The burden on 50 Senate Democrats and President Joe Biden to save democracy became much heavier Thursday, and even more urgent. In a 6-3 majority opinion, the Supreme Court gutted what remained of the Voting Rights Act. This was not a shocking outcome. After all, the Supreme Court had already severely damaged the landmark civil rights law back in 2013, when it gave Republican states the green light to start enacting whatever outrageous racist voter suppression laws they wished. Arizona took them up on that offer, giving the court—with three new illegitimate justices appointed by the former insurrectionist in chief—the excuse to destroy the whole of the law.

Which means the burden on the Senate goes beyond abolishing the filibuster and overruling the Supreme Court with new laws. A federal judiciary jam-packed with Donald Trump’s illegitimate judges—including this Supreme Court—will make sure those laws don’t stand.

It means that Biden and Senate Democrats have to do what Republicans have shown themselves willing and capable of doing—whatever it takes—to save the nation.

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Let’s talk about those three illegitimate justices Trump and Mitch McConnell installed. Neil Gorsuch is sitting in a pilfered seat. Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans shrugged off their constitutional obligation to advise and consent on judicial nominations and blockaded Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee for the highest court. They left a vacancy on that court for nearly a year in order to deny the nation’s first Black president that seat. They also abolished the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees—unanimously. (Thanks, Joe Manchin, for helping them out on that vote, by the way.)

Then there was Brett Kavanaugh, who faced numerous and credible sexual assault allegations as well as an extremely shady financial situation on top of multiple perjury issues, none of which were adequately investigated during his rushed confirmation process. His experience, his temperament, his willingness to play fast and loose with the truth—all of that should have disqualified him from even being nominated. But there is no bottom to what Republicans are willing to say and do in order to win.

And finally, Amy Coney Barrett with her extremely short and extremely extreme judicial career, who was rushed onto the court in record time literally days before the presidential election and while ballots were already being cast. (Which proved again that McConnell’s “principle” behind the Garland blockade was total bullshit.) She was Trump’s choice because he was so certain she was going to give him the final vote he needed on the court to hand him the election. “I’m counting on them to look at the ballots, definitely,” Trump said about the Supreme Court.

Now, that’s court packing. That’s elected Republicans being willing to do anything and everything in their power to rig the system in their favor. In return, they secured a compliant Supreme Court majority, one willing to fully embrace the Court’s ingnominious Jim Crow past. This is a court majority that wants the minority of the electorate and elected officials to rule.

Republicans have proved to be absolutely ruthless and diabolically creative when it comes to eroding democracy for their own power and profit. Democrats, on the other hand, have held onto a moral superiority that is disastrously naive and self-harming. “We won’t stoop to their level” might be a comforting thing to tell each other in the Democratic cloakroom in the Senate, but while they’re patting themselves on the back, they’re dooming themselves to irrelevancy and American democracy to the trash heap.

It’s gone beyond the need to abolish the filibuster in order to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Restoration Act to overrule the Supreme Court. As essential as that is, it’s not enough.

Schumer said it himself: “Failure is not an option, voting is too sacred.” Well, it’s time to do something about it. Don’t just keep promising to fight. Actually fight. And win. 

The Supreme Court has to be reformed and it has to be expanded, period. Biden and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have to do everything in their power to make that happen. What’s the point of having control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, along with the biggest bully pulpit in the world, if you won’t use it to secure the future of democracy?