How an Alito Retirement Could Allow Trump to Reshape the Supreme Court

The president won’t increase the conservative bloc’s margins, but he could more deeply entrench the high court’s Trumpist bent.

Will there be a Supreme Court vacancy in 2026? The November midterms are inching closer—and with them, the slim but growing prospect of a Democratic Senate majority next January. If any conservative justices want to guarantee that a conservative president nominates their successor, their window to get out while the getting is good is closing fast.

Of the court’s two eldest members, it is considered unlikely that Justice Clarence Thomas will step down any time soon. The 77-year-old justice has signaled both publicly and privately that he will not retire from the court while he can still work. In 1993, The New York Times reported that Thomas, who was fresh off his bruising confirmation battle at the time, planned to serve on the court until 2034. “The liberals made my life miserable for 43 years, and I’m going to make their lives miserable for 43 years,” he reportedly told a clerk.

Justice Samuel Alito, on the other hand, may be closer to retirement. CNN’s Joan Biskupic reported last December that Alito was “pondering” stepping down. It is well known that the 76-year-old justice’s wife Martha-Ann is eager for him to retire, as she acknowledged in a surreptitiously taped conversation at a Supreme Court event last year. Alito’s planned book release later this year, as well as his recent hospital visit for an unspecified health issue last month, also drew renewed attention to his potential return to private life after a victory lap of sorts.

If Alito retires this year, it would not significantly alter the court’s overall ideological balance. Trump would be swapping out one conservative justice for another. At the same time, installing a younger justice would further cement the conservative majority’s long-term grip on the Supreme Court by preventing a vacancy from opening up under a Democratic presidency, barring structural reforms and expansion. Otherwise, the continuation of the conservatives’ 6-3 majority could seriously frustrate liberals’ plans to enact a post-Trump agenda, even with a sizable congressional majority.

At the same time, Trump’s second-term Supreme Court nominee could be unlike anyone that he previously appointed to the high court. The Republican Party remains firmly in his grip, with GOP senators confirming a wide range of........

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