Tag: scotus

Chief Justice John Roberts Appears Set to Throw a Wrench in Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Case

Chief Justice John Roberts signaled Wednesday that he might act as a thorn in President Donald Trump’s side.

During oral arguments over Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship, Roberts pushed back against Solicitor General John Sauer, who made the president’s argument.

Specifically, Roberts sounded skeptical that the Fourteenth Amendment, on which birthright citizenship rests, excludes children of illegal immigrants.

“Based on Chinese media reports,” Sauer said in a clip posted to the social media platform X, “there are 500 — 500 — birth-tourism companies in the People’s Republic of China, whose business is to bring people here to give birth and return to that nation.”

“Having said all that,” Roberts replied, “you do agree that that has no impact on the legal analysis before us?”

Sauer did not agree. Instead, he respectfully cited the late Justice Antonin Scalia in arguing that 19th-century Americans did not foresee such things. In other words, the people who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment did not intend it for the children of illegal immigrants.

“Well, it certainly wasn’t a problem in the 19th century,” Roberts responded.

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YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS UP: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Claims Stealing a Wallet in Japan Makes You ‘Locally Owe Allegiance’ in Bizarre Birthright Citizenship Argument

Far-Left Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson left many Americans scratching their heads after offering a bizarre analogy involving… stealing a wallet in Japan.

During oral arguments in the landmark case tied to President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, Jackson attempted to redefine the concept of “allegiance” under the 14th Amendment, using a hypothetical crime committed abroad.

The exchange occurred during a discussion on the 14th Amendment and the definition of being “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States

In the warped world of the radical left, being subject to criminal prosecution is now the same thing as the “allegiance” required for birthright citizenship.

Jackson laid out a convoluted hypothetical involving a trip to Japan.

Her argument? If she steals a wallet in Tokyo and gets arrested, she is suddenly “owing allegiance” to the Japanese sovereign.

“If I steal someone’s wallet in Japan, the Japanese authorities can arrest me and prosecute me. It’s allegiance, meaning can they control you as a matter of law?” Jackson posited. “So there’s this relationship based on even though I’m a temporary traveler… I’m still locally owing allegiance in that sense.”

If the mere ability of a state to prosecute a crime constitutes “allegiance,” then the word has lost all meaning. Allegiance is a bond of loyalty to a nation; it is the commitment to defend its laws and its borders. It is not, as Jackson suggests, a “relationship” formed when a pickpocket gets caught in a Tokyo subway or here in America.

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HUNDREDS of companies provide BIRTH TOURISM for foreign moms who want US citizen babies

During oral arguments before the Supreme Court regarding birthright citizenship, the Trump administration noted the prevalence of “birth tourism,” or the action of an expecting foreign national traveling to the United States with the intention of giving birth to their child on American soil, granting them US citizenship. 

Kayleigh McEnany said on Fox News as the Supreme Court was in session, “There are more than 500 firms in China that facilitate people coming from the Chinese Communist Party to give birth here in the United States. Obama enabled this through loopholes dating back to 2009, and what that could mean is 1 million new voters by 2030. Imagine that, Communist Party voters.”

Over the years, a number of companies across the US and its territories have catered to mothers from countries such as Russia and China. Recent reports have revealed companies operating in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific. 

Analysts have estimated that around 1,000 companies offer birth tourism services to US territories and the mainland. They claim that in China alone, 1.5 million American-born babies are being raised by Chinese parents who have participated in such services. 

Among such companies is the Shanghai-based GlobalBaby8, which advertises “economy” packages for expecting mothers starting at $14,000, and a “Supreme Type” package that starts at $45,000 and includes features such as a luxury villa, shopping and leisure trips, dedicated postpartum nanny service, and a one-month birthday party for the child. 

Another company, China Mifubaby Group, has offices in California and multiple Chinese cities, and caters to Korean and Japanese moms-to-be, advertising “expedited visas,” “American citizenship,” and “short direct flight distance.” 

