re: The court packing narrative is aggravating.

I think the traditional practice for reducing size of a given multi-judge federal court (circuit courts of appeals, Supreme Court) has been to provide that the subtractions occur only as a Justice/Judge either dies off or retires/resigns. In other words say the Court's at 15 Justices and new fed act passes reducing to 11. You finally achieve the 11 only after any 4 leave the Court for whatever reason, retirement etc.

Then again, while they're tailoring laws to achieve a political purpose, may as well pass one that says they can summarily dismiss the Justice(s) at will. It's all so crazy.