In today’s edition … You told us what you thought — with some disagreement — about college prices … Republicans have a money advantage, but what will the Trump-backed ads look like? … but first …
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The House of Representatives failed yesterday to constitutionally stipulate that the Supreme Court has nine seats.
This was a show vote. No one expected it to clear the needed two-thirds majority. And it failed with only one Democrat supporting the constitutional change. But the vote put scores of Democrats on the record about a topic that could be significant in the party’s 2028 nominating process: expanding the Supreme Court.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), who pushed for yesterday’s vote, argued Democrats want to “pack the U.S. Supreme Court,” labeling the move purely political. “We’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen,” he told reporters. “We will keep the nine.”
After several decades of initial fluctuation, the court has remained at nine justices since 1869. But in recent years, Democrats have fumed over how Republicans have handled Supreme Court nominations.
In March 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland, which Republicans blocked, saying it was improper for an outgoing president to nominate a justice so close to an election. Senate Republicans had no such issue in late 2020, however, when President Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“A lot has changed since 2020 when expansion was seen as a radical idea,” said Josh Orton, the head of Demand Justice, a group focused on Supreme Court reform. “Expansion has to be central to any conversation about the court. … To me, it is an emergency.”
While focus on the issue has somewhat faded since Trump’s first term, it was revived earlier this year when the court decided to weaken the Voting Rights Act. And the forthcoming 2028 nomination fight is also expected to revive the proposals.
“I think we are in a position now that calls for some significant actions taken by the Congress, and we ought to expand, and 13 is a pretty good number,” Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-South Carolina) said this weekend on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “A baker’s dozen, it would be a good number to have on the court.”
Clyburn was responding to 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s call to do the same. Harris, who is clearly eyeing another run in 2028, used an appearance at the National Urban League’s annual conference to expand the court.
“We need to revisit the point of expanding the court to 13 justices like we have 13 district courts,” she said.
Harris is far from alone.
Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary who ran for president in 2020, has long called for Supreme Court expansion and said this summer that confidence in the Court is why expansion is needed. “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,” he said on Fox News.
Altering the court has also unified the Democratic Party’s wings. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a more moderate member of the party, has argued for “radical reform” to the court and said, “everything needs to be on the table.” Meanwhile, progressives like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York) and Ro Khanna (California) have long backed expansion.
“This amendment is an admission that Congress has the power to expand the court,” Khanna wrote ahead of the vote yesterday. “I will vote no. Expand the court from 9 to 13.”
While national Democrats have backed expansion, it’s unclear whether voters support it. A 2025 poll by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania found 31 percent of Americans “favor increasing the number of justices on the current nine-member Supreme Court,” the lowest of other proposed court reforms like term limits and ethics reform. Thirty-six percent of Americans opposed expanding the court, while 34 percent had no opinion.
Which leads to the question of whether Democrats want to have this conversation now, ahead of an election where the party feels like it has a winning message on the economy and prices.
“Democrats who are running to win House seats are rightly keeping the focus on Donald Trump’s handling of the economy, the Iran war, and tariffs rising costs,” said Brian Fallon, a longtime Democratic operative and the former head of Demand Justice. “That is what the average candidate running in a red-to-blue district should want to mitigate, and they should be doing everything to keep the focus on that.”
But, Fallon said, “that is neither here nor there for the two-year conversations the party is about to have” ahead of 2028.
“I don’t think it’s super helpful for our closing message to be about expanding the courts,” said Jesse Lehrich, a Democratic operative who tracks the 2028 nomination fight on his newsletter, “Nobody’s Listening.” “But I don’t think it’ll matter that much. People can’t afford to live.”
Lehrich did argue that Democratic activists will likely make expanding the court “table stakes for 2028,” but that it likely won’t be “an animating debate in 2028, because everyone running will support it.”
Democrats are growing increasingly worried that they are about to be swamped by Republicans’ significant outside money advantage, namely from the Republican National Committee, Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc.; and Elon Musk’s expected involvement in the midterms.