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Dem Rep. Susie Lee Deletes ‘I’ll Pray They F*** Him to His Face’ Post About Trump

Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV), who describes herself as “America’s #1 Most Bipartisan Member of Congress,” posted and later deleted a profanity-laced response on X to an Associated Press (AP) story about President Donald Trump’s planned attendance at Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship.

Shortly after 1:00 a.m. ET on April 1, Lee replied to an Associated Press post that said Trump would attend Wednesday’s hearing on birthright citizenship, adding that the visit would make him the “first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the nation’s highest court.” In response, Lee wrote: “So fucking fucked up. I’ll pray they fuck him to his face. Sorry, I say fuck a lot these days.” She subsequently deleted the message.

During the 2018 campaign for Nevada’s Third Congressional District, long viewed as a battleground seat, Republican Danny Tarkanian said Lee was closely tied to then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, telling Breitbart News, “Nancy Pelosi helped recruit her to run, she’s raised her millions of dollars, she’s raised twice as much money as the incumbent race for the last election. It will probably be the most expensive congressional race in the country.”

In November 2019, Lee argued Trump had engaged in “clear obstruction” and “abuse of power” over Ukraine, telling a Las Vegas town hall that she supported an impeachment inquiry because she believed there was “ground enough for me to support further fact-finding.” Lee also said she was acting to uphold her oath to the Constitution, arguing that “democracies live or die by the integrity of their elections.”

The next month, Lee announced she would vote to impeach Trump, saying in a statement, “The facts are clear: the President abused the power of his office and blatantly obstructed Congress.” She added, “I took an oath of office to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” At the time, Breitbart News noted that Lee represented one of the congressional districts Trump had carried in 2016 before Democrats flipped it in the 2018 midterms, and that polling in her district suggested her impeachment stance could carry political risk.

Lee has also faced years of ethics scrutiny. In June 2020, she became the subject of an outside ethics complaint after pushing for a change to federal pandemic loan requirements that later benefited her husband Dan Lee’s company, Full House Resorts. Two weeks after the change, the company received $5.6 million in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. Lee said she had no influence over whether the loans were approved, though a spokesperson later acknowledged she had been made aware of the application and its approval.

FACT, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, stated that Lee’s involvement with Full House Resorts created doubt about her impartiality and raised questions about whether she had acted in the public’s best interest. Days later, Joni Ernst proposed legislation requiring lawmakers, their spouses, and congressional employees to disclose PPP loans within 15 days. The proposal followed reporting that Lee was among the lawmakers or spouses of lawmakers connected to PPP benefits.

Lee again drew scrutiny in 2021 over her financial disclosures. Business Insider reported that she had failed to adequately disclose more than 200 stock trades since early 2020, valued between roughly $267,000 and $3.3 million. The trades involved companies including Planet Fitness, Wayfair, Marriott International, Carnival, Williams-Sonoma, and US Foods.

Lee’s office said the trades had been executed by a third-party money manager without her input and that she worked with a financial adviser and the House Ethics Committee to file the transactions once she became aware of them. Breitbart News reported that the late disclosures did not appear to trigger automatic penalties.

Later that year, FACT called for an investigation into Lee, contending that her repeated failures to disclose stock trades on time could amount to violations of the STOCK Act and House ethics rules. FACT Executive Director Kendra Arnold said the disclosure law must be strictly enforced to determine if members of Congress are using their positions for self-enrichment. Breitbart News also included Lee in a 2021 roundup of 11 Democrats alleged to have violated the STOCK Act.

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“No One Knows What Will Happen Now”: Justice Jackson Warns Against Unbridled Free Speech

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is again warning of a growing threat to the nation. In her lone dissent in Chiles v. Salazar, Jackson observed that “to be completely frank, no one knows what will happen now.” The ominous tone stemmed from the fact that free speech had prevailed over state-imposed orthodoxy in a Colorado case.

Eight justices, including her two liberal colleagues, ruled that Colorado could not prevent licensed counselors from “any practice or treatment” that “attempts or purports to change” a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

The win for free speech was catastrophic for Jackson and many on the left. Allowing counselors to discuss the causes and basis for sexual orientation changes, Jackson maintained, would “open a can of worms.” It would be far better for the majority to simply silence such dissenting voices in the name of science.

