US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders
597 comments
·June 27, 2025acoustics
cyanmagenta
That was a concern noted by the dissent.
That said, the procedure here is to just use class action lawsuits to get nationwide injunctions. The opinion explicitly notes that it is an option. And today there was a big flurry of people amending their complaints to do just that.
Spivak
I actually have some insider info on this. While it sounds like in theory all you have to do is take your existing lawsuit and add the additional step on certifying your class, that option isn't available for the vast majority of legal challenges. In the history of the ACLU they have had less than ten cases where they could have been converted into a class action. As a real life example the "trans women being moved to men's prisons" case isn't eligible to be made into a class action.
Unfortunately "the set of people who are affected by this law" doesn't define a class.
Spooky23
Since we’re rendering people to El Salvador, there’s no reason some ICE bounty hunter can’t grab you in Massachusetts, and dump you in some Home Depot parking lot in the Carolinas.
stogot
Would this not be by residency? If you are a Oklahoma resident, then do either of those states matter?
grogers
IANAL but isn't any ruling by even a lower court precedent? Like if I sue the government for thing A and a lower court rules in my favor, doesn't that make the next plaintiff's case for sueing the government for thing A much easier? All it seems to do is make everything much less efficient.
nwallin
It's only binding in that district.
So here's how the loophole works. There are 12 courts of appeals. You (ICE) does a bad thing. (renditions a US citizen to an El Salvador concentration camp without due process) You get sued, appeal it to that court of appeals. Let's say it's the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, let's say you lose. You take the L and move on. You never do the bad thing in the 9th circuit again: that decision is binding. Then you do it again in a different circuit. Let's say you do the bad thing in Texas, where the 9th circuit decision was not binding. Let's say you win this time. Now the 5th circuit is your playground.
From now on, every time you arrest someone in the 9th circuit, you put them on an express flight to anywhere in the 5th district within an hour or so of arresting them, before they can get a lawyer to talk to a judge. The precedent that matters is the 5th circuit precedent, where the detainee is right now, not the 9th district (or anywhere else) where they were detained.
Because the Supreme Court has now ruled that this is a lower court problem, they've effectively blocked anyone from ever getting justice ever again.
diogocp
There is no loophole. Defendants in the 5th circuit can appeal to the Supreme Court.
That is one of the main roles of the Supreme Court: resolving circuit splits.
AnimalMuppet
No, the way this works is, now you have a circuit split (the 9th says one thing, the 5th says the opposite). So when the person who lost in the 5th circuit appeals, the Supreme Court takes it, and whatever they decide is binding on both the 5th and 9th circuits (and everyone else).
goodluckchuck
You don’t honestly believe that do you?
null
goodluckchuck
Universal injunctions are superfluous. If the law says the government cannot do X, then who is a judge to command that the government not do X? That’s the legislature’s job. Judges have no authority to create rules saying people shall and shall not do certain things. That’s called passing a law. Similarly, when a party violates an injunction, who is the Judge to enforce his command? If it within a case or controversy between litigants, then that is one thing. When the judge they’re going to proactively punish someone any time the law as against anyone… that’s a purely executive function.
In terms of efficiency, it’s more efficient. Those in favor of universal injunctions are saying there should be hundreds of judges all racing to rule over the government, and to have their opinions control in the abstract as to cases that aren’t even before them.
If the government forces the same issue over and over there are plenty of remedies at hand: 1983 civil penalties against officers, sanctions against attorneys for frivolous arguments, and ultimately the court can hand the legislature everything it needs to impeach and remove a president by ruling that he / she is intentionally failing to enforce the law.
unsnap_biceps
So the purpose of the judiciary branch is to interpret the laws. If a judge rules that the government is violating the law, you want the government to continue to be allowed to violate the law until the legislature convenes a hearing and rules and then what? The judiciary branch was able to rule on punishment for violating the rules, fines and jail time and what not. You would push all that to the legislature as well? Or would the legislature run a hearing and then ask the judiciary branch to pick the punishment and then have the legislature apply it?
I just don't understand how you expect this to work unless the point is to make the judiciary branch entirely pointless (for government level check and balances).
djoldman
I'm not a lawyer.
What's the chance that this could be addressed via class action?
CyanLite2
High likelihood and even Mustice Thomas mentioned it being high.
