President Trump tore into the Supreme Court and the “dumb judges and justices” making up the US federal court system on Monday, as a case involving his executive order banning so-called “birthright citizenship” is scheduled for oral arguments on Wednesday.
The high court agreed last December to hear a legal challenge to the order, which critics argued would infringe on the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
The president vented that the amendment was passed to protect former slaves, not what he and administration officials have referred to as “birth tourism.”
“Birthright Citizenship is not about rich people from China, and the rest of the World, who want their children, and hundreds of thousands more, FOR PAY, to ridiculously become citizens of the United States of America,” Trump posted on his Truth Social.
“It is about the BABIES OF SLAVES! We are the only Country in the World that dignifies this subject with even discussion. Look at the dates of this long-ago legislation – THE EXACT END OF THE CIVIL WAR!” he said.
The Senate passed the 14th Amendment in 1868, and it was ratified two years later.
Its Citizenship Clause states that “[a]ll 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 Immigration and Nationality Act later codified that language in 1952.
The Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara on Wednesday after lower courts ruled his Jan. 20 executive action was likely unconstitutional.
That order grants automatic citizenship to babies born in the US who have at least one parent with citizenship or legal permanent residency.
Some of the justices on the court’s supermajority have recently delivered the president setbacks — especially after striking down his signature tariffs in late February.
“The World is getting rich selling citizenships to our Country, while at the same time laughing at how STUPID our U.S. Court System has become (TARIFFS!),” Trump fumed in his post. “‘Dumb Judges and Justices will not a great Country make!’”
The birthright citizenship case originated in New Hampshire as part of a class-action lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of children of foreign nationals. Separately, a group of Democratic-led states sued over Trump’s order.
After district courts and appeals courts issued preliminary rulings in favor of the plaintiffs, the cases were consolidated, and the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer has asked the high court to reconsider how the citizenship clause “was adopted to grant citizenship to newly freed slaves and their children — not … to the children of aliens illegally or temporarily in the United States.”
The ACLU has disputed this, calling birthright citizenship “one of many features of American life that the Framers embraced, alongside freedom and equality” and arguing that subsequent federal laws upheld this understanding.
