Supreme Court

New Democratic Senate Spells Doom for Trump's Judicial Nominees

The Senate's new Democratic majority is unlikely to approve any Republican judges.

Damon Root | 11.5.2026 7:00 AM

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(Illustration: Adani Samat. Photo: Koen van Weel/ANP/Newscom/Envato)

In a recent edition of this newsletter, I asked whether Justice Samuel Alito would come to regret making "the same mistake" as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who famously declined to retire from the U.S. Supreme Court when the Democrats still had control of the Senate and Barack Obama was still president. Instead, by stubbornly remaining on the Court until her death in 2020 at the age of 87, Ginsburg effectively made it possible for her replacement to be picked by President Donald Trump and swiftly approved by a Republican-controlled Senate. That's how the conservative law professor Amy Coney Barrett came to replace the liberal legal icon Ginsburg on the Supreme Court.

After this week's midterm massacre for the Republicans, we may get the chance to find out if Alito's judicial career will end on a similarly Ginsburg-ian........

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