Even then, it only affects those in the class. E.g., it wouldn’t stop across the board federal enforcement as unconstitutional. It would take take a better part of a decade for that class action to move forward.
DarknessFalls
This administration does not really care about the rule of law. It cares to some degree about public perception. The timing of this ruling is about revoking birthright citizenship, which is a huge Constitutional trampling. There were opportunities four years ago for the SC to step in and they refused to intercede. For example, why didn't they rule in favor of executive authority when President Biden he tried to forgive student loan debt and a Federal Judge in Texas deemed it "unlawful"?
Now we get to see Americans have their legitimacy removed so they can be sent to "Alligator Alcatraz", the new prison being built just for them in the Everglades.
mjburgess
[flagged]
rufus_foreman
>> The majority seems too trusting that the government will appeal its losses
You seem too skeptical that the Supreme Court wouldn't see right through that. That's their job. They do it well and they've done it well in this case.
Let's be honest here, you're upset because your favored opinion lost a round at the Supreme Court.
These things happen.
SrslyJosh
They're complicit. Their power is (hypothetically) intact, and they don't care about potential harm to anyone else.
paulvnickerson
This had to happen. The state of affairs prior to this ruling is that any of 700 district judges could unilaterally block the president from exercising his authority under the constitution pending a review, including matters of national security, based on their own subjective politics. It broke the proper functioning of the government. This restores a proper functioning balance of powers.
vannevar
>The state of affairs prior to this ruling is that any of 700 district judges could unilaterally block the president from exercising his authority under the constitution pending a review, including matters of national security, based on their own subjective politics.
It would be more accurate to say that prior to this ruling, any of 700 district judges could unilaterally block the president from exceeding his authority under the constitution pending a review, including matters of national security, based on their own subjective view of the law. It may differ in other countries, but under the US Constitution, the judicial branch ultimately decides the limits of executive authority, not the President.
If it's truly a matter of national security, the President could always file emergency appeal and it would almost certainly be granted. If it's such a dire and immediate emergency that even those few hours were critical, it's doubtful that any President would feel obligated to obey the injunction anyway.
Far from preventing the proper functioning of government, this was one of the few remaining guardrails maintaining the proper functioning of government under unprecedented circumstances.
billfor
We didn't have universal injunctions for most of the republic. They started around 1916 and even then prior to Nixon, federal law required 3 judge courts for injunctions against govt. actions. So this idea of a single judge halting something (right or wrong) only dates back to 1976.
null
AnimalMuppet
But see, it works both ways. If a judge can unilaterally block the president from exceeding his authority, a judge can equally well block the president from exercising his authority. (There is no magic black letter printing on executive orders that is within his authority and red letter printing for those that exceed it. In fact, this is exactly what these court cases are about.)
So either a judge can block orders that exceed the president's authority and orders that are within it, or the judge can block neither.
vannevar
Sure. And if their judgment is deemed incorrect, it will be overturned on appeal. If the matter is urgent, appeal will be expedited. That's how the system works. You can certainly argue that we need more courts to handle the current workload, but let's directly address that issue rather than curtailing the injunction power to reduce the work.
Bear in mind that this was a case where the multiple courts who considered the issue were unanimous in their opinion that the President was very likely to lose on the merits. Exactly the kind of case where there should be an injunction.
jayd16
But that's fine because the executive can appeal and is in a much better position to do so, and it makes far more sense for the law to be consistent than to only benefit those with the power and time to fight back.
Since when did we start arguing that executive power must be unchecked for fear of it being slightly inconvenienced?
refurb
> any of 700 district judges could unilaterally block the president from exceeding his authority
Not at all. Whether or not the president is exceeding their authority, a judge could block it nationally. It's not like lower court rulings haven't been overturned before.
And the bigger issue is "judge shopping". Want to block something nationally? Just find 1 of 700 judges who will rule the way you want, and file in that district.
vannevar
Forum shopping is indeed a problem, but it's a separate problem calling for its own solution.
null
pyinstallwoes
Your premise is false, exceeding is not the limit, because the limit is at the behest of any of the judges; given a judge exceeds their rational, then they exceed their rational ability to limit the executive branches power
dpe82
And if the judgement is in error, it will be appealed and overruled by a higher court. This is how our system works. We're only seeing it as a "problem" lately because the past few administrations have leaned increasingly heavily on unilateral executive action rather than legislation as the constitution designs, and as we'd been doing successfully for the previous 200 years.