The dissent in Chiles is only the latest example of the chilling jurisprudence of Justice Jackson, including a pronounced dismissal of free speech values. Consider the holding of her colleagues that Jackson finds so horrific.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the First Amendment “reflects … a judgment that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth … any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an ‘egregious’ assault on both of those commitments.”

What a nightmare.

Instead, Jackson would have declared the ban on anything deemed “conversion therapy” to be “conduct,” not speech.

It is that easy.

You simply impose an orthodoxy and then treat any dissenters as being regulated for their conduct, not their viewpoints.

Justice Elena Kagan could not withhold her frustration with her colleague, noting that “[b]ecause the State has suppressed one side of a debate, while aiding the other, the constitutional issue is straightforward.” She added that Jackson’s view “rests on reimagining—and in that way collapsing—the well-settled distinction between viewpoint-based and other content-based speech restrictions.”

Other countries have embraced Jackson’s permissive approach to speech curtailment.

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Supreme Court Rules 8-1 Against Colorado Law Banning So-Called ‘Conversion Therapy’

The Supreme Court overwhelmingly ruled against a Colorado “conversion therapy” law on Tuesday that bans therapists from helping minors align their “gender identity” with their biological reality. 

The High Court ruled against the law 8-1, saying it likely violates the First Amendment by allowing some viewpoints but not others. Liberal-leaning Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has repeatedly been unable to describe what a woman is, penned the lone dissent. 

Colorado’s law was passed in 2019; more than 20 other states have laws banning “conversion therapy.” While Colorado’s law bans archaic and unethical aversion methods historically associated with conversion therapy, like electroshock therapy, it also more broadly outlaws “providing professional services for the purpose of attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including attempting to change behaviors or expressions of self or to reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same gender.”

Kaley Chiles, a practicing Christian and a licensed counselor who, per court documents, “believes that people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex,” sued the state over the law. She argued the law banned her from using talk therapy with clients who voluntarily come to her to help them align their sexuality or view of their identity with their biological reality, particularly with regard to minors.

Chiles contended Colorado banned consensual conversations based on the viewpoints expressed, in violation of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, and only allows counselors to push minors toward “gender-affirming care,” which includes social transition, sex change drugs, and surgeries — methods which are experimental, steeped in ideology, and pushed by large medical associations. Colorado argued that licensed health professionals in the state are subject to professional discipline for providing treatment to patients that falls “below the accepted standard of care.”

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‘Refuses to enforce its own precedents’: Sotomayor torches SCOTUS for inaction on ‘significant’ buried evidence in slaying of teen pizza delivery driver

Justice Sonia Sotomayor registered a sharp dissent Monday as the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the case of a man sentenced to life in the 1998 slaying of a teenage pizza delivery driver in Louisiana, accusing her colleagues of refusing to “enforce its own precedents.”

Joined only by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor argued that it made little sense for the Supreme Court to effectively free James Skinner’s co-defendant from death row with a decision a decade earlier but to leave Skinner in prison for the rest of his days without parole, when both men were incarcerated for the murder of 16-year-old Eric Walber based on “similar sets of evidence, which centered on the same two eyewitness accounts.”

“Equal justice under law, the phrase engraved on the front of this Court’s building, requires that two codefendants, convicted of the same crime, who raised essentially the same constitutional claims, receive the same answer from the courts,” Sotomayor said. “Here, because the Louisiana courts refused to apply this Court’s Brady precedents, including a decision by this Court involving the very same evidence, Skinner risks spending the rest of his life in prison while [Michael] Wearry walks free,” Sotomayor said. “Because the Court refuses to enforce its own precedents, I respectfully dissent from the denial of certiorari.”

Under Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors must hand over “Brady material,” evidence that is exculpatory or tends to be favorable to the defense. The “withholding of evidence that is material to the determination of either guilt or punishment of a criminal defendant violates the defendant’s constitutional right to due process,” the Supreme Court held in 1963.

