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Watchdog Warns of Trump Plot to Push Alito, Thomas Off Supreme Court While GOP Still Controls Senate
"NPR’s reporting that Justice Alito is retiring was early. But it wasn’t wrong."
Jul 01, 2026
Following a series of major US Supreme Court decisions, NPR retracted an erroneous report on Tuesday that conservative Justice Samuel Alito was planning to retire.
But while that report turned out to be false, a progressive legal action group is warning that it pointed to something potentially very real: That President Donald Trump could try to push aging right-wing justices like 76-year-old Alito, as well as 78-year-old Justice Clarence Thomas, to retire early so he can replace them with young judges who can cement a right-wing majority for decades.
"NPR’s reporting that Justice Alito is retiring was early. But it wasn’t wrong," said Josh Orton, the president of Demand Justice, and Ezra Levin, the co-executive director of Indivisible, in a statement on Wednesday. "We know that Donald Trump will do whatever he can to hold onto power, and we are prepared for him trying to force Alito, Thomas, or both off the bench this year, while Republicans still control the Senate and can ram through a replacement."
It's not an unfounded fear. It's something Trump has discussed openly.
In April, the president told Fox Business interviewer Maria Bartiromo that he was "prepared" to appoint as many as three justices before his term is up—perhaps alluding to the possibility that the liberal 72-year-old Justice Sonia Sotomayor could die before the next president is inaugurated or that the 71-year-old conservative Chief Justice John Roberts could retire.
"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."
He called Alito—who authored major decisions to gut abortion rights, allow religious businesses to deny contraceptive coverage to employees, and kneecap public sector unions—"one of the great justices of all time," but added, "It’d be nice to say, now I have somebody for 40 years.”
He also invoked the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom he said “really hurt herself within the Democrat Party" by refusing to retire when Barack Obama was president. After Ginsburg's death in 2020, Trump replaced her with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who expanded the court's conservative majority to 6-3.
Trump was asked about possible Supreme Court vacancies again in an interview with Breitbart News on Wednesday after NPR jumped the gun on Alito's retirement. The president suggested he was torn.
“Well I think you know, if you listen to people, there are three potential vacancies for various reasons, so I’m certainly prepared,” he said. “There are a lot of great people out there who would like to have that position.”
While he praised Alito, describing himself as the justice's "single biggest fan," he reiterated that putting “a young conservative judge on the bench for 40 years” is a “very important thing." He said that the idea of replacing either Alito or Thomas was a "mixed blessing."
Rumblings of a concerted push for both Alito and Thomas to pack up can be traced back to 2024, when The Washington Post reported that Trump adviser Mike Davis was championing the idea in conservative legal circles.
But neither man has indicated plans to retire at this moment. And if Thomas, who has sat on the bench since 1991, were to retire before the next Congress is sworn in, he'd be stopping less than two years shy of eclipsing William O. Douglas to become the longest-serving Supreme Court justice.
Demand Justice, however, is betting on long-term political power winning the day. The group said it has invested $3 million "to prepare for a 2026 Supreme Court fight."
This will include pressuring Republican senators to reject Trump's pick—particularly those like Sens. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Thom Tillis (NC) who are retiring at the end of this term, Sens. John Cornyn (Texas) and Bill Cassidy (La.) who lost their primaries, and Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), who have (at least rhetorically) broken with Trump more frequently than their GOP colleagues.
Orton and Levin said that "Trump will choose his nominee for one reason: loyalty." They said he'd likely pick somebody who'd validate even his most lawless actions even more than the current justices do—including supporting his efforts to overturn an election result, which the court rejected in 2020.
"We’ll be ready to expose them," Orton and Levin said. "And we’ll be ready to fight."
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John Fetterman Under Fire for Letting Nomination of ‘Crony Trump Judge’ Advance
"At a time when Trump is corrupting the courts with crony judges who will rig our economy and attack our rights and freedoms for decades, Democrats cannot afford to treat these nominations like business as usual."
Jun 05, 2026
Democratic Sen. John Fetterman is coming under fire from progressives for allowing one of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees from his home state of Pennsylvania to advance to a confirmation hearing.
As reported by Punchbowl News, Fetterman (D-Pa.) this week waived his right to block the nomination of former federal prosecutor Antonio Pozos for a lifetime appointment in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. In doing this, Fetterman became the first Democratic senator to waive this right during Trump's second term.
Under the Senate's "blue slip courtesy" tradition, senators can opt not to return a blue slip—named for the color of the paper form—to the Judiciary Committee for a particular judicial nominee from their home state, if they don't believe the nomination should advance. A spokesperson for Fetterman confirmed he had turned in a blue slip for Pozos on Friday.
This drew the ire of Demand Justice, which vowed on Friday to take out a six-figure ad campaign against the Pennsylvania Democrat for letting a "crony Trump judge" move toward confirmation.
"At a time when Trump is corrupting the courts with crony judges who will rig our economy and attack our rights and freedoms for decades," the group said, "Democrats cannot afford to treat these nominations like business as usual."
