Humiliated Trump Watches Own Justices Tear His Citizenship Case Apart
Sarah Ewall-Wice The Daily Beast
Conservative justices poked holes in the Trump administration’s argument as the president looked on. (photo: The Daily Beast)
Conservative justices poked holes in the Trump administration’s argument as the president looked on.
As the justices took turns launching a series of brutal questions at Solicitor General D. John Sauer after he made the government’s argument on Wednesday, President Donald Trump was sitting in the courtroom watching.
He is the first sitting president ever to attend oral arguments before the Supreme Court, but it did not stop even the justices he appointed from criticizing the administration’s case.
Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, asked probing questions that suggested they were not buying Sauer’s argument to dramatically restrict birthright citizenship.
Roberts used “quirky” while Barrett said she was “puzzled.”
The president signed an executive order on his first day back in office that strictly limited birthright citizenship to the children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. The move was immediately challenged in court, but the Supreme Court’s decision could dramatically change how babies born in the U.S. are granted citizenship.
If the Supreme Court upholds the president’s order, the ACLU estimates it would strip some 250,000 babies of their U.S. citizenship and some 4.8 million people over the next two decades.
At the root of the case is the 14th Amendment, which states, “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.”
But the Trump administration argued that the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment was meant to grant citizenship to freed slaves and their children after the Civil War.
The ACLU, which was arguing the case on behalf of children born in the U.S., slammed the Trump administration for trying to overturn a century of Supreme Court precedent and the U.S. Constitution.