The evidence of Brady violations in the case of Michael Wearry was egregious to the point that the Supreme Court ruled his conviction and death sentence had to be set aside in 2016, and a new trial was “required.” Of particular concern was what the state hid from the defense about its star witness, a “jailhouse snitch” named Sam Scott who two years after the slaying claimed a lesser level of responsibility in Walber’s death while pointing to Wearry, Skinner, and three others.

That story not only changed, but was also wrong about basic facts. For instance, the witness claimed Walber was shot to death — but the evidence showed that on that April 1998 day, the Albany High School football player was filling in for someone who didn’t show up for work at Pizza Express and was beaten and run over by his own car, local CBS affiliate WAFB reported. Skinner was allegedly behind the wheel.

Further explaining why the Supreme Court found Scott’s account “dubious,” one of his versions of the crime said Randy Hutchinson — who had “undergone knee surgery to repair a ruptured patellar tendon” nine days earlier — ran after the pizza delivery driver.

Worse yet, Scott had made statements behind bars that he wanted to “‘make sure [Wearry] gets the needle cause he jacked over me,'” an inmate reported. Neither the defense nor the jury were aware of this evidence.

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Supreme Court Set to Hear Landmark Case That Could End Birthright Citizenship Loophole and Cripple Anchor Baby Industry

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments next week in a constitutional showdown over President Donald Trump’s executive order that would end automatic birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to illegal aliens or parents on temporary visas.

The case, Trump v. Barbara, stems directly from Executive Order 14160, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” which Trump signed on his first day back in office.

The order directs all federal agencies, including the State Department, Department of Homeland Security, and Social Security Administration, to stop issuing citizenship documents, such as passports and Social Security numbers, to any child born on American soil unless at least one parent is a U.S. citizen or a green card holder.

Children born to parents who are here illegally, on temporary visas (such as student, work, or tourist visas), or otherwise not subject to full U.S. jurisdiction would no longer qualify for automatic citizenship under the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.

The order explicitly interprets the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” to exclude those whose parents owe primary allegiance to a foreign country.

The Supreme Court granted review in December after multiple lower courts, including federal district judges and appeals courts, issued nationwide injunctions blocking the policy.

All lower courts that have ruled so far have declared the executive order unconstitutional, citing the 1898 Supreme Court precedent in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which held that a child born in the U.S. to Chinese immigrant parents who were legal residents at the time was a citizen.

Oral arguments are set for Tuesday, with a final decision expected by late June or early July.

If the Supreme Court upholds the order, it will represent a major shift in American immigration policy, effectively ending the “anchor baby” incentive that encourages illegal crossings and birth tourism.

Only a handful of countries, mostly in the Americas, grant automatic citizenship based solely on being born there. Most nations in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia determine citizenship by bloodline or require at least one parent to be a citizen or permanent resident.

President Trump has repeatedly pointed out the national security and economic threats posed by the current system, pointing to “birth tourism” operations run out of China and other countries where pregnant women fly to the U.S. specifically to give birth and secure citizenship for their children.

Those children later return home but retain the ability to sponsor family members for U.S. visas or even claim benefits as adults.

Kayleigh McEnany, former White House press secretary and current Fox News contributor, broke down the stakes in a recent segment.

“Next week, the Supreme Court is slated to revisit President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order,” McEnany stated. “It directs all U.S. government agencies to refuse issuing citizenship documents to children born to illegal immigrants or children who do not have at least one parent who is an American or a lawful permanent resident. It’s a law President Trump says is in place all over the world, and he’s right. You’re looking at that map. And if he wins in court, he would effectively cripple the booming birth tourism industry.”

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The Senator Who Saved America From FDR’s Court-Packing Scheme

Americans can be thankful that the cynical effort to corrupt the Court in 1937 was defeated by principled legislators like Montana’s Burton K. Wheeler, a member of FDR’s own party.

“When you don’t like the message,” the old saying goes, “shoot the messenger.”

In the wake of Supreme Court rulings they don’t like, leading Democrats in Washington renewed calls last year to “pack” the Court with more liberal justices. Were that to happen, it would surely set off “tit for tat” fights the next time a Republican sits in the White House.

