I’ll take a ginger ale, if you have one. 
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It’s difficult to be optimistic about anything SCOTUS related these days but one good sign is that they didn’t lift the stay that many lower courts put on this EO. And I also heard Nina Totenberg on the radio this morning explaining that the court’s liberal justices have been skewering the conservative majority for “being willing to issue short, sometimes impenetrable orders without having full briefing and oral argument.” It seems like she’s under the impression that the liberal justices may have wanted this case argued rather than just issuing an order. I hope she’s right, and that this case ends up humiliating the Trump administration by setting a strong precedent reaffirming birthright citizenship. (Not that we should even need one for something that’s this cut and dry.)
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The other one I’ve heard is that “the 14A was only meant to give citizenship to freed slaves and no longer applies.” Which is ludicrous, as birthright citizenship wouldn’t even have done that effectively, as so many enslaved people at the time of the Civil War had been abducted from Africa rather than born in the US. Not to mention that is not what the Amendment says, at all.
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Yeah I kinda wish the SCOTUS response had been not to hear the case, instead issuing a statement saying “stop wasting our time with obvious well established law, and please start respecting the lower court rulings because you are wasting our time coming directly to SCOTUS with every case like we are your personal lawyers.”
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The counter to that argument is very simple, and is one that Scalia used many times on other issues. Had the framers of the 14th Amendment intended that to only apply to granting citizenship to the formerly enslaved, they could have made that clear quite simply in the phrasing of the amendment. Because they did not do so, we must assume that they did not intend it to apply only to that narrow case.
ETA: What I’ve done here is to use the central tenet of originalism: that we have to respect the original language in the Constitution, Amendment, or statute. You cannot read intent into a writing when nothing in the writing suggests that intent. Normally, I’m not a fan of originalism. However, if I can throw it back in the faces of the fascists, I am more than willing to do that.
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The problem with this (and by way of disclaimer, IANAL or even a law student) is that it relies on the conservative, ostensibly “originalist” wing of the Court to have even the faintest concern for consistency of jurisprudence over undermining the apparatus of state.
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Well, that and it clearly wasn’t the intent, either, because it didn’t do that thing. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 did.
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It’s also starting to look like Alito and Thomas are by themselves on these types of issues, which is a good sign. Good for a couple of reasons. One, because that means MAGA doesn’t have close to a majority on the Court. Two, because those two are the two oldest members of the Court and the only ones likely to retire anytime soon to be replaced by Trump appointees.
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I’m not surprised. He and Thomas are clearly 100% MAGA.
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“I find it completely inappropriate for this court to realize the administration has acted in bad faith and lies like a cheap throw rug every chance it gets.”
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Because of course he did.
He wants to be the Chief Justice of the fascist kangaroo court.
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None of Trump’s SCOTUS appointments voted with him on this case.
That’s gotta sting.
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Alito will never be Chief Justice, which is actually partly why he’s such a massive dick, in my opinion. Roberts was initially nominated to replace O’Connor when she retired. Alito was allegedly Bush’s top choice for the new Chief Justice whenever Rehnquist decided to retire. Then Rehnquist died suddenly, and since Roberts’s confirmation process was already underway, his nomination was elevated to Chief Justice and Alito was nominated to replace O’Connor. There have always been rumors that he developed a big resentment over that and has never gotten over it.
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Trump’s nominees were all picked by Leonard Leo, who is a massive right wing tool, but isn’t really MAGA. Ironically, the two MAGA justices were appointed by Bush Sr and Bush Jr.
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