Each of these is important in its own way, but none more so than the challenge taken up on Wednesday by the Supreme Court, to the legality of Executive Order 14160, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” Issued in the first hours of his first day back in office, the order is Donald Trump’s bid to abolish the long-standing rule that, with narrow exceptions, citizenship attaches automatically to those born on U.S. soil. That made for riveting inter-branch theatre, especially since Trump, infuriated by the Court’s rejection of his emergency tariffs in February, has denounced the Court as “STUPID” and “disloyal to the Constitution.” Two of the Justices he appointed, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, defied him in the tariffs case; he called them “fools” and an “embarrassment to their families.” This is, perhaps, not the best way to make friends and influence Justices. For the Trump Administration, this is less a bug than a feature: Sauer argued, in his opening statement, that birthright citizenship “demeans the priceless and profound gift of American citizenship,” “operates as a powerful pull factor for illegal immigration,” and “has spawned a sprawling industry of birth tourism, as uncounted thousands of foreigners from potentially hostile nations have flocked to give birth in the United States.” Chief Justice John Roberts, returning to the last point, asked Sauer a seemingly friendly question about how significant a problem that was.
Author: Ruth Marcus
Published at: 2026-04-01 21:34:50
Still want to read the full version? Full article
