Breaking: Trump Loses at Supreme Court on Birthright Citizenship

We begin the day with major breaking news, and spoiler alert, it's excellent news for American democracy. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down Donald Trump's efforts to ban birthright citizenship via executive order, reaffirming that birthright citizenship is a constitutional right that Trump can't touch, at least not in this way. It's one of the biggest defeats of Donald Trump's entire political career, and he and MAGA are livid as the story breaks. But before we unpack all that, if you end up liking this video and you want to support the channel, please be sure to hit the like, subscribe, and alert bells before you go. All right, folks, we have a lot to talk about. This story just dropped, and I expect we'll probably be doing multiple videos about it throughout today. This is the initial reaction, the initial breakdown. Let's hear a bit from Fox News. And it's a big one. It has to do with birthright citizenship. It was an executive order that on day one of his second term in January of 2025, signed the executive order. It was immediately challenged. And now we can tell you that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against President Trump's order to limit birthright citizenship. Shannon, we have talked for some time about the president feeling that he would not win on this one. The question is, why not? OK, right off the bat, it says children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily president present are, quote, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and are citizens at birth under the 14th Amendment Citizenship Clause. Look how this broke down. As we expected, the chief justice wrote this opinion. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett and Jackson joined. Jackson has a concurring opinion in which Sotomayor joins. Justice Kavanaugh files an opinion concurring in the judgment and dissenting in part. The dissent comes from Justice Thomas. He is joined by Gorsuch, Alito, and then Justice Gorsuch apparently has his own dissenting opinion. So it is what we expected after the arguments here. And it looks like a bit of a split, but enough of a plurality coming together to say that the executive order that the president issued very quickly upon taking office is no good and that if people are here, subject to the jurisdiction thereof includes people who are here illegally. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts says this. Citizenship then and now was the right to have rights to freely participate in our political community. Talking about the 14th Amendment, the framers of the 14th Amendment extended that promise to every freeborn person in this land. That's a quote and it looks like it's a quote back to some of the legislative debate about this in Congress. He says we keep that promise today. So again, a massive defeat for Donald Trump, arguably on par with the tariffs in many ways, substantially more important, right? The tariffs would certainly wreak devastating economic harm on the American people. But this was an attack on American democracy and it was repudiated. Again, the story is just now breaking. Aaron Reikland Melnick noting, a 6-3 vote upholds birthright citizenship, affirming the default rule that all persons born in the United States, with narrow exceptions, are US citizens at birth. Notably, four justices would have rewritten the Constitution. Kavanaugh concurs only because he thinks the law Congress passed in the 1950s granting birthright citizenship governs, but he thinks Congress could eliminate birthright citizenship along Trump's lines if they wanted. So Kavanaugh believes that if Congress were to pass a law banning birthright citizenship, they could do that and that he would then vote with Alito and Thomas and Gorsuch to overturn birthright citizenship. Now, again, that's absurd, right? Federal statute does not dictate the Constitution. This is a constitutional provision, which means it trumps, pun intended, federal statute. But it just goes to show that even now you're starting to see some of the partisans say, well, not only would we have ruled in Trump's favor, but maybe moving forward, you could do it this way. At the end of the day, though, this is a victory, right, in a 6-3 decision. You have, again, Kavanaugh concurring in part. You have Amy Coney Barrett, another Trump appointee joining in full justice, Chief Justice John Roberts writing the majority opinion, and, of course, the three liberal justices as well. Now, before we look at the Democracy Docket's reaction to this, I want you to see in real time Republican Speaker Mike Johnson finding out about this decision. So birthright citizenship, which, as I speak, has not come down yet, but it helped hundreds of thousands of formerly enslaved people in Louisiana. Now, do you, as a constitutional lawyer and representative to the descendants of some of those people who were enslaved, agree with the president that it should be done away with? What was the- I missed the first part of the question. It helped hundreds of thousands. No, what was the- But it has not come down yet. But do you agree with the president that it should be done away with? What hasn't come down? Oh, birthright, sorry, birthright citizenship. Yeah, okay, look, yes, as a constitutional lawyer, I've got lots of opinions on this. Okay, I understand what the framers did, and when we added this to our constitutional order, I understood what the intent was. I do think, I think anybody who looks at this- oh dear, what did they rule? Here we go. Children born in the United States parents unlawfully or temporarily present are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and our citizens at birth under the 14th Amendment citizenship clause. What's your reaction to that? So he's growling. We'll probably dedicate a separate video to the fallout from MAGA because, again, MAGA tears are quite delicious. We nourish ourselves