President Donald Trump may be poised to appoint two or more justices to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) over the course of his second term. Two particular names have been floated as potential appointees.
Politico reported Tuesday night that Trump is expected to name a list of nominees for several judicial vacancies in the lower courts over the next several weeks. Unlike in his first term — where Trump got more than 200 Article III judges confirmed to lifetime positions throughout the federal judiciary — he has just a few dozen vacancies to work with between now and 2029. But SCOTUS Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who are 76 and 74 years old, respectively, could be replaced by Trump appointees should they retire while Trump is still president.
"They’re going to be looking for even more bold and fearless judges," Trump ally Mike Davis told Politico. "Judges who have been battle-tested."
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According to Politico reporters Hailey Fuchs and Josh Gerstein, one of the names at the top of the list of potential replacements for Thomas and Alito is 43 year-old U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who Trump appointed to the Southern District of Florida in 2020. Cannon presided over Trump's classified documents case, which was seen as former Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith's strongest case before Cannon scuttled it last July.
Another possible Supreme Court nominee is 37 year-old Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, who sits on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Tampa. Trump nominated her to the post in August of 2020 when she was just 33 years old, just a few months after Cannon's appointment. Mizelle has no prior experience as a judge, though she clerked for Clarence Thomas between 2018 and 2019. Mizelle is also the wife of Chad Mizelle, who is chief of staff to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
"I think they will be more ideologically extreme, on the fringe of what used to be the Republican Party," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) of Trump's likely judicial nominees in an interview with Politico. "They will be MAGAs, basically. Given the trend of the end of the last Trump term, we’re heading over a cliff in terms of fringe right wing views. They will have a litmus test on steroids."
Should Trump appoint replacements for Thomas and Alito, it would mean that five of the nine members of SCOTUS would be Trump appointees. However, Trump won't have many opportunities to fill the lower courts if the current number of vacancies stand over the next four years. In his lame-duck period, former President Joe Biden and then-Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) successfully confirmed Biden's 235th federal judge, which is one more than Trump named during his first term. Biden left Trump with just 47 total vacancies across the entire judiciary, compared to the 127 that former President Barack Obama left Trump in 2017.
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Click here to read Politico's full article.