James Carville Told Democrats to Hide This Plan Until After They Win

April 20, 2026 Cat2, Politics
Rosemarie Mosteller via shutterstock

James Carville built his entire career on knowing what Democrats could say out loud and what they had to keep quiet.

On Thursday, he told them exactly which category their real agenda falls into.

Carville said if Democrats win the presidency and both chambers of Congress in 2028, then they should make Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. states on day one and expand the Supreme Court to 13 justices.

Carville's Court Packing and DC Statehood Plan Would Add 8 Democrat-Controlled Seats

Let's be clear about what Carville is describing.

Adding Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. as states creates four new Senate seats – almost certainly four new Democratic Senate seats.

Packing the Supreme Court from nine justices to 13 gives Democrats four new appointments – almost certainly flipping the current 6-3 conservative majority to a liberal one overnight.

That's a permanent structural transformation of American government, engineered on day one, with no public debate, by a party that specifically planned not to mention it during the campaign.

Carville even acknowledged he knows exactly what he's proposing.

"F— it. Eat our dust," he said.

This is not a reform agenda.

This is a blueprint for one-party rule – written down, recorded, and published – while the people who would execute it plan to stay quiet about it until they have the votes.

The Last Democrat Who Tried Court Packing Lost 81 House Seats

The last time a Democrat tried to pack the Supreme Court, his own Vice President gave a thumbs down on the Senate floor.

In 1937, Franklin Roosevelt – fresh off a landslide reelection – put forward a plan to add as many as six new justices to the Court, designed to guarantee favorable rulings on his New Deal legislation.

The backlash was immediate and bipartisan.

The Senate Judiciary Committee called the bill "an invasion of judicial power such as has never before been attempted in this country."

The Senate voted 70-20 to send it back to committee, where it died.

Roosevelt's Vice President John Nance Garner openly mocked the proposal.

Democrats lost 81 House seats in the 1938 midterms.

Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg – a liberal icon appointed by Bill Clinton – called court packing a "bad idea" as recently as 2019, warning it would make the court look "partisan."

The verdict from American history is unanimous: court packing is an assault on the independence of the judiciary, and the American public knows it.

Carville knows it too.

That's why he told Democrats not to talk about it.

Carville Predicted Trump Would Jail Him Too and Was Wrong About That

Before you take Carville's plan too seriously as a political warning, remember who Carville is right now.

Before the 2024 election, he predicted Trump would jail journalists and commentators like himself the moment he returned to office.

That didn't happen.

Now he's betting Trump resigns in disgrace after the midterms and Democrats ride back into total power in 2028.

The man who spent years calling Trump voters stupid is now the party's leading voice for hiding the real agenda until the polls close.

John Fetterman – not exactly a right-wing firebrand – already rejected Carville's court-packing scheme with three words: "Win more elections."

The Heritage Foundation has spent years warning that court packing would "destroy not only the independence of the judiciary, but also the unique way that the U.S. Senate has participated in the legislative process for more than 200 years."

Carville just handed them a smoking gun – recorded, timestamped, and published for the world to hear.

Democrats Plan a Power Grab They Admit Cannot Survive a Campaign

The most important thing Carville said wasn't the plan itself.

It was the instruction to hide it.

A party confident in its ideas runs on them.

A party that tells its candidates not to discuss its actual agenda until after the election has already admitted that agenda can't survive public scrutiny.

Trump won two elections and governed out loud.

He signed executive orders, held press conferences, and let the whole country watch in real time.

Carville is advising Democrats to do the exact opposite – collect ballots under one premise, then govern under another.

That's not saving democracy.

That's stealing it.

Sources:

  • Alexander Hall, "Carville tells Dems to quietly prepare power grab with DC, Puerto Rico statehood and Supreme Court packing," Fox News, April 17, 2026.
  • Alexander Hall, "Carville calls on Democrats to 'unilaterally' pack Supreme Court, create new blue states 'to save democracy'," Fox News, August 7, 2025.
  • "How FDR Lost His Brief War on the Supreme Court," Constitution Center, February 5, 2024.
  • "Court-Packing Threat Puts Two Branches of Government at Risk," The Heritage Foundation.
  • "The Left's Relentless, Unjustified Assaults on the Supreme Court's Legitimacy," The Heritage Foundation, August 11, 2023.
  • "Fetterman Rejects Carville's Supreme Court-Packing Proposal, Tells Democrats to 'Win More Elections'," PJ Newsletter, November 24, 2025.