Justice Samuel Alito went on Fox News Sunday the day before the Supreme Court opens its term and said someone is leaning on it. "There has been a concerted effort to intimidate the court and justices on the court, to try to influence us to decide cases differently from the way in which we have been deciding them," he said. "And I am concerned about the future of the court." He named no one.
The anchor had asked him about Trump, who told TIME on Thursday that he regretted appointing Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett: "I put them in. They voted against me too often." Alito said he put "all of that" out of his mind, then said he worried about "the things that people in important positions say about the Supreme Court." He did not say which people, or which positions.
He did say he is counting. In a CBS interview released Friday and airing in full Monday, CBS's chief legal correspondent asked whether he had considered retiring under "some pretty intense pressure from Republicans." "I thought about it," Alito said. "It's something that I think that somebody at my age has to think about every term." He is 76. She asked whether he would keep weighing it each year. "Yeah, I think I have to."
So a justice who says the Court is being pushed is also telling Washington his seat is a yearly decision that turns on "what any president might do with respect to a replacement." Which president, and which Senate, is the question he left on the table.