8note
really there's no limit to presidential power. the constitution is non-binding to the president. thus, there is no such thing as an executive breech of power, because they dont need to follow any laws set by congress, and dont even need to leave at the end of a term or when congress removes them.
its all just some text on a poece of paper, and neither congress nor the executive wield the military, so their opinions are irrelevant.
tshaddox
I'm personally much less worried about genuine national security matters getting temporarily blocked than I am about general authoritarianism from the President (any President). Given the impotence of Congress, what checks on executive power are we left with?
Spooky23
Appeal to Theil to talk to the king.
ReptileMan
Prayer mostly. Or actually fixing the congress.
ceejayoz
Trump did once note an additional option.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/us/politics/donald-trump-...
acoustics
In this case, the president does not have the authority under the constitution to purport to invalidate the citizenship of natural-born citizens. It is the executive that broke the proper functioning of the government.
thatfrenchguy
I know words are just words, but trying to re-interpret "subject to the jurisdiction" is such a ridiculous over-reach.
Enjoy the chaos though, because some later administration as a revenge will very likely strip the rights of folks who can't show a naturalization certificate in the same way.
EasyMark
I really don't understand why they didn't turn the case into a 14th amendment case. I guess they wanted to provide more slack and time for their benefactor and political ally (SCOTUS conservatives <--> Trump)
indil
[flagged]
BryantD
There was lots of debate in the Senate during the passage of the 14th Amendment; much of it revolved around birthright citizenship. Both those who wanted the Amendment to exclude people who were born to those temporarily in the US and those who did not acknowledged that, in the form passed, it did not.
Sen. Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania said "I am really desirous to have a legal definition of ‘citizenship of the United States. Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen?" He didn't think that child should be.
Sen. Conness of California said he thought it should cover "the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. I voted for the proposition to declare that the children of all parentage whatever, born in California, should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States, entitled to equal civil rights with other citizens of the United States." And let's remember, as Conness was certainly aware, that many of those Chinese laborers had been imported illegally.
They knew what they were passing, and they knew it included birthright citizenship. Senators who wanted to alter the Amendment to exclude some people failed.
ejstronge
> tourist parents here for a few weeks (for example) aren't subject to the jurisdiction of America. It's a valid argument to make, even if you come down on a different side
This ‘jurisdiction’ claim essentially only applied to people who had a diplomatic status while in the US. A traveler from Canada has no special right against being prosecuted (just like you would not were you to go to, say Britain).
A governmental figure from Canada would have protections - we would need to interact with another sovereign to hold them accountable.
This really has nothing to do with tourism, outside deceitful assertions on television.
Regarding Britain, here’s an example of someone not being subject to the jurisdiction of a country after committing a serious crime: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/harry-dunn-uk-anne-sacoolas...
I hope this clarifies your misunderstanding about the meaning of jurisdiction.
acoustics
The OP said that the courts were preventing the president from exercising his power under the constitution, I replied that he does not have this power under the constitution. That's all.
There's a right way and a wrong way to go about addressing problems. If the president wants to exclude natural-born children of illegal immigrants from citizenship, he can lead an effort to amend the constitution.
EasyMark
It's not valid. When you're in a country you are subject to it's laws, whether it's the USA or Somalia
thephyber
> You can't just let anyone in to give birth and then collect benefits; it's unsustainable.
You don’t seem to think the USA is very exceptional…
teachrdan
> Even in logical terms it makes sense: You can't just let anyone in to give birth and then collect benefits; it's unsustainable.
The 14th Amendment was passed in 1868. Government benefits were basically nonexistent at the time, and besides, with the US population at under 40 million people, we needed more citizens, not fewer. Your "logical" argument is completely anachronistic and irrelevant.
The conservative side of the Supreme Court claims to rule based on what the writers of the Constitution had in mind. This is another example of how they completely ignore what the writers/framers/etc. of the Constitution intended as soon as it interferes with the larger conservative agenda that they serve.
Spooky23
What benefits are you collecting?
The core premise of your racist rant is built around a the massive edge case. Reality is this policy will probably disenfranchise more children of American soldiers born abroad than prevent the alien invasion you’re scared of.
