‘If we retake the Senate … we need to use every single lever of power that we have to deal with the Supreme Court,’ Maine Democrat says
SKOWHEGAN, Maine—Senate candidate Graham Platner called to stack the Supreme Court and impeach “at least two” of its sitting justices, moves he said should be top priorities for Democrats should they retake the upper chamber next year.
“We’re going to have to start treating the Supreme Court like the political action wing that it has become of conservatism,” Platner said Saturday during a Somerset County Democrats meeting in the central Maine town of Skowhegan. “It is not functioning as a constitutional body.”
“I’m a supporter of stacking the Court,” he continued. “I’m also a supporter of, I mean, the Senate can write its own rules. … I firmly believe if we held Supreme Court justices to the same standard that we hold other federal judges, there’s a compelling case for the impeachment and removal of at least two justices.”
“It’s very frustrating to me that there are Democrats in the Senate that either do not understand or don’t want to understand the power they actually have. … If we retake the Senate, get the majority—fingers crossed—we need to use every single lever of power that we have to deal with the Supreme Court.”
The remarks are Platner’s most aggressive to date when it comes to the High Court. Platner’s campaign site lists a number of left-wing policy priorities, but does not include a section on the Supreme Court. And while Platner has criticized the Court’s conservative justices on X, he has not called to expand the Court or impeach any of its members.
Platner did not say which Supreme Court justices he believes should be impeached, nor did he offer details on his vision for the Court’s expansion. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The issue could emerge as a sticking point in the race to challenge incumbent Republican senator Susan Collins. Platner’s most prominent primary opponent, Maine governor Janet Mills, has accused the “conservative majority of the Supreme Court” of “judicial overreach,” but has not taken a position on stacking the Court.
Platner’s Somerset County appearance was one of three Saturday campaign stops. At a town hall held 60 miles west in Bucksport, Platner accused the Trump White House of “full-blown fascism,” and suggested it would contest the results of the 2026 midterms.
“The starting point for whatever comes next is the exact same place, whether we are talking about winning a Senate seat in a normal election next November, or whether we’re talking about figuring out how to resist fascism in contested elections, because the White House is going to do what we think it’s probably going to do,” Platner said.
“We have a changing climate, which—before we had full-blown fascism in this country—I would have said was probably the biggest problem on the horizon.”
The stop in Bucksport was not a breeze for Platner. At one point, a sexual assault survivor confronted him over his 2013 Reddit post urging rape victims to “take some responsibility for themselves,” the Washington Free Beacon reported. Platner apologized, said he penned the post when he “had come out of the infantry” and “had a frankly myopic worldview on this issue,” and then said he had “no excuse” for the post and other “jokes” he posted to Reddit.
Included among those “jokes” are posts in which Platner labeled white rural Mainers “racist” and “stupid,” denigrated police as “bastards,” and called himself a “communist.” He will need to convince Mainers to overlook the posts to oust Collins next November—a recent EMILYs List poll found that Platner trails Collins by 19 points when voters read “additional information, including quotes in his own words from his online posts.”
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