Donald Trump has publicly attacked the Supreme Court after losing his birthright citizenship case, calling the decision “absolutely insane” and a “miscarriage of justice.”
The ruling in Trump v. Barbara was widely expected, given that the Fourteenth Amendment has long been understood to guarantee citizenship to anyone born on American soil.
Despite the clarity of the constitutional text, several justices chose to question established legal interpretation, with Clarence Thomas producing a 90-plus page dissent that critics described as nativist in its reasoning.
Birthright citizenship remains, as it has been since the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the law of the land and cannot be removed through executive order.
Trump announced on Truth Social that he intends to ask the same Supreme Court to reconsider the ruling immediately, a move that legal observers say has virtually no prospect of success.
Legal analyst Steve Vladeck has previously outlined how rare and difficult it is to obtain a Supreme Court rehearing, having addressed the question when similar speculation arose around the Trump immunity case.
The Solicitor General is widely expected to file the rehearing petition regardless, having already spent considerable time before the Court challenging settled constitutional principles with references to Roman law sources.
The Solicitor General recently asked the Court to reconsider its refusal to hear an E. Jean Carroll appeal, making baseless rehearing petitions an increasingly frequent feature of the administration’s legal strategy.
Trump’s claim that there are signs advertising migrant services along the border appears to derive from a separate controversy involving a Texas hospital that offered flat-fee obstetrics services in 2021.
The broader pattern, according to critics, reflects how loyalty to the administration increasingly requires lawyers and officials to pursue hopeless legal motions on demand, with the cost of compliance escalating over time.