If elected to a second term, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump could nominate a majority of the Supreme Court — a feat of influence unseen in the United States since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Most terrifying for progressives is the prospect of liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor leaving the bench during a Trump presidency, allowing him to move the court further to the right.
Sotomayor would be 74 at the end of 2028. She has publicly complained about her workload on the bench, and her recent health troubles and longtime history of diabetes have already led to calls from progressives that she step down during President Biden’s dwindling term.
If Sotomayor left, only two liberal justices would remain: Justice Elena Kagan, 64, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, 54.
Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett have already delivered a string of victories for conservatives, culminating in the overturning of Roe. vs. Wade in 2022.
“Were Trump to win, he might well extend the life of [his] majority by a generation or more, replacing Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito with much younger versions of the same thing — and all too possibly expand that majority even further if one of the three progressive Justices should have to be replaced,” said Andrew Tobias, an activist and former treasurer of the Democratic National Committee.
Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative icon and the current court’s longest-serving member, will be 80 at the end of a second Trump term. Justice Samuel Alito, another rightwing stalwart, would be 79.
Supreme Court justices service a lifetime term, unless they step down.
“Alito has overturned Roe. He’s done what he wants to do,” said Mike Davis, a plugged-in conservative attorney who is rumored to be on Trump’s shortlist for US Attorney General. “Justice Alito is a great man and has earned his retirement.”
Republicans are widely expected to take back the Senate, which confirms Supreme Court nominees, come November.
“If Republicans take the Senate and the presidency this November and a vacancy occurs on the Supreme Court for some reason after that, the White House would be in very good shape,” said Leonard Leo, a co-chairman of the the Federalist Society, a conservative legal nonprofit influential in shaping the federal bench during Republican administrations.
There are “about a dozen US Court of Appeals judges who have the demonstrated ability, record, courage, and judicial philosophy to serve as a great Justice,” he added.
Leo’s confidence has been matched in equal measure by liberal hysteria.
As Trump cemented the court’s conservative majority, progressive voices became increasingly wedded to court-packing schemes that would increase their power on the federal bench. Vice President Harris has publicly proclaimed she is “open” to the idea of expanding the number of Justices on the court.