NPR announced Justice Samuel Alito was retiring from the Supreme Court.
The network yanked the June story within minutes and never fully explained why.
Alito just answered the question everyone in Washington has been asking since.
Alito Tells The Wall Street Journal He Is Not Retiring From the Supreme Court
Alito sat down with The Wall Street Journal for a rare summertime interview.
He put months of speculation to rest with five simple words.
"Obviously I'm here for another term," Alito told the paper.
The 76 year old justice has served on the Supreme Court since President George W. Bush appointed him in 2006.
His new term begins in October, and he plans to be sitting on the bench when it does.
Alito made clear the pressure campaign to push him out has not been welcome.
He compared the people demanding his exit to vultures circling overhead.
"They are flying around," Alito said of the critics, adding that it comes with the territory of a lifetime appointment.
That is the kind of blunt honesty conservatives have wanted from this Court for years.
NPR's Nina Totenberg Torched Her Own Credibility With a Retraction and Apology
This entire saga started because NPR could not get a basic fact right.
Legal correspondent Nina Totenberg reported on June 30 that Alito was stepping down.
NPR pulled the pre-written story within minutes of publishing it.
Totenberg later explained on air that she misheard an announcement about court retirements while rushing out of the courtroom and wrongly assumed it was Alito.
She called it the worst professional mistake of her more than 50 years in journalism.
President Trump weighed in during a July interview with Breitbart News.
He said he was certainly prepared for a possible vacancy and called Alito one of the greatest justices ever to sit on the bench.
Trump added that nobody could truly replace him.
Alito made his own priorities clear in the interview as well.
He insisted he decides every case strictly on the merits, regardless of who benefits politically.
"I vote in every case the way I think the case should be decided," Alito said.
Why a Fourth Trump Supreme Court Pick Is Off the Table For Now
Clarence Thomas, the Court's oldest sitting justice, has drawn far less retirement pressure than Alito despite being older.
Democrats think they can pressure Alito and Thomas into retiring early because of what happened with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who stayed on the bench through her declining health only to hand Trump a seat anyway after she passed.
Bader Ginsburg was a frail, slight old lady in declining health who refused to walk away – that is a far cry from Thomas or Alito who remain healthy and vibrant.
Still Democrats and their media pals will do whatever they can to bait Republicans into pushing for an Alito or Thomas retirement.
Their go-to tactic is floating the idea that Republicans might not get a shot at a fourth Supreme Court pick while they still control the Senate.
Every retirement rumor about an aging justice is really a fight over the future of the Court.
Alito made it plain he decides when he leaves, not NPR, not Democrats, and not a Twitter mob demanding he clear the way.
For now the answer is simple.
He is staying.
Nevertheless, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said back in April that he would push Ted Cruz or Mike Lee as potential nominees if a seat came open.
Mike Lee is likely much closer to being intellectually equal to Alito than Ted Cruz but many conservatives would love either Lee or Cruz on the Supreme Court.
The problem with that is Lee is far more valuable right now in the Senate, especially since you can’t trust the Mitt Romney-Spencer Cox RINO mob running Utah right now to replace him with a true conservative.
Meanwhile, the longer Cruz has been in the Senate, the more he seems to have moved into alignment with Mitt Romney compared to when he was first elected in the Tea Party wave.
For many that’s reason enough to want him gone from the Senate but putting him on the Supreme Court would be a terrible idea for the same reason.
There’s little doubt Cruz has had his eye on a SCOTUS seat for ages but to borrow a line from Lloyd Bentsen in the 1988 vice presidential debate “Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.”
Even considering nominating someone currently in the legislative branch to the Court is dubious at best.
Outside of the legal world and the most in the weeds Washington policy wonks, few Americans had likely heard of Alito, Thomas, the late Antonin Scalia before they were nominated for the Court.
If Americans want our next Supreme Court Justice to be of the caliber as the three most conservative justices in recent history if not all of it, then looking to stock from whence they came – namely lower federal courts – is a better starting point than the Senate.
Sources:
- "Justice Alito Says He'll Serve Another Term on Supreme Court," Breitbart, August 7, 2026.
- "Alito to WSJ: Obviously I'm here for another term," The Hill, August 8, 2026.
- Matt Vespa, "Samuel Alito Just Made a Huge Announcement About His Potential Retirement," Townhall, August 7, 2026.
- Matt Margolis, "Alito Isn't Retiring. I'm Not Sure How I Feel About That," PJ Media, August 8, 2026.
- "Justice Alito confirms he will return for another Supreme Court term," UPI, August 7, 2026.
Related posts:
Jack Smith Just Gave One Answer Under Oath That Let Grassley Prove Him Guilty of Perjury
Nick Shirley Walked Into Ceuta to Film Spain’s Invasion and Barely Walked Out
