Amid "crass" speculation about whether he — and other justices — should be pushed to retire, Justice Samuel Alito will remain on the Supreme Court with zero intention of retiring in the near future, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
In the aftermath of Donald Trump's election victory last week, open chatter began in conservative legal circles about whether the 74-year-old — as well as the 76-year-old Clarence Thomas — should step down to allow the Trump to nominate and install a younger conservative to the high court.
"Despite what some people may think, this is a man who has never thought about this job from a political perspective," one person close to Alito told the Journal. "The idea that he's going to retire for political considerations is not consistent with who he is."
Further, Alito, appointed in 2006 by President George W. Bush, has hired one law clerk for the 2025-26 term and is on track to hire the full complement of four, the Journal reported.
The speculation focused on Alito and Thomas drew a rebuke last week from Leonard Leo of the conservative Federalist Society, who assisted Trump with judicial nominees in the Republican's first term.
"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 statement Friday.
Calls for Justice Sonia Sotomayor to step down spawned almost immediately from the left after the election. The 70-year-old Sotomayor, nominated by then-President Barack Obama in 2009, is the oldest Democrat-appointed justice on the court. Some on the left saw Sotomayor's age as a way to seat someone on the high court before Trump takes office in January with Republicans in control of the Senate.
"This would probably be a good day for Sotomayor to retire," David Dayen, editor of The American Prospect, wrote on X.
She, too, has no plans to step down from the court, the Journal reported Monday.
Regardless, the drumbeat of speculation on Alito and Thomas is likely to continue through Trump's first two years at least, given Republicans' 53-seat majority in the Senate before the 2026 midterms, according to the report.
"I expect Alito to announce in the spring of 2025 that he will retire from the court," conservative legal commentator Ed Whelan wrote last week. "I think it very likely that Thomas will do the same in the spring of 2026."
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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