President Donald Trump just did something no sitting president has ever done in the entire history of the United States — he walked into the Supreme Court to sit in on oral arguments. Three of the nine justices sitting up there owe their robes to him.
Was this an intimidation tactic or a genuine interest in the case?
The case is Trump v. Barbara, and it challenges Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for babies born to parents who are in the country illegally or on temporary visas. Trump signed the order on his very first day back in office, and Democrats have been shrieking about it nonstop ever since. Four federal courts and two appeals courts blocked it so far. “Dumb Judges and Justices will not a great Country make!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The ACLU — those perpetually outraged hall monitors of American law — trotted out their national legal director Cecillia Wang to argue against the order. “We have the president of the United States trying to radically reinterpret the definition of American citizenship,” Wang huffed, apparently unaware that the president of the United States was sitting right there in the courtroom watching her say it.
But the real comedy gold here is the ACLU’s ad campaign leading up to the hearing. Brace yourselves. They licensed Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” to promote their fight for birthright citizenship. Bruce even authorized it personally.
These people have never listened past the chorus of that song in their entire lives.
“Born in the U.S.A.” is about a Vietnam veteran who gets chewed up and spit out by his own country. The guy comes home from war, can’t find a job, gets ignored by the VA, and ends up with nothing. It’s one of the most bitter, angry protest songs ever recorded. Ronald Reagan’s campaign tried to use it in 1984 and got embarrassed when someone actually read the lyrics. Forty-two years later, the ACLU made the exact same mistake — except they paid for it and put it on a billboard outside Target Center in Minneapolis.
They couldn’t even be bothered to read the lyrics to a Springsteen song. And these are the people we’re trusting to interpret the 14th Amendment? Please.
Trump’s Solicitor General D. John Sauer laid it out plainly: the 14th Amendment was written at the end of the Civil War to protect the children of freed slaves. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. (But apparently the ACLU thinks it also covers birth tourists from Beijing. Sure.)
Sauer compared the potential for correction here to Brown v. Board of Education — the kind of historic reversal that fixes a century-old misreading. He told the Court that “birthright citizenship for children of illegal and transient aliens degrades the meaning and value of American citizenship.”
Trump himself has been making this point for months. “This was meant for the slaves… for the children of slaves,” he said. “I’m in favor of that. But it wasn’t meant for the entire world to occupy the United States.”
He’s right. We’re the only country on the planet that hands out citizenship like Halloween candy to anyone who happens to be physically present when their mother goes into labor. Chinese billionaires have been running birth tourism operations for years — Trump cited cases where single individuals claimed 59 and 75 “children” as American citizens. That’s not immigration. That’s a scam.
The ACLU dragged out over 300,000 petition signatures and 42 amicus briefs to tell the Court how wrong Trump is. They assembled a rally outside featuring Senator Alex Padilla and some “activist and content creator” named Carlos Eduardo Espina. (When “content creator” is your credential in a Supreme Court case, your side might be in trouble.)
Meanwhile, Trump just… showed up. He didn’t need a rally, a petition drive, or a misunderstood Springsteen anthem. He walked into the building, sat down, and watched the arguments unfold in a courtroom where he appointed a third of the bench. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed it like it was any other Wednesday on the president’s calendar.
The Supreme Court Historical Society confirmed that no sitting president has ever attended oral arguments before. Not Lincoln. Not FDR. Not either Roosevelt, for that matter. Richard Nixon argued a case there once, but only during his awkward gap years between being vice president and president. William Howard Taft served as Chief Justice — but only after he left the presidency.
Trump didn’t wait. Trump doesn’t do “after.”
Even the Left’s legal scholars know they’re in trouble on this one. Last year, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the administration’s position “an impossible task.” Spoiler alert, Sonia: you’re about to get outvoted 6-3. A ruling is expected by early summer, and if Trump’s order survives, it will affect roughly 255,000 babies born each year and reshape American immigration policy for generations.
The ACLU can keep playing their misunderstood rock anthems and collecting signatures from people who think the Constitution is a Yelp review they can edit. Trump walked into the Supreme Court, sat down in a chair no president has ever occupied, and stared directly at the justices he put there. Somewhere in that courtroom, Bruce Springsteen’s royalty check was crying harder than Bob Menendez at sentencing.
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