President Donald Trump is publicly signaling that a big change could be coming to the Supreme Court.
Trump says he has a shortlist of new nominees ready, and the president has made it clear he expects Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to resign before the midterms to give him the chance to reshape the highest court in the land.
Trump told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo that he is ready to fill as many as three seats on the Supreme Court when vacancies open up, naming Alito specifically as a justice he both admires and is watching closely.
“In theory, it’s two — you just read the statistics — it could be two, could be three, could be one,” Trump said. “I don’t know. I’m prepared to do it.”
Neither Alito nor Thomas has announced any plans to retire. But speculation around a potential Alito departure has been building for months, driven by his age at 76, his more than two decades on the bench, and a recent health scare.
Alito was hospitalized for dehydration in March after becoming ill at a Federalist Society dinner. A Supreme Court spokesperson said the justice was “thoroughly checked” and returned to the bench the following Monday.
Thomas, 77, has drawn comparatively less retirement speculation, though he too has served more than three decades on the court.
Trump heaped praise on Alito while hinting that a retirement could come soon – which would cement his legacy.
“Justice Alito is an unbelievable justice, and a brilliant justice, and he gets the country,” Trump said. “He does what’s right for the country. It’s the law, and he goes by it as much as anybody, but he gets to the point.”
Trump said that it would be “nice” to appoint someone who could serve on the court for 40 years.
He used the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a cautionary tale. Ginsburg refused to retire when Democrats controlled the White House and Senate, before ultimately dying in office in 2020. The longtime liberal justice was replaced by Trump’s conservative appointee Amy Coney Barrett.
“She really hurt herself within the Democrat Party,” Trump said.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said this week that his committee is “fully prepared” to get a nominee appointed to the high court before the midterm elections if Alito steps down.
Republicans are eyeing the window before the 2026 midterms because voters often swing towards the party that is out of power. A vacancy filled now, with the current Republican majority, would give Trump far more flexibility than one in the second half of his term.
Trump already holds the record for the most Supreme Court influence of any president in recent history. His three first-term appointments — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — gave the court its current 6-3 conservative majority. Replacing Alito and Thomas with younger conservatives would extend this conservative control for decades.