Fearing Trump’s Second Term, Liberals Want Justice Sotomayor Replaced
Are liberals so scared of a second-term Trump presidency that they want to replace senior liberal judges on the Supreme Court before November 2024? The calls by progressives for Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor to retire this year seem to express their fear of Trump’s second presidential coming.
Early last year, leftist news and opinion site POLITICO published a newsletter article titled “What to do about Sotomayor” in which the writers, Lauren Egan and Eli Stokols, cited liberal media sources asking 68-year-old Justice Sonia Sotomayor to step down (Sotomayor is now 69). The article cited “some Democrats close to the Biden administration and high-profile lawyers with past White House experience” confirming to POLITICO’s newsletter West Wing Playbook their support for the retirement of Justice Sotomayor.
The sources chose to remain anonymous because they feared being perceived as insensitive to publicly call for the Obama-appointed liberal and only Latina judge on the bench to retire. At the same time, they fear Sotomayor’s staying on the court beyond 2024 may repeat the story of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG), who refused to retire under Obama. RBG eventually died in September 2020 when Trump was still in the White House and he got a chance to appoint a conservative judge – Amy Coney Barrett – to strengthen the conservative majority in SCOTUS.
Left-leaning political commentator Josh Barro was very calculative in his opinion on the issue as he broke down the statistical probability of Sotomayor’s SCOTUS seat going to a conservative judge in case the Democrats failed to win either the presidency or retain control of the Senate in the 2024 election. Barro wrote:
Sonia Sotomayor will turn 70 this June. If she retires this year, Biden will nominate a young1 and reliably liberal judge to replace her… But if Sotomayor does not retire this year, we don’t know when she will next be able to retire with a likely liberal replacement.
Barro asked why Democrats were not calling for Sotomayor’s retirement and suggested that she could make her retirement “contingent upon the confirmation of a replacement.” He sounded frustrated as he called this silence of Democrats “cowardice in speaking up about Sotomayor — a diabetic who has in some instances been traveling with a medic.”
The unsaid part in the reported anxiety of liberals regarding Sotomayor’s presence in the SCOTUS is her life expectancy. Even for the leftists of the day, expressing the worry that Sotomayor may die while the country has a conservative President or Senate, or both, is too much of a civility risk – which could translate into risk at the ballot.
C. Douglas Golden touched that point in his commentary piece in The Western Journal (March 20) as he reminded Barro of his double standards acknowledged in Barro’s own article – namely, the senile Joe Biden running for reelection. Golden wrote that Barro realizes the irony when he anticipates the response to his call for Sotomayor’s retirement by writing:
“One obvious response to this argument is that the president is also old — much older, indeed, than Sonia Sotomayor. I am aware, and I consider this to be a serious problem. But Democrats are unlikely to find a way to replace Biden with a younger candidate who enhances their odds of winning the election.”
Golden concluded that the left is in panic and “desperate to shove a minority woman off the court in order to shore up whatever support it has there.”
If her position is not political why should she be called on to retire????
It’s a legitimate concern. Sounds like Dems have learned the value of winning a presidential election. I still think 10 year term limits is the best way of keeping the SCOTUS relevant and fresh.
The same limits on Congress and senate
Maybe we just need unbiased judges who follow the rule of law…..
Term limits for SCOTUS just changes the bias by putting time constraints on the perpetrator to get er done before they go. The issue is bias, political bias, and such. Conservatism, liberalism, feel free to use any of it as long as you are in bounds of the letter of the law. Even the abortion ruling —- either one, as long as it follows the letter of the law, then so be it.
However, the overturns seem to speak to bias UNLESS there’s some radical new piece of evidence to the contrary. And therein lies the rub with the abortion decision, not the decision itself, but why the overturn was even needed. How did Roe v Wade get it so terribly wrong?
For Congress, I think Senatorial time limits is a bad idea. The Sentate is one of the toughest jobs in the world. The Founders designed our system to have making law be almost impossible. It takes skill, knowledge, charisma, and years of experience to be a great practictioner of making law. One might hate the McConnells, Reids, of the world, but they can get things done. Frankly, a newbie in the Senate does not stand a chance. Even if the smartest monkey in the jungle, they have no associations with any other Senator putting them behind the 8–ball to begin with. And if you change the process to fix all that, IMO, you ruin what the founders intended —— making laws almost impossible to establish.
IMO, the People’s House, sure — time limits. Who cares…. I think here is the great American debate, normal, regular people voicing opinions. More free, wilder, out of the box thinking, all good IMO in the people’s house. Newbies welcome.
The older I get, the more I like whatever the founders came up with. Almost every time. It’s a terrible system but can’t find a better one.
It’s the liberal judges that try to legislate from the bench and make up the rules as they go along. The retired justice Breyer is a good example from his recent remarks about the SCOTUS giving America a constitution that they don’t want. That’s just total bullshit. It’s people like him who hate our constitution. And justice Jackson recently proved it by running her mouth during the oral arguments on social media. You people can run but you can’t hide. The truth is coming out. The left wants more authority from the government and less personal freedoms. They want a constitution that says that the government can do more to us and less we can do about it. So be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. That’s why I’ll never obey democrats rules. And more people are waking up to the fact.