Chuck Schumer hasn’t even picked up the majority leader’s gavel, and he’s already slamming the Supreme Court’s door in Donald Trump’s face.
Democrats insist they only care about quality nominees.
And Schumer once confessed one regret that tells conservatives exactly what he’s really after.
Schumer Slams the Courthouse Door Before He Even Gets the Keys
Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) didn’t wait for the new Congress to get sworn in before telling President Trump which Supreme Court picks he plans to toss in the shredder.
“The bottom line is we’re not going to allow a right-winger on the court,” Schumer told The Associated Press after Democrats grabbed control of the Senate in the midterms.
He piled on from there, promising that Democrats are “not going to allow any crappy nominees” through. That covers the lower courts and Trump’s Cabinet too.
Notice who gets to decide what counts as crappy. Chuck Schumer does.
The AP asked whether he would sit on a vacancy until after the 2028 election, the way Mitch McConnell held Antonin Scalia’s seat open in 2016. Schumer wouldn’t answer. He didn’t rule it out, either.
That puts two justices squarely in the spotlight. Justice Samuel Alito is 76. Justice Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving member of the Court and one of the finest originalists ever to put on the robe, is 78.
Schumer’s threat could crank up the pressure on both men to step down in the coming weeks, before Republicans lose the gavel, according to The Hill. But Alito has reportedly told friends he doesn’t plan to leave the bench before the end of the year, The New York Times reported.
The Quality Test That Only Seems to Flunk Conservatives
Schumer wants the country to believe this fight is about competence.
He told reporters Democrats aren’t slapping a blanket hold on Trump’s judges. He just wants nominees like the ones Joe Biden sent over.
“We want judicial nominees like we showed in ‘23 and ‘24, who obey the law, who have fidelity to the rule of law,” Schumer said. “Too many of Trump’s nominees did not have that at all.”
He struck the same chord with Semafor before the votes came in. “If the nominees are as crappy as his present ones, very few of them are going to get through,” he said. “It’s the quality of the candidate that matters. Thus far, Trump has a record of notoriously bad candidates.”
And who grades quality in Schumer’s world? The American Bar Association, the lawyers’ trade group that handed its top “well qualified” rating to roughly 85 percent of Biden’s 200-plus judicial picks, The Hill noted.
But the same outfit looked at Clarence Thomas in 1991 and couldn’t bring itself to give him its top mark. Two members of its screening committee even rated him “not qualified.” The Senate confirmed Thomas 52 to 48 anyway, after Democrats dragged him through the Anita Hill spectacle, accusations he flatly denied under oath. Thomas went on to write New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, one of the most important Second Amendment rulings in American history.
So much for the ABA’s crystal ball.
And here’s the real giveaway. Schumer didn’t vow to stop an unqualified nominee. He vowed to stop a right-winger. Nobody needs a law degree to spot the difference.
Schumer Wrote This Exact Playbook Back in 2007
The quality talk might sound brand new. Schumer has actually been rehearsing this speech for nineteen years.
On July 27, 2007, with George W Bush about 18 months from leaving office, Schumer delivered the keynote address to the American Constitution Society, a left-wing legal group.
“We should reverse the presumption of confirmation,” he told the crowd. “The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance.”
Then came the pledge. “I will recommend to my colleagues that we should not confirm a Supreme Court nominee EXCEPT in extraordinary circumstances,” Schumer said.
But the line that matters most right now sat buried in the middle of that speech, where Schumer took stock of his career.
“Without question, my greatest regret in the 109th Congress was not doing more to block Alito,” he said. “Alito shouldn’t have been confirmed. I should have done a better job; my colleagues said we didn’t have the votes, but I think we should have twisted more arms and done more.”
Read that one with a calendar handy. The Senate confirmed Alito 58 to 42 in January 2006. Two decades later, the justice Schumer called his greatest regret sits at the center of Washington’s retirement watch, and Schumer is in line to hold the gavel that decides who replaces him.
