The Josh Lafazan Show on YouTube - Episode 111

Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order Faces DEFEAT — But SCOTUS Targets Nationwide Judicial Blocks

The Josh Lafazan Show on YouTube - Episode 111

Welcome to The Josh Lafazan Show — where we break down the most important political and legal issues shaping America today. In this episode, we’re taking a deep dive into the blockbuster Supreme Court case that could change the way citizenship — and the Constitution — are interpreted in this country.

This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, and the implications couldn’t be bigger. While the justices appeared unconvinced by the Trump administration’s legal arguments, there’s another major development that may give the former president a partial legal victory.

Let’s start with the obvious: Trump’s executive order targeting birthright citizenship is almost certainly unconstitutional.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is crystal clear: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.” That clause has guaranteed automatic citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil — regardless of their parents’ immigration status — for over 150 years.

So how can a president override that with a single executive order?

Spoiler: He can’t.

As New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin put it, Trump can’t simply sign away a constitutional amendment. If he wanted to repeal birthright citizenship, he would need Congress to propose and ratify a new amendment — just like when the country overturned Prohibition. That’s how constitutional law works.

But it wasn’t just constitutional scholars who were skeptical — the justices themselves were unimpressed.

Even Trump’s solicitor general, John Sauer, had a hard time defending the policy. In a striking moment, he admitted to Justice Brett Kavanaugh that the Trump administration has no clear way to enforce the order. That’s a pretty glaring problem when you're asking the highest court in the land to uphold an executive action of this magnitude.

Then came the devastating questions from Justice Elena Kagan, who grilled Trump’s team for admitting they’d ignored lower court rulings — a move she called legally outrageous. The suggestion that the executive branch could simply refuse to follow federal court orders raised serious alarm bells about the rule of law and the separation of powers.

So yes — Trump’s birthright citizenship order looks like it’s going down in flames.

But here’s the twist: while the executive order itself might fail, the Court’s conservative majority seems poised to make a broader ruling that could fundamentally change how federal courts operate — particularly the use of nationwide injunctions.

Currently, federal judges can block federal policies not just for the plaintiffs in a case, but for the entire country. This tool has been used repeatedly to stop Trump-era initiatives in their tracks. And that’s exactly what’s happened here — three federal judges issued nationwide injunctions blocking Trump’s birthright citizenship order.

But conservative justices, especially Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, want to change that. Alito criticized what he called “the occupational disease” of judges believing they can override executive power with a single ruling. He argued that allowing 680 district court judges to issue sweeping orders creates chaos — and oversteps their authority.

Instead, they suggested that broad policy disputes should be handled through class-action lawsuits, which are much more difficult to initiate and take longer to resolve. That shift could make it significantly harder to challenge illegal or unconstitutional federal policies in the future — especially for marginalized communities.

But the Court isn’t unanimous on this. The liberal justices pushed back forcefully, arguing that eliminating