Alito Eyes 2027 Retirement, Raising Prospect of a Seven-to-Two Conservative Court
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Justice Samuel Alito confirmed to CBS News this week that he considered retiring this year and will revisit the decision in 2027. At 76, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005, Alito's departure while Trump remains in office would give the president a fourth Supreme Court nomination — following Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett — potentially shifting the Court to a seven-to-two conservative supermajority for a generation. Alito's specification that he will decide in 2027, after November's midterms, made clear the timing is as much about Senate composition as personal preference.
The Court also took up two significant immigration cases. Justices are reviewing Trump's mandatory detention policy for certain categories of immigrants, which lower courts found unconstitutional in specific applications, and separately allowed the administration to resume third-country deportations — the practice of sending individuals not to their home country but to a third country that agrees to receive them.
A federal judge reinstated the Seattle US attorney whom Trump fired in July, with Chief Judge Stanley Bastian ruling that a president cannot fire a court-appointed US attorney. The Justice Department said it would immediately appeal, framing the dispute around the unitary executive theory — the argument that the president holds plenary authority over all executive branch officers. A separate judge struck down a recently enacted noncitizen voting law as unconstitutional, finding that noncitizens already cannot vote in federal elections under existing statutes and that the new law's enforcement mechanisms violated due process.
The Justice Department's announcement that it is reviewing whether Watergate-era prosecutors mistreated Richard Nixon drew immediate attention for the historical revisionism embedded in its framing. Former special counsel Jack Smith told the Senate this week he would prosecute Trump again if given the opportunity. And a Republican senator's attempt to use a perjury allegation against Smith collapsed after the underlying claim was found to hinge on a basketball team mix-up. In Tennessee, Governor Lee ordered a review of the state's lethal injection protocol after death row inmate Pike survived an attempted execution, forcing a public reckoning with the legal and moral obligations the state holds when the method fails.