Justice Samuel Alito has no plans to retire from the Supreme Court in the near future, according to a source close to the judge. told the Wall Street Journalending a wave of speculation among some Republican leaders that Alito, 74, might leave office to make way for a younger, more conservative jurist.

Rumors of Alito’s retirement began circulating almost immediately after Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, which also saw Republicans set to retire. regain control of the Senate and maintain control of the House in January.

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Media broadcasts to the United States Supreme Court. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

With no filibuster on Supreme Court nominations, the Republican majority would allow Trump to face little or no resistance to confirming his picks. High Court judgesif the court’s two oldest conservative justices, Alito and Clarence Thomas, retired.

Alito, for his part, made it clear that he had no intention of doing so.

“Despite what some may think, this is a man who has never thought about this job from a political point of view,” said a person close to Alito. told the Wall Street Journal, who was the first to announce the news of his intention to remain on the bench.

“The idea that he is going to retire for political reasons is not consistent with who he is,” this person added.

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Current members of the United States Supreme Court (Alex Wong/Getty Images/File)

Alito was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2006 by President George W. Bush.

At 74, Alito is the second-oldest justice behind Justice Clarence Thomas, 76, appointed to the Court by President George HW Bush in 1991. Sonia Sotomayor, appointed by President Obama in 2009, is 70.

But the pressure on Alito and Thomas to step aside to make way for younger nominees chosen by Trump could prove deeply polarizing at a time when public approval of the Supreme Court falls in the middle 1940s, according to one report. Gallup survey in September.

Conservatives currently hold a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court. Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court during his first term, preserving his conservative majority. President Biden, for his part, recently nominated Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the court in 2022 following the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer.

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If Alito and Thomas retire from the bench, Trump could become the first president since Eisenhower, also a Republican, to appoint a majority of the Supreme Court’s justices.