A lot of Democrats fail to understand why it's so important to expand the courts. It's about WAY more than even just Roe v Wade, the ACA, LGBTQ rights, or worker protections. It's about whether we still have a democracy.

Let me explain what is going to happen here. Thread: /1

Republicans know they have lost the country. Their only chance at keeping power is aggressive gerrymandering, cheating and suppression.

They've also learned to use lame duck sessions to prevent themselves from losing power AFTER they lose elections. Here's what they will do: /2

They will strip incoming Dem governors of the ability to expand voter rights and force them to get supermajorities of gerrymandered legislatures.

All Trump-stacked courts will deny both Congress & citizen initiatives that curb gerrymandering or implementing voting rights. /3

Functionally, this will mean that the winner of the 2010 midterm elections that determined gerrymandering at the time, will control all voting rights and district lines in swing states for *generations*.

And by court order! /4

There will be overwhelming voter and Congressional enthusiasm for eliminating gerrymandering and implementing voter rights, and the Courts and gerrymandered legislatures that Republicans keeping "winning" will actually losing, will block all said initiatives. /5

Voters will eventually turn back to the GOP thermostatically as Dems are unable to govern, and they'll ratchet their power further.

If Dems don't kill the filibuster, the effect will be even worse. Reforms won't even make it as far as the Courts! They'll die in the Senate. /6

And it's not just that we'll lose Roe and the ACA and all the rest. It's not just that Dems will lose elections. We functionally won't have a democracy. We'll have an apartheid system run by the winners of the 2010 election...forever.

Only expanding the courts will fix it. /7

The consequences are that dire. We have to end the filibuster. We have to expand the courts. We have to end gerrymandering and pass HR1 in such a way that no GOP Senator can stop it, and no court can find specious reasons to strike it down.

It's that, or catastrophe. /end