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…
Page B1From§Eachthe supper edition — 2 September 2026
Three days after Clyburn calls 13 a pretty good number, his caucus votes to keep it possible.
As it ran on the front
The nine-justice norm, unwritten and unloved except when someone tried to touch it, died Wednesday on the floor of the House. It had no formal birth certificate — courts run on custom as often as law — but it had outlived nearly every other unwritten rule in this town, and it had never once needed defending, because nobody with real power had wanted to change it. That changed.
House Joint Resolution 1, the Keep Nine Amendment, asked for exactly what its name promised: freeze the Court at nine, forever, by amendment. That takes two-thirds. It got 212 votes to 206 against, with 15 members sitting it out, and it died the ordinary death constitutional amendments die in this country — not defeated, just insufficiently loved. Two hundred and five House Democrats supplied the votes that killed it.…
…(cont) Three days earlier, on a Sunday show, the dean of the caucus had already told the country why. Rep. Jim Clyburn, asked whether he agreed with expanding the Court, did not hedge. Thirteen, he said, is a pretty good number. He went further, allowing that his own defense of Clarence Thomas back in 1991 was something he now regretted. This was not a backbencher freelancing. This was leadership, on the record, three days before the vote that would have foreclosed the option he had just endorsed.
So the amendment failed for the most honest reason an amendment can fail: the people voting on it did not want to give up something they were actively considering using. Republicans, who brought the measure partly to hang a DSA label on the other party, got their receipt anyway — not manufactured, just handed to them, in Clyburn's own transcript. That's not spin. That's just what happened, and it's a little shit that nobody in that caucus had to be tricked into saying it out loud.
The nine-justice norm is survived by the eight-justice norm, the seven, and every other number a future Congress might someday find pretty good. It is preceded in death by a hundred other quiet customs nobody wrote down because everyone assumed the other side wouldn't try it either. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that the next amendment, if anyone bothers, arrive before the vote it's supposed to prevent, not three days after the confession.
“They didn't kill that amendment to protect the Court, they killed it to keep their own options open, and Clyburn told you that three days early on live television. Nine justices, thirteen, whatever number wins next time — that's the whole game now, and your case, your kid's case, whatever ends up in front of however many strangers in robes, gets decided by however many the winning side needs that year. That's not a conspiracy, that's a transcript and a roll call vote, both public.”
“Look, this amendment was about protecting judicial stability, full stop — Republicans brought it forward because stability matters. Did I say it was also designed to tie Democrats to the DSA? I did not say that, that's not — okay, the Post said that, I'm not the Post. Either way the amendment failed on its merits, which have nothing to do with messaging, which I also did not just describe as messaging.”
The receipts
Nearly every House Democrat voted to kill a constitutional amendment proposal on Wednesday that would have kept the Supreme Court at nine justices. In a 212-206 vote, with 15 members not voting, the House failed to garner the two-thirds majority needed to pass HJR 1. Known as the “Keep Nine Amendment,”
Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) on Sunday called for an expansion of the Supreme Court's nine justices to 13, calling that increase a "pretty good number." "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker asked Clyburn if he agreed with former Vice…
House Democrats blocked a constitutional amendment to cap Supreme Court justices at nine after President Donald Trump warned of future court packing.
A GOP-proposed constitutional amendment to limit the Supreme Court to nine justices failed in the House, coming up well short of the two-thirds majority needed.
Republicans brought up the constitutional amendment as part of an effort to accuse Democrats of seeking to pack the high court due to its conservative majority and tie them to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
The Republican-led resolution, which requires two-thirds support in the House and the Senate, is a response to increasing openness among Democrats to expand the court.
A Republican proposal to amend the Constitution to prevent expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court failed on the House floor. Like all constitutional amendments, the measure needed a two-thirds majority of the House to pass, which it did not get: The vote was along party lines at 212-206. Democrats have never supported...
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.