President Trump told Fox Business in April he was "prepared" to nominate two or three Supreme Court justices. Getting even one confirmed may be harder than the White House expects, and the president's own campaign against Republican senators is a big reason why.
Republicans hold 53 Senate seats. Every Democrat can be expected to vote no on any Trump nominee. That math gives the president a cushion of exactly three Republican defections before Vice President JD Vance would need to break a 50, 50 tie. Lose four, and the nomination dies.
The trouble is that Trump has spent recent weeks endorsing primary challengers against sitting Republican senators, the same senators whose votes he would need on a Supreme Court confirmation. Newsweek reported that this "revenge tour" has fractured the GOP caucus at exactly the moment the president may need it most.
Start with the names. Susan Collins of Maine. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. All four have voted against the administration on an Iran war-powers measure. Collins and Murkowski have previously expressed reservations about supporting conservative Supreme Court nominees. Tillis has opposed several administration judicial picks. Cassidy voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial.
None of these senators owes Trump a political favor. Several have active reasons to oppose him.
Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over longtime Republican loyalist John Cornyn in the state's Senate primary, with a runoff set for May 26. Collins publicly rebuked the move. "I don't understand," she said. "He is an ethically challenged individual. John Cornyn is an outstanding senator and merited the president's support."
In Louisiana, Trump backed Julia Letlow over Cassidy. On May 16, Letlow won the primary outright. Cassidy, who also announced opposition to White House ballroom funding tucked into the budget reconciliation bill, is now a lame duck with no reason to do the administration any favors on a confirmation vote before his term ends.
Tillis announced in 2025 that he will not seek reelection in 2026. A retiring senator faces no electoral consequences for breaking with a president. That makes him unpredictable on any high-stakes vote.
Jim Kessler, a senior fellow at the centrist think tank Third Way, laid out the confirmation math bluntly:
"People like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins were already gonna be a no on any Supreme Court justice because Collins is up for reelection and Murkowski will be up soon. And then you've got Tom Tillis as well. So, you know, I don't think the votes are there for that."
Three firm defections would leave Trump at exactly 50 votes, enough to confirm with Vance's tiebreaker, but with zero margin for any additional Republican holdout. A fourth defection sinks the nomination entirely.
Kessler also described the broader dynamic. "Revenge is a two-way street," he said. "All the politicians that he's gone after are either finished with their career or they hope to have a second start by being someone who took Trump on. So somebody like John Cornyn, who's been a Republican loyalist his entire life and was stabbed in the back by Trump."
Cornyn formerly chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, the body that vets every Supreme Court nominee before a full floor vote. Alienating a senator with that institutional knowledge and those relationships is not cost-free, even as the president signals readiness to fill any vacancy.
The entire question hinges on whether Justices Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas step down. Right now, neither appears inclined to do so.
Alito was hospitalized in March for dehydration, fueling speculation about his health. But he has hired law clerks for the next term and has a book scheduled for publication in October, one day after the new Supreme Court term opens. Those are not the actions of a man cleaning out his chambers.
Thomas has told associates he "continues to love the work." Both justices have publicly stated their intention to remain on the bench. Recent signals from both justices point firmly toward staying put.
Trump has floated names for potential nominees, including Senator Ted Cruz and Judge Aileen Cannon. But floating names means nothing without the Senate votes to confirm.
The confirmation math could get worse before it gets better. Republican strategist Mike Madrid warned that Democrats are now within striking distance of a Senate majority in 2026:
"A year ago, nobody ever believed that the Democrats would be within striking distance of getting a majority in the Senate. And now it's, you know, it's a coin toss. It's as likely as that it's not. That jeopardizes the entire Trump agenda. And of course, Supreme Court justice becomes a big part of that consideration."
Democrats need to flip four seats to take control. Trump's approval numbers in key battleground states are not helping. In Maine, where Collins faces reelection, Trump sits at negative 17 net approval. In Michigan, another Senate battleground, it's negative 14. Even in Texas, a state Trump won by 14 points in 2024, his approval has slipped to negative 3.
Matt Klink, president of Klink Campaigns, identified the downstream risk: "The danger for Republicans is that Trump's approval becomes the emotional shortcut voters use to make decisions in races they otherwise haven't fully engaged."
If Republican Senate candidates in purple states get dragged down by the president's numbers, the party could lose its majority entirely by 2027. At that point, confirming a conservative justice becomes functionally impossible.
Republicans have pulled off a contested Supreme Court confirmation before. In October 2020, the Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett on a 52, 48 party-line vote, the closest to a presidential election in history and the first modern confirmation with zero minority-party support. That vote gave Trump his third justice and cemented a conservative majority.
But that confirmation happened with a unified Republican caucus. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told colleagues at the time that "they won't be able to do much about this for a long time to come." The Barrett confirmation succeeded precisely because Republican senators were aligned behind the nominee.
That alignment no longer exists. Collins, Murkowski, Tillis, and Cassidy have each broken with the president on significant votes in recent months. The president has responded not by mending fences but by endorsing their opponents. The broader debate over whether the Court has become a political body only raises the stakes of any confirmation fight.
There is nothing wrong with a president holding senators accountable. Primary challenges are a legitimate tool. But timing matters, and so does sequencing.
Endorsing challengers to Republican incumbents while simultaneously needing those incumbents' votes on the most consequential appointment a president can make is a strategy that works only if you can afford to lose them. With a three-vote margin, Trump cannot.
The president controls whom he endorses. He does not control how scorned senators vote on his nominees. Collins, Murkowski, Tillis, and Cassidy have each demonstrated a willingness to break ranks. None of them has a political incentive to fall in line, and some now have a political incentive to do the opposite.
If a Supreme Court vacancy opens tomorrow, the White House would need every one of those senators. The president has spent the last several weeks making sure they know exactly how little he values their loyalty.
You can settle scores or you can confirm justices. Doing both at the same time requires a margin this Senate does not provide.
