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President Joe Biden knows better than anyone that there's no such thing as a sure thing when the Senate considers a Supreme Court pick. That should give him an edge now. As a senator, he helped take down Robert Bork's nomination in 1987. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991, he presided over the contentious hearings that secured Clarence Thomas' confirmation amid sexual harassment allegations. He watched Republican Senate colleagues force their own president, George W. Bush, to withdraw Harriet Miers from consideration in 2005. (Allen, 1/26)

The conservative movement has, for decades, prioritized Supreme Court fights over nearly all other forms of political battle. But a survey on Wednesday of some of the top officials and activists in that universe indicates that they aren’t planning a vicious political fight over President Joe Biden’s pick to replace retiring Justice Steven Breyer. At least not yet. (McGraw and Fuchs, 1/26)

Democrats’ razor-thin majority will have to make history to confirm Stephen Breyer’s successor to the Supreme Court. A 50-50 Senate has never done it before. As the White House considers candidates to replace the retiring justice, they’ll need a judge who is guaranteed to garner support from every member of the Democratic caucus. That raises the stakes for the confirmation battle, but also provides some comfort for Democrats: as long as they stay unified, Republicans can’t stop Breyer’s successor from being confirmed. Republicans scrapped the 60-vote threshold on high court nominees in 2017. (Levine and Everett, 1/26)

Senate Democrats say they plan to move speedily to consider President Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Stephen G. Breyer, following the lead of Republicans who raced through the nomination of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a matter of weeks before the 2020 elections. Holding a bare 50-seat majority that is under severe threat in November’s midterm elections, Democrats acknowledged the need to act fast, particularly since an illness or death of one of their members could deprive them of their numerical advantage and greatly complicate efforts to fill the seat. (Hulse, 1/26)

As with other Supreme Court confirmation fights, much of the public scrutiny will land on a handful of swing votes in both parties that will help determine the fate of Biden’s pick. One is Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has voted to confirm all but one Supreme Court nominee during her more than two decades in the Senate. The lone exception was Barrett, whose nomination Collins protested because it was too close to a presidential election. She, along with Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), voted in favor of Ketanji Brown Jackson, a jurist considered to be at the top of Biden’s shortlist of nominees, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last year. (Scherer and Kim, 1/26)

Justice Breyer’s expected announcement, which has been sought by liberal activists, could motivate core Democratic voters after Mr. Biden has suffered from setbacks to his legislative agenda in Congress and public fatigue from the coronavirus pandemic. It could also energize conservative voters if GOP senators are able to cast Mr. Biden’s nominee as too far to the left on hot-button social issues. Within hours of Wednesday’s news, Mr. Trump’s political action committee sent a fundraising email warning that Mr. Biden would “appoint a LIBERAL ACTIVIST” to the court. (Thomas, Collins and Andrews, 1/26)

Progressives greeted the news of Justice Stephen Breyer’s forthcoming retirement with a mixture of relief and frustration — relief at the likelihood his replacement would yield a younger and more diverse liberal bloc on the court, and frustration his departure would do little to impede the steady march of the court’s six-member conservative majority. (Kruzel, 1/26)