Sheldon Whitehouse spent years threatening the Supreme Court and never landed a single punch.
Now he and Jamie Raskin just revealed they've been meeting every month to fix that.
What they're planning for January would be the most aggressive attack on the Court in American history.
The Supreme Court Subpoena Plan Democrats Have Been Building Since August
In August, standing in front of hundreds of Iowa Democrats, Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse stopped pretending.
Whitehouse has spent nearly two decades as the Senate's most relentless Supreme Court antagonist – hundreds of floor speeches, threatening amicus briefs, and open vows to restructure the Court dating back to at least 2010.
He and Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin – expected to chair the House Judiciary Committee – had already been meeting monthly to coordinate a Supreme Court offensive the moment Democrats took the majority in January.
"We are already meeting monthly to plan," Whitehouse told the crowd. That's a sitting U.S. senator describing a premeditated operation against the third branch of government – not campaign trail posturing.
Whitehouse – expected to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee – explained exactly how they plan to do it. His Senate subpoenas can be killed by a Republican filibuster. Raskin's House subpoenas cannot.
"They cannot block a Jamie Raskin House subpoena," he told the Iowa crowd, spelling out the workaround that makes the House the tip of the spear.
Raskin isn't just planning subpoenas. He wants 13 justices on the Supreme Court – four new seats packed with Democratic appointees who would flip the entire constitutional order. He called the current court "gerrymandered, stacked, and packed."
You can't gerrymander the Supreme Court, but that's what happens when Democrats exhaust their legitimate arguments and start rewriting definitions instead.
Democrats Pushed Court Packing and SCOTUS Subpoenas in 2023 and Folded
Democrats ran this play in 2023. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to subpoena Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo – private citizens – as part of a campaign to discredit justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Republicans threatened 150 retaliatory subpoenas and Democrats folded.
Now they're back with House gavels that carry no filibuster protection and a months-long head start on planning. After that failure, conservatives pushed Congress to pass the "Keep 9" constitutional amendment to block future packing attempts. Democrats ignored it.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, used one word to describe what this is: lawfare.
"They don't like that the Supreme Court has justices who are dedicated to upholding the Constitution, so they resort to lawfare," Schmitt told the Daily Signal.
"Democrats don't care about lowering prices or helping American families – Democrats care about political retribution and lawfare, and their baseless attacks on the Supreme Court are a key part of that attack on the American constitutional order."
Zack Smith, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, focused on the constitutional threat.
"There is a separation of powers concern here if Raskin and Whitehouse try to intimidate and bully the court and threaten with court packing," Smith told the Daily Signal.
That threat has historical precedent. Franklin Roosevelt had 76 Senate Democrats and overwhelming majorities in both chambers when he tried to pack the Supreme Court with six additional justices in 1937.
His own party rejected the plan in a 70-22 Senate vote. The Senate Judiciary Committee – controlled by Democrats – called it "needless, futile, and utterly dangerous" and urged the Senate to reject it so emphatically it would never be attempted again.
Why Their Court Packing Scheme Would Shatter the Separation of Powers
Democrats lost the Supreme Court the right way – through elections, confirmations, and a constitutional process spanning three decades. What Whitehouse and Raskin are building now isn't oversight. It's a pressure campaign designed to grind down conservative justices until they rule the way Democrats want.
Whitehouse laid out every tool: subpoenas, mandatory ethics codes with investigative teeth, retroactive term limits, and jurisdiction stripping.
He told the Iowa crowd he wants to strip the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction – the cases that make up virtually every ruling Americans actually care about.
Congress gave that power, he said, so Congress can take it away. That's not an ethics probe – it's a constitutional hostage situation.
Smith drew the line at Congress using oversight as a weapon: when Congress investigates the Supreme Court not over budget requirements but to change how it rules, the separation of powers doesn't bend – it breaks.
The conservatives who built a 6-3 majority over thirty years are now watching Whitehouse and Raskin run a coordinated monthly operation designed to tear it down before 2028.
FDR tried this in 1937 with 76 Senate Democrats behind him, and his own party stopped him. The question is whether anyone is willing to do it again.
Sources:
- Fred Lucas, "Retribution and Lawfare: Democrats Eye Supreme Court Subpoenas and Probes," The Daily Signal, November 6, 2026.
- Nick Arama, "Whitehouse and Raskin Remarks in Iowa Just Provided an Even Bigger Reason to Vote for the GOP," RedState, August 30, 2026.
- "Conservative Leaders Blast Democrats' Witch Hunt Against SCOTUS Justices They Don't Like," Breitbart, November 30, 2023.
- "FDR Announces Court-Packing Plan," Fox News.
