Teacher:In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Teacher: Now, understand the problem? Solve this instance: Big news hiding in Nina Totenberg’s story on Justice Gorsuch voting 100% with Justice Thomas: 
  
 But it is unlikely that Kennedy will remain on the court for the full four years of the Trump presidency. While he long ago hired his law clerks for the coming term, he has not done so for the following term (beginning Oct. 2018), and has let applicants for those positions know he is considering retirement. Kennedy’s position on the court is more than consequential. In the most hotly contested and closely divided cases, his vote often decides the outcome. With every passing day, it has become more clear that President Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, is probably even more conservative than the justice he replaced, Antonin Scalia. 
  
 This would put Justice Kennedy’s retirement right before the 2018 midterms, giving the Republican base reasons to turn out and keep the Senate with a Republican majority (already a strong possibility in 2018). 
  
 He’ll be able to go out on a high note, deciding the fate of partisan gerrymandering, gay rights, and who knows what else. 
  
 UPDATE: Republicans in the Senate would have a strategic decision to make: try to confirm a replacement before the elections, or use it as a tool to boost midterm turnout. ||||| Justice Neil Gorsuch Votes 100 Percent Of The Time With Most Conservative Colleague 
  
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Evan Vucci/AP Evan Vucci/AP 
  
 By now, we can probably say that Justice Anthony Kennedy is not retiring from the U.S. Supreme Court. The word "probably" is apt because nothing is certain about the plans of this or any other Supreme Court justice when it comes to ending his or her service on the nation's highest court. 
  
 But this week, the court wrapped up the current term, and Kennedy, who turns 81 in July, seems to have decided to stay on the job — at least for the coming term. 
  
 There could be a variety of reasons. As an institutional matter, he could well have concluded that there had been enough uncertainty and drama on the court after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, and the vacancy that lasted for well over a year with Senate Republicans refusing to even consider President Obama's nominee. 
  
 Kennedy may also have thought it best to ensure that there is a full complement of nine justices for at least a year. He could even have been put off by President Trump's tweets about the judiciary. 
  
 But it is unlikely that Kennedy will remain on the court for the full four years of the Trump presidency. While he long ago hired his law clerks for the coming term, he has not done so for the following term (beginning Oct. 2018), and has let applicants for those positions know he is considering retirement. 
  
 Kennedy's position on the court is more than consequential. In the most hotly contested and closely divided cases, his vote often decides the outcome. With every passing day, it has become more clear that President Trump's first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, is probably even more conservative than the justice he replaced, Antonin Scalia. 
  
 Ideological footprints in the sand 
  
 It is unusual to see a new justice's ideological footprints so clearly in his first year or two on the high court. Indeed, most new justices, including those with long careers on the lower courts, are somewhat hesitant at first. They understand that the Supreme Court's word is the final word, and that looking at issues from this new perspective is somewhat different from the perspective of a lower court judge, whose job is to carry out the mandates of a higher court. 
  
 But Justice Gorsuch seems both sure-footed and sure of himself and his views. Though he was confirmed in time to hear only the final two weeks of the term's oral arguments, his votes and opinions in those cases — and others that the court has disposed of since he was sworn in — paint a vivid picture of a justice on the far right of the current Supreme Court bench. 
  
 Enlarge this image toggle caption J. Scott Applewhite/AP J. Scott Applewhite/AP 
  
 Indeed, he voted 100 percent of the time with the court's most conservative member, Clarence Thomas, according to SCOTUSblog. 
  
 If Thomas is Gorsuch's new best friend, in terms of votes, his second-best friend statistically is Justice Samuel Alito, with whom he voted next most often. 
  
 Those three, and sometimes just two, represented the far right of the bench this term, while Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Kennedy represented the center right. On the ideological left, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor voted together most often — 78 percent of the time — and to a somewhat lesser extent with Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, who might be characterized as on the center left. 
  
 A look at the court's last day sitting this week is illustrative. 
  
 Gorsuch, Thomas and Alito would have let the modified Trump travel ban go into effect in its entirety, while six justices, including the chief justice and Kennedy, issued a compromise ruling that allowed the executive order to go into effect with certain conditions. Until the court reviews the order more fully in October, the six said that the modified ban cannot be applied to "foreign nationals who have a credible claim of bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States." 
  
 On gay rights, the three dissented when the court summarily struck down an Arkansas law that barred married same-sex couples from having both their names on a birth certificate. Writing for the conservative trio, Gorsuch said, "It is very hard to see what is wrong with . . . a birth registration regime based on biology." 
  
 In contrast, the other six justices, including the chief justice and Kennedy, wrote that the court's 2015 decision declaring a right to marry for same-sex couples guaranteed more than a marriage certificate. It also guaranteed "the constellation of benefits that the States have linked to marriage." And the majority observed that the states, including Arkansas, do not have a paternity requirement for opposite-sex couples to list both names on a birth certificate. 
  
