Reshaping the federal judiciary has been the singular success of President Donald Trump’s political project. Throughout his first term, Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate—with the help of the conservative legal establishment—worked non-stop to leave no vacancy behind, stacking federal courts with movement conservatives ready and willing to impose their worldview across the country.

Trump seemed poised to do the same thing during his second term, this time guided by those more loyal to the man himself than to any particular legal philosophy. But Trump can’t fill vacancies unless judges create them, and for most of Trump’s second term, new ones have been few and far between: Before last week, only one new district court vacancy had arisen since December, and there hadn’t been a new court of appeals vacancy since October.

But starting on Friday, when Trump raged against the Supreme Court over its tariffs decision and attacked the justices personally, three appeals court judges have sent letters to the White House stating their intent to retire. With the midterms rapidly approaching and control of the Senate up for grabs, the question is whether these three new vacancies are the last drips of a well that’s running dry, or the warning signs of a dam about to burst. We’ll know the answer in the next few weeks.

Since Trump won re-election, only 34 judges—six appeals court judges and 28 district court judges, 27 Republican appointees and seven Democratic appointees—have created vacancies. (A judge creates a vacancy when they leave the bench or assume “senior status,” a form of semi-retirement in which judges take a reduced caseload.) And new vacancies have been scarce, particularly of late. In the 11 weeks before last Friday, only one district judge had decided to go senior: Western District of Wisconsin Judge James Peterson. Peterson was appointed in 2014 by President Barack Obama, and will assume senior status when a successor is confirmed.