The notion that the sins of the father impact the child is repugnant. The interests of the nation as a whole not allowing a clear violation of the birthright of our fellow citizens have to be addressed in a lower court, as the Supreme Court isn’t even required to hear their case.
You’re allowing yourself to be manipulated into expanding the power of an executive who will never leave and a court whose power and individual avoidance of culpability for bribery and corruption. I suppose you’ll shrug when we decide that the electoral college can choose to follow the “silent majority” as opposed to the voters.
lelandbatey
If you are born and live in the US, how could you possibly not be "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States? Likewise, if you are born in the US to tourist parents who then leave the United States with you, how exactly are you supposed to "collect benefits"? And even if you are "collecting benefits", to be a citizen you'd have to also be paying your taxes, which should entitle you to said benefits.
Where exactly is the unsustainable part of this?
tmountain
This implies that executive orders should be the status quo, which deviates from the design of the American system of government. The courts should not be routinely blocking the president because the president should not be routinely ruling by executive order. This change paves the way for additional power concentrated in the executive branch which is already far too powerful. It is the next step towards an authoritarian regime and no good will come from this ruling.
AnimalMuppet
True. And yet, in that world, what we would have is judges blocking acts of Congress instead.
nradov
Having a strong federal government in the first place deviates from the design of the American system of government. We ought to eviscerate federal government power and devolve most executive power back to the several States. That would make national politics far less contentious.
krapp
We tried that. It was called the Continential Congress, and it was a spectacular failure.
If you want the US to be a loose confederation of 50 sovereign nations, fine. Just hope you live in California, New York or Texas, because every other state is going to devolve into the American equivalent of Eastern Europe.
majormajor
It stretches credibility to claim that the "proper functioning of the government" is broken today requiring a change by something that is ... quite old.
(I think there's a MUCH stronger argument to be made that the proper function of the US government has been broken by Presidents changing thing by executive order because nobody has enough votes to do much in the Senate. It seems like "nobody has the votes to make big changes" should be an indicator that not making big changes is the proper result.)
The status quo would be "issue a ruling, it may or may not get put on hold while the government appeals, eventually it gets to the Supreme Court if necessary." Seemed to be working. Republicans obviously have used this to challenge stuff themselves.
It is unclear why there is a need for giving the government an escape hatch to let them say "sure, we lost this one case, we'll stop enforcing things against these few people, we just won't appeal and will continue to do whatever we want nationally instead."
tshaddox
> It seems like "nobody has the votes to make big changes" should be an indicator that not making big changes is the proper result.
"Nobody has the votes" seems like a weird way to put it, because is implies that everyone wants to make changes, they just can't agree which changes to make. On the contrary, I think the issue is that most congresspeople do not want to make changes. Changes are scary. If your name is associated with a change, and that change becomes unpopular, it might threaten your reelection!
majormajor
> "Nobody has the votes" seems like a weird way to put it, because is implies that everyone wants to make changes, they just can't agree which changes to make. On the contrary, I think the issue is that most congresspeople do not want to make changes. Changes are scary. If your name is associated with a change, and that change becomes unpopular, it might threaten your reelection!
The split in Congress is driven by the split in the people and the people DO want actions taken. Just - different actions for each faction.
If there was only one fairly unified party of voters in the country and a Congressman was refusing to vote to do what the voters wanted them to do, they'd get voted out.
"Not doing anything to be careful" is a bug enabled by the population being split.
pjc50
You're just stating that the President, and his federal government, should be above the rule of law again.
elAhmo
Not a single decision so far was related to national security. The checks and balances exist and they are/were working, and this is an attempt to circumvent that.
NPC82
But don't forget the emergency narrative: "We're being invaded!" and "Governors (bureaucrats, etc.) aren't doing what I want them to do it's now an emergency!". This is not only how our dictatorial executive overreaches, but also how its supporters justify the means in their minds.
hayst4ck
Law and order is frequently said, but few people separate the ideas. Law is justice while order is the absence of open conflict. They are not the same thing.
