Opinion | John Yoo: The blue wave's real target is the Supreme Court

Democrats now have both houses of Congress, and former Justice Department official and Berkeley law professor John Yoo warns in a Fox News op-ed that the institution most at risk is the Supreme Court.

Yoo's first point is about timing. With the Senate flipping in January, he argues, no conservative justice is likely to retire before 2028, because a Democratic Senate would be unlikely to confirm a successor. Justice Clarence Thomas is 78 and Justice Samuel Alito is 76. Yoo, who clerked for Thomas, says he would be shocked if Thomas left while he could still do the job, and Alito has said publicly he will not retire this year. He calls the talk of a lame-duck swap for a younger justice Beltway politicking rather than serious strategy.

His bigger warning is court-packing. Almost every leading Democrat, Yoo writes, now wants to "reform" the Court by expanding it from nine justices to 13 or more. If Democrats build on these majorities, he argues, the country could get not just new faces on the bench but "an entirely different kind of Court altogether," one that would undo the rulings that returned abortion to the states, protected the individual right to bear arms and ended racial preferences in admissions.