Progressives are trying to pester liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 69, into retiring over fears she could die on the job like Ruth Bader-Ginsburg while conservative president is in office

!chuds they're afraid of lol

• CNN commentator Josh Barrow adds to clamor of voices on the left demanding the early retirement of the pioneering Latinx justice

• They fear the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority could be further entrenched if the 69-year-old dies in office under a Republican presidency

• Comes after they helped force the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer in 2022 and his replacement by Ketanji Brown Jackson

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is under pressure from fellow liberals to retire amid growing fears she might enable a Republican president to appoint a conservative successor.

CNN commentator Josh Barrow became the latest to demand the 69-year-old step down lest she follow in the footsteps liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg who died while serving at 87 in 2020.

That death allowed then-president Donald Trump to cement the court's conservative majority with the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett, and some liberals are determined it will not happen again.

'I'm not saying I think Justice Sotomayor is on death's door,' Barrow conceded to his fellow panelists on CNN This Morning.

'But I think it's important, given it's a lifetime appointment, to take a very long-time horizon view on this.

'It seems like that -- it would be the right time strategically for her to step down in favor of somebody younger if she's very concerned about the political balance on the court.'

The sitting president is entitled under the constitution to appoint justices to the Supreme Court, subject to Senate approval, and Trump appointed three during his four years in office.

Liberal campaigners mobilized against Justice Stephen Breyer who retired at 83 in 2022, allowing President Biden to appoint Ketanji Brown Jackson to the bench.

The court's 6-3 conservative majority has steamrolled a raft of landmark judgements including the overturning of Roe V Wade and the outlawing of positive discrimination at public institutions.

And the pressure on Sotomayor is growing after she made gloomy remarks about her role in a speech to University of California Law School students this week.

'I live in frustration,' she admitted, 'and every loss truly traumatizes me in my stomach and in my heart.

'Cases are bigger. They're more demanding. The number of amici are greater, and you know that our emergency calendar is so much more active.

'To be almost 70 years old, this isn't what I expected.

'I'm tired.'

'I find it a little bit surprising, given what Justice Sotomayor describes there about the stakes of what is happening before the Supreme Court, that she's not retired,' Barrow said.

'It's quite possible the Democrats will lose control of the Senate in the next election and who knows how long it could be before there's a next opportunity for a Democratic president to make a new appointment to the seat she sits in.'

The Bronx-born justice was the first Latinx to sit on the bench when she was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009.

She has suffered from life-long Type-1 diabetes and her father died at just 43, but her mother made it to an impressive 94.

Supreme court justices are over 80 when they retire on average, but some on the left are even targeting Sotomayor's fellow liberal justice Elena Kagan who is just 63.

'Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan are important. But they are important because of the values they champion,' wrote liberal lawyer and podcast host Peter Shamshiri last year.

'If they want to see those values protected, then they can't risk letting their seats fall into Republican hands.'

'If Sotomayor and Kagan do not retire within the next two years they could doom the entire country to live under a 7-2 or even an 8-1 court controlled by an increasingly radicalized Republican Party's appointees,' wrote legal journ*list Ian Millhiser in Vox.

But despite her complaints, Justice Sotomayor seemed reluctant to throw in the towel.

'It is still work that is all-consuming and I understand the impact the court has on people and on the country, and sometimes the world. And so it is what keeps me going.

'You can't throw up your hands and walk away. And that's not a choice. That's an abdication. That's giving up.'