Kurt Eichenwald Profile picture
Sep 26, 2020 11 tweets 3 min read Read on X
The main way to save American democracy - which GOP hates - is to completely transform SCOTUS, not to tilt it toward democratic as opposed to Republican majority, but to make the majorities largely irrelevant. Which means we need 27 Justices. The way....1
time.com/5338689/suprem…
...this would work would also expose the GOP's "constitutionalism" as just BS policy seeking.

No 1 or 2 people - particularly when you have pure partisans like Alito and Thomas on the court - should have the power to change American based on policy preference, nor falsely...2
...claim "original intent" allows for throwing out all precedent. The amount of overruled - or ignored - precedent in recent years has been shocking. If these Justices *are* just calling balls and strikes (which we know they aren't) no one could possibly object to using...3
...expansion. It would work like an appeals court: A large pool of justices (27, which is less than in some full banc of judges), arbitrarily assigned to each case, where 9 hear. All reversals of precedent automatically go to all 27. All purely political cases - election...4
...results, campaign contributions, power of 1 branch of government - goes to all 27.

How theye picked: Would only happen under a democratic president with a dem senate, but here goes. A rule is established that all nominees must have served for at least 5 years on appeals...5
...court, and been involved in no partisan activities (this would have knocked out Alito, because he was practically a branch off the GOP Congressional Campaign Committee. But too late.) A total of 18 new Justices would be named. GOP senate is invited to nominate enough that...6
...the total named by GOP would be 13. Dems the same: 13. Then a final one nominated by joint agreement. Now, the "nominations" would have to go to the president. Any judge who meets the requirement - 5 years, no partisan activities - and passes background check will be...7
...formally nominated by the president. At this point, the final standard: The nominees must receive at least a B rating by the ABA to get a quick approval. Anyone who receives less than a B is subjected to more extensive hearings to explore qualifications. And...the end. You...8
...would then have qualified and experienced judges, without direct partisan behavior. No single Justice could direct the court anywhere. Every ruling would be subjected to extensive review. And in the end, the politics of nominating and confirming justices in the future would..9
...stop having "life or death" reactions on either side. Replacing 1, 2, or even 3 would make little difference.

And anyone who would not want to do this without citing policy goals misses the point. We have to try to remove SCOTUS from partisanship. Traditional...10
..."packing the court" would set off a race to the bottom. Trying to turn the court liberal would be no more appropriate than trying to turn it conservative. It needs competence, with competing jurisprudence. Then it can be the Supreme Court again rather than what we have now
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More from @kurteichenwald

Sep 6, 2025
Trump continues to show he is an idiot with absolutely no knowledge of American history or the history of our Armed Forces. Pumpkinhead declares that the Department of War was renamed the Department of Defense because it was "woke." In fact DOW was NEVER renamed DOD..../1
... DOW was renamed in 1947 as the National Military Enterprise only one reason: The armed forces were being unified for the first time. The Department of War only oversaw the Army and later the Navy. With the introduction of the Air Force, Truman - and the GOP Congress.../2
...decided they needed to consolidate all of the civilian leadership of each branch into one entity. Keeping something with the same name when it was a different beast struck GOPrs and Dems as foolish. So they renamed it as the National Military Enterprise.../3
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Apr 28, 2025
With us now learning that Redstone from Paramount is putting pressure on 60 Minutes to trim its journalistic sails to keep Trump happy and help her with a merger, time to tell a story of journalism from another era. This is a story about greatness at the @nytimes. I was....
...conducting a running investigation of the American Express Company, which was engaged in a lot of stuff it shouldn't have been. Some brutal stories upended major deals they were trying to make, etc. I won one of the monthly Publisher's Awards ($500) AO Sulzberger Jr. gave..
...winning for my American Express work. Three months after I finish, my boss comments how much he admired my faith in the paper. I had no idea what he was talking about. "Wait, you don't know?" he asked....
Read 7 tweets
Apr 18, 2025
In just three months, Trump has:
1. Wrecked decades-long relationships with USA's best allies, who now have said that relationship is over.
2. Sent global stocks markets into a tailspin.
3. Sent bond markets into collapse.
4. Moved world against dollar as global currency.../1
...5. Lied to courts & refused to abide by rulings, in what could be the greatest breakdown in Constitutional government since founding.
6. Ignored due process before shipping someone to a torture prison.
7. Wistfully discussed his desire to send Americans to torture prisons.../2
...8. Demonstrated, once again, that he is too stupid to understand what tariffs are or how they work.
9. Threatened the independence of the federal reserve.
10. Demanded that the federal government get to determine what private colleges teach.
11. Crippled the FDA, CDC..../3
Read 5 tweets
Apr 17, 2025
People looking only at the stock market are missing the full magnitude of Trump's economic incompetence. His "yes-no-maybe" idiocy with tariffs is leaving equity investors with no sense of which way to go. But worse is the bond market..../1
...the near-cliche of markets it that when investors sell stocks, they rush to US bonds. It's a rare time in our history that this standard response does not happen. But...now it's not. The largest holders of our debt are instead scooping up short-term t-bills and gold.../2
...this means that they are losing faith - or certainty - in the US long term economic future. The only way to deal with this is to increase interest rates - thus providing bond investors with higher rewards for taking what they perceive as higher risk..../3
Read 16 tweets
Jan 2, 2025
As a German citizen (I hold dual citizenship) Im disgusted by the ignorance of @JDVance & @elonmusk in promoting AfD as if it's a normal party. Perhaps they aren't just ignorant & AfD actually reflects their viewpoints, but there is a reason its founders resigned, the German.../1
...courts have deemed them an extremist organization (which, if you creep 2 far in Germany, can get you banned), why there have been national protests against them, and why the German government's Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz classified Der Flügel, AfD's far-right faction.../2
whose growth of control of AfD is what led to the resignation of its founders, as "a right-wing extremist endeavor against the free democratic basic order" and as "not compatible with the Basic Law." AfD sued, but a court ruled "there were sufficient factual indications.../3
Read 8 tweets
Oct 26, 2024
As someone who has been a journalist for almost 40 year, working as a senior writer at the New York Times, Newsweek, etc, the decision by @WilliamLewis, a Murdoch alum, to cripple the @washingtonpost by abandoning endorsements, is one of the most craven actions I've ever seen../1
...taken in the industry. Make no mistake, this wasn't just cowardice. It was @WilliamLewis and perhaps @JeffBezos dragging a now-once great paper into the sewer because of their own political beliefs. If Lewis et al wanted to abandon endorsements, fine. But you don't do it.../2
@WilliamLewis @JeffBezos ...days one of the most consequential elections in history. We have on one side a convicted felon, deemed an ignorant fascist by his own people, who half this country believes is, in fact, a fascist, and on the other side a woman half the country believes is a communist.../3
Read 14 tweets

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