SCOTUS Watch

Trump Reportedly Thinks “Health” Issues Could Knock Out Three More SCOTUS Justices

And that he’ll be able to replace nearly half the court.
Gorsuch addresses the audience in the Rose Garden after his judicial oath ceremony on April 10th.
By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Donald Trump enjoys certain perks simply by virtue of being Donald Trump: he gets two scoops of ice cream while everyone else gets one, and he was handed millions to jump-start his business rather than starting from scratch. It seems the president has become accustomed to such preferential treatment; according to Axios, Trump believes he’ll get to replace four—yes, four—Supreme Court justices by the end of his first term.

“They swear he’s not joking,” Jonathan Swan wrote.

Trump technically got a freebie with Neil Gorsuch thanks to Mitch McConnell stonewalling Barack Obama for a year as the then-president attempted to fill the late Antonin Scalia’s seat, and he may very well get to nominate a second SCOTUS judge given rumors surrounding the 81-year-old Anthony Kennedy’s impending retirement. (NPR reported in July that the notorious swing vote had been telling clerkship applicants that he might retire after the 2018 term.) If he’s lucky, and if her supporters do not send her enough kale, Trump believes he has a good chance of replacing 84-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a reliably progressive voice on the SCOTUS bench. “What does she weigh? Sixty pounds?” Trump told a source during a conversation, wherein he predicted he would get four justices.

But the president is holding out hope for a fourth potential departure that surprised politicos:

“Who’s the fourth?“ the source asked.

[Sonia] Sotomayor,” Trump said, referring to the relatively recently appointed Obama justice, whose name is rarely, if ever, mentioned in speculation about the next justice to be replaced. “Her health,” Trump explained. “No good. Diabetes.”

Sotomayor’s type 1 diabetes, which she contracted as a child, was a mild point of contention during her confirmation, but she has been vigilant about maintaining her health, helped along by medical advances.

Another Axios report hints at why Trump suddenly has SCOTUS on the brain: stacking the federal courts with conservative judges is one of the few goals he and Mitch McConnell, his establishment nemesis and erstwhile punching bag, bond over. The two reportedly “speak behind the scenes more frequently than is leaked,” with nominating conservatives judges a “regular topic.” In a recent conversation with McConnell, Trump reportedly praised a Wall Street Journal column celebrating his appointment of a “class of brilliant young textualists bearing little relation to even their Reagan or Bush predecessors,” all in the vein of the late Scalia, to open seats on the federal benches. However, while it’s true that the Gorsuch confirmation is one of Trump’s few high-profile legislative successes as president, he might be ever so slightly overconfident in his ability to reshape the judiciary.