Cabinet appointments are not the only thing being closely watched in the lead up to the second Trump term. The president-elect’s appointment of three Supreme Court justices was one of his biggest impacts during his first term in office. With a second Trump presidency around the corner, many have speculated the two conservative justices — Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — may retire in the next four years.
Isaac Yu, who reports for the Houston Chronicle’s Austin bureau, said that two judges with Texas ties may be considered. “One is Andrew Oldham, who is based in Austin,” he said. “And the other is James Ho, who is based in Dallas.” Both these judges are among the most conservative on the Fifth Circuit, Yu said.
“(Oldham) is a federal judge who was appointed by Trump during his first term to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. He was a longtime aide to Gov. Greg Abbott before that,” Yu said. “Both Oldham and Ho have clerked for the Supreme Court before. Oldham clerked for Justice Alito and Ho clerked for Clarence Thomas. So some people see them as sort of ideological successors to these two justices who are facing these pressures to retire.”
The pressure to retire comes from conservatives who want to see younger judges that match their ideology appointed to the highest court. “(Alito and Thomas) are the two oldest members of the court. They’re both in their 70s. Trump appointed three judges who were in their 50s,” Yu said. “So it’s really appealing to conservatives to have, you know, replacements for these older justices because if Trump would be able to replace them, he’d have nominated them not only a majority of the court, but a very young majority – baking in conservatism for a long time to come.”
Yu said he is curious to see if either of these judges remain on the short list as the Trump presidency gets underway. “There are some signals that Judge Ho is very interested in this position,” he said. “He’s sort of recently kind of walked back or complicated his long standing support for birthright citizenship, which some people are saying places him more in line with people who are going to be in the Trump administration.”
If Trump does have the opportunity to nominate more Supreme Court judges, Yu said the Republican-controlled Senate would likely support his choices. “The last time around, both (these judges) were confirmed to the Fifth Circuit by relatively narrow margins,” he said. “Oldham was entirely along party lines. And James Ho picked up a couple of conservative Democrats, none of whom are still in the Senate. But Republicans have a majority in the Senate for at least the next two years. So if their confirmation hearings were to happen sometime in that time frame, they have a pretty good chance of getting confirmed.”
It is interesting to see how the potential nomination of these Texas judges could impact the future of the Supreme Court. With the retirement speculation surrounding Justices Alito and Thomas, the appointment of younger, conservative judges like Oldham and Ho could significantly influence the direction of the highest court in the United States. As the Trump presidency unfolds, the consideration of these judges for Supreme Court nomination will continue to be a topic of interest and discussion among political analysts and observers.
