There is growing speculation involving the Supreme Court retirements of conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas – and the White House is pushing back on the reports.
President Donald Trump dismissed speculation Tuesday, saying he wants Alito and Thomas to remain on the bench.
“I hope they stay ’cause I think they’re fantastic, OK?” Trump told Politico during an interview. “Both of those men are fantastic.”
The president’s comments come after mounting pressure from some Republicans for the Supreme Court’s two oldest conservative justices to retire before the 2026 midterm elections.
If both justices retire during Trump’s second term, the president would become the first since Dwight Eisenhower to appoint a majority of sitting Supreme Court justices.
Trump already appointed three justices during his first term — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — giving the court its strong 6-3 conservative majority.
Some Republicans have urged the justices to step down now while Republicans control both the White House and Senate, allowing Trump to appoint younger conservative replacements who could serve for decades.
Conservative legal commentator Ed Whelan predicted that Alito would announce his retirement this past spring, with Thomas following the next year.
“I expect Alito to announce in the spring of 2025 that he will retire from the Court. I think it very likely that Thomas will do the same in the spring of 2026,” Whelan wrote at the time.
Conservative legal operative Mike Davis wrote on social media after Trump’s recent election victory that Alito was “gleefully packing up his chambers.”
But the speculation has drawn sharp criticism from Leonard Leo from the Federalist Society, which played a key role in Trump’s first-term judicial appointments.
“No one other than Justices Thomas and Alito knows when or if they will retire, and talking about them like meat that has reached its expiration date is unwise, uninformed, and, frankly, just crass,” Leo said in a rare public statement. “Justices Thomas and Alito have given their lives to our country and our Constitution, and should be treated with more dignity and respect than they are getting from some pundits.”
Both Thomas and Alito have hired full complements of law clerks for the next two terms through October 2026, which typically suggests a justice plans to remain on the bench.
The urgency among some Republicans stems from concern about the 2026 midterms. Republicans currently hold 53 seats in the Senate, and losing just two seats would create significant obstacles to confirming any Trump nominee.
Thomas was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush and has served for nearly 34 years. If he serves three more years, he will become the longest-serving justice in U.S. history.
Alito was appointed in 2006 by President George W. Bush and has served for 19 years.
The three most recent justices who retired did so at older ages. Stephen Breyer retired at 83, Ruth Bader Ginsburg served until her death at 87, and Anthony Kennedy retired at 82.