Democrats control the Senate today and could conceivably muster the votes to fill a vacancy if one occurs in the next two years. But a plan spearheaded by Senator Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) to change the Court’s composition from nine to 13 has no chance to pass both houses of Congress, at least for the moment. Boosting the number of justices for purely ideological advantage is the very definition of court-packing.

Reducing the size of a court can also be seen as a form of court packing (or “unpacking”), depending on the intent. Ten years ago, then-Congressman (now Senator) Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) introduced the ironically named Stop Court Packing Act. It would have reduced the number of judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia from eleven to eight. Clearly meant to thwart President Obama’s nominees to the court, it went nowhere.

When Democrat Franklin Roosevelt attempted court-packing in 1937, a prominent member of his own party helped lead the successful fight to defeat it. That would be none other than Montana Senator Burton K. Wheeler, who put country ahead of party when he declared,

Create now a political court to echo the ideas of the Executive and you have created a weapon. A weapon which, in the hands of another President in times of war or other hysteria, could well be an instrument of destruction. A weapon that can cut down those guarantees of liberty written into your great document by the blood of your forefathers and that can extinguish your right of liberty, of speech, of thought, of action, and of religion. A weapon whose use is only dictated by the conscience of the wielder.

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Wheeler earned his law degree from the University of Michigan before heading for Seattle. He never made it. His train stopped in Butte, where he lost almost everything he had in a poker game. He decided to recoup by building a law practice in Montana.

His political career began in 1910 when, at age 28, he was elected to the Montana legislature. After running unsuccessfully for Governor in 1920, he won a US Senate seat two years later. Wheeler was a staunch ally of Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, but he courageously broke with FDR over the court-packing plot.

Fresh from a landslide reelection to a second term in 1936, Roosevelt was determined to crush the independence of the Supreme Court by turning it into a rubber stamp for the White House. He was so rattled by rulings against his dubious New Deal policies that he publicly smeared the Court as “those nine old men.” Nobody had tampered with the size of the Court since 1869, when Congress established that the highest judicial body would consist of nine justices.

FDR asked lawmakers to approve a plan whereby the President could nominate a new justice every time a sitting one reached the age of 70 and failed to voluntarily retire. Roosevelt already controlled the executive branch and held sway over the legislative branch, with big Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. For Wheeler, a grab for the judicial branch was a bridge too far.

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SCOTUS Rejects Citizen Journalist’s Case Against Officials Who Arrested Her for Asking Police Questions

Priscilla Villarreal built a following in the way modern news often grows now. Not through printing presses or broadcast towers, but through a Facebook page that drew more than 200,000 people into its orbit.

In Laredo, Texas, under the name La Gordiloca, she reported quickly, conversationally, sometimes uncomfortably close to the raw edge of events.

In 2017, she texted a police officer to confirm the identities of two victims, one from a suicide, one from a car accident. She received answers. She published them.

Months later, she was arrested.

The law used against her had been sitting unused for 23 years. It makes it a felony to solicit nonpublic information from a government official “with intent to obtain a benefit.”

In Villarreal’s case, authorities argued that the benefit was popularity, more followers, more attention, more reach.

In other words, doing well at the job became the job’s alleged crime.

A state judge dismissed the charges, finding the statute too vague to stand. That might have sounded like a resolution, the system correcting itself in the end.

Instead, it became the beginning of a second act.

Villarreal filed a civil rights lawsuit against the officials involved in her arrest. The response was immediate and familiar within legal circles: “Qualified immunity.”

The doctrine protects government officials from liability unless there is already a court decision declaring nearly identical conduct unconstitutional.

No case had ever addressed the idea of arresting a journalist for asking a question over text.

A three-judge panel initially sided with Villarreal, stating, “If the First Amendment means anything, it surely means that a citizen journalist has the right to ask a public official a question, without fear of being imprisoned. Yet that is exactly what happened here: Priscilla Villarreal was put in jail for asking a police officer a question. If that is not an obvious violation of the Constitution, it’s hard to imagine what would be.”

The clarity of that statement did not last.

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