Dems just handed a game-changing weapon — thanks to Alito and Thomas

President Donald Trump has been able to ram through much of his controversial agenda thanks to the acquiescence of the Supreme Court, where Republican judges outweigh Democratic ones by a 6-3 majority. Yet according to a libertarian editor, Trump may actually have a problem — two of his oldest judges seem unwilling to retire.

“Democratic strategists are probably jumping for joy at the news of Alito and Thomas sticking around on the bench for a bit longer,” Reason senior editor Damon Root wrote on Tuesday. Root was referring to Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who at ages 76 and 77 respectively are near the average retirement age for Supreme Court judges. Both are staunch conservatives who consistently support Trump’s agenda, yet historically judges who do not retire around that age will pass away in office. If Alito and Thomas died near the end of Trump’s second term — much as Justice Antonin Scalia passed away near the end of President Barack Obama’s second term a decade ago — Trump would need to go to a possibly Democrat-controlled Senate to confirm their replacement… and, like Senate Republicans after Alito’s death, they would likely refuse to confirm anyone.

“If either Alito or Thomas did retire this year, after all, his Trump-picked successor would almost certainly sail through the confirmation process in the Republican-controlled Senate,” Root explained. “But now, if the Democrats manage to take control of the Senate in this year's midterm elections, any future SCOTUS nominee from Trump will stand about zero chance of ever getting confirmed.”

He concluded, “That's a pretty good campaign message if you happen to be a Democrat running for the Senate.”

Indeed, Democrats do not even need to win control of the Senate to hinder Trump’s agenda in the second half of his last term. CNN recently observed that "even if Senate Democrats come up short in November, there could be a big difference between Trump nominating a justice with 53 Republican votes this year and trying to do so with 50 or 51 in the second half of his term."

"But the president may have other reasons, apart from the confirmability factor, to try and usher things in this direction," CNN added.

Writing for AlterNet, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich harshly criticized both Alito and Thomas, although he was clear about which one was worse.

“I’ve long assumed that Samuel Alito was the worst,” Reich wrote. He observed that Alito wrote for the majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), which effectively overturned a woman’s right to choose for millions of Americans by overturning Roe v. Wade (1973), going on an initially-undisclosed 2008 luxury fishing trip to Alaska with hedge fund billionaire and GOP donor Paul Singer and not recusing himself when Singer had business before the court and flying an inverted American flag outside his Virginia home shortly after January 6th.

“But I’ve come to revise my view of the court’s worst Justice,” Reich wrote. “Clarence Thomas is 77 years old. He has now served on the Supreme Court for over 34 years, making him the longest-serving member of the Court. He is a bitter, angry, severe hard-right, intellectually dishonest, ideologue.” Reich reached this conclusion after reading Thomas inaccurately conflating progressive ideas with fascism and authoritarianism generally by tracing it to the administration of a Democratic white supremacist, President Woodrow Wilson.