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KIND OF BLUE

Karoline Leavitt Pushes Bonkers Post-Election SCOTUS Theory

The former press secretary believes a plot is being hatched to change America’s highest court.

A photo illustration of Karoline Leavitt and the Supreme Court justices.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Reuters

Karoline Leavitt is backing a post-election theory being peddled by Elon Musk that the Democratic Party is secretly plotting to overturn the Supreme Court’s Republican majority.

Musk believes Democrats will try to expand the nation’s highest court and appoint new left-leaning justices to shift the balance in their favor if they win control of Congress.

In his plea to retain a Republican Senate—reposted by Leavitt—Musk also claims Democrats intend to turn Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico into states and open the borders and legalize everyone living in the country illegally to boost the number of Democratic Party voters.

U.S. Supreme Court justices pose for their group portrait at the Supreme Court in Washington, U.S., October 7, 2022.

EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

“This would result in America becoming a permanent one-party state and the end of a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word,” wrote Musk on X to his 241.5 million followers.

The world’s richest man said the alleged plot was his “biggest concern” if the Democrats sweep the House, Senate and presidency in 2028.

But he said voters should back Republican senators in Tuesday’s election to help prevent that eventual outcome.

Elon Musk, Karoline Leavitt, and Susie Wiles.

Elon Musk departs the White House with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on the South Lawn in Washington, DC, March 21, 2025.

ANNABELLE GORDON/AFP via Getty Images

“Other reasons (to vote) are irrelevant compared to this one,” he added.

On Friday, Leavitt reposted Musk’s plea to her 3.1 million Instagram followers, writing: “This is what’s at stake. Vote.”

The Republican Party currently holds a 6-3 conservative majority in the nine-person Supreme Court panel.

Karoline Leavitt has backed Elon Musk's post-election conspiracy theory.

Karoline Leavitt has backed Elon Musk's post-election conspiracy theory.

Karoline Leavitt/Instagram

The conservatives include three justices Trump appointed—Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh. George W. Bush appointed Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, and George H.W. Bush appointed Clarence Thomas.

Barack Obama appointed two liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan—and the third, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was appointed by Joe Biden.

In August, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said SCOTUS had made a series of recent decisions that “eroded democracy” and claimed that “dramatic Supreme Court reform is necessary.”

“There’s a variety of different options that are on the table,” he told the National Association of Black Journalists, adding: “And I think that we can’t foreclose any single one of them. The Supreme Court, the conservative right-wing majority on the Supreme Court, has become, you know, basically a subsidiary of the MAGA Republican Party.”

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Congress rules on the size of the Supreme Court. Nowhere in the Constitution does it set a number of justices.

The court has grown and shrunk seven times in its history, often for politically expedient reasons.

John Adams pared the court down to five in 1801 to prevent Thomas Jefferson from appointing any justices, while Franklin Roosevelt wanted to boost the number to 15 in 1937 to pack the court with his supporters.

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