As the GOP races to try to install Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court before the election, Joe Biden and most competitive Democratic Senate candidates — other than one — are running away from queries about whether they would support expanding the court.

Republicans have not suffered from such equivocation — instead, they have for years tried to pack the courts, both through contraction and expansion. In Washington, they have pushed to shrink the courts, and they have blocked Democratic presidents from filling judicial appointments — moves designed to increase the power of GOP-appointed judges already on the bench. In states, Republicans have pushed to expand the courts to increase their number of appointees.

At the Supreme Court level, Republicans stole a majority when they denied a hearing for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court choice for 293 days before Trump took office, and placed Neil Gorsuch on the courts. They minted a more conservative majority with Brett Kavanaugh. Amy Coney Barrett and a six-to-three balance on the court, arriving via a grim bit of luck, would just be the icing on a decades-long, ultraconservative majority that threatens Americans’ reproductive rights, voting rights, labor rights, health care rights, and civil rights.