There’s an old principle in warfare: if you can’t defeat the fortress, cut its supply lines. You don’t need to storm the walls when you can simply starve what’s inside. It’s a tactic as old as civilization – and apparently, it’s one that hasn’t been lost on the modern Democrat Party.

Last Thursday evening, Justice Samuel Alito stepped back onto a familiar stage. The Federalist Society’s annual Antonin Scalia Memorial Dinner in Washington drew the usual crowd of legal conservatives, but the mood carried a different weight this year. Alito – the author of Dobbs, the man who returned abortion to the states and took a blowtorch of criticism for it – hadn’t headlined the dinner since 2022. NPR even ran a report back in June claiming he was retiring. They retracted it. He showed up anyway. Say what you will about the man – he doesn’t flinch.

The timing matters. Just days earlier, Democrats secured control of both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections. For years now, they’ve floated proposals to reshape the Supreme Court: packing it with additional justices, imposing term limits, leveraging ethics requirements as a cudgel. In 2023, a group of Democratic senators tried to withhold $10 million in court funding until the justices adopted a stricter conduct code. Kamala Harris has openly called for expanding the bench. At what point do we stop calling these “reforms” and start calling them what they are?

What Alito actually said

Against that backdrop, Alito delivered a warning that should concern every American who still believes in separation of powers.

From the New York Post:

Congress can turn off the lights at the Supreme Court and stop everything from happening if they will not fund our activities. If the independence of the judiciary is eliminated, the Constitution as adopted in 1789 will no longer be the same.

Let that sit for a moment. The mechanism is painfully simple. While the Constitution protects justices from salary reductions, Congress controls appropriations for staff, operations, security, and facilities. You don’t need to remove a justice to neutralize a court. You just defund the people who keep it running.

Alito called the judiciary the “least dangerous branch,” echoing Alexander Hamilton. He reached for an analogy: a hand grenade next to a 500-pound bomb and a nuclear weapon. Least lethal of the three, sure – but still deadly when someone else controls the ammunition.

What it really means

Here’s what gets me. The conservative legal movement spent over forty years building this majority the right way – through presidential elections, Senate confirmations, rigorous legal scholarship. Dobbs. Heller. The end of racial preferences in college admissions. Every one of those victories came through the constitutional process the Founders designed. Not a single shortcut.

And the answer from the other side? Skip the process. Defund the institution. Threaten to pack the bench until it bends. They call it saving democracy. Funny how “saving democracy” always seems to involve kneecapping the institutions that won’t do what Democrats want.

Alito didn’t mention the midterms Thursday night. He didn’t have to – everyone in that room could count. The lights are still on at the Supreme Court. I just wonder how long this new Congress plans to keep it that way.

Key Takeaways

• Justice Alito warned Congress could effectively shut down the Supreme Court by cutting its funding.
• Democrats now control both chambers and have already floated court-packing and budget threats.
• The conservative legal majority was built through legitimate constitutional processes over decades.
• Defunding a co-equal branch of government isn’t reform – it’s institutional sabotage.

Sources: New York Post, Denver Gazette