If the Barrett nomination goes through and the Democrats subsequently get the trifecta, this would be my response:
- Pass a bill that expands the supreme court to 11 justices, name two appointees
- Propose a constitutional amendment that:
- Sets the court at nine justices permanently
- Sets the tenure of a justice to 18 years, nonrenewable, with one expiring every two years, in feburary of odd years
- Retires existing SC justices in inverse order of tenure (so, Thomas, Breyer, Roberts, Alito, Kagan, Sotomoyor, Gorsuch
- States that if an appointee to any federal office is not voted on in six months, the senate will have been considered to have waived its right to advise and consent, and the appointee takes their office
If the republican state legislatures want to live with the court packing scheme, they would get to. But if they want to repeal it, this amendment gives them a path to repeal the court packing scheme and replace it with a sustainable and fair way of dealing with the problem — every president gets two appointees, the senate majority leader doesn’t get a pocket veto, and there is no more waiting for 85 year olds to die as a structural part of our system of government.
It’s not enough to retaliate against abuses. Make structural changes that make future abuses of the same type impossible.
Zoë Michelle's little corner of the internet 
#4 is interesting because that’s more or less the way the Senate has been operating with trump’s executive appointees–they serve as “interim” secretaries, etc, indefinitely, even when the Constitution has no allowance for interim appointees to the post. So there are situations where the Senate is happy to shirk its advise & consent duty. There might need to be something more robust.
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Yeah, that’s a worthwhile thought. Maybe make the thing recripocal — if the president doesn’t make a formal appointment in six months, empower the senate to do it in the President’s stead?
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