With Republicans set to regain control of the White House and the Senate, the spotlight has turned to the Supreme Court and whether the two oldest justices may step down, paving the way for President-elect Donald J. Trump to lock down a conservative supermajority for years.
But the open speculation about the justices, Clarence Thomas, 76, and Samuel A. Alito Jr., 74, has prompted fissures in the conservative world, eliciting a striking rebuke from Leonard Leo, a leader of the Federalist Society and arguably the most powerful figure in the conservative legal movement.
“No one other than Justices Thomas and Alito knows when or if they will retire, and talking about them like meat that has reached its expiration date is unwise, uninformed and frankly just crass,” Mr. Leo said in a statement on Friday.
Mr. Leo played a leading role in recommending judicial nominees to Mr. Trump in his first term. But in the years since Mr. Trump left office, MAGA-style Republicans who believe Democrats are an existential threat to the country — sometimes called the New Right — have come to disparage Mr. Leo and the Federalist Society as symbols of what they believe was an insufficiently aggressive legal approach that sometimes held Mr. Trump back.
Confirming Supreme Court justices has become increasingly partisan, making the window to do so very slim. In 2016, Senate Republicans, led by the majority leader at the time, Mitch McConnell, refused to hold a vote on any nominee by President Barack Obama, a Democrat, to fill a vacancy.
In January, when Mr. Trump assumes office, Republicans will hold the majority in the Senate, likely with a few seats to spare, giving the White House broad latitude to select particularly conservative nominees. It will diminish any moderating influence that the most centrist members of the Republican caucus, like Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, might otherwise have had.
