President Donald Trump’s days of naming conservatives to the federal bench may be ending, but members of the Federalist Society, the powerhouse that helped Republican administrations transform the judiciary, are down, not out, and already anticipating 2028.
The mood at their annual lawyers convention in Washington, DC, held the week after the Blue-wave election trounced Republicans, was strikingly sanguine. That’s partly because, since its founding in the early 1980s, the Federalist Society’s mission has been to wage battle against a perceived dominant liberal culture.
A sense of grievance is in the group’s DNA. Conversations in the grand ballroom and marble corridors of the stately Mayflower Hotel during the were strewn with references to “the fight.”
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Members reveled in recent Supreme Court decisions overturning precedent, commemorated with blue-rimmed gold coins placed at luncheon tables on Thursday, the first day of the three-day convention. One of the most popular celebrated Trump v. Slaughter, which reversed a 1935 decision and bolstered executive power by letting the president fire the heads of independent agencies.
Other coins swiftly seized by attendees covered West Virginia v. BPJ , which allowed states to keep transgender girls and women from participating in female sports, and Louisiana v. Callais, which erased protections under the 1965 Voting Rights Act . On the flip side of coins: “Commemorating Generational Wins at the Supreme Court.”
During a black-tie dinner Thursday evening, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito further galvanized the audience as he was interviewed on stage. He referred to groundbreaking cases from the current majority, including the 2022 decision he wrote that overturned Roe v. Wade and abortion rights.
“The decision showed a lot of courage,” Alito said, calling out fellow conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett , in the audience, for signing onto the majority.
The “onward” attitude throughout the convention was also a byproduct of members’ recollections of past election defeats.
“I’ve been through the highest of highs and the lowest of lows,” said Donald McGahn, a former White House counsel, noting the 2006 midterms when Democrats vanquished the GOP to take control of both the House and Senate during George W. Bush’s second term. McGahn kept the first Trump administration laser-focused on remaking the courts, an effort that led to three Supreme Court appointments and record-setting lower-court confirmations.
“I’ve been coming for more than a decade, no matter who’s just won,” said Karin Lips, president of Network of Enlightened Women. “We’re investing in young people for the future. The attitude is that there are big battles to wage in the war of ideas. We have to keep fighting.”
The next generation of conservatives will have to wait at least two, if not six, years for significant judicial appointments, given the margins Democrats gained in the Senate, which has power over judicial confirmations and is expected to stall Trump’s selections during 2027 and 2028.
What comes next – and who – for the Republicans was foremost on the mind of attendees.
“The question is, ‘What does the post-2028 Republican party look like?” said Chad Pekron, an Arkansas lawyer who has been part of the Federalist Society since his Yale Law School days more than 25 years ago.
“I think there’s a serious question of whether the party goes back, to where it was more than 10 years ago, or if it continues in this populist direction,” Pekron said. “MAGA resulted from a person – a unique person – at a unique point in time.”
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Pekron, sporting a blue “FedSoc” tie with orange stripes and dotted with silhouettes of James Madison, said he had wondered whether he would find a gloomy atmosphere, as in November 2008 when Barack Obama won the presidency and Democrats made substantial gains in the US House and Senate.
But, he said, with attention on the next round of political leadership, “This group is like the happy warriors. It accelerates the fight.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a premier speaking spot Friday: the Barbara Olson Memorial Lecture, named after a conservative lawyer and commentator who was aboard the plane intentionally crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
Some attendees spoke favorably of Rubio for 2028, but many other names, including Vice President JD Vance and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, were in the air.
“These are generational issues we are fighting,” said University of Minnesota law professor Ilan Wurman. “It’s not just about one election. How can we move forward in an era when Trump won’t be president anymore? I think there will be a real desire to figure out what’s next.”
Roger Pilon, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, said, “We’ve got to recover the spirit of Ronald Reagan.” Pilon, who served in the Reagan administration over its two terms in the 1980s.
Pilon was among the more senior members of the crowd that skewed white, male and on the older side – but far from the oldest. Among the GOP-appointed judges in attendance was US Appeals Court Judge Carlos Bea, of the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit, age 92.
The Federalist Society was founded in 1982 by a trio of law students seeking conservative intellectual debate to counter the prevailing liberalism on campuses. They had allies in then-University of Chicago law professor Antonin Scalia (a faculty sponsor who eventually became a Supreme Court justice) and then-US appellate judge Robert Bork, keynote speaker for their first symposium.
The name derived from the Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay. Fed Soc founders adopted a silhouette of Madison for their logo, and the emblem was omnipresent this week, especially at the pop-up gift shop selling clothing, down to Fed “socks,” and all manner of souvenir, including a self-inking stamp with a memorable Scalia quip about ill-conceived laws, “Stupid But Constitutional.”
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The staff offered a complimentary baby onesie to Lips of the women’s network founded 20 years ago at the University of Virginia. Lips was holding her young baby son – her fifth child – in a front-facing carrier as she moved around the conference participants, seeking familiar faces, making contacts.
Federalist Society Board Co-chairman Leonard Leo, who worked closely with McGahn on the judicial juggernaut of Trump’s first term, before a falling out with the president, added to the emphasis on a longer perspective.
“Historically, we’ve managed to put our chin up and just move on, knowing that what we do is a longer-term battle,” Leo said. “And we need to keep building the infrastructure and talent pipeline.”
Other conference veterans could not help but slip into memories of past events.
McGahn recalled attending a Fed Soc annual conference in 1995, just after he had landed a job with a Washington law firm.
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Then in his late 20s and awestruck, he said someone beckoned him to an empty seat at a table where former Reagan officials happened to be gathered, including former Attorney General Edwin Meese.
“You never know who you will meet,” McGahn said, and reflecting on his excitement, added that soon after he left the event, “I called my mom.”
CNN’s John Fritze contributed to this report.
