By The Daily Wire (World News) | Created at 2026-10-03 14:15:51 | Updated at 2026-10-03 15:18:46
6 hours ago
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito opened the door to a possible retirement next year as Republicans scramble to retain control of the Senate with just 31 days to go until Election Day.
In an interview with CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford, Alito said he had weighed stepping down this year but chose to remain on the brench despite what Crawford characterized as “pretty intense pressure” from GOP officials eager to confirm a like-minded successor.
“I thought that I could still make a valuable contribution,” Alito said, explaining his decision to stay on the court.
But Alito made clear that his tenure on the high court could be coming to a close.
“It’s something I think that somebody at my age has to think about every term,” he said.
When Crawford asked whether the conservative jurist would reconsider retirement each year, Alito replied, “Yeah, I think I have to.”
The possibility of a 2027 vacancy highlights the stakes of the November 2026 elections. If Alito retires, President Trump would nominate his successor, and the Senate would decide whether to confirm the pick. Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority. Recent polling, however, shows Democrats in striking distance of flipping the upper chamber.
“It’s too hard to predict what the political situation will be, and what any president might do with respect to a replacement,” Alito said in the interview.
Michael Whatley, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, is working to turn the Supreme Court into a campaign issue.
“There is no doubt that in the next 6 years there will be one or more Supreme Court Justices who will retire – and NC needs to have a CONSERVATIVE Senator voting on their replacements,” he said in a statement.
On the Democratic side, Troy Jackson, the party’s Senate nominee in Maine, seized on the Alito interview to highlight Sen. Susan Collins’ vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who later joined the majority in the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“This election will determine who confirms the next Supreme Court justice,” Jackson wrote on X. “Susan Collins voted to confirm three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, and she’s voted with Donald Trump 96% of the time.”
During the interview, Alito reflected on the “courage” it took for the five-justice majority to stick together in the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade. The draft opinion was leaked before the ruling, triggering nationwide protests and violent security threats against the conservative justices.
In June 2022, Nicholas Roske traveled from California to Maryland armed with weapons and intending to kill Kavanaugh at his home. Roske pleaded guilty and was sentenced to just over eight years in federal prison.
“I think that required courage by all of the justices in the majority… We didn’t know it at the time. We didn’t know when we produced the draft that was leaked, but it required courage to go ahead with that because of the implications,” Alito said. “There are others. I mean, there are cases that have resulted in the loss of old friendships.”
In a Fox interview, Alito said he has an idea of who was behind the leak but that the evidence “is not strong enough” to publicly name the person. The Supreme Court’s own investigation also failed to identify the leaker.
“The physical threats and the harassment represent something new in our society and something that’s quite disturbing, and I think it’s a danger,” Alito said. “It’s a danger for the courts, and it’s a danger for others in public life.”
