A legal expert shredded the “fever dream” that seems to be animating President Donald Trump’s latest push to limit birthright citizenship.
Harry Litman, a former federal prosecutor, argued in a new essay on his Substack, “Talking Feds,” that Trump’s new executive order, which creates new exceptions for birthright citizenship and places limits on so-called “birth tourism,” is destined to fail at the Supreme Court. He described the move as another iteration of Trump’s “favorite play” — taking a loss and calling it a win — that revealed the president hasn’t grasped how resoundingly the Supreme Court rejected him the last time he tried this scheme.
“It’s a fever dream,” Litman wrote. “The chief order directly conflicts with Barbara, and it is destined to fail the first time the administration tries to use it. The second is subtler, and its fate will depend on how it’s administered.”
Litman was referring to the case Trump v. Barbara, in which the Supreme Court held that Trump’s previous executive order ending birthright citizenship flew in the face of the 14th Amendment.
Since then, Trump has lashed out at the Supreme Court by accusing it of costing the country “trillions” of dollars because of the ruling. Trump officials like Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff, and Will Scharf, the new White House counsel, have also repeated false claims about the legality of the order, Litman noted.
For instance, he pointed to Miller’s “astonishingly brazen” claim that the 14th Amendment was written to guarantee citizenship to the children of slaves, a claim that the Supreme Court explicitly rejected, Litman noted.
Litman was also taken aback by Scharf’s claim that noting in the new executive order “runs afoul of any of the Supreme Court’s opinions.”
Litman described the claim as “stunning that the Trump administration would claim with a straight face.”
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