Birthright Citizenship Case Pushes Trump's Relationship With Supreme Court to Brink

[mahatmakanejeeves]

The Wall Street Journal
‪@wsj.com‬

The Supreme Court is set to consider a pillar of President Trump’s immigration crackdown: limiting U.S. citizenship. Trump seems to be bracing for defeat.

Birthright Citizenship Case Pushes Trump’s Relationship With Supreme Court to Brink
President fumes at justices as they prepare to take up his next big case
on.wsj.com
1:16 PM · Mar 29, 2026

The Supreme Court is set to consider a pillar of President Trump’s immigration crackdown: limiting U.S. citizenship. Trump seems to be bracing for defeat.

— The Wall Street Journal (@wsj.com) 2026-03-29T17:16:50.234804Z

Birthright Citizenship Case Pushes Trump’s Relationship With Supreme Court to Brink

President fumes at justices as they prepare to take up his next big case

By James Romoser
March 29, 2026 5:00 am ET


Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett during a State of the Union address.
Justices listened to President Trump’s State of the Union address in February. Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON—President Trump’s relationship with the Supreme Court has never been more toxic. Now, it risks getting worse.

After the court’s rejection of Trump’s tariffs provoked a new level of hostility from the president, the justices are set to consider a pillar of his immigration crackdown: limiting U.S. citizenship. Trump seems to be bracing for defeat.

{snip}

[Mysterian]

1. This case will show us who are the true traitors to the constitution

on the Corrupt Court.

[GiqueCee]

2. Trump's problem is...

... that he thinks he owns the justices he appointed. That's not how it works, Cupcake. Someone worthy of the presidency – Which you demonstrably are not – would know that.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. 'Alarm bells' ring as Trump resurrects racist arguments in major legal case: experts

The 14th Amendment is clear to me and the arguments being raised by trump are weak. The authority cited by trump's DOJ is really weak.

'Alarm bells' ring as Trump resurrects racist arguments in major legal case: experts

— Raw Story (@rawstory.com) 2026-03-30T14:30:15Z

https://www.rawstory.com/birthright-citizenship-supreme-court-2676636588

The Trump administration is relying on legal arguments developed by Confederate officers and 19th-century xenophobes to challenge birthright citizenship in a Supreme Court case expected to be decided by summer, drawing criticism from legal scholars who say the administration is recycling deeply racist historical precedents.

The administration's Supreme Court brief cites Alexander Porter Morse, a Confederate officer and Louisiana attorney who advocated for legalized segregation in the 1896 case that established the "separate but equal" doctrine that propped up Jim Crow laws, reported the Washington Post.

"The Trump administration has tapped Morse as an authority in its push to upend long-settled law that virtually everyone born in the United States is a citizen," the Post reported. "Over a century ago, Morse was among a trio of thinkers who spearheaded a failed effort — steeped in anti-Black and anti-Chinese racism — to erase birthright citizenship. The Trump administration is reviving their arguments to make its case today, some legal scholars say."

The administration also relies on arguments from Francis Wharton, a legal scholar who wrote that Chinese immigrants were insufficiently "civilized," and George D. Collins, a San Francisco attorney whose career ended in scandal.

Lucy Salyer, a University of New Hampshire history professor, expressed concern about the administration's approach. "If you know the history and the broader context of what they were trying to achieve, it does ring alarm bells," she said.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. The man behind Donald Trump's push to end birthright citizenship (suspended attorney John Eastman)

John Eastman has been advancing his fringe interpretation of the 14th Amendment for decades.

The man behind Donald Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship www.politico.com/news/2026/03...

— Timothy McBride (@mcbridetd.bsky.social) 2026-03-31T14:08:51.193Z

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/31/birthright-citizenship-supreme-court-john-eastman-00851127

Long before John Eastman helped devise Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election, he had another pet cause: ending birthright citizenship.....

Yet, when Trump signed his order on the subject last year, he made no mention of the former law school dean and Supreme Court clerk’s long advocacy for the cause. And while the Justice Department’s public briefs closely track Eastman’s arguments, they don’t cite his writings or acknowledge his role as the theory’s leading evangelist.

“This is his issue,” said Linda Chavez, a longtime conservative activist and senior Reagan White House official who has sparred publicly with Eastman on the subject. “I’ve known John forever and this has been a bee in his bonnet for as long as I’ve known him.”....

Eastman has been advancing his fringe interpretation of the 14th Amendment since 2005, racking up more than 100 op-eds, interviews, law review articles, debates, speeches and legislative hearings.....

And Eastman is still battling the fallout from the 2020 election. He helped concoct the theory that Trump could cling to power by having Vice President Mike Pence refuse to count some states’ electoral votes. That didn’t persuade Pence, but did score Eastman a speaking role at Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021 rally on the Ellipse, where Eastman aired unproven claims of election fraud.

He subsequently lost his professorship at Chapman University and has been suspended from practicing law in California. He’s appealing a decision calling for his permanent disbarment in that state.

Eastman needs to be finally disbarred. This asshole is a disgrace to the legal profession.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

5. MaddowBlog-Trump's attendance at the Supreme Court's birthright citizenship arguments won't help his case

If his radical gambit is likely to lose, why bother with an unprecedented presidential appearance at the high court? There are two prevailing explanations.

Link to tweet

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/why-trump-attending-supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-arguments

Not surprisingly, Trump’s radical gambit has struggled in the courts, which relied on generations’ worth of legal precedent, but the Supreme Court nevertheless agreed to hear the case. Ahead of Wednesday’s oral arguments, the president decided to do something his predecessors never did. MS NOW reported:

President Donald Trump will be watching oral arguments today as the Supreme Court weighs whether the president holds the power to end birthright citizenship. […]

Trump’s presence at the court is significant. He will be the first known sitting U.S. president to attend oral arguments before the high court, according to the Supreme Court Historical Society.

By way of explanation, the president told reporters on Tuesday that he intended to sit in on oral arguments “because I have listened to this argument for so long.” (A day later, I’m not entirely sure what that was supposed to mean.)....

So why bother with an unprecedented presidential appearance at the high court? There are two prevailing explanations — though they’re not mutually exclusive, and both could be true.

The first is that this is part of a ham-fisted intimidation campaign: By literally showing up in person, it’s possible that Trump, who appointed a third of the court’s justices, thinks he can apply extra pressure to those who will decide the case’s fate.

If this is the goal, the president is likely to be disappointed. Unlike congressional Republicans, justices don’t want to be seen as obedient White House loyalists, and it’s easy to imagine Trump’s stunt backfiring.

The other theory is that Trump recognizes the fact that the Supreme Court won’t let him rewrite constitutional law through an executive order, so he went to oral arguments as a political tactic intended to deliver an anti-immigrant message — which the White House sees as more politically salient than other issues that are dominating the public conversation, such as the war with Iran and high gas prices.

“The big thing for Trump is to be seen putting up a fight,” Politico noted. “This policy — always a Hail Mary from a legal perspective — is as much about signaling to the president’s base as it is a serious attempt to change the law.”

Whatever the explanation, if the president expects his order to be upheld, he probably ought to start lowering his expectations. Watch this space.