Speaker Mike Johnson walked out Tuesday and did something Washington hates. He named the scheme. Then he scheduled a vote.
The House will take up a proposed constitutional amendment Wednesday to lock the Supreme Court at nine justices. Johnson is bringing it under suspension of the rules, which means Democrats cannot hide behind procedure. Two-thirds of the House has to say yes. Every member goes on the record.
Eric Daugherty posted the clip. Real America’s Voice ran the same remarks. The speaker did not whisper.
We are going to bring a constitutional amendment. It is a bill to amend the U.S. Constitution to ensure that the U.S. Supreme Court remains composed of only 9 justices. We will keep the nine!
Then the line that actually matters.
We WILL have them put their money where their mouth is!
That is the point. Not a fantasy that 38 states ratify this by Friday. The point is forcing the party that spent five years screaming about a “stolen Court” to vote, in public, on whether the Court should stay a Court or become a rubber stamp they can inflate whenever they lose.
Nine Has Been the Number Since Grant
The Constitution never wrote “nine” into Article III. Congress sets the size. It has bounced between five and ten. In 1866, Republicans shrank the bench so Andrew Johnson could not fill seats. In 1869, after Grant took office, the Judiciary Act restored the Court to nine, one chief and eight associates. It has stayed there for more than a century and a half.
Franklin Roosevelt tried to smash that settlement in 1937. He wanted as many as six extra justices so the New Deal would stop losing in court. Even his own party flinched. The plan died. Historians still dress it up as a “reorganization.” Everybody at the time knew what it was. Packing.
Joe Biden, back when he still pretended to be a Senate institutionalist, called court packing a “bonehead idea.” That was before the left decided the Constitution is optional whenever originalists win.
The amendment itself is short. H.J. Res. 1, introduced by Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona and reported by Judiciary in July, would add one sentence:
The Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine justices consisting of one chief justice and eight associate justices.
Ratification would still take two-thirds of the Senate and three-fourths of the states. Johnson knows that. So does anyone who has read Article V. This vote is a flashlight, not a finished cathedral.
They Are Not Hiding the Motive Anymore
Johnson tied the amendment to the document the left actually published. The Democratic Socialists of America rolled out a 2026 platform that does not stop at thirteen justices. It calls for replacing the presidency and the Supreme Court with “an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.” Abolish the Senate. Kill the Electoral College. Open the border. Treat the coequal branches as clerical staff.
House leadership put it in writing this week. The Majority Leader’s floor schedule says radical Democrats and the DSA want to “politicize and restructure the Supreme Court” or abolish it outright. Johnson’s own language on Tuesday was blunter. He talked about “the Democrat Socials of America,” the communists taking over the party, and a platform that wants to abolish the border, abolish prisons, defund police, and pack the Court.
That is not a talk-radio riff. That is the Speaker describing the coalition now writing Democratic litmus tests. Climate activists have already said Democratic candidates should promise to expand the Court or get the sack. The Judiciary Act of 2023, pushed by Markey, Warren, Nadler, and Schiff, would have grown the bench to thirteen. Term-limit bills are the polite cousin of the same project. Change the umpires until the score looks right.
A coalition letter this summer from Advancing American Freedom, the Liberty Justice Center, and more than fifty other groups said the quiet part without apology. Adding justices now would serve no purpose but to politicize the Court. The first pack invites the next pack. Pretty soon the Supreme Court is just another caucus.
The Keep Nine Coalition has been pushing this amendment for years. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota carried an earlier version. Biggs has the vehicle on the calendar now. The left will call it a stunt. Stunts do not usually require a two-thirds vote.
A Court That Can Be Resized at Will Is Not a Court
Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?
That is the whole argument. If the losing party can manufacture new seats whenever a majority opinion hurts, there is no law. There is only power wearing a robe. FDR learned the country would not swallow it in 1937. The modern left learned a different lesson. Keep saying “democracy” while you dismantle the parts that restrain you.
Johnson is not pretending this amendment walks out of the Capitol and into the Constitution tomorrow. He is making Democrats answer a simple question in an election year. Do you want nine justices, the number America has lived with since Reconstruction, or do you want a Court you can inflate until it votes the way the DSA platform demands?
They will vote no. Count on it. Then they will explain that packing is “reform,” that thirteen is “balance,” and that replacing the Court with a committee of Congress is just “modernization.” Let them say it into a microphone with the roll call attached.
Nine is not magic. Stability is. A republic that lets one faction resize the judiciary after every loss is not arguing about case law. It is arguing about whether the law still exists.
Johnson put the bill on the floor. We will keep the nine, he said. Tomorrow we find out who is willing to say it out loud.
