For years, conservative litigants flocked to Judge Reed O’Connor’s district. Now, North Texas has become a favorite destination of the Justice Department.
Page A7From§Eachthe supper edition — 30 August 2026
Clyburn backs a 13-justice Supreme Court — Trump's entire policy agenda already runs through one federal judge in Texas.
You want to know how power actually moves in this country, forget the nine justices for a second, because nobody's using all nine anymore anyway. Jim Clyburn wants thirteen justices on the Supreme Court — thirteen, like it's a jury, like more seats fixes a machine that isn't broken, it's captured. He says it while admitting he regrets defending Clarence Thomas, which is Washington-speak for 'I helped build the room I'm now complaining is too small.' Fine. Take the note. But look where the actual work gets done while everybody argues about the marble building: one federal courtroom, one judge, in Texas. Not thirteen judges. Not nine. One. That's where, according to the paper of record, the entire national policy agenda of a sitting president gets filed, heard, and blessed. You don't need to stack a court when you've already got a door with your name over it, and the part that should make the guy at the end of the bar put his beer down is that nobody had to change a single rule to make this happen. No amendment. No vote. Just paperwork, filed in the right zip code, in front of the right robe, over and over, until 'the judiciary' quietly becomes 'a judiciary,' singular, located in one building you could drive to. Clyburn's thirteen-justice fix is aimed at the wrong door. You can triple the Supreme Court and it changes nothing about a system where the real veto power sits one floor up from a strip mall, in a district that was picked, on purpose, because it's the one place a certain kind of lawsuit is guaranteed to land on a friendly desk. That's not a conspiracy theory, that's a filing cabinet. The whole architecture of 'checks and balances' assumes the other branches show up. When an entire executive wish list can be laundered through a single, predictable venue, the other eight hundred federal judges in this country are furniture. Add justices if you want — it doesn't touch the bottleneck. The bottleneck isn't the size of the bench. It's the zip code. Fix the zip code, and then talk to me about thirteen.
“You want to know how power actually moves? Forget nine justices, forget thirteen — it all funnels through one guy in one courthouse in Texas, and nobody had to pass a law to make that happen, they just filed the paperwork in the right zip code. Add ten more justices, it doesn't touch the bottleneck; you've got to move the door.”
“Judge shopping? That's called venue selection, it's a normal legal strategy every side uses — wait, do other administrations do this? I'm sure they do, I just can't think of one right now, so let's move on.”
The receipts
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) voiced his support for expanding the Supreme Court to 13 justices and lamented his defense of Clarence Thomas during the conservative justice’s confirmation in 1991. In an appearance on NBC News’s Meet the Press…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.