Sign up for TPR Today, Texas Public Radio's newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each morning.
President Donald Trump is looking down the road at a possible opening on the U.S. Supreme Court, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) could be a potential nominee to the high court.
Speaking Wednesday at a Washington summit promoting the administration’s new “Trump Accounts” initiative for children, Trump called Cruz “a very tough guy, very brilliant guy,” adding: “He’s a brilliant legal mind, he’s a brilliant man. If I nominate him for the United States Supreme Court, I will get 100% of the vote.” Trump then framed the idea as politically convenient for both parties: “The Democrats will vote for him because they want to get him the hell out. … And the Republicans will vote for him because they want to get him the hell out, too.” Trump capped the riff by saying Cruz is “a great guy, too.”
The comments land amid persistent Washington chatter that there could soon be openings on the nine-member high court—particularly because several justices are in their 70s. No justice has publicly announced plans to retire, but reporting and legal-world commentary have increasingly focused on whether a retirement could come in 2026, when a Republican Senate could more easily confirm a Trump pick.
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas is the court’s longest-serving member and the oldest justice at age 77. There is routine speculation in Washington about whether he might step down during a Republican presidency, allowing President Donald Trump to nominate a successor who would likely preserve the court’s conservative majority.
The political timing matters. Republicans currently hold a 53–47 majority in the Senate. Democrats argue they have a pathway to winning the majority of seats in the chamber in the November 2026 midterms. That has sharpened the incentive for Trump and Senate Republicans to move quickly on any Supreme Court opening that arises before the election.
Cruz, a former Supreme Court clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, has long cultivated credentials that fit the profile of modern nominees: elite legal training, conservative bona fides, and experience arguing before the court as Texas solicitor general.
In 2020, Trump publicly included Cruz on a list of possible Supreme Court picks, though he ultimately chose others for prior openings.
The last sitting U.S. senator appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court was Sen. Harold Hitz Burton (R–Ohio), nominated by President Harry S. Truman and confirmed in September 1945.
