I GUESS WE KNOW NOW THAT ALITO PLANS TO RESIGN AND LET LEONARD LEO PICK HIS REPLACEMENT

I can't really get excited about the mask-off conversations Samuel and Martha-Ann Alito had with documentarian Lauren Windsor -- obviously the Alitos have acknowledged that they're right-wing partisans, but Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin is too conflict-averse to hold hearings on Alito or Clarence Thomas, and no other elected Democrat will even make noise about them.

In the midst of what should be a massive judicial legitimacy crisis, the front page of Durbin's Senate website makes clear what he regards as the real burning issue of the day:

Dick Durbin -- fighting for you!

But there's a small newsbreak in the story about Windsor's conversation with Justice Alito's wife:

Referencing her husband, Mrs. Alito says, “He’s like, ‘Oh, please don’t put up a flag.’ I said, ‘I won’t do it because I am deferring to you. But when you are free of this nonsense, I’m putting it up and I’m gonna send them a message every day, maybe every week, I’ll be changing the flags.’ They’ll be all kinds...."

When would Samuel Alito be "free of this nonsense," i.e., public scrutiny of what he and his wife say and do? Unless Martha-Ann thinks the day is coming when journalists, documentarians, and people on social media will be afraid to subject them to public scrutiny because of the likely legal (or extralegal) risks, she's undoubtedly referring to the years of Alito's retirement. Which means that he doesn't intend to stay on the court until death, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

And when would he resign? Maybe in the last year of Donald Trump's second term, when he'll be 78 and Trump can outsource the job of picking his forty-something replacement to Leonard Leo. Or he might wait until some other Republican president can outsource the job of picking his forty-something replacement to Leonard Leo. It's unimaginable that he would risk allowing a Democratic president and Senate to choose his replacement.

I think Alito and Thomas (who'll be 79 at the end of the next presidential term) might step down in Trump's second term if he's elected. That would mean a majority of the Court would be Trump appointees. In a better world, the thought of that might give one-issue pro-Palestine voters pause, but I'm sure it won't. And while you might argue that it will be a tall order for Leo to find two jurists as vile as Alito and Thomas, I'll just point to Matthew Kacsmaryk and Aileen Cannon and say that I'm sure he'll manage it.