Extremist septuagenarian freak Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, aged 76 and 77, respectively, are not planning to retire this year, CBS News reports citing sources close to Clarence and an earlier Fox News report specific to Sedition Sam. MAGA federal judges Aileen Cannon and Matthew Kacsmaryk did not comment on the story and there’s no word yet if they’ve been working on a Plan B to hire a Blackwater hit squad to create openings on the highest court.

The simplest explanation is that the two are arrogant and overconfident of their ability to defy entropy in the same way Joe Biden and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were, that they’ll be able to call it a career on their terms and there’s no way their advanced age could ever have catastrophic downstream consequences for their side and even unravel so much of what they and others had worked so hard to build. They are, after all, boomers who think themselves invincible.

Then there’s the not that distant second most likely, lib hopium explanation: One or both of them floated retirement to John Thune and he told them point blank he couldn’t 100 percent guarantee 51 votes for a replacement with the midterms coming up. Thune also could’ve said they cannot at all rely on Trump not to nominate Mike Lee or some other mental patient now that Donald’s on the outs with Leonard Leo and might not look at anyone in the Federalist Society talent pool. Either way – or both ways since those possibilities aren’t necessarily in tension – it’s better to just keep their fingers crossed and hope that the Senate doesn’t flip, buying them another two years to figure it out even if their majority is likely to be smaller if it survives into next year. The worst outcome would be that one or both of them retire, the replacement nominations fail, the Senate flips, and then the seats stay empty going into a presidential election year that, at this point at least, favors the Democrats.

The third one is that they’re confident they can rig the midterms for the GOP and retirement can wait until next year. Your mileage may vary on whether that confidence is actually justified. The fourth possibility is that they are and have always been shapeshifting reptilian humanoids from the Draco Constellation who feast on the flesh of innocent victims to maintain their life force.