Sen. Susan Collins rejected packing the Supreme Court after Democrat Troy Jackson said he was open to adding justices because the court “obviously is not working.”
Breitbart reported that the exchange came during Thursday’s Senate debate, when Jackson backed term limits, tougher ethics rules, and a larger bench.
Collins answered that the Court’s independence comes first, and that adding seats to reshape outcomes collides with the founders’ design for a judiciary insulated from politics.
Jackson did not hide his reason. He said the Court “obviously is not working” and claimed it was serving Donald Trump and “the billionaire class,” naming Justices Thomas and Alito in the funding charge.
Jackson framed lifetime tenure as outdated in practice. He said justices lack ethics, take trips, and accept gifts from people with business before them, conduct he argued the founders never expected.
He put the remedy list in plain order: enforceable ethics rules first, term limits next, and openness to more seats if the current nine will not deliver the results he wants.
His full case ran hot and direct:
"I understand why we had Supreme Court that was supposed to be lifetime positions, but look, what we have now is something unbelievable. I mean, people that don’t have any ethics. People that are taking trips, people are taking you know gifts from people that are going to come before them. I mean, this is not I don’t think what our founding fathers expected whenever they set up you know this system. And so yeah, I think first and foremost we have to have real ethics reform that’s accountable that you can hold people do. I think that we should have term limits, and I’m not against putting more people on the court because this court obviously is not working. It’s working at the pass of the Donald Trump and the billionaire class. I mean, that’s who’s actually funding people like Thomas and Alito."
That is the classic packing argument in new clothes: dislike the rulings, then change the roster. Readers have already seen voters spar over packing the Court when Democrats push past nine justices.
Collins refused the premise. She said the point of the judicial branch is insulation from politics, as one of the three branches in the founders’ system of checks and balances.
She called seat-adding a direct break with that vision and said the Court should not be run like Congress.
She also put her own confirmation record on the table, a record few Republican senators can match:
"What we want is a Supreme Court that is insulated from politics. That was the whole idea of the judicial system, one of the three branches of government, parts of the checks and balances that the founders of this country envisioned. To try to pack the court by increasing the numbers goes completely against the vision of those who wrote the Constitution. I would also point out that I am the only Republican senator who voted for Justice Sotomayor, Justice Jackson, and Justice Kagan. Those three liberal women justices who were appointed by Democratic presidents, and that’s what I think the founders want. They don’t want the Supreme Court to be like Congress."
Collins’s point was institutional, not tribal. She had already voted to confirm three liberal women justices named by Democratic presidents. She still rejected packing when a Democrat demanded a bigger Court.
Senate confirmation fights remain fierce on their own terms, as when Trump highlighted Murkowski’s Garland vote after a later clash over a Justice Department pick.
The Constitution leaves the number of Supreme Court seats unspecified. Congress created a six-member Court in 1789, changed the size several times, and locked membership at nine in 1869.
That history cuts both ways in a debate like this one. Lawmakers can change the number by statute. They have done it before. Collins’s answer was that using that power to “pack the court by increasing the numbers” still violates the founders’ aim of a Court that does not mirror Congress.
Jackson’s charge tied the bench to Trump and wealthy donors. Collins answered with structure and precedent, not a counter-smear. High-stakes Supreme Court business continues on multiple fronts, from political cases to commercial ones, including when the NFL pressed the Court on prediction markets.
Trump’s own litigation also keeps the Court in the national frame, including efforts to reopen a dismissed 2016 campaign lawsuit. None of that requires rewriting the Court’s size to settle policy fights Congress can still wage the old-fashioned way.
Jackson led with ethics, gifts, and travel. He wanted rules with real teeth. He wanted term limits. Only then did he add that he was “not against putting more people on the court.”
Collins did not litigate every allegation in the exchange. She rejected the structural fix. A Court that grows whenever one party dislikes the docket stops being a check and starts being another chamber of politics.
That is why her confirmation record mattered in the moment. She had already crossed party lines for Sotomayor, Jackson, and Kagan. She still would not endorse expansion as a cure for outcomes Jackson rejects.
Decisive Senate votes always carry political heat, even outside the Court, as when Cassidy defended a deciding confirmation vote he described in careful terms. Packing is a different tool. It changes the institution itself.
Jackson said the Court works for Trump and billionaires. Collins said the founders wanted a Court that does not work like Congress. Only one of those claims protects the branch from the next majority that loses a string of cases.
When politicians dislike the rulings, the easy move is to change the umpires. Collins held the line on a Court built to resist that urge.