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tions, and taking advantage of fortuitous timing to confirm justices the way they’ve always been confirmed.

Manufacturing new seats out of nothing, or forcing the retirements of conservative justices by fiat, would be a blatant rigging of the court. If a portion of the country thinks that it no longer needs to abide by the Court’s decisions, that obviously creates the predicate for serious civil strife. The same is true if Congress is no longer seen as legitimate after it is packed with newly minted Democratic senators.

Democrats feel justified in embracing any means to match and exceed Trump’s comprehensive aggressiveness. Trump’s provocations — the lawfare, the executive overreach, the wars without congressional authorization, the gerrymandering — all have ample precedent among prior Democratic presidents. Democrats, of course, don’t see it that way, and they fear and loathe Donald Trump more than they have any other Republican president.

In reaction, should they sweep in 2028, they may try to push the American constitutional order past an event horizon from which it will never return. In other words, 12 years after the GOP was told to charge the cockpit or die, the stakes for our system really could be existential.

Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.

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