Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
In It to Win It
In It to Win It's Journal
In It to Win It's Journal
July 1, 2026
An initial analysis of the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case, and what it means going foward.
The War on Birthright Citizenship Has Just Begun - Jamelle Bouie
An initial analysis of the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case, and what it means going foward.
July 1, 2026
It was a weird and wild ride as the Supreme Court handed down the last decisions of the term that started all the way back in October of 2025. We were so much younger then. After 58 argued cases and a steady, sneaky stream of shadow docket orders, the court issued its final four decisions Tuesday, and one justice was retired and unretired in short, confusing order.
The headline win: The court upheld birthright citizenship, but only by a 5-4 vote on the constitutional question, far closer than expected, and a sign of just how willing four justices are to rewrite the 14th Amendment to suit Donald Trump's wishes. Justice Brett Kavanaugh tried to split the baby, and Dahlia and Mark explain why his approach is more alarming than it first appears.
The news doesn't get better from there. The court ruled against transgender student athletes in cases out of Idaho and West Virginia, with Kavanaugh writing for the majority and Justice Neil Gorsuch offering an unconvincing retreat from his brief moment, post-Bostock, as an LGBTQ rights ally. The court also gutted limits on coordinated spending between political parties and candidates, opening new doors for even more big money in elections.
Plus: the strange saga of Justice Alito's accidentally announced "retirement," what it reveals about the court's obsession with secrecy, and a first look at next term's blockbuster Second Amendment case on assault weapons.
We Narrowly Avoided a Huge Blow to the Constitution (with Mark Joseph Stern) - Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick
It was a weird and wild ride as the Supreme Court handed down the last decisions of the term that started all the way back in October of 2025. We were so much younger then. After 58 argued cases and a steady, sneaky stream of shadow docket orders, the court issued its final four decisions Tuesday, and one justice was retired and unretired in short, confusing order.
The headline win: The court upheld birthright citizenship, but only by a 5-4 vote on the constitutional question, far closer than expected, and a sign of just how willing four justices are to rewrite the 14th Amendment to suit Donald Trump's wishes. Justice Brett Kavanaugh tried to split the baby, and Dahlia and Mark explain why his approach is more alarming than it first appears.
The news doesn't get better from there. The court ruled against transgender student athletes in cases out of Idaho and West Virginia, with Kavanaugh writing for the majority and Justice Neil Gorsuch offering an unconvincing retreat from his brief moment, post-Bostock, as an LGBTQ rights ally. The court also gutted limits on coordinated spending between political parties and candidates, opening new doors for even more big money in elections.
Plus: the strange saga of Justice Alito's accidentally announced "retirement," what it reveals about the court's obsession with secrecy, and a first look at next term's blockbuster Second Amendment case on assault weapons.
July 1, 2026
On his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that would have made the children of undocumented immigrants and temporary visitors non-citizens — rendering them effectively stateless. And while six Supreme Court justices struck down that executive order today, three sided with Trump.
And in headlines, the Supreme Court issues major rulings on trans rights and campaign finance, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. returns to D.C. after four months away, and White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought testifies before a House appropriations subcommittee on federal spending.
Chapters:
00:00: Opening
01:06: Headlines: Trans high school athlete ruling
02:08: Campaign finance ruling
02:48: Tom Kean Jr. returns to Congress
03:37: Russell Vought testified
05:07: Birthright Citizenship
06:14: Interview with Cecillia Wang
10:05: Ad break
11:31: Interview with Cecillia Wang cont.
19:46: Pod Save The UK Promo
20:19: Closing
Trump LOSES AGAIN as SCOTUS Upholds Birthright Citizenship - What A Day
On his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that would have made the children of undocumented immigrants and temporary visitors non-citizens — rendering them effectively stateless. And while six Supreme Court justices struck down that executive order today, three sided with Trump.
And in headlines, the Supreme Court issues major rulings on trans rights and campaign finance, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. returns to D.C. after four months away, and White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought testifies before a House appropriations subcommittee on federal spending.
Chapters:
00:00: Opening
01:06: Headlines: Trans high school athlete ruling
02:08: Campaign finance ruling
02:48: Tom Kean Jr. returns to Congress
03:37: Russell Vought testified
05:07: Birthright Citizenship
06:14: Interview with Cecillia Wang
10:05: Ad break
11:31: Interview with Cecillia Wang cont.
19:46: Pod Save The UK Promo
20:19: Closing
July 1, 2026
Jessiah talks to Professor Leah Litman of @strictscrutinypodcast about how we are still in a five-alarm fire with the Supreme Court even after a string of recent Trump defeats.
🚨 THIS IS A FIVE ALARM FIRE (with Leah Litman) - Pondering Politics
Jessiah talks to Professor Leah Litman of @strictscrutinypodcast about how we are still in a five-alarm fire with the Supreme Court even after a string of recent Trump defeats.
July 1, 2026
In their second emergency episode in two days, Leah, Melissa, and Kate break down the Court’s final day of the term and folks, it’s a doozy. We’ve got America’s preeminent “father of daughters” Coach Brett Kavanaugh’s majority opinion allowing states to exclude trans women and girls from female sports teams, a massive blow to campaign finance law, and the survival of birthright citizenship by the skin of the 14th Amendment’s teeth. To top it all off, we got an Alito retirement fakeout courtesy of NPR.
