
I don’t think that can fly in any climate. What might fly is an amendment to keep it permanently at nine.
I’d support increasing the number of justices, if only so that they could handle more cases per session. SCOTUS takes too few important cases and should be encouraged to take more. However the method of selecting any additional justices should be modified so that no one ideological faction controls the appointment of additions. In other words, a single administration and a single Congress shouldn’t be allowed to appoint all the additional justices. This mechanism would be one-time variance from the usual rules for the appointment of a limited number of additional justices. It might have to run over time, possibly with the additional justices not sworn in until all additional justices have been nominated and approved.
I would love to see the Congress say yeah we will take that up right now and if it passes Trump will get to appoint all 4 of the new ones. It would just be funny to see them filibuster that and scream how unfair it is after asking for it for the last 10 yrs or so.
That’s not all he wants to pack.
Damn you beat me to it!
Buttgig is not even relevant so why the coverage? One 2028 poll showed him in the single digits. That’s the story there.
Interesting that every win or attempt to win on the side of the communist progressives is by changing the rules or cheating.
More proof that the left cannot win on arguments and logic.
Time to pass the SAVE Act and start putting nails into the Democrat and DSA coffin.
Look at Maine. Black letter law says you can’t run for two offices in one election cycle., but that isn’t stopping the Ds.
It’s not nearly as clear as that, and also, with regard to congressional races, is it even constitutional? There’s no question that their new guy is eligible for the senate, so how can state law keep him off the ballot? Especially after the recent precedent set when attempts to keep Trump off the ballot were overturned.
So he is just like the DSA that want to subordinate the court and president to a mob of congress critters.
Well, he doesn’t want to abolish the presidency, since he’s got his eye on it. Also the senate.
We have 9.
that’s enough.
Shrink the number of Appelate circuits to 9., and have the DC Circuit filled on a rotating basis by justices from the 9 circuits on three year terms.
That solves two problems in one.
In the long term, I’d like to see us go back to each SCOTUS justice coming from each circuit region, rather than most all coming from the DC/NYC legal blob.
Was it ever the case that each justice came from the circuit he oversaw?
That’s a decent idea to limit, to.some degree, the geographic concentration of influence for DC/NYC Acela corridor. Not sure how it works in practice though. As a non binding guideline to try and find a stellar Jurist from Appeals CT or State Supreme Courts outside the usual precincts it would be worth a look.
Small town mayor, and DEI cabinet appointment for gays, wants to pack SCOTUS. What could go wrong there?
Why wait. Trump can appoint the new 4 justices this afternoon.
No, he can’t. Currently there are only nine seats and they’re all filled. Congress would have to create new vacancies before Trump could fill them.
He truly is stupid, you know. Simply ignore him and maybe he’ll go away. At least, if we ignore him he can’t do any more damage.
please do not use ‘booty judge’ and ‘pack’ in the same sentence.
FDR tried to pack the court, we readers of history know, but did you know that after that failure he never passed another piece of domestic legislation?
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