
<p>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.</p>



<p>Early last year, leftist news and opinion site <em>POLITICO</em> 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 <em>POLITICO</em>’s newsletter <em>West Wing Playbook</em> their support for the retirement of Justice Sotomayor.</p>



<p>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.</p>



<p>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:</p>



<p><em>Sonia Sotomayor will turn 70 this June. If she retires this year, Biden will nominate a young1 and reliably liberal judge to replace her…</em> <em>But if Sotomayor does not retire this year, we don&#8217;t know when she will next be able to retire with a likely liberal replacement.</em></p>



<p>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.”</p>



<p>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.</p>



<p>C. Douglas Golden touched that point in his commentary piece in <em>The Western Journal</em> (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:</p>



<p><em>“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.”</em></p>



<p>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.”</p>

Fearing Trump’s Second Term, Liberals Want Justice Sotomayor Replaced
