Gov. Ron DeSantis says Trump has zero chance of confirming Thomas or Alito successors after Democrats flipped the Senate, locking conservatives out for years.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis laid out the math in blunt terms after Democrats won control of the Senate in Tuesday’s midterm elections. President Donald Trump, he said, has no realistic path to put a worthy successor on the Supreme Court for Justice Clarence Thomas or Justice Samuel Alito.
In a November 4, 2026 social media post, DeSantis tied that outcome directly to the new Senate map. He warned the confirmation window is closed for the rest of Trump’s term, and may stay closed even longer.
Latin Times reported the governor’s assessment as part of a wider conservative worry: a Democratic Senate majority can freeze judicial picks and leave the Court’s 6-3 conservative majority exposed if either of its oldest justices leaves the bench.
DeSantis did not hedge. He started with the seats still hanging on prediction markets, then drew the line on Court replacements.
He wrote that if Republicans lose the races where those markets put Democrats at 90% or better, Democrats would hold 55 Senate seats.
From there, his judgment was absolute.
"Chance of confirming a worthy successor to Justice Thomas and/or Alito during President Trump’s term: Zero."
He went further on the next stretch of presidential politics. Even if Republicans win back the White House in 2028, DeSantis said the chance of confirming a worthy successor during a 2029, 2033 Republican administration is “probably zero.”
That is the core warning. Senate control, not just the Oval Office, decides whether a conservative vacancy can be filled.
Thomas is 78. Alito is 76. They are the Supreme Court’s two oldest justices. Replacing either one with a younger conservative would help lock in the current 6-3 majority for decades.
Alito has already addressed retirement talk. In early October he told CBS News he had considered stepping down, then decided to stay. He said he believed he could still make a valuable contribution to the Court.
That choice matters more after the midterms. A justice who retires into a Democratic Senate hands the other party the nomination fight. A justice who stays keeps the seat in conservative hands for now, but also leaves the long-term succession question unresolved.
No formal retirement has been announced. The political calendar has changed around them anyway.
DeSantis was not alone in reading the map that way. Conservative lawyer Ed Whelan, a former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, also questioned whether Republicans could confirm another justice before Trump’s presidency ends.
The Daily Beast reported Whelan’s view that a Democratic Senate majority would make judicial confirmations difficult for Trump’s remaining two years. He raised the same problem for a future Republican president. He also doubted Thomas or Alito would retire before the new Congress takes office in January, given the uncertainty over replacement votes.
Michael Flynn Jr., the son of Trump’s former national security adviser, went at the downstream risk from another angle. He questioned whether the election results could eventually produce a liberal Supreme Court.
Those comments track the same institutional fact. The Senate confirms justices. Lose the Senate, and the confirmation power shifts with it.
The new Congress takes office in January. From that point, a Democratic majority can bottle up nominees, demand concessions, or refuse to advance conservative picks at all.
DeSantis framed the immediate term as closed. His longer warning reached through 2033. In plain terms, he argued Republicans could hold the presidency again and still fail to move a Thomas or Alito successor if Senate arithmetic stays hostile.
Prediction markets, as he cited them, heavily favored Democrats in the remaining races that would get them to roughly 55 seats. He treated that path as the working assumption for confirmation politics.
The Court still sits at 6-3 conservative. The vacancies that would test that majority have not opened. The Senate that would fill them has already moved.
Conservatives who spent years building that Court majority now face a simpler rule of power: without Senate votes, the next nominee does not get a hearing worth having. Voters changed the chamber. DeSantis said the confirmation odds changed with it.