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“All of that takes the advantage that Democrats have in terms of individual small dollar donors, and it really will just swamp it,” Rep. Chris Pappas (D-New Hampshire) told me yesterday when I asked about how he sees his strong fundraising faring in the face of Republican money. “We are going to get outspent in this race. We just have to have enough to get our message out.”
Only a tiny portion of the expected spending has started, but both Democrats and Republicans running campaigns this cycle expect the tens of millions in spending to begin soon.
What I’m most curious about is what that spending looks like. Will, for example, MAGA Inc. use its massive war chest to prop up key Republicans? Attack certain Democrats? Or will the spending be more Trump-focused?
We got some insights on that yesterday when Securing American Greatness, the nonprofit arm of Trump’s political operation, began running an ad firmly focused on one man: Trump.
The ad features Dana White, the head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a Trump friend, calling the president “the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met” and arguing “nothing was going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves.” It then turns to Trump saying, “When the world needs courage, vision, and inspiration, it is still turning to America. There is no challenge Americans cannot overcome, no frontier too vast for us to conquer. We will be prosperous. We will be proud. We will be strong, and we will win like never before.” The images under the spot are almost all of the president.
The ad flabbergasted Democrats, who questioned why the group would run an ad entirely focused on the president at a time when his approval rating is arguably one of the biggest issues facing Republicans on the ballot this year.
“Oh no, Democrats are COOKED if Trump spends $100M telling voters the sky is green,” Addisu Demissie, a Democratic operative, sarcastically tweeted. “Please don’t hurt us, sir.”
“Trump wants to run ‘Morning in America’ again,” Jesse Ferguson, another Democratic operative, told me of the ad. “When people open their bills, they’re more likely to think it’s Mourning in America.”
Ferguson said every ad that features Trump saying things are great will ring hollow for voters dealing with high prices and economic worries. “You can’t gaslight a grocery bill,” he said.
Republicans focused on keeping control of the House and Senate later this year were not as worried.
“A rising tide lifts all boats. If a concern is his approval rating, why not invest in improving his standing, highlight the wins, and strengthen the overall political environment for every Republican on the ballot,” said a Republican operative working on House races, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk openly about Trump’s approval rating.
Ohio Capital Journal: An Ohio data analyst has found, using government data, that “2.1 million foreign-born, working-age men have left the country since the start of Trump’s second term.”
New Jersey Monitor: With more states adopting cellphone bans in schools, the next few years will test whether such bans help students not only learn, but detach from screens. New Jersey students returning to school this week will be barred from using cellphones from bell to bell.
Baltimore Fishbowl: Baltimore’s crime turnaround has been dramatic. Mayor Brandon M. Scott announced this week that the city’s downturn in homicides and shootings has continued this summer, with “18.2 percent decrease in homicides and a 5.6 percent decrease in non-fatal shootings” since last year.
Many of you were not concerned about the rising college costs detailed in this piece, arguing that very few students actually pay full price.
“I’m a trustee of a small liberal arts college. Our ‘list’ price is just over $60,000. Our average student pays a little less than half that. Our board members work extremely hard to make sure our value proposition is worth $60,000,” writes JR Yates Jr.
And George L. Bustin wrote that “the data on college tuition is profoundly misleading,” arguing that “one should ask how many of the matriculated students are actually paying that price or even a substantial percentage of it,” pointing to financial aid and other programs.
“What is in fact going on here is that these universities are engaged in a form of redistribution,” wrote Bustin. “Elite schools will attract a fair number of students from wealthy families who can without difficulty pay the full cost of tuition. And so they do. These revenues in fact help to subsidize the generous financial aid packages extended to other students and in some cases the majority of students.”
Not everyone agreed with this thinking.
George Affeldt recalled that his college costs in Wisconsin were low because the state government funded his university. “Current politicians choose not to fund public educational institutions so that students, parents, and families must pay,” wrote Affeldt.
Today, we wrote about the Democratic movement to expand the Supreme Court. What do you think about this idea? Do you see it as “court packing,” as Republicans argue? Or do you think changes to the judiciary are needed to combat a lack of public trust? If you are a Democrat, do you think this is something candidates should be running on this year? Let me and your fellow Early Brief readers know at [email protected].
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