This is a ruling which chooses order over law. Order without justice is tyranny.
dayofthedaleks
This is functionally equivalent to the Enabling Act of 1933. [0]
macawfish
Only eerily not legislated
roenxi
Can you outline the argument as to how? It seems quite different according to the article. The courts still assert supremacy when it comes to interpreting and vetting the law, and Trump isn't allowed to overrule the legislature's lawmaking powers.
bravesoul2
Also it is not a constitutional change.
827a
[flagged]
drdaeman
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a884_8n59.pdf
Justice Sotomayor dissents:
> Instead, the Government says, it should be able to apply the Citizenship Order (whose legality it does not defend) to everyone except the plaintiffs who filed this lawsuit.
If that’s the case, I’m curious if it could be fixed with a class action, so everyone (or everyone born in the US) is a plaintiff? If that’s legally a thing.
UncleMeat
It could be fixed for the class with a class action. But the courts have also don't their damndest to make that hard too. Requiring a class action means that courts have the additional opportunity to say "nope that's not a valid class" (WalMart v Dukes being a rather famous example).
dh2022
Thank you for this example - is very interesting.
I read the Wikipedia article [0] and I would point out that a class defined by birth place would pass easily Scalia's test for commonality. So it seems that using a class action suit that includes every person born in US of un-documented parents would work. (But who knows what other tests the Supreme Court would come up now...)
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wal-Mart_Stores,_Inc._v._Dukes
treetalker
It may not be surprising to learn that over the past several decades conservative Congresses (through the so-called Class Action Fairness Act and its ilk) and Supreme Court decisions have all but eliminated class actions.
bluecalm
I don't think class action lawsuit is needed here. It's enough for one case to get to SCOTUS and then we will hear their opinion about how 14th amendment should be interpreted. It will be an interesting case I think both 4-5 against and 5-4 in favor of changing the interpretation is possible (with 3-6 and 6-3 less likely outcomes).
matthewowen
The problem (which Sotomayor raises in her dissent, pages 94 and 95 of the PDF) is that it may never reach the supreme court:
> There is a serious question, moreover, whether this Court will ever get the chance to rule on the constitutionality of a policy like the Citizenship Order. Contra, ante, at 6 (opinion of KAVANAUGH, J.) (“[T]he losing parties in the courts of appeals will regularly come to this Court in matters involving major new federal statutes and executive actions”). In the ordinary course, parties who prevail in the lower courts generally cannot seek review from this Court, likely leaving it up to the Government’s discretion whether a petition will be filed here. These cases prove the point: Every court to consider the Citizenship Order’s merits has found that it is unconstitutional in preliminary rulings. Because respondents prevailed on the merits and received universal injunctions, they have no reason to file an appeal. The Government has no incentive to file a petition here either, because the outcome of such an appeal would be preordained. The Government recognizes as much, which is why its emergency applications challenged only the scope of the preliminary injunctions
bluecalm
That's a good point. I was under the impression that the current administration thinks it can win a case about 14th amendment in case both parents are not legally in US with current majority but if they are in fact not appealing it would mean they think they would lose.
Tadpole9181
Wait, doesn't this just... End the constitution as a whole? So long as the current executive wants some unconstitutional thing, they get that unconstitutional thing in every state on their side in perpetuity? The constitution is now... per-litigant?
goodluckchuck
That is terrible jurisprudence, but at least it’s honest. Sotomayor is overtly stating that she’s made up her mind and will not consider the possibility that maybe the 14th Amendment might mean something other than she already thinks. I really do not think someone should be a judge if they can’t be open minded enough to consider the arguments of the parties.
sbohacek
The administration does not need to appeal to the supreme court. I don't think they would appeal it since it is being enforced as desired.
Indeed, this is one of the concerns of the dissenting opinions.
axus
I'm worried about the trend of civil rights going unprotected until after a Supreme Court ruling.
throwaway48476
That's what laws are for. Courts aren't supposed to write them.
EasyMark
Note how they fast-tracked Trump's case so he could do maximum damage before any test of the 14th, and ignored the actual 14th amendment challenges.
BryantD
CASA Inc. in Maryland is in fact refiling its broader lawsuit as a class action case, and has asked for a wider injunction on that basis. So we'll see.
AndrewKemendo
>class action
What you describe is voting
We’re in this mess because people are not interested enough, educated enough, or engaged enough politically to make their position explicit to drive the direction of legislation and executive action.
