While many are hoping that special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation on the Trump administration will result in the president's impeachment, they might be disappointed to find that even if Trump is impeached he might still have time to make long-term changes that would outlast his presidency and others down the line. This became quite apparent when Axios reported last Sunday that President Trump believed he would replace four Supreme Court justices by the end of his first term.

Reshaping the Supreme Court with politics

The president leaned on rumors that Justice Anthony Kennedy would be retiring while mentioning the health of Justice Ruth Ginsberg and Sotomayor.

The fourth Justice was already appointed as Neil Gorsuch within the first months of his presidency. Obviously, Trump would single-handedly change the look of the Supreme Court for at least a few decades as he would likely only nominate conservative justices.

Last Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stood next to Trump in the Rose Garden during a press conference. McConnell led the conservative fight against former President Obama for eight years, ending with the obstruction of Obama's nominee for Supreme Court Justice after Anthony Scalia died in early 2016. McConnell refused to hold any hearings for Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, until there was a new president, assuming that the next president would be a Republican.

Reshaping the federal courts

With Republicans believing that Hillary Clinton would become the next president, many were already beginning to suggest that they would reject her nominee as well. The standoff between Republicans and Democrats, however, continues, with Republicans holding power in both the House and Senate. The Weekly Standard reported on that same Monday that McConnell elevated the confirmation of federal judicial nominees as a top priority in the Senate.

McConnell said that regardless of what tactics Democrats used, those federal judges would be confirmed. This means that Trump's power to appoint federal judges for the nation's courts would be confirmed no matter the obstacle. In order to do this, McConnell has already weakened the legislative power of "blue slips" which senators use to deny hearings and votes regarding the confirmation of nominees from their states. Instead, from here on out, McConnell will only acknowledge the blue slips as far as how the senators vote, and not let them "blackball" nominees.
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