The US Supreme Court Thread - Post Roe v. Wade reversal edition

Apparently John Oliver did a segment on the ADF, summarized in The Guardian. If you're not familiar with this organization, which had its roots with James Dobson and Focus on the Family, it is must reading. Keep in mind Mike Johnson worked there for a while.

 

SC hearing birthright citizenship and universal injunctions today

The Supreme Court on Thursday is weighing whether to allow President Donald Trump's radical reinterpretation of the Constitution's guarantee of birthright citizenship to go into effect, at least in part, while litigation continues.

In an unusual move, the court heard oral arguments on a series of Trump administration emergency requests seeking to limit the scope of nationwide injunctions that blocked the plan almost as soon as it was announced in January.

A decision siding with the administration would not only provide a boost to Trump's birthright citizenship proposal but would also help the administration implement other policies via executive actions, many of which have also been blocked nationwide by lower court judges.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/tr...-plea-limit-birthright-citizenship-rcna206794

 

Based on what I'm seeing, it sounds like the Justices were generally opposed to the number of nationwide injunctions that district courts are imposing, but were also looking for a mechanism by which a district court COULD impose nationwide injunctions in certain situations. So that leads me to believe the SCOTUS ruling will ultimately set a checklist that district courts must follow before they can implement a nationwide injunction.

Also, based on the Justices questions, it looks like the Court is almost universally opposed to ending birthright citizenship. Both Conservative and Liberal justices were using Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship as an example of a blatantly unconstitutional EOs.

 

edit: the above was posted while I was writing. Hopefully he’s right and I’m panicking over nothing.

If Trump wins this one, Dems need to put together a court reform plan, and it has to be punitive/humiliating for the current Supremes.

A point I’ve made a few times is that America has taught fascists and their fellow travelers that they can only win, they can’t ever lose, a loss just means “we will try again later.” I’m not happy that vengeance needs to be part of the Dems’ agenda, but it’s a necessary tactical shift. Otherwise, no strategy can work, because too many important, powerful people lack the character to do the right thing.

Bezos and Zuck and Columbia University and Alito and Kavanagh and Roberts and the Sulzbergers need to be shown that there is a downside to supporting or accommodating fascism.

I mean, this should have happened last summer when the Supremes gave Trump immunity. But better late than never. The Supreme Court has become lawless and partisan. That can’t work in our system of democracy. The Supremes need to be metaphorically castrated.

 

Yeah. I meant for the birthrights part of my post to be an aside. I clearly failed to make that clear.

 

A point I've been hammering is that Dems need to make it explicit that if the US votes culture wars, they ain't going to bail them out when the GOP does their usual thing.

 

It’s a shame that all these ideas are coming out now, since I think we have less than 5% chance to keep the Republic after 2026. It will take at least 20 years to have a decent democracy back, if the USA doesn’t split in the next decade or so.

 

Remember when people said it'd be equally dangerous for Biden to flex his immunity for the Republic, and he was doing the right thing by trusting the voters?

Pepperidge farm remembers.

 

He should've gotten to work. But Dems don't hit hanging curves as we know.

 

Conjunction Injunction, what's your function?
Putting the brakes on Donnie's bad impulses
Conjunction Injunction, how's that function?
I got three favorite justices and need 2 more
Conjunction Injunction, what′s their function?
I got lawsuits & public opinion
But they′ll only get you so far

 

The Constitution doesn't matter anymore:

This slippery slope is steep as hell.

Justice Sotomayor called it: if the government can strip birthright citizenship from kids born here, what stops them from stripping gun rights too? Remember this later; Trump and Republicans opened the door.

Watch til the end… pic.twitter.com/7nPvnUK1FN

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) May 16, 2025

If we somehow manage to survive until 2028, we need a completely new OS.

 

It's cute to think that come 2028 this regime will be over.

 

Yeah. I 100% agree. They will either create some unnecessarily ambiguous test that judges have to follow before they can issue a nationwide injunction, or they'll require a class action lawsuit.

 

Trumpists do these things for one of two reasons, maybe both. Probably both.

1. They’ve learned Dems never retaliate.
2. They don’t think about being out if power, either because part of fascism is holding power forever, or because another part of fascism is its lack of thinking about the future in a concrete way.

I understand why he didn’t do it, but it would have been awesome if after the presidential immunity ruling, Biden had arrested the 9 Supremes for 24 hours, just to show that a president could do that and get away with it.

Such a stunt would probably have been too extreme last summer, but next time the Dems get power, it won’t be.

 

IF there's a next time.

 

Good example with the guns tho.

Just say the 2A was for Colonial times vs a foreign enemy. Not for your arsenal in the basement & not for AR15s