Originally published at: The Supreme Court Has Never Heard a Case As Easy As This One
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at Balls and Strikes. On January 20, 2025 — his first day back in the White House — President Donald Trump issued an executive order purporting to override the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear oral…
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How difficult is “All Persons”?
All means all, not some.
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The problem is not the word “All”, it’s the word “Persons” - the pond scum arguing this bullshit simply don’t accept that we are all “Persons”, then count only those who agree with them.
Remember, these are the same assholes who hope to deport something like 100 million of us, because we don’t agree with them! 
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The key phrase the bigoted bast*rds are using to justify this illegal order is:
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof
The legal theory is that undocumented immigrants are not subjected to our jurisdiction. The fact that a bunch of them have been arrested, tried, imprisoned and even executed would seem to me that they are subjected to our jurisdiction. But I’m just a security guard and not a lawyer.
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I would put money on 9-0 at 3:1 odds, or +6 for the over-under.
This is not going to be close.
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Here’s what I don’t understand-why are they even hearing this case? How can an Executive Order undo a Constitutional Amendment? Why would they just not say you want to change citizenship rules, you have to do it by amending the 14th Amendment? It just seems to me that should be the requirement.
Who am I kidding? The GOP operatives masquerading as Supreme Court Justices are going to strip us of our citizenship, aren’t they?
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They could even have shadow-docketed it, like they do so many other things.
“Nope. Next!”
But there are apparently justices that need to hear the arugments of this case before they can decide.
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I appreciate your optimism, but recent history requires skepticism.
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I think it’s +6, with Thomas and Alito dissenting for sure. I’m not sure whether Kavanaugh or Gorsuch is going to swallow the Stoopid pill and join the dissent.
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They tried to shadow docket reject it, but the word processor kept typing out, “Nyet”.
Seriously, it takes 4 votes to accept the appeal. It’s clear to me that two of the votes were Thomas and Alito. I suspect the other two votes were Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and as I noted above I expect one of them to be too corrupt to get to the right answer.
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Thomas is not with trump on this one, nor is Gorsuch. Rapey hasn’t said anything yet. Alito wants to do trump a solid, but he’s going to be under intense internal pressure not to be the only dissenter. If he gets Rapey on board – and Rapey is clearly auditioning to be the next Chief Justice – it’ll be 7-2.
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Wow! That sounds so optimistic. Are you feeling yourself this morning?
Oh. April Fools. You got me
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I would say there’s still a 1-in-3 chance it will be unanimous. Alito and Kavanaugh will be under great internal pressure to get on board in exchange for narrowing the opinion somewhat. And as things stand right now, there are 6 votes against the administration and probably a 7th in Thomas too.
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Lord help us if you are right about Rapey.
My take on Justice McBeerface is that he wants to write that no matter what the 14th means (which works as a sop to trump – see, you might be right!), Congress has codified the common understanding of birthright citizenship and trump can’t overrule that statute with an executive order even if he’s right about the 14th. So I expect him to write that up in concurrence, which is also how constitutional law is supposed to be done. Judges are not supposed to get to constitutional issues if the case can be decided without reaching them.
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Balls and strikes. Don’t ya know.
We’ll see what kind of balls Roberts et al have with trumpy sitting there hoping to intimidate. (Yes, I believe he was trying to intimidate those capons on the court.)
And, of course, why did they even take this case?