For aging U.S. Supreme Court justices, the politics of retirement looms large

REUTERS/Jim Young

President Trump says he hopes Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito stay on the Supreme Court “a long time,” but behind the scenes, court watchers are closely eyeing their age, timing, and what a retirement could mean for the court’s future. With elections looming and a friendly Senate (for now), the question isn’t just if a vacancy will open — but when, and under whose control.

Any vacancy would give Trump the opportunity to make a fourth appointment to the court. The last president to appoint four justices was Republican Richard Nixon, who served from 1969 to 1974.

John Kruzel has more insight here.

Coming up today

Environment: Twenty-two youth plaintiffs will argue before the 9th Circuit to appeal the dismissal of their lawsuit against President Trump challenging a set of executive orders that rolled back climate protections.
First Amendment: The D.C. Circuit will hear arguments over whether the FTC can subpoena nonprofit Media Matters as the agency probes whether media watchdog groups coordinated advertising boycotts against some social media platforms. Last year a divided D.C. Circuit panel upheld an August decision by a lower court judge who had called the subpoena retaliatory and described it as a "fishing expedition" by the FTC. Read that order here.
Education: A group representing major public and private universities will urge U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor in Boston to effectively expand an earlier order he issued barring the Trump administration from forcing public colleges in 17 states to turn over sweeping amounts of data to the Trump administration so it can examine whether they have ceased considering race as an admissions factor.
Defamation: President Trump faces a deadline today to respond to the BBC’s motion to dismiss his $10 billion lawsuit over its editing of a 2021 speech in a documentary. The BBC argued in its motion to dismiss that Trump's subsequent reelection showed the documentary did not harm his reputation. The BBC will have until April 27 to reply to Trump's response.
Antitrust: Drug purchasers and retailers including CVS and Walgreens are slated to take Takeda to trial in Boston federal court in lawsuits alleging the pharmaceutical company unlawfully kept prices high for its anti-constipation medication Amitiza by delaying generic competition, costing the plaintiffs hundreds of millions of dollars in overcharges.
Criminal: Mexican drug lord Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada is due to be sentenced today after pleading guilty to ordering murders and shipping millions of kilograms of cocaine during his decades-long leadership of the violent Sinaloa cartel.
SCOTUS: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is scheduled to speak at Yale Law School. The speech is titled “Equity and Exigency: A First-Principles Solution for the Supreme Court’s Emergency Docket.”

Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.

More top news

Industry insight

President Trump is nominating Benjamin Flowers, a former Ohio solicitor general who convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to block the Biden-era COVID-19 vaccination-or-testing mandate for large businesses, to serve as a judge on the 6th Circuit.

$70 million

That’s how much a jury in Chicago said Abbott Laboratories must pay in damages to a group of families that had accused the company of failing to warn that its formula for premature infants can cause a potentially deadly bowel disease, according to a company spokesperson. Read more here.

"We're not quite sure how to translate 1974 into 2026, but we do know that the ‘balance of trade deficit’ was not the same thing as the ‘balance of payments deficit’."

—U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Timothy Stanceu during oral arguments on Friday over the legality of President Trump’s new round of tariffs. A judicial panel sharply questioned the Trump administration's justification for the levies. Stanceu, an appointee of president George W. Bush, seemed to flatly reject the Trump administration's argument that a trade deficit, which occurs when a nation like the U.S. imports more goods than it exports, was on its own enough to justify tariffs under a 1974 law. Read more about the arguments here.

In the courts

Gaming: A federal judge on Friday blocked Arizona from continuing its criminal case against prediction market Kalshi, according to the CFTC, which sued to prevent states from regulating the ‌industry.
Social media addiction: Meta must face a lawsuit by Massachusetts' attorney general alleging that the Facebook and Instagram parent deliberately designed features to addict young users. The ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court marked the first time a state high court has considered whether a federal law that generally shields internet companies from lawsuits over content posted by their users would also bar claims that companies like Meta knowingly addicted young users.
M&A: U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley in Sacramento extended an ‌order temporarily freezing Nexstar's acquisition of rival broadcast station owner Tegna