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WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory, combined with the Republican takeover of the Senate, may extend conservative control of the Supreme Court for another two decades.
For much of the last four years, progressives focused their energies on proposals to expand the size of the court or impose term limits on the current justices. These ideas to restructure the court depended on Democrats winning sweeping power in both the White House and the Senate.
Instead, Republicans will be in charge and positioned to preserve the conservative grip on the high court long after Trump leaves Washington.
The two oldest justices are also its most conservative jurists. Clarence Thomas, 76, joined the court 33 years ago and would become the longest-serving justice in the court’s history early in 2028. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., appointed in 2006, is 74.
If Vice President Kamala Harris had won the election, there was little chance they would have chosen to retire and have their seats filled by a liberal.
But conservative analysts think it is quite likely Alito or Thomas or both will retire during Trump’s second term.
Ed Whelan, who writes regularly in the National Review, said he expects Alito will leave first.
“I certainly have no inside knowledge. But I’d bet big on it,” he said.
He thinks the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg while Trump was in office will persuade Thomas and Alito they should not stay too long. She resisted calls from liberals to step down during President Obama’s last term, betting Hillary Clinton would succeed him in 2016. Instead Trump won, and a liberal seat flipped to a conservative.
Retirements by Alito or Thomas would allow Trump to appoint one or two far younger conservatives, likely selecting from those he appointed to the federal appeals courts during his first term.
Once confirmed, they could potentially sit for 30 years.
If Democrats had kept control of the Senate, they could have blocked Trump nominees they considered extreme. But Trump and his legal advisers will not face that hurdle.
In his first term, Trump appointed three conservative justices with the help of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
When Justice Antonin Scalia died early in 2016, McConnell prevented Obama from filling his seat.
Early in 2017, Trump chose Neil M. Gorsuch, who is now 57, to fill Scalia’s seat. When Ginsburg died weeks before the 2020 election, McConnell cleared the way for Trump’s quick appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who is now 52.
Along with Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, 59, they cast the key votes to overturn the right to abortion in 2022, and in July, to give Trump and other presidents a broad immunity from criminal charges for their actions while in office.
All three of them can expect to serve another 20 years on the court.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the sixth conservative, will turn 70 in January. The oldest of the court’s three liberals, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, had her 70th birthday in June.
While neither of them are seen as likely candidates to step down in the next four years, Trump could appoint another young conservative if either of them retired.
President Biden will leave office having made a historic but singular appointment in Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s first Black woman.