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A vote away from undoing the civil war
The birthright citizenship ruling was a wake-up call, not a victory.
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It won’t come as news to Public Notice readers that the Supreme Court, in the hands of the worst chief justice of all time, John Roberts, has been uniquely, unrelentingly malign. But often, the damages wrought are masked, clothed in technical and arcane language, coming across as nothing more than a debate about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Sometimes, though, a decision comes along that’s crystal clear, one where it takes no history degree, no law degree, no STEM degree, no anything, to see how horrifically wrong things are.
It might seem kind of doomer-y to be lamenting the outcome in Trump v Barbara, the birthright citizenship case. After all, per CNN, “the conservative Supreme Court dealt a significant blow” to Trump’s immigration agenda. Per the New York Times, “the justices reaffirmed the long-held principle that nearly all children who are born on US soil are American citizens.”
Why whine when the good guys won 6-3 or 5-4, depending on how you’re counting?
Because it never should have been this close.
Because the Fourteenth Amendment says what it says.
Because our history is what it is.
Because Republicans are already planning their next moves, with Vice President JD Vance bragging that birthright citizenship is “hanging by a thread” and Sen. Rand Paul rushing to introduce a new constitutional amendment.
Manufacturing dissent
Honestly, this shouldn’t have been a case that needed to be addressed in all but the most summary fashion.
The only role for a functional Supreme Court would have been to deny a cert request from the Trump administration by saying, basically, “Did the lower court stutter?” Instead, we came within one vote of letting the very worst people in the country run roughshod over one of America’s sacred compacts, or, as Michael from the 5-4 Podcast put it, “we are one John Roberts heart attack away from the complete dissolution of the reconstruction amendments and instantiation of a formalized caste system.”
