While liberals may have been trying to push Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire and be replaced by President Joe Biden with their pick of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Obama-nominated justice of the U.S. Supreme Court is staying. She's not the only one who doesn't intend to retire. The same goes for Justice Samuel Alito, who was nominated by President George W. Bush. In an exclusive for The Wall Street Journal published earlier this week, sources close to Alito revealed that he won't be retiring.
As that report from Tuesday mentioned:
WASHINGTON—Justice Samuel Alito has no plans to step down from the Supreme Court, people close to the justice said, tamping down speculation among legal activists that the 74-year-old jurist was readying to retire so that President-elect Donald Trump could fill his seat with a younger conservative.
“Despite what some people may think, this is a man who has never thought about this job from a political perspective,” said one person close to Alito. “The idea that he’s going to retire for political considerations is not consistent with who he is.”
Trump’s election last week set off renewed discussions over the future of the Supreme Court, where the three eldest justices are in their 70s.
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Alito has already hired one law clerk for the 2025-26 term, and is on track to hire his full complement of four in the coming months, people familiar with the matter said.
Liberals loathe Alito, especially after he wrote the opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson in 2022, which overturned Roe v. Wade and sent the abortion issue back to the people. While the decision didn't officially come down until late June 2022, it was leaked in early May of that year, putting liberals in such a panic that they even defended illegal protests at the homes of conservative justices, including Alito, who reportedly had to take extraordinary measures to ensure his safety. Even then White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki declared that they "encourage" such protests back in May 2022.
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More recently, Alito also came under heavy criticism for flags flown on his properties, including an upside American flag and the Appeal to Heaven flag. Democrats who have long had it out for the Court and conservative justices, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), tried to get Alito to recuse himself from cases, but to no avail.
Yet for all this hatred, far-left news outlets celebrated Alito staying on the bench in a way as it meant they were able to mock Republicans. "Justice Samuel Alito Won’t Be Pushed Out for MAGA Replacement," read a headline from the Daily Beast. "Alito Set to Destroy Republicans’ Trump-Packed Supreme Court Dreams," read a headline from The New Republic. Mentioning "packed" in a headline about the Court comes off as quite ironic, as that's what Democrats were looking to do when they were in power, with some very real threats coming for institutions such as the Court and the filibuster, had they won last week.
Justices have lifetime appointments, despite how Biden announced in July his plans to "reform" the Court, with those plans involving term limits. Harris also stood by such plans and continued to reveal her mission to upend the Court as her campaign went on. Alito, and Sotomayor, will retire when they're good and ready, just as the other justices will. Fortunately, should any justices leave a vacancy, Republicans not only control the White House in a matter of months, but the Senate as well.
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