on MAGA despair, unapologetically so. There's a lot of schadenfreude here. Trump has yet to publicly react to it, so we will definitely be dedicating future videos to going through the reaction. But to get into more of the particulars of the decision, let's turn to Democracy Docket, which is Mark Elias's publication. Supreme Court strikes down Trump's attempt to eliminate birthright citizenship. We'll also refresh the page because, again, this is a recently breaking story, which means it could be updating in real time. The Supreme Court struck down Trump's attempt to unilaterally deny citizenship to children born in the United States to foreign nationals, a plan that would have sharply altered who can vote in American elections. In a 6-3 ruling, the court said Trump's executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship violated the 14th Amendment. It sided with a class of babies and expecting parents who would be affected by Trump's order. The ruling was not a surprise. Birthright citizenship has long been considered a settled question in American jurisprudence. Trump's executive order came as the opening salvo in his across-the-board attack on all forms of immigration, but it also had grave implications for voting. Denying automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to non-citizen parents would allow Trump to shape the future electorate, influence the demographic makeup of electoral districts, and suppress civic participation. Signed on his first day in office, Trump's order directed federal agencies to deny Social Security numbers and U.S. passports to babies whose parents lack permanent legal status or citizenship. The order directly contradicted the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause, which states, quote, all persons born, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. The order never went into effect. Lower courts unanimously ruled that, in addition to violating the 14th Amendment, it also breached federal immigration law and Supreme Court precedent. While the court's decision is a tremendous blow for Trump, it was a largely expected one. During oral arguments this year, a majority of justices appeared deeply skeptical of the order. At one point, Chief Justice John Roberts described the Department of Justice's defense as, quote, quirky. Trump appeared to sense beforehand that the case would likely not go his way. After the arguments, which he attended in person, Trump preemptively railed against the Supreme Court on social media. In one post, he claimed the justices were, quote, dumb and the U.S., quote, stupid for allowing the longstanding practice which is enshrined in the Constitution. While the Supreme Court upheld a lower court's determination against Trump's directive, it previously ruled in legal proceedings against the order that individual district court judges could no longer block executive actions throughout the country through, quote, nationwide or, quote, universal injunctions. Following that ruling, civil rights and immigration organizations countered with several class action lawsuits representing babies and expecting parents who would be affected by Trump's order. So again, folks, this is a big friggin' deal. This is a big deal. This is a major defeat for Donald Trump, one of the very worst he has ever suffered. It's not surprising, given that the law was so clearly against Donald Trump and on the side of American democracy. But given that the Supreme Court and our current constitutional structure are the ultimate arbiters of what is or is not constitutional, and they are very capricious, they are very inconsistent, they are partisanly motivated, there was some question, right? Maybe not a 50-50 chance, but there was some question about whether or not they would rule in Trump's favor or rule against him. And it does say something. This should have been a 9-0 decision, but it wasn't. You have the three of the conservatives ruling in Trump's favor. And I just want to end with this. Again, we are going to do subsequent videos unpacking Trump and MAGA's response to this. For just schadenfreude purposes, we must delight in their despair, given that at least one of their attempts to upend American democracy has failed so miserably. So we should celebrate that and mock them. We will do that in subsequent videos, especially as we allow the reactions to percolate. We'll have more to go through. But I want to end on this. My attitudes about the Supreme Court have not changed. You will have some people, some bad faith actors, say, okay, this is proof that the Supreme Court is nonpartisan and that the Supreme Court is not beholden to Trump. That's an incredibly stupid argument. We have Democratic politicians who have voted occasionally in favor of Trump legislation. We have Democratic politicians who have occasionally voted in favor of Trump nominees to the cabinet. By that logic, I guess Democrats don't oppose Trump and that they all support Trump. So you should stop complaining about Democrats, MAGA, right? Because they occasionally side with Trump. It's the same thing with the liberal justices on the court. You guys should stop bitching about Justices Kagan and Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown-Jackson, because they do occasionally rule in Trump's favor. The idea that simply because the Supreme Court occasionally rules against Trump, that that must mean that the Supreme Court is not generally in Trump's pocket is absurd. It does not follow. The Supreme Court of the United States is still a partisan, ideologically biased institution. It is a threat to democracy in its own way, as much as Trump, even though it's not as active in our day-to-day lives. And the Democratic Party needs to take power, expand the court, and force a binding code of conduct down the court's throat to rein in their corruption and make this unaccountable branch much more accountable to the people. In the meantime, let me know what you think in the comments.