WASHINGTON — President Trump continued to unleash his fury at the Supreme Court Monday after his loss in the tariff case, angrily predicting that it may soon deal him another blow in the birthright citizenship case.
“Our incompetent supreme court did a great job for the wrong people, and for that they should be ashamed of themselves (but not the Great Three!),” Trump seethed on Truth Social, referring to Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas, who sided with him in the tariff case.
“The next thing you know they will rule in favor of China and others, who are making an absolute fortune on Birthright Citizenship, by saying the 14th Amendment was NOT written to take care of the ‘babies of slaves,’ which it was as proven by the EXACT TIMING of its construction.”
Now that the Supreme Court has decided the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariff case, the birthright citizenship case — Trump v. Barbara — is perhaps the president’s most high-profile case still pending before the high court.
Trump had signed an executive order on the very first day of his second term to end the practice of birthright citizenship, which guarantees almost everyone born on US soil citizenship.
Critics, like Trump, argue that the policy has made the US a mecca for illegal immigrants to enter the country and have babies so that their children can become Americans.
During Trump’s first term, his team was skittish about challenging birthright citizenship due to precedent under the 1898 United States v. Wong Kim Ark Supreme Court case, which found that children born in the US to foreign parents become American citizens under the 14th Amendment.
The Supreme Court is slated to hear oral arguments in that case on April 1.
“But this supreme court will find a way to come to the wrong conclusion, one that again will make China, and various other Nations, happy and rich,” Trump further vented. “Let our supreme court keep making decisions that are so bad and deleterious to the future of our Nation – I have a job to do.”
Before last Friday, Trump had been chummy towards the high court, having appointed a third of its justices and enjoyed a string of short-term victories on its shadow docket.
But then the high court ruled last Friday that he can’t use IEEPA to impose his sweeping worldwide and country-specific tariffs, dealing a massive blow to his protectionist agenda. IEEPA is a statute that doesn’t include the word tariff and has never been used by a president before Trump to impose them.
Following the setback, Trump turned to other authorities to reimplement his tariff policy. He also had other tariffs in place that weren’t impacted by the decision.
Late last week, he invoked Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to impose a global baseline rate of 15%, up from his prior 10% rate, due to the increased difficulties in issuing customized rates against countries now that his IEEPA use has been shut down.
Those Section 122 tariffs will expire after 150 days unless Congress re-ups them, but Trump’s team is working to use other legal avenues to keep them in place.
“The supreme court (will be using lower case letters for a while based on a complete lack of respect!) of the United States accidentally and unwittingly gave me, as President of the United States, far more powers and strength than I had prior to their ridiculous, dumb, and very internationally divisive ruling,” he added.
“For one thing, I can use Licenses to do absolutely ‘terrible’ things to foreign countries, especially those countries that have been RIPPING US OFF for many decades, but incomprehensibly, according to the ruling, can’t charge them a License fee,” he added.
