PRESSURE MOUNTING

Trumpy Justice Spills on Retirement Plan After Midterms Mess

The court’s second-oldest justice has acknowledged pressure to step aside.

One of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices says he will not retire in the next two months while Republicans still control the Senate.

Justice Samuel Alito, 76, has told friends that he doesn’t plan on retiring before Democrats retake the Senate, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

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There were MAGA rumblings that the George W. Bush appointee should voluntarily step down after Tuesday’s midterms revealed a Democratic rout in both chambers of Congress, which will make it more difficult for Trump to replace him with a conservative should he later retire or die.

Alito told Bloomberg News last month that he was planning “to stick around through this term.” In August, he similarly told The Wall Street Journal, “Obviously I’m here for another term.”

But the scale of Democratic wins—between 54 and 56 seats in the chamber tasked with confirming justices—renewed interest in his plans.

Alito acknowledged to the Journal that there was pressure to retire.

Such nudges are “not pleasant,” Alito noted, “in the sense that it’s a reminder of mortality. It’s like, what are those vultures doing up there? They are flying around. But it goes with life tenure.”

Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, seemed to be looking forward to the day her husband is no longer subject to the scrutiny and restrictions of his job, according to a 2024 undercover audio recording by journalist Lauren Windsor.

In the recording, Martha-Ann anticipated the day when the jurist is “free of this nonsense”—a remark that came amid a boast about putting up a Jan. 6-linked flag at their New Jersey and Virginia homes. That action drew enough scrutiny that her husband had to comment and say he wasn’t responsible. In the same conversation, Martha-Ann ranted about “feminazis” and the Pride flag.

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Alito is the second-oldest justice on the Supreme Court. The oldest, 78-year-old Clarence Thomas, another staunch conservative, has repeatedly said he has no plans to retire.

Even if either or both justices decided to step down immediately, the confirmation process for their replacement would hardly be a guaranteed success in the 53-47 Senate. The Times notes that John Cornyn and Bill Cassidy each lost their reelection bids to Trump-endosred primary challengers, and may not want to give him a win after he helped oust them.

Also, Susan Collins, who lost on Tuesday, voted against Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett in the fall of 2020, citing its fast-tracked nature before that year’s presidential election.

Additionally, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski has opposed a Trump nominee before, having voted against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination in 2018.

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At the end of the Supreme Court’s last term in late June, chatter about a potential retirement flared up when NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported—and then retracted—a story stating that Alito was retiring.

Two months before, Trump, 80, alluded to concerns that, by not retiring at the right political moment, elderly judges could end up repeating the mistake of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who chose not to step down before the 2016 election. The liberal justice died in 2020 at age 87, allowing Trump to replace her with Barrett in the final few months of his term.

The prestigious job can be alluring, Trump said: “It’s probably not easy to give up for people.”

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The Daily Beast has contacted the Supreme Court for comment.

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