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Justice Alito is not leaving

 


There was a lot of speculation, not too long ago, that Justice Alito would be leaving after the end of the October 2025 session of the US Supreme Court.

The idea was: (1) that Alito wanted to be replaced by Trump, so he would want to get out while Trump still controlled the Senate and could still secure a younger Alito clone as replacement for the retiring Alito, and (2) that Alito has a new book coming out, October 6th, and he would want to be free to do a book-selling tour at that time. 

Of course if Alito is still a Justice as the new October 2026 session goes underway, book selling opportunities will be constrained.

So went the speculation.  But when Justices do retire on the basis on such calculations, they generally do so right after the final gavel of the old session falls -- this year, that gavel fell on June 30th.  Yet Alito made no such announcement. Quite the contrary, early this month he told The Wall Street Journal that he is "here for another term."

I'm happy to see it. The world may look very different next summer than it looks now and -- even assuming the physically and mentally tottering old man President remains alive and in office -- any confirmation attempt next summer will also look very different.

      

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  1. HenryAugust 18, 2026 at 7:24 AM

    Let's hope that a Democratic Senate refuses to confirm any Trump nominee to any position--judicial, federal agency, ambassadorship, or anything I haven't thought of. I am not hopeful, though, because too many Democrats are cowardly, conservative (in the non-political sense of the word), and mentally living in the era when the Republican Party (whom Democrats viewed as their friends across the aisle) hadn't been replaced by the Trump Cult.

    The reason that the Democrats should refuse to confirm any nominee is that Trump's sole criterion for nominations is loyalty to him. It should make no difference to Democrats if a nominee is qualified on paper, which is highly unlikely, since Trump abhors expertise.

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