Image copyright EPA Image caption Justice Kennedy's retirement hands Mr Trump a second pick on the US Supreme Court

US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is to retire, giving President Donald Trump the chance to cement a conservative majority on the top court. He notified President Trump in a letter Wednesday, telling him that effective July 31, he would “end my regular active status as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, while continuing to serve in a senior status.”

Kennedy called it the “highest of honors to serve on this Court,” and he expressed his “profound gratitude for having had the privilege to seek in each case how best to know, interpret, and defend the Constitution and the laws that must always conform to its mandates and promises.”

Here is the letter he sent to President Trump

CBS News’ Jan Crawford noted that Kennedy had been saying privately he would retire, so this was not a big surprise. The nomination battle will likely ignite a firestorm on Capitol Hill as it comes just a year after Republicans changed the rules of the Senate in order to push through the nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump's first nominee. Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, characterized Reagan’s choice as a “basic compromise of principle,” while political activist Richard Viguerie described the nomination as a “total surrender to the left.” Over the next three decades, conservatives were indeed often disappointed with Kennedy and his votes on a variety of issues, particularly social ones. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who blocked Obama’s nominee for eight months, said that the Senate would hold a vote on Kennedy’s successor “this fall”, meaning before the November elections that could see a changeover in Senate control.
US Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy announces his retirement, effective July 31, 2018.