In an interview with Punchbowl News, Demand Justice president Josh Orton called on all Democrats, not just Fetterman, "to stand up to Trump’s attacks on the rule of law," imploring them to "do so in every room—not just on Twitter and not just on TV."
Demand Justice has argued that all of Trump's judicial nominees have refused to contradict the president's false claim that he won the 2020 election or to denounce the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, and has called on Democrats to block everyone he's nominated to the federal bench.
Progressive organizing group Indivisible also criticized Fetterman for enabling Pozos' nomination to go through, while hinting at a future primary challenger for the first-term senator should he run for re-election in 2028.
"Alleged Democrat John Fetterman has decided to let one of Trump’s judicial nominees move forward for a lifetime appointment," wrote Indivisible. "Fetterman’s betrayal of his voters and everything he claimed to campaign for is why he will be a one-term senator."
Fetterman in 2025 tied with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) as the Senate Democrat who voted for the most Trump Cabinet nominations. Data published by VoteHub in February showed that Fetterman has voted on legislation with Trump more than any Democratic senator.
He is also the only Democrat in the Senate to consistently oppose war powers resolutions aimed at ending Trump's illegal war of choice with Iran.
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'Logical Conclusion' of Citizens United as Delaware Judge Lets Corporations Vote in Local Elections
Delaware is home to more corporations than people. Human people, that is, as under longstanding state law and the US Supreme Court's infamous 2010 ruling, corporations are people, too.
May 27, 2026
A judge in Delaware—a state with more registered business entities than people—ruled Monday in favor of a small town that allows corporations to vote in local elections.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz ruled that the town of Fenwick Island, population 400, did not violate the state Constitution by permitting business entities—which make up 12% of the town's "population"—to vote in municipal elections, as case plaintiff the ACLU of Delaware had claimed.
"What is a 'person?' When one cuts to the heart of this case, that is the question," Karsnitz wrote to open his 20-page ruling.
‼️‼️Delaware Superior Court upholds a municipal ordinance allowing individuals to cast votes on behalf of LLCs, trusts, and corporations in local elections against a challenge that the ordinance constitutes unlawful vote dilution for real persons under the state constitution. aboutblaw.com/blQg
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— Anthony Michael Kreis (@anthonymkreis.bsky.social) May 27, 2026 at 1:46 PM
"According to the law, a person is anyone or anything that can initiate and be subject to legal proceedings. By this conception, any adult, corporation, or institution is a person, but a minor is not a person, a fetus is not a person, and a humanoid robot... is not a person," the ruling continues. "This highlights that legal personhood is dependent solely on legal recognition."
The judge noted that in 2008, the Delaware General Assembly amended Fenwick Island's charter "to expand its voter registration rolls to allow individuals to cast votes on behalf of trusts, limited liability companies, partnerships, and corporations that own property in Fenwick."
"Today, the overwhelming majority of legal entity property owners in Fenwick registered to vote, and on whose behalf votes are cast, are trusts," Karsnitz added.
"I appreciate that Plaintiff may disagree with Delaware’s policy of authorizing certain municipalities to allow voting on behalf of entity property owners," the judge wrote.
"Visions of faceless large corporations, or even HAL, controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction," he continued," referring to the malevolent artificial intelligence-powered computer in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film version of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. "However, Plaintiff has not demonstrated that this policy violates the principle of one person/entity/one vote."
"Plaintiff points to no other persuasive independent authority than the Elections Clause of the Delaware Constitution itself," Karsnitz concluded. "And matters of policy are appropriately left to legislative bodies, not the courts."
Fenwick Island Mayor Natalie Magdeburger told Reuters earlier this year that "a property owner who pays taxes and is subject to our ordinances should have a say in who represents them on our Town Council."
Meanwhile, the ACLU of Delaware contends that "with over 2 million business entities incorporated in Delaware–roughly double the amount of actual people living in the state–the people of Delaware risk having their voices drowned out when towns like Fenwick Island allow corporate voting."
Karsnitz's ruling does not mention Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 US Supreme Court decision affirming that political spending by corporations, nonprofit organizations, labor unions, and other groups is a form of free speech protected by the 1st Amendment that government cannot restrict. The decision ushered in the era of super PACs—which can raise unlimited amounts of money to spend on campaigns—and secret spending on elections with so-called “dark money.”
While Delaware's corporate personhood laws long predate Citizens United, numerous critics of Monday's ruling referred to the case, including the progressive legal advocacy group Demand Justice.
"Corporations aren't people," the group asserted on X. "They don't have kids in local schools, they don't drink the water, they can’t be jailed for crimes, and they shouldn't get a vote."
Some compared Hawaii, where Democratic Gov. Josh Green recently signed legislation clarifying that corporations are not people, with Delaware.
"Hawaii made a move to rein in Citizens United," writer Van Dennis posted on X, "and Delaware responded, "The fuck you are."
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