Rumors have swirled that the U.S. Supreme Court’s two most conservative-aligned members may retire soon in a bid to allow President Donald Trump to appoint another originalist, conservative-aligned justice while he still has a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate. According to multiple reports, however, neither of the long-serving justices has any plans to step down.

Fox News reported late last week that Justice Samuel Alito intends to remain on the Supreme Court, while ABC News confirmed that Justice Clarence Thomas is also unlikely to retire. Thomas, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall, has served on the bench for nearly 35 years, while Alito, who was appointed by George W. Bush to succeed Sandra Day O’Connor, has served for over 20 years. The two are the court’s longest-serving members, along with Chief Justice John Roberts, another appointee of George W. Bush, who succeeded William Rehnquist and has served 124 days longer than Alito.

Alito has already hired law clerks for the coming Supreme Court term and is expected to remain on the bench at least through 2027, while Thomas “continues to love the work,” according to sources cited by ABC News. Appearing on “Washington Watch” last week, legal scholar Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and former lecturer at Georgetown University’s Center for the Constitution, cautioned, “Unless you hear about a retirement from the justice or maybe his wife, I would discount all of it. It’s just rumors — based on rumors, based on speculation.” Shapiro observed that 77-year-old Thomas is just months away from becoming the longest-serving justice in the Supreme Court’s history and has “said that they’re going to have to carry him out. So I doubt he’s going to retire — certainly not this year.”

“So that’s why all the focus right now is on Justice Alito,” who is 76 years old, Shapiro observed. “You know, he reads the political tea leaves the same as all of us. They’re not immune from understanding these different currents. But at the same time, he’s at the height of his powers, and he seems to be enjoying his job,” Shapiro continued. Both Thomas and Alito have sided with the Trump administration in a number of crucial, high-profile cases, even when the other Republican-appointed justices — including Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, who were appointed to the bench by Trump during his first term — have been reticent to do so. Alito, frequently joined by Thomas, has authored a number of high-profile opinions and dissents.

Speculation over the possible retirements of Thomas and Alito comes after Trump himself suggested in a Fox News interview earlier this month that he already has a list of potential Supreme Court appointees and intends to put as many as three new justices on the bench before the end of his term. “In theory, it’s two — you just read the statistics — it could be two, could be three, could be one,” he said. The only other two justices who may retire before Trump leaves office would be 71-year-old Roberts or 71-year-old Sonia Sotomayor, who was appointed by Barack Obama and has been on the bench for nearly 17 years. Vacancies on the bench were created during Trump’s first term by the deaths of Antonin Scalia (who was succeeded by Gorsuch) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who was succeeded by Barrett), and the retirement of Anthony Kennedy (who was succeeded by Kavanaugh). “I don’t know. I’m prepared to do it,” Trump said of appointing new justices in the event of retirements. While some have speculated that Judges James Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit or Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida may be on the president’s shortlist, he has not confirmed any names.

Shapiro noted that Trump “hasn’t put out a new list” since his first term, when he considered justices almost exclusively from a cadre compiled by the Federalist Society. While “some of the folks on his previous list have effectively aged out” and would be unlikely to be considered for a seat on the bench, Shapiro opined, any potential Supreme Court nominee would “probably [be] one of the judges who he appointed in his first term.” However, it “could be someone else. Could be someone like the solicitor general, John Sauer, who Trump likes a lot and is doing a good job defending administration policies. But there are a lot of very good, solid judges who Trump appointed, whom he likes and who, for that matter, clerked for Alito and Thomas.”

The most recent addition to the Supreme Court was Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was appointed by Joe Biden to replace then-nearly-84-year-old Stephen Breyer, who was appointed by Bill Clinton. Breyer confirmed in a New York Times interview at the time that he intended to retire so that a Democrat-held White House and a Democrat-controlled Senate could pick his replacement. Breyer cited a conversation he had once had with Scalia, who said, “I don’t want somebody appointed who will just reverse everything I’ve done for the last 25 years.” Breyer said that Scalia’s advice “will inevitably be in the psychology” of his decision to retire.

As midterm elections draw nearer and Republicans worry about the potential loss of an already-narrow majority in the House of Representatives and the potential shrinking of their embattled Senate majority, similar arguments have been advanced to press Thomas or Alito to resign to allow Trump a chance to appoint a conservative-aligned justice without a contentious Senate confirmation fight. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) suggested that either Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) or Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) could replace Alito. Cruz said that he isn’t interested in the position and would prefer to focus on policy and politics, while Lee said simply that he hopes Alito will “stay on the court forever.”