Conservatives are sounding the alarm that the Republican Party's midterm wipeout may have cost them their grip on the Supreme Court for years to come.
Democrats retook the House on Tuesday and flipped Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Iowa, Ohio and Maine, seizing control of the upper chamber, and The Daily Beast reported on the conservative gnashing and wailing over the consequences.
Once the new Senate is seated in January, Democrats will be able to block any Supreme Court nominee President Donald Trump sends their way, and that has put renewed focus on conservative Justices Samuel Alito, 76, and Clarence Thomas, 78, who have faced persistent questions about whether they’ll retire before the 80-year-old president leaves office.
“Justice Samuel Alito will be under pressure to resign, perhaps as soon as this week, so that Republicans can nominate a replacement and seat the person during this lame-duck period,” wrote the Wall Street Journal’s Damian Paletta. “Will Trump pressure Alito to step down?”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis offered a bleak forecast. If Democrats win the races where prediction markets give them strong odds, he said, they’ll hold 55 Senate seats.
“Chance of confirming a worthy successor to Justice Thomas and/or Alito during President Trump’s term: Zero,” DeSantis posted on X. “Chance of confirming a worthy successor during a hypothetical GOP admin 2029-2033: probably zero.”
MAGA influencers were less measured.
“One of the worst outcomes as a result of the a-- beating we’ve seen tonight… Liberal Supreme Court?” wrote Michael Flynn Jr., son of Trump’s former national security adviser.
“We needed to replace Alito and Thomas while we had the chance. Now we’re f---ed,” MAGA influencer Joey Mannarino told his nearly 800,000 followers.
Conservative lawyer Ed Whelan, a former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia, threw cold water on the idea of a lame-duck rescue. He said he’d be “extremely surprised” if either justice announced a retirement now, noting the GOP’s margin will shrink to 52-48 once Democrat Sherrod Brown is sworn in for Ohio’s special-election seat in early December.
Whelan said Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski would be unlikely to back a Trump pick, and that John Cornyn, Thom Tillis and Bill Cassidy “aren’t going to be eager to do Trump any favors.”
He warned that even a Republican elected president in 2028 might not be able to fill a seat until the GOP retakes the Senate, which “might not happen until 2033.”
Alito told CBS News last month that retirement is “something that I think that somebody at my age has to think about every term.”