Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is not expected to leave the bench this year and intends to keep serving into at least 2027, ABC News reported, citing sources close to the 76-year-old conservative jurist. Justice Clarence Thomas, 77, is also expected to remain, according to separate sources.

Fox News first reported Alito's intentions. The news lands squarely on months of Washington speculation, much of it driven by the left, that Alito or Thomas might step down while a Republican president and a Republican Senate could confirm like-minded replacements.

That speculation can now be set aside. Alito has been hiring clerks for next term and has remained, in the words of those close to him, "an active and engaged participant in the court's work." His apparent decision to stay removes from the table a high-stakes, high-profile confirmation battle on the eve of the midterm elections.

Retirement rumors built on speculation, not substance

The retirement chatter around Alito intensified after he was briefly hospitalized earlier this year for a health scare of undisclosed origin. His age, and the political alignment of the White House and Senate, gave Washington's permanent speculation class all the raw material it needed.

But as earlier analysis of the Alito retirement rumors noted, the talk was always long on conjecture and short on evidence. No public statement from Alito ever hinted at departure. No filing, no letter, no signal from the Court itself.

Alito authored the landmark 2022 opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that cemented his place in the Court's modern history and drew sustained hostility from progressive advocacy groups. That hostility, combined with his age and the political window, fueled a cycle of speculation that fed on itself.

Details of Alito's brief hospitalization only added oxygen to the fire. Yet the sources who spoke to ABC News described a justice who shows no signs of slowing down, hiring staff, preparing for the next term, and fully engaged in the Court's docket.

Thomas on track to set a historic record

As for Thomas, the Court's most senior member, sources say he "continues to love the work." In the next few years, Thomas will eclipse the record for the longest-serving justice in American history, a milestone that alone suggests he has no interest in stepping aside.

Thomas, like Alito, has been a target of progressive pressure campaigns urging retirement or recusal on various grounds. None of it, evidently, has moved him. The 77-year-old conservative justice appears content to keep doing the job he was confirmed to do more than three decades ago.

President Trump had previously signaled his readiness to fill vacancies if they arose. As Trump himself said amid the growing retirement talk, he was prepared to fill up to three Supreme Court seats. With Alito and Thomas staying put, that scenario moves off the immediate horizon.

The left's track record on Supreme Court retirements

The progressive appetite for managing Supreme Court exits is well documented. When Justice Stephen Breyer began his own retirement process, the announcement leaked before he was ready, and the fallout illustrated exactly the kind of political gamesmanship that surrounds these decisions.

National Review reported that White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain called Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin to tell him President Biden wanted Durbin to know Breyer was about to announce his retirement. Klain asked Durbin to keep the information secret because Breyer planned to make an official announcement the next day. The secret did not hold.

Sources told Fox News at the time that Breyer was not planning to announce his retirement that day and was "upset with how this has played out." As Breitbart reported, Breyer was surprised and caught off guard by the news reports. President Biden himself told reporters, "There has been no announcement from Justice Breyer."

Court-watchers described Breyer as a strict follower of protocol, someone who would announce a retirement at the end of a term, not in the middle of one. One insider told the Washington Examiner:

"He is a by-the-book stickler for following protocol. You announce your retirement at the end of terms, not in the middle."

The same source added that Breyer "did not plan for this to leak out" and "was just beginning the standard process of winding down." Outside groups had been pressuring Breyer to retire, and speculation about possible Biden nominees began within hours of the leak.

The Breyer episode is worth remembering because it shows how Washington treats Supreme Court retirements as political commodities, something to be timed, leaked, and leveraged for maximum partisan advantage. The left spent months pressuring Breyer to leave. When he finally began the process on his own terms, those terms were overridden by political operatives who couldn't wait a single day.

What stays off the table, for now

With both Alito and Thomas expected to remain, the composition of the Court's conservative majority holds steady. The Court's docket already includes major constitutional cases that will test the boundaries of executive power, and both justices will be part of those decisions.

The political class will have to find something else to speculate about. No confirmation hearing. No Senate floor fight. No cable-news countdown clock. The midterm elections will proceed without a Supreme Court vacancy dominating the debate.

For conservatives, the news is straightforward good news. Two justices committed to the text of the Constitution plan to keep doing their jobs. The left wanted a vacancy to exploit or a retirement to spin. They got neither.

Some things in Washington still work the way they're supposed to: a justice serves as long as he chooses, on his own terms, without apology.