That is the framework we must work with if post-Trump Reconstruction is to build a lasting constitutional settlement and not just be another pause before we're right back to square one with the next traitor and tyrant. And that can not happen with his judicial enablers still in unchecked power.
Suppose SCOTUS decreed Catholicism is now the state religion. It would be absurd to say we have no choice but to submit so long as at least 34 senators won’t vote to remove them. Court packing is part of Madisonian checks and balances, it’s in the Constitution as a tool Congress has in extremis.
Last time Congress messed with the number of SCOTUS seats wasn’t over mundane policy disputes in normal cases. It was to defend Reconstruction, the settlement of a literal civil war, from any Johnson appointments.
It’s not flippant hyperbole when we describe the post-Trump agenda as Reconstruction.
And if you don’t like court packing, there’s always the other explicitly textual tool Congress has: jurisdiction stripping. Cut them down to deciding nothing more than original jurisdiction fights over water allocation on the Colorado river. I don’t think that’s the better route but it’s there.
“Court packing is never ever something you should do” is not a tenable position. It’s trivial to imagine a court so extremely anti-constitutional (and yet 34 senators won’t convict) where court packing would be the necessary lesser evil. The only question is if the Roberts Court is that bad. (it is)