Trump’s win may extend conservative control of the Supreme Court for decades

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 two more decades.

For much of the last four years, progressives focused on proposals to expand the court to more than nine justices or to impose limited terms on the current justices. These ideas depended on Democrats winning sweeping power in 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 the bench’s most conservative. Clarence Thomas, 76, joined 33 years ago and is on track to become the longest-serving justice in the court’s history early in 2028. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., confirmed in 2006, is 74.

If Democrat Kamala Harris had won this presidential election, there was little chance the elder conservatives would have chosen to retire and have their seats filled by liberals.

But conservative analysts think it’s likely Alito or Thomas or both will retire in 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 ofliberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at 87, while Trump was still in office, will persuade Thomas and Alito that they should not stay too long. Ginsburg had resisted calls from liberals to step down during President Obama’s final term, betting Hillary Clinton would succeed him and nominate her successor. Instead Trump won in 2016, and flipped Ginsburg’s liberal seat to a conservative, Amy Coney Barrett, before he lost to Joe Biden in 2020.

Retirements by Alito or Thomas would allow Trump to appoint one or two far younger conservatives, likely from those he appointed to federal appeals courts during his first term.

Once confirmed, those conservatives could potentially sit on the high court for 30 years.

If Democrats had kept Senate control, they could have blocked Trump nominees they considered too extreme. But Trump and his legal advisors will not face that hurdle.

In his first term, Trump appointed three conservative justices with the help of then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

When Justice Antonin Scalia died early in 2016, McConnell blocked Obama from filling the conservative’s seat.

Early in 2017, Trump chose Neil M. Gorsuch, 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 Barrett, now 52.

With fellow Trump Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, 59, Gorsuch and Barrett cast the key votes in 2022 to overturn the right to abortion, and in July to give Trump and other presidents broad immunity from criminal charges for actions in office.

All three of them can expect to serve 20 more years on the court.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the sixth conservative, turns 70 in January. The oldest of the court’s three liberals, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, is 70.

While Roberts and Sotomayor aren’t seen as likely to step down in the next four years, Trump could appoint yet another young conservative if either of them does.

And President Biden will leave office having made a single but historic appointment in Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s first Black woman.