It is Sunday, April the 19th. I'm Ali Velshi. It seemed unlikely just weeks ago, but the Democrats' odds of flipping the Senate this fall have increased. Democrats can retake control of the Senate with a net gain of four seats, and the influential

Cook political report just moved exactly four races toward the Democrats. Georgia, where the incumbent

John Ossoff is running, is now leaning Democrat. North Carolina, where the former governor

Roy Cooper is running, is now leaning Democrat. Ohio, where former three-term senator Sherrod Brown is likely to be

the Democratic nominee is now considered a toss-up. And even Nebraska, which has long been considered

solid Republican turf, has moved from solid Republican to likely Republican. The fact that Nebraska's

even shifting a little is telling. Republicans still have the edge

in the Senate heading into the midterms, but it's narrowing. And Republicans know it, which is why

with polling showing the public's patience with Donald Trump becoming exhausted, the GOP's looking

for ways to get around the will of the people in case it turns against them at the ballot box in

November, which it might, and lock in

their agenda before the clock runs out, and the biggest agenda item of all is the Supreme Court.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are 77 and 76 years old, respectively. Both are reliably

conservative, both are part of the high court's six to three supermajority that

has fundamentally reshaped American law on abortion, on guns, on executive power. And given

their respective ages, both are potentially approaching the end of their time on the bench.

There's no age limit on the bench, but maybe they want to retire. Here's the calculation.

Republicans seem to be making the calculation that if either of these two justices retire while Donald Trump is president and Republicans still control the Senate,

Donald Trump gets to replace them with someone younger, someone who could sit on that court not for years, but for decades.

And since Supreme Court confirmations require only a simple majority in the Senate,

if the Senate remains under Republican control, Donald Trump wouldn't need the support of a single

Democratic senator. Now, this is not a particularly quiet strategy. Just last week, the Senate

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