Batten Down the Hatches! Justice Breyer is Retiring!

Would it be “jumping the gun” to predict that all hell is about to break loose? I think not. 

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will retire — once a replacement has been confirmed — after serving for nearly three decades on America’s highest court, according to reporting confirmed by NBC News on Wednesday.

The retirement of Breyer — who at 83 is the Supreme Court’s oldest justice — will allow President Biden to nominate a replacement, giving liberals a chance to lock in a reliably liberal justice for decades to come.  

President Biden has previously promised that, if given the chance, his first nominee to the Supreme Court would be a black woman. Potential nominees who fit the bill, according to NBC, include “federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, former Breyer law clerk, and Leondra Kruger, a justice on California’s Supreme Court.”

The news sets up a bitter confirmation fight just before the midterm elections in which Democrats are expected to suffer significant losses in Congress. With a currently razor-thin majority in the U.S. Senate, every Democrat will need to be onboard with whomever President Biden nominates. But a Democratic caucus that hasn’t been entirely unified in Biden’s first year in office, means that Senators such as Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) could pose an obstacle to radical nominees.