Side Note

RBG says she’ll remain on the court for at least five years, but why not forever?

Liberal crusader and Kate McKinnon muse Ruth Bader Ginsburg does not intend to leave the Supreme Court anytime soon. Ginsburg, who was appointed to the court by Bill Clinton in 1993, is currently the oldest Supreme Court justice.

“I’m now 85,” Ginsburg, a two-time cancer survivor, told CNN on Sunday. “My senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90, so think I have about at least five more years.” The rest of the justices are between ages 50 and 82.

Now that President Trump’s nomination of conservative Brett Kavanaugh is poised to swing the court even further to the right, placing long-held precedents like Roe v. Wade in jeopardy, the fate of the court’s oldest liberals — including Ginsburg and 79-year-old Stephen Breyer — has become an essential point of concern for the left.

all hail our immortal leader

all hail our immortal leader

Ginsburg has standing offers for “eight or so” units of blood, at least one kidney, and many, many vitamins. RBG has already characterized her personal trainer as the “most important person in her life,” to the relief of many liberals. Her intensive workout includes leg curls, bench presses, one-legged squats, and butterfly stretches — and, as a POLITICO reporter who barely made it through will tell you, it’s no joke.

Here at The Outline, we are contemplating the long game. A study this month suggested that while a person’s risk of dying is generally thought to increase with age, it plateaus at age 105. We think it is possible for RBG to simply never leave the court. Now that a group of inventors and scientists are seriously pursuing immortality (mostly to benefit themselves), once all the experimental trials are finished, maybe we can slip RBG some of the secret elixir.