Citizens of The United States have every tool available to to work together to shape their communities. The reality is the overwhelming majority do not do that, and you can come up with a lot of reasons why, which are structural in many cases, but the fact remains that the majority of people are not involved in the political process at all, have no desire to be an actively reject any opportunity to be.
Assuming that citizens would all of a sudden become involved because it requires a lawsuit, means that there’s the capacity to do so, which does not exist, and all we need is a catalyst.
If the number of possible catalysts that have already happened in the last decade we’re not sufficient then nothing short of a literal terminator Skynet scenario is going to cause people to take action and I’m increasingly doubtful that even that would do it.
Based on my observation from my work position, people are ready to just roll over onto their backs and have robots slice them from the belly up, because it’s easier than actually doing something that would prevent it.
hakunin
I think this often gets confused. Voting a president in doesn't give them a blank mandate to do whatever they want, such as break the law. And knowingly doing things that might not get approved by courts, but veiling it in a "novel legal theory" disguise is still breaking the law. Just because slow and thorough processes need to take place to adjudicate these actions doesn't mean that these actions aren't worth adjudicating. So while voting is important, keeping the voted-in president accountable is important too.
jfengel
According to the Supreme Court, that's exactly what it does. The President simply isn't accountable.
I would not have thought that this is what the Constitution says, but the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what the Constitution says. That's not in the Constitution, either, but they've appropriated that job for two centuries, so we let them get away with it. The "it's not illegal if the President does it" part is new, though they've been leading up to it for decades, so it's not really surprising.
tshaddox
Also, any time anyone actually brings up any details about Presidential elections you'll quick get many people rushing to explain how the people do not in fact directly elect the President and how this is such an incredibly brilliant idea.
cmurf
Except voting this person to the presidency has given just over 1000 convicted criminals a pardon, as promised in advance. It’s an unlimited and irreversible power.
The Court has long considered that the president has a duty to follow the law, but also that the Court can’t compel the president to follow the law. That is a political question. Congress alone can stop a president by impeaching and removing them from office. Not only can’t the Court initiate impeachments, impeachment is unreviewable by the Court.
If there’s a servile Congress, it means voters can elect a law breaker as president. They are going to get a president who breaks the law.
And this is what’s happening. People voted for an abuser, a rapist, a felon, a conspiracy theorist who lies about the outcome of elections, lies that VPOTUS can and should overturn them, and even sent a mob to have that VPOTUS assassinated for refusing to comply with that illegal order. Then boasted he’d pardon all those criminals who were in his service. And despite all of this, people voted for him again.
The people got exactly what they voted for.
tshaddox
It's so silly to blame the American people though, considering the vastly greater resources required to politically organize millions of people to counter the what a handful of people in the executive branch or a couple dozen people in the legislative branch can do with a flick of the wrist.
kevin_thibedeau
I vote but have little influence because I won't join a party and live in a state with closed primaries where the real selection process is carried out. If the remaining 30 closed states cared about civic engagement they'd switch to one of the established open primary models.
shams93
There is also the damage done by the Supreme Court ending the Voting Rights Act, had the act been in place in 2024, Kamalah would have won by a landslide. Millions of minority voters were targeted for disenfranchisement in 2024.
EasyMark
between that one and citizen's united the GOP takeover was assured.
dh2022
Huh? Kamala lost because Trump made in-roads in Latino and Arab voting population in Michigan and Wisconsin. Almost half of Latinos voted for Trump [0] and more Arabs voted for Trump than Kamala [1] and [2] and [3]. Quite the opposite of minority voters were disenfranchised - minorities exercised their right to vote the way they wanted.
[0] https://www.as-coa.org/articles/how-latinos-voted-2024-us-pr... [1] https://www.voanews.com/a/in-historic-shift-american-muslim-... [2] https://www.npr.org/2025/03/03/nx-s1-5249686/arab-muslim-vot... [3] https://thewash.org/2024/11/07/arab-american-voters-shift-to...
root_axis
Voting and engagement is not the issue. Trump would have won even if all eligible voters voted.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec...
The problem is that Dems are just culturally irrelevant. Most people don't care about issues, policy or the economy, they just want to cheer for a team and will justify everything their team does regardless of efficacy or outcome. Trump is the fun underdog team that everyone is talking about, the Dems are the boring party-pooper team we all love to hate. During covid, that boring became a source of needed stability, but after boring stewarded us through the crisis, nobody wanted to be associated with them again.
