President Donald Trump urged the Supreme Court to consider a Fox News host’s perspective as it mulls birthright citizenship, insisting the justice should “use their powers of common sense.”
Trump berated the nation’s highest court in a Truth Social post early Monday, days after he attended arguments on Wednesday before conservative and liberal justices weighing whether the president can restrict the 14th Amendment’s guarantee that nearly anyone born on United States soil is an American citizen.
“It’s too bad that the Supreme Court can’t watch and study the Mark Levin Show tonight on the Birthright Citizenship Scam,” Trump posted around 1 a.m. on Monday. “If they saw it they would never allow that money making HOAX to continue. THEY SHOULD USE THEIR POWERS OF COMMON SENSE FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY.”
Trump said the conservative-majority court should consider Levin’s segment from Life, Liberty & Levin on Sunday, during which he suggested the 14th Amendment did not intend to grant birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants.
Levin said the United States had “forgotten” the purpose of the 14th Amendment, which he insisted was framed to “ensure that Blacks were treated equally as citizens” after the Civil War, when some southern states “refused to comply.”
“I think we’ve turned it into an immigration amendment and worse than that an illegal immigration and illegal alien rights amendment,” Levin said.
Levin also spoke directly to the nine justices during Sunday’s segment.
“You on the court, you get to decide now on a big issue, you should leave it to the people in our elected representatives or the amendment process with a legislative process,” Levin said. “But if you rule on this and constitutionalize this, you will be known as the most activist court in the history of the Supreme Court, and the damage is incalculable.”
Trump also attacked the Supreme Court over other issues in the post.
“They failed miserably on Tariffs, needlessly costing the USA Hundreds of Billions of Dollars in potential rebates for the benefit haters and scammers,” Trump said. “Why??? Don’t do it again! The Country can only withstand so many bad decisions from a Court that just doesn’t seem to care.”
Trump’s call to action comes just days after he spent more than an hour of arguments made by the Republican administration’s top Supreme Court attorney. He left the proceeding shortly after lawyer Cecillia Wang started a presentation in defense of birthright citizenship and later posted on Truth Social about the issue.
“We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” Trump posted on Wednesday. “Actually, about three dozen countries, nearly all of them in the Americas, guarantee citizenship to children born on their territory.”
The case, Trump v. Barbara, hinges upon a 2025 executive order that would deny citizenship to U.S.-born children unless at least one parent is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. Several of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices seemed skeptical of the Trump administration’s arguments on Wednesday, including Neil Gorsuch, who was nominated by Trump during his first term.
Gorsuch noted Wednesday that there’s little discussion about domicile, which refers to someone’s permanent home, a key concept to the argument offered by Solicitor General D. John Sauer. Gorsuch also questioned the sources of Sauer’s arguments.
“The stuff you have about ‘unlawfully present,’ it’s like Roman law sources you’re going to,” Gorsuch said.
An attorney and former clerk for Gorsuch, meanwhile, believes the Supreme Court would rule in favor of Trump regarding birthright citizenship if the Constitution were strictly followed.
Mike Davis, a Trump ally who previously clerked for the conservative judge, told Megyn Kelly last week that the “very simple law, this executive order should be upheld” if the Supreme Court does its job. He also insisted that the 14th Amendment clearly states that a person must be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States or have allegiance to the U.S., in addition to being born in the United States.
Davis said the Supreme Court previously ruled that Native Americans didn’t have birthright citizenship because they weren’t subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S., although Congress later gave Native Americans citizenship through a law in 1924. He also accused the justices of politicizing the high-profile case.
“The issue is that there’s this whole thing called politics and I am concerned, after listening to today’s oral arguments, that these justices didn’t wear their robes today,” Davis told Kelly last week. “They wore their capes today.”
