Ted Cruz predicts a Supreme Court seat will open up this summer

Sen. Ted Cruz suggested Thursday that another seat on the U.S. Supreme Court will open up this summer, though he offered nothing to explain this premonition.

On stage at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Cruz also predicted that such a vacancy would prompt liberals to “go full Armageddon meltdown.”


“I think we’ll have another Supreme Court vacancy this summer,” said Cruz, a Texas Republican who fought against President Donald Trump for the GOP nomination last year. “If that happens, as much as the left is crazy now, they will go full Armageddon meltdown.”

Cruz isn’t the first person to note that Democrats will probably fight harder if Trump has the chance to nominate a second justice to the Court. He has already nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the late Antonin Scalia’s seat, but given that both are conservatives, Gorsuch would not change the Court’s ideological balance if he were confirmed. A replacement of regular swing voter Anthony Kennedy or one of the liberals on the bench, meanwhile, would substantively change its direction.

Cruz also isn't the first to suggest that another seat could open up before Trump leaves office. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, of the Court's liberal wing, is 83; Kennedy is 80. And President Barack Obama appointed two justices over his first term.

Still, Cruz’s remark prompted some snark on Twitter as users wondered whether he was hinting at a justice’s retirement plans or, more darkly, implying that one of the sitting justices might die.