| Democrats in Congress risk losing an important messaging battle to voters: Whether their big social safety net legislation is good government intervention or bad. As Democrats continue to wrangle over what to put in their all-encompassing legislation (regulate climate change? expand Medicare? pay for prekindergarten and community college?), Republicans have spent months accusing them of being big spenders and of trying to intrude on how Americans are living their lives. Polls show Democrats' individual ideas are pretty popular. But a new survey suggests that Republicans' attacks are resonating: A majority of Americans want government to spend less time involved in their lives than more. That's according to a Gallup survey, which found that except for a brief period last year as the pandemic closed down America, Americans typically think government is doing too much, rather than not enough. That is the opposite direction Democrats want the country to go in, as they try to win enough votes from within their own party to legislate the biggest expansion of government in decades. Independents in particular are really skeptical of government doing too much right now, notes The Post's Philip Bump. It makes me think of something former Republican congressman Charlie Dent told me recently: He thinks when Democrats won in 2020, they over-interpreted their mandate about what voters want from them. But many Democrats, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), feel this moment is their best chance to do things they've been promoting for decades. (If they lose control of either or both chambers of Congress in next year's midterm elections, Democrats might not have such a complete hold on power for another decade, largely because of gerrymandering.) So they're going to go for it anyway. Don't expect a Supreme Court expansion anytime soon  The current nine Supreme Court justices. (Erin Schaff/the New York Times via AP) | Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) bent precedent to get more conservative justices in place, by refusing to consider former president Obama's nominee in 2016 but then taking the opposite tact when a vacancy opened up near the end of Trump's term. His moves helped tilt the Supreme Court in a conservative direction for years to come. Now that liberals are in power, they've responded with an even bolder idea, asking: Why don't we add seats to the court to make it more liberal? The court doesn't have to be nine members; in the past it's had six or even 10. President Biden appointed a commission of academics to study this and other changes to the court. And while they're not done, some of the commission's early work is coalescing around the notion they don't think packing the court is a good idea. They say it would politicize the court even more than it already is. "The risks of court expansion are considerable, including that it could undermine the very goal of some of its proponents of restoring the court's legitimacy," they write. Which is a relief for Biden, who didn't seem to want to make any big changes to the court anyway. (He's also reluctant to make big changes to the Senate filibuster.) But one idea from this commission that could gain traction: Congress could try to pass a law or change the Constitution to require term limits for justices. Biden will surely be pressed on this in the days to come. If Trump had Twitter, he'd be tweeting about this A judge said this week that Jan. 6 defendants jailed in D.C. have been treated unfairly. And this judge said the Department of Justice should investigate, particularly about why jailer officials didn't approve a surgery for a defendant's broken wrist for months, reports The Post's Spencer Hsu: "The failure of D.C. officials to turn over medical records is 'more than just inept and bureaucratic jostling of papers,' [the judge] said in a hearing, raising the possibility of deliberate mistreatment." This summer, Trump allies in Congress showed up at a jail in D.C. protesting treatment of these defendants, of which there are about three dozen jailed right near the Capitol.  Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and other Republican lawmakers tried to protest jailed Jan. 6 defendants this summer. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) | But, some context: Hsu reports this particular jail has had lots of complaints of problems, including among non-Jan. 6 defendants. And Trump and his allies quickly morphed from defending people's rights into rationalizing the political violence that got many of them jailed in the first place. | 
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