Fear of an even more conservative Supreme Court puts Democratic focus on a possible withdrawal of Judge Sotomayor. Democratic senators express for the first time in public their concern about a repeat of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg case, which led to a sharp conservative turn by the court.
Ginsburg, then 81 years old and a cancer survivor, could have retired and been replaced by a Democratic appointee when then-president Barack Obama was in the White House. But the judge rejected the calls and died in September 2020, leaving it up to Republican Donald Trump to replace him with a conservative judge.