Schumer’s own speech even spelled out the target. Under what he called “Lesson Four,” he told the liberal lawyers: “Take the President at his word. When a President says he wants to nominate justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas, believe him.”
Same mold. Same senator. A much bigger majority this time.
He admitted the rest, too. “Ideology matters,” Schumer told that audience in 2007. Maybe somebody should staple that page to his talking points about “fidelity to the rule of law.”
What Democrats Plan to Do With a Captured Court
Democrats never really accepted the Court Donald Trump built. They just lacked the votes to do anything about it.
In 2016, after Scalia died, Schumer went on ABC’s This Week and blasted Republicans for obstruction when McConnell refused to move Barack Obama’s nominee. Now he won’t even say whether he’d run the same play. Funny how the outrage depends on who holds the gavel.
Then there’s March 2020, when Schumer stood outside the Supreme Court at an abortion rally and aimed his fire at two sitting justices by name. “You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price,” he warned Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Chief Justice John Roberts publicly rebuked him for it.
That’s the man who now promises to keep the Court “in balance.”
The White House fired back, saying “extreme Democrats have a history of politicizing the Supreme Court, even entertaining plans to pack the Court with liberal justices.”
And Schumer left the door to that scheme wide open. He refused to tell the AP whether he’d try to scrap the filibuster, something he already attempted and botched under Biden. Kill the filibuster, and the court-packing crowd only needs a simple majority and a friendly President to bolt four extra seats onto the bench and turn the Court into a Democrat rubber stamp.
Think about what sits on the chopping block. Alito wrote Dobbs, the ruling that returned the abortion question to the people and their elected representatives. The Court ended racial preferences in college admissions. Thomas wrote Bruen. A packed Court would take aim at every one of those wins, then move on to gun rights, free speech, warrantless spying, and invented legal rights for illegal aliens and gender ideology.
Schumer calls his new majority “durable.” He even told the AP that “it’s not just a flip of the Senate once.”
But the Republicans who handed him that gavel should look in the mirror first. The war crowd in Washington pushed the party into a fight with Iran, and voters noticed. Asked by NBC News exit pollsters whether the US made the right decision in taking military action against Iran, 63 of every 100 voters said no. Democrats scooped up 83 percent of that group, and even 15 percent of those skeptics still voted Republican, a sign the doubts ran deep into the GOP’s own coalition.
Meanwhile, the Democrats taking over aren’t the Truman-era variety. Schumer poured $67 million into Michigan to help elect Abdul El-Sayed, a Medicare for All socialist who beat Schumer’s own hand-picked candidate in the primary.
Maybe Schumer genuinely just wants sharper résumés on the bench. Maybe. It’s possible a man can spend nineteen years griping about one justice and suddenly start caring only about paperwork.
But he already told everyone how he thinks. He did it in 2007, in writing, and his office still posts the speech on his Senate website.
In July 2007, Chuck Schumer told a room full of liberal lawyers that his greatest regret was failing to block Samuel Alito. In November 2026, he told the AP no right-winger will get onto the Court while Democrats run the Senate.
Sources: The Hill, “Schumer vows Senate Democrats would block any ‘right-winger’ Trump Supreme Court nominee,” Alexander Bolton, November 6, 2026
The Associated Press, “Senate Democrats will not let Trump put a ‘right-winger’ on the Supreme Court, Schumer vows,” Mary Clare Jalonick, November 5, 2026
The Associated Press, “Republicans rammed through Supreme Court nominees. Now Democrats will have the votes to stop them,” November 2026
Office of US Senator Chuck Schumer, keynote address to the American Constitution Society, July 27, 2007 (press release, July 31, 2007)
Semafor interview with Chuck Schumer, as cited by The Hill
The New York Times, as cited by The Hill
Legal Insurrection, “Schumer tries to explain away his 2007 SCOTUS vote speech,” February 2016
NBC News exit polling, 2026 midterm elections