 On gun rights, Gorsuch and Thomas voted to hear a challenge to a California law barring people from carrying a gun in public for self-defense. The other seven justices left in place a lower court ruling that upheld the law. 
  
 On the subject of campaign finance, Gorsuch and Thomas cast similar dissenting votes when the court refused to hear a challenge to the so-called soft-money ban contained in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. 
  
 And finally, Gorsuch and Thomas refused to sign on to the limiting language of the court's 7-to-2 decision on state aid to religious schools. Five justices agreed that it was unconstitutional for the state of Missouri to deny public funds to resurface the playground at a church school. But Gorsuch and Thomas wrote separately to strongly suggest that, in their view, religious schools are entitled to the same kind of taxpayer funding that other schools get. 
  
 Next term, thunder and lightning 
  
 If, as many observers characterized it, this term was the "calm before the storm," the next term will have plenty of thunderbolts. 
  
 Among the issues facing the court will be: 
  
 A test of state public accommodations laws, and whether business owners can deny commercial services for a gay wedding. 
  
 A case testing whether police have to get a warrant to track cellphones. 
  
 And a case that tests whether there is a constitutional limit to the practice of partisan gerrymandering. At issue is whether the party in power can perpetuate and increase its influence by packing its opponents into a small number of legislative districts, or carefully dispersing its opponents into so many different districts that the opposing party has little to no chance of winning in most districts. Partisan gerrymandering has existed since the founding of the republic, but with the advent of high-powered computers, the practice has become so refined — and effective — that increasingly, congressional districts and state legislative districts have been all but walled off from competition. 
  
 In this case, as in so many others, Justice Kennedy's vote is likely to be pivotal. In a case testing partisan gerrymandering in 2004, Kennedy said he was amenable to the idea of a limit on partisan gerrymandering, but he couldn't figure out a neutral test to gauge how much is too much. Now, in a case from Wisconsin, some progressive groups contend they have come up with a test that would work. The outcome will assuredly determine how our democracy functions in the years to come. ||||| Photo: Eric Thayer/Getty Images 
  
 One week ago, the persistent rumor that Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement was imminent was put to rest when the 2016–2017 Supreme Court term ended with no announcement from the 80-year-old jurist. Now it’s back. 
  
 Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog noticed this new clue hiding in an NPR story on Justice Neil Gorsuch that was published on Saturday. Nina Totenberg reported: 
  
 But it is unlikely that Kennedy will remain on the court for the full four years of the Trump presidency. While he long ago hired his law clerks for the coming term, he has not done so for the following term (beginning Oct. 2018), and has let applicants for those positions know he is considering retirement. 
  
 Clerk hiring can offer clues about whether a justice is mulling retirement. Current justices get four clerks each and retired justices get one, so sometimes justices only hire one clerk if they don’t think they’ll finish out their term. Though, as Above the Law’s David Lat explained, that’s not a hard and fast rule: 
  
 Now, hiring clerks for 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 is not dispositive evidence that a justice will remain on the bench. There’s a nice tradition at the Court of justices picking up “orphaned” hires of their colleagues (which is what happened with Justice Antonin Scalia’s displaced clerks), so the clerks aren’t necessarily left in the lurch. But as a matter of collegiality and consideration — and whether or not you like his jurisprudence, Justice Kennedy is collegial and considerate — it’s not nice to impose upon your colleagues by hiring clerks you know will never work for you, putting pressure on these colleagues to sacrifice their own hiring discretion to scoop up your leftovers (because of SCOTUS tradition). 
  
 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who obviously does not want President Trump appointing her successor, has already selected her clerks through 2020. But as of March, there were plenty of other justices who, like Kennedy, had yet to make their hires for the term that starts in 2018. 
  
 But if Kennedy is telling prospective clerks that he might not be sticking around, that’s concerning news for liberals — and not only because he’ll be giving Donald Trump another Supreme Court appointment. As Rick Hasen notes, he’d be stepping down “right before the 2018 midterms, giving the Republican base reasons to turn out and keep the Senate with a Republican majority (already a strong possibility in 2018).” |||||
Student:
When the Supreme Court wrapped up its current term, all eyes were on Anthony Kennedy amid rumors that he'd announce his retirement. He did not do so, but the rumors are gaining steam once again thanks to an NPR story. The focus of the piece was on new Justice Neil Gorsuch, but Rick Hasen at the Election Law Blog saw "big news" hiding in the midst of it, specifically that Kennedy has been warning potential clerks for the October 2018 term that he's considering retirement. Hasen points out that could mean Kennedy would step down just before the 2018 midterm elections, leaving Senate Republicans with a choice: try to confirm a new justice before the elections or deliberately wait in a bid to boost GOP turnout. The hiring of clerks isn't necessarily a surefire way to make predictions about justices, observes a post at New York. But it notes that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wouldn't want President Trump to name her successor, has her clerks selected through 2020.