Nomination Notes: Advocacy groups gear up for potential Supreme Court nomination battle, continue to call for reform
This excerpt is from a piece that originally ran on July 3, 2026.
In their own announcement yesterday, Alliance for Justice (AFJ) released a compilation of research about 30 potential Supreme Court nominees. The research reveals a “troubling pattern” among the possible nominees, AFJ said, calling out their “records marked by loyalty to Donald Trump, hostility toward fundamental rights, and decisions that favor powerful billionaires and corporate interests over working people and communities.”
Included on the list are 24 federal judges confirmed during Trump’s first term, including 21 appellate judges and three district court judges. The other six are from Trump’s second term, including three individuals confirmed to the appellate bench (Emil Bove, Jennifer Mascott, and Justin Smith) and three others who currently work in the Department of Justice (Todd Blanche, Harmeet Dhillon, and John Sauer). Five of the six have worked as a personal lawyer for Trump, and the other (Mascott) worked in the Trump White House prior to her confirmation. Bove, of course, also worked at the Trump DOJ.
“Americans deserve to know exactly who could be entrusted with a lifetime seat on the highest court in the country,” said Rachel Rossi, president of AFJ, in their press release. “Our research goes beyond headlines to examine how these judges have ruled, whose interests they have protected, and what their records tell us about the future of our constitutional rights. Alliance for Justice will continue serving as the nation’s leading resource for rigorous, fact-based analysis throughout any Supreme Court nomination process.”
The research, which AFJ says they will continue to update, “demonstrates that many of the potential candidates have consistently placed political ideology above judicial independence. Several have close ideological ties to the judicial philosophy advanced by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, reflecting a broader effort to reshape the Supreme Court into a vehicle for consolidating political power rather than serving as an independent check on it.”