Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett will testify before Congress tomorrow, July 14 — the first time any justice has appeared before lawmakers since 2019. The stated subject is the court's $225.1 million FY2027 budget request. The real backdrop is a 2025–2026 term that left both parties furious, for opposite reasons.

Six of the term's defining rulings fell 6-3 along ideological lines. Democrats are furious that the court gutted the Voting Rights Act, handed Trump the power to fire independent regulators, and erased limits on party spending. Republicans still stew over the same court's 6-3 rebuke of Trump's birthright-citizenship order. Roll Call called the mood on Capitol Hill "bipartisan annoyance."

Democrats: Senate Republicans Rigged This Court. Add Four Justices.

Nadler and Markey call the 6-3 majority illegitimate and want a 13-justice bench.

The progressive fix is four more seats. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) have led the progressive push to add four seats, creating a 13-justice Supreme Court. Nadler's office argues the 6-3 conservative majority rests on what Democrats call a stolen seat: Senate Republicans blocked Merrick Garland for nearly a year in 2016, then rushed Amy Coney Barrett through in 2020. Former Vice President Kamala Harris has also discussed expansion as a reform option.

Expansion is constitutional, supporters say. Supporters point out that Congress has changed the court's size six times in American history, and the Constitution sets no fixed number. The rulings this term — especially the VRA evisceration and the unchecked presidential removal power — have renewed the urgency. Public support is evenly split, at 50% for and 50% against.

Republicans: Court Expansion Is Raw Power Politics — Lock In Nine

Jim Jordan's constitutional amendment would fix the court at nine members, permanently.

The Republican answer: lock nine into the Constitution. House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) is leading the "Keep Nine" push: a constitutional amendment that would permanently fix the court at nine members, removing any future Congress's ability to add seats. The House version (HJR 1) passed committee 15-8 along party lines, with zero Democratic support. In the Senate, Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced the companion measure, joined by Sens. John Cornyn, Thom Tillis, and Mike Lee.

Republicans call court expansion naked power politics. Add four justices today and a future Republican majority adds more tomorrow. A constitutional amendment ends the escalation. To take effect, it would need two-thirds of both chambers and ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures.

Term Limits Have 67% Republican Public Support — and Zero Republican Co-Sponsors

Eighteen-year terms poll at 67 percent with Republican voters — and cannot find one Republican co-sponsor.

The real problem is lifetime tenure, the third camp says. A third group argues that both expansion and entrenchment miss the real problem: lifetime tenure makes every confirmation battle a political apocalypse, and the current court has no binding ethics code. Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Alex Padilla (D-CA) introduced a Senate bill that would impose 18-year staggered terms on new justices, after which they'd assume senior status. Rep. Johnny Olszewski Jr. (D-MD) introduced the House version (H.J.Res.174) on May 4.

The obstacle is the filibuster, not public opinion. Booker linked the push directly to last month's FTC ruling: "We can do that in a Congress that's willing to do that, especially if we're willing to reform the filibuster." The polling case is strong — term limits draw support from 85% of Democrats, 76% of independents, and 67% of Republicans. That bipartisan public support hasn't translated into bipartisan legislative backing: in the current Republican-controlled Congress, the bill has no path forward.

Reformers also point to the court's expanding shadow docket. The court issued 63 emergency orders this term versus 56 full-merits rulings, deciding major cases through brief unsigned orders that skip full briefing. On July 7, the court used the shadow docket to allow Texas to enforce an age-verification law for app stores — no extended briefing, no public dissents.

Where This Lands

A Georgetown Law professor told CNN: "The court's tendency to decide important cases along 6-3 partisan lines is a serious problem for the court's legitimacy." But agreement on the problem hasn't produced agreement on the solution. Court expansion requires only a simple majority in Congress — achievable if Democrats ever hold the House, Senate, and White House — but it would arrive without Republican legitimacy. The constitutional amendment locking in nine faces near-impossible ratification math. Term limits have the broadest public support but no Republican co-sponsors, and the filibuster blocks Senate action. When Kagan and Barrett sit down before the Appropriations subcommittee on July 14, lawmakers on both sides will almost certainly try to make the budget hearing into something it isn't: a referendum on the court's future.

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