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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has indicated he will nominate a seventh conservative Supreme Court justice if he is elected president in 2024 and serves two terms — in a shot at term-limited Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump.
DeSantis, 44, who is expected this week to jump into the GOP presidential primary, said Justice Clarence Thomas, 74, Justice Samuel Alito, 73, Chief Justice John Roberts, 68, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, also 68, may all retire in the next eight years, giving whoever is president the power to reshape the high court.
“I think if you look over the next two presidential terms, there is a good chance that you could be called upon to seek replacements for Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito and the issue with that is, you can’t really do better than those two,” DeSantis told the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Orlando on Monday.
“If you replace a Clarence Thomas with somebody like a Roberts or somebody like that, then you’re gonna actually see the court move to the left, and you can’t do that.
“So it is possible that in those eight years, we have the opportunity to fortify Justices Alito and Thomas as well as actually make improvements with those others, and if you were able to do that, you would have a 7-2 conservative majority on the Supreme Court that would last a quarter-century.