LorenPechtel
What *meaningful* action would you have people take?
Remember, force is out of the question because it will provide justification for the oppression and make people more willing to accept it.
esseph
Force is never out of the question.
The illusion some want you to believe, is that it is.
underlipton
Brian Thompson's death didn't seem to have any major consequences along those lines. Targeted assassinations seem to be kosher for avoiding crackdowns. If someone were to shoot Peter Thiel in the head, do we REALLY expect to see a sudden descent into oppressive authoritarianism? Or, as with Thompson, do most people say, "Eh, he had it coming," and keep it moving?
ada1981
There is some compelling research from Princeton that for 90%+ of the American voting population, there opinions have zero impact on federal policy. It's all lobby driven money.
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba
And they actively vote against the will of their constituents 35% of the time. http://promarket.org/2017/06/16/study-politicians-vote-will-...
rayiner
That’s not quite an accurate description of the Princeton Study. What the study actually shows, if I’m thinking of the correct one, is that for the most part average americans agree with the elite. The results of the study are driven by the fact that when elites and average americans disagree, the politicians tend to side with the elites.
A prime example of this is the immigration system. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi... (“On the Ballot: An Immigration System Most Americans Never Wanted”). Americans never asked to import tens of millions of people from the third world. When Congress reformed the immigration system in 1965, they promised that wouldn’t happen. But for decades, there’s been a coalition of pro-foreigner liberals and pro-cheap-labor conservatives that have facilitated massive immigration that average americans never asked for.
Trump, ironically, is a reaction to the very thing the Princeton study identified.
scarface_74
What people don’t want to admit is that this is exactly what more then half the people wanted. Because of the way the electoral college works as far as the President, gerrymandering with the House and 2 seats per state in the Senate, more people voting who disagree wouldn’t do any good.
You can’t shape your community to overcome the power of the federal government.
tshaddox
> this is exactly what more then half the people wanted
Donald Trump received only 49.8% of votes in the 2024 United States presidential election.
goodluckchuck
Absolutely, and they discussed this. The “problem” with that is the results of a class action are binding on the class, win or lose. So it’s possible that you’re a member of the # Million person class-action claiming to be exempt from deportation because of X (because you didn’t opt-out) and the class could lose. The Universal Injunctions were a one-way rule. If the government lost any one case, the rule would apply again the government in every other instance. However, if the government won, only that one person would be deported and the opposition would be free to try the same argument again against a different judge.
jaggajasoos33
A lot of our systems work because everyone at least half heartedly sort of goes by the rules. Yes, everyone sort of pretends to obey the rule and hence it works. In reality these systems are extremely fragile and a small committed minority can totally break years of precedent and systems. I think we are at that phase right now from the right side and soonish we will see the same from right left as well.
smeej
Makes me think of the latter part of this quotation:
"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist." - Lysander Spooner (emphasis mine)
Resilient systems have to align incentives such that they work whether or not everybody has enough good will or agreeability to play along.
250 years isn't a bad run. Maybe the next Constitution can iterate and fix the incentive alignment.
markus_zhang
That small minority probably showed up like a hundred years ago, or earlier.
ethbr1
There are few ways to secure rules against every contingency that don't come at a cost in efficiency.
Either you can have watchers all the way down and nothing gets done, or there are limits.
hayst4ck
By accepting the frame that it is federal judges and not the law that is blocking trump, it means that we are analyzing based on a frame of Trump vs Judges rather than Trump vs Law.
If you accept that framing, you accept many of that frames implications without even consciously processing them. This is one of the ways that consent is manufactured.
This ruling is stating that federal judges cannot rule that the law is blocking Trump. By accepting and adopting the frame that it is Trump vs Judges you implicitly accept that the law itself is a weapon rather than a boundary. It argues that the law is subjective, based on the judge ruling, rather than objective. It argues that there is no objective truth. To say it is judges and not the law that stops trump is to say that judges are agents of themselves and not agents of the law.
Agreeing that it is Judges vs Trump is implicitly agreeing that the law is arbitrary based on the judge ruling. Arbitrary government is authoritarian government.
