Justice Samuel Alito says he is weighing retirement and could hand President Trump another Supreme Court nomination if he leaves after next year’s term.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito confirmed he is considering retirement, saying in a CBS News interview that he thought about stepping down this year and will face the same choice again in 2027.
Politico reported the excerpts, released Friday ahead of an interview set to air Monday. The 76-year-old justice did not announce a date. He did make clear that age forces the question every term, and that he still believes he has work left to do.
That math matters. If Alito leaves after next year’s term, President Donald Trump would get another nomination to a Court his prior picks already shifted to the right. If Democrats take the Senate in the midterms, a fourth Trump pick would face a much harder confirmation path.
Alito pushed back on the idea that the timing of any exit could undo his record. He refused to treat retirement as a political chess move.
In the interview, Alito put the decision in plain terms.
"It’s something that I think that somebody at my age has to think about every term,"
he said, before adding why he has stayed.
"But I thought that I could still make a valuable contribution, which is why I became a justice and a judge in the first place."
Critics have long fretted that a justice’s exit date can lock in, or lose, a generation of precedent. Alito declined to play that game. He said the political weather around a replacement is too unstable to use as a guide.
"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.
The practical stake is still obvious. Trump already remade the Court through his judicial picks. Another vacancy would give him a fourth justice. Earlier retirement speculation around Alito showed how closely conservatives watch every signal from the current bench.
Trump, in a recent interview, voiced regret about several nominees who later ruled against his administration on some issues. That frustration does not change the structural point. Who holds the seat, and who confirms the next nominee, still decides the Court’s direction for decades.
Senate control is the choke point. Democrats winning the chamber in the midterms would make a fourth Trump confirmation far tougher. Waiting past that window raises the risk that a vacancy lands under divided government, or worse for originalists, under a hostile one.
Alito also used the interview to defend his June 2022 majority opinion that struck down Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutional abortion regime that had stood for decades. The final decision closely matched a draft that had leaked a month earlier.
He said the Court did not know, when it produced that draft, what the leak would unleash. He still described the choice to proceed as one that demanded courage because of the consequences.
"We didn’t know it when we produced the draft that was leaked, but it required courage to go ahead with that because of the implications,"
Alito said.
The personal price was real. He said the ruling cost him old friendships. He did not cast that as a reason to retreat.
"That’s something you have to live with,"
he said.
"It’s part of the job that you’re going to displease people by making decisions on controversial matters, because one side or the other is going to really dislike you because of the decisions."
That is the job description progressives spent years trying to turn into a scandal. A justice applies the law, loses friends, and keeps showing up. Longtime colleagues have described Alito’s steel in blunt terms for a reason. He was never built for the applause circuit.
Alito’s own timeline is now on the record. He thought about retiring this year. He will think about it again in 2027. Between those markers sits the possibility of an exit after next year’s term, which would hand Trump another nomination while Republicans still have a cleaner path in the Senate.
He is also expected to make appearances tied to a book on his judicial philosophy. The interview fits that broader effort to explain how he reads the Constitution and why he will not launder hard cases through public-relations fear.
Readers tracking his recent Court work have watched the same pattern. Alito’s handling of recusal fights and case participation keeps drawing scrutiny from the left, which treats every ethics dust-up as a resignation demand. The justice has not obliged them.
Nor has he treated financial-disclosure fights as a reason to surrender the bench. Coverage of his holdings and disclosure timing has followed the same script: pressure first, substance second. He is still writing opinions.
For conservatives who waited decades to reverse Roe, that stubbornness is the point. The justice who authored the opinion ending the old abortion regime is now saying, in public, that contribution still outweighs comfort. Prior rounds of exit rumors ended with him staying put. This time he left the door open without sprinting through it.
The succession fight will not be gentle. A Trump nomination to replace Alito would test whether the Senate still confirms originalist judges on the merits, or whether midterm politics turn every vacancy into a blockade. Alito’s message was that he will not time his life around that panic.
He asked whether he can still serve. He answered that he can. The country should prefer justices who work until the work is done over politicians who demand empty seats on a schedule.