President-elect Donald Trump nominated three Supreme Court justices during his first four years in the White House, entrenching a six-member conservative majority that has since 2020 overturned abortion rights, dismantled major environmental protections and gutted the power of federal regulators to respond to pressing issues like climate change.
During his next term, Trump may have the chance to do something that no president has done since Dwight Eisenhower: hand-pick five of the high court’s nine justices.
“With the Senate going Republican, whomever he wants is going to end up on the Supreme Court,” Republican pollster Frank Luntz said during a Tuesday night appearance on NewsNation. “That is about as big an impact as you can have this election evening because there are a couple justices that will probably be retiring in the next year or two.”
Luntz didn’t specify which justices might step down, but observers say the most likely candidates are the two oldest members of the court’s conservative wing — Justices Clarence Thomas, 76, and Samuel Alito, 74.