The court’s decision to permit the executive to violate the constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law,” Jackson wrote. “Given the critical role of the judiciary in maintaining the rule of law … it is odd, to say the least, that the court would grant the executive’s wish to be freed from the constraints of law by prohibiting district courts from ordering complete compliance with the constitution.
This feels about as grim as the Citizens United dissent, which has been proven more and more true every day:
A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.
grapesodaaaaa
To some extent, laws are enforced and interpreted subjectively.
The famous quote “give me the man and I will give you the case against him.” Comes to mind. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_the_man_and_I_will_g...
Legal settings (at least in the US), have always favored the wealthy who can find an army of lawyers to find loopholes.
I don’t agree with this, and hopefully what is currently happening raises awareness.
For example, the Patriot act post-9/11 famously gave law enforcement unconstitutional powers within 100 miles of a national border (I could be off, but this is how I remember it). If you really want to split hairs, the US has a LOT of borders if you include international airports.
selfselfgo
[dead]
wdb
Sounds like you now need to start lawsuits in every state?
dragonwriter
> Sounds like you now need to start lawsuits in every state?
Every federal judicial district (that's one per state in smaller states, but more in larger states—California has four.)
buckle8017
Doesn't California have two?
North and South?
dragonwriter
Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Central.
https://www.caed.uscourts.gov/caednew/index.cfm/cmecf-e-fili...
mannyv
They need to do two things:
1. File a suit in every circuit
2. Request an injunction type that's more appropriate
Given the number of babies being born every day it shouldn't be hard to do.
The thing is, the US doesn't issue citizenship papers. So I suppose they need to apply for an SSN and get denied (since the baby is a non-citizen), which will show immediate harm.
It also begs the question: if that baby is illegal can it be deported?
crooked-v
> and get denied
The thing here is that instead of officially denying it, the administration will just "coincidentally" slow-walk everything indefinitely, then illegally exile the baby to Sudan when ICE notices they don't have proof of citizenship.
mannyv
[flagged]
treetalker
One upshot may be that the law will be drastically different in the several circuits and (unless SCOTUS plans to handle everything on the emergency docket — as it did here) it will stay that way so long as SCOTUS lets the issues percolate through them (using them as laboratories, as Justice O'Connor was fond of saying).
bluecalm
My understanding is that the administration's position is that at least one of the parents needs to be a citizen or a legal resident. If that's the case the answer to your question is: yes - together with the parents.
PleasureBot
I suppose the recourse the Supreme Court is offering is that the baby (or more likely the parents) can sue when the citizenship is denied. At which point I'd just expect ICE to arrest and deport them when they show up to court for their lawsuit.
EasyMark
but the amendment doesn't say that, it's a very simple Amendment at its heart.
dontlikeyoueith
And if the parents are on valid non-resident visas? Suddenly the child has no status?
Moreover, there is literally no mechanism to prove that your parents are citizens.
Millions of citizens will be at the whim of whatever racist thug decides to hurt them that day.
Welcome to Fascist America.
Havoc
I guess we’re in for some absolutely wild EOs then
hayst4ck
An excerpt from They Thought They Were Free:
"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. (https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.htm)
It seems like it was ruled that instead of 1000, much more local, people able to protect constitutional rule with the force of the judiciary, we now have 9.
If you analyze only based on power changes, now fewer people have more power.
null
guywithahat
Shouldn’t it say US Supreme Court affirms constitutional powers?
siliconc0w
It's wild that that the supreme court can just avoid ruling on the actual patently illegal and unconstitutional action that this administration is taking and instead solely focus on a procedural mechanism that is being used to stop that illegal action.
Oh but the high court of chancery in england! They didn't have them, so we can't either! Never mind that is 2025, we're a different nation, the federal government has a lot more power, and we have these injunctions for all of Biden's term and they had plenty of opportunity to stop them but said nothing when it was for protecting gun rights or denying women's healthcare.
The majority seems too trusting that the government will appeal its losses.
Strategically, the government could enact a policy affecting a million people, be sued, lose, provide relief to the named plaintiffs, and then not appeal the decision. The upper courts never get the opportunity to make binding precedent, the lower courts do not get to extend relief to non-plaintiffs, and the government gets to enforce its illegal policies on the vast majority of people who did not (likely could not) sue.