CHAPTERS
0:00 SCOTUS Issues Final Decisions of the Season
6:25 Birthright Citizenship Decision
30:17 Ad Break
33:32 Trans Women in Sports Decision
47:10 Campaign Finance Decision
53:20 Will Justice Alito Retire?
SCOTUS Doubles Down on Bigotry in Final Decisions of the Term - Strict Scrutiny Podcast
In their second emergency episode in two days, Leah, Melissa, and Kate break down the Court’s final day of the term and folks, it’s a doozy. We’ve got America’s preeminent “father of daughters” Coach Brett Kavanaugh’s majority opinion allowing states to exclude trans women and girls from female sports teams, a massive blow to campaign finance law, and the survival of birthright citizenship by the skin of the 14th Amendment’s teeth. To top it all off, we got an Alito retirement fakeout courtesy of NPR.
CHAPTERS
0:00 SCOTUS Issues Final Decisions of the Season
6:25 Birthright Citizenship Decision
30:17 Ad Break
33:32 Trans Women in Sports Decision
47:10 Campaign Finance Decision
53:20 Will Justice Alito Retire?
July 1, 2026
https://coloradosun.com/2026/06/29/colorado-supreme-court-rejects-democrat-redistricting-plan-initiative-240/
Colorado Supreme Court rejects Democrats' ballot measures asking voters to redraw state's congressional map
The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday threw out a trio of ballot measures that aimed to redraw the state’s congressional map and give Democrats three more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, removing Colorado from the nationwide battle over redistricting and delivering a victory to Republicans.
The initiatives, funded by a group linked to U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, would have temporarily paused the state’s independent redistricting process, which voters added to the state constitution in 2018.
Had voters approved the ballot measures in November, they would have put new maps in place for the elections in 2028 and 2030, making Democrats favored to win seven of Colorado’s eight congressional seats, up from the four they hold today.
Only Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, represented by Republican Lauren Boebert, would have remained a safe GOP seat.
But in two decisions on Monday, the state Supreme Court ruled that the proposal violated the “single subject” requirement in the state constitution, which requires that ballot initiatives have only one central purpose.
The initiatives, funded by a group linked to U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, would have temporarily paused the state’s independent redistricting process, which voters added to the state constitution in 2018.
Had voters approved the ballot measures in November, they would have put new maps in place for the elections in 2028 and 2030, making Democrats favored to win seven of Colorado’s eight congressional seats, up from the four they hold today.
Only Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, represented by Republican Lauren Boebert, would have remained a safe GOP seat.
But in two decisions on Monday, the state Supreme Court ruled that the proposal violated the “single subject” requirement in the state constitution, which requires that ballot initiatives have only one central purpose.
https://coloradosun.com/2026/06/29/colorado-supreme-court-rejects-democrat-redistricting-plan-initiative-240/
June 30, 2026
The Constitution Is On Life Support - Jay Willis @ Balls and Strikes
https://ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/birthright-citizenship-opinion-constitution-on-life-support/On Tuesday morning, the United States Supreme Court came exactly one vote away from holding that the Fourteenth Amendment does not mean what it says—that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” As outlined their dissenting opinions in Trump v. Barbara, four sitting justices—Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—would have instead held that the Constitution has nothing to say about President Donald Trump’s racist crusade to erase the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.
Trump v. Barbara is probably the highest-profile case of the term, in part because of its real-world stakes for millions of people, and in part because it is not every year that the Supreme Court has to answer a question like “Does the Constitution allow the president to ignore more than a century of Supreme Court precedent simply because he doesn’t like brown people?” Because this case received so much media attention, and went against Trump, and came down on the last morning of the term (the drama!), over the next few days, you are going to be soaked by a broken fire hydrant of fawning op-eds informing you that the result in Barbara proves once and for all the Court’s independence from Trump, and that the institution remains resolutely committed to its mission of Doing Law, Not Politics.
The decision does none of these things. Trump v. Barbara is the stupidest Supreme Court case in recent memory: the nation’s nine fanciest lawyers spending God knows how many hours pondering a question about the Fourteenth Amendment’s meaning that a bright sixth-grader could have answered without difficulty in roughly 30 seconds. The fact that a bare majority of the Court eventually arrived at the howlingly obvious, so-simple-it-feels-like-a-trick-question result—and only after months of forcing noncitizen parents wonder if their children would soon be rendered stateless—is not evidence of the justices’ boundless intellect or analytical rigor. It is a damning indictment of an institution that is teetering on the brink of stuffing the entire enterprise of constitutional governance in the garbage.
Trump v. Barbara is probably the highest-profile case of the term, in part because of its real-world stakes for millions of people, and in part because it is not every year that the Supreme Court has to answer a question like “Does the Constitution allow the president to ignore more than a century of Supreme Court precedent simply because he doesn’t like brown people?” Because this case received so much media attention, and went against Trump, and came down on the last morning of the term (the drama!), over the next few days, you are going to be soaked by a broken fire hydrant of fawning op-eds informing you that the result in Barbara proves once and for all the Court’s independence from Trump, and that the institution remains resolutely committed to its mission of Doing Law, Not Politics.
The decision does none of these things. Trump v. Barbara is the stupidest Supreme Court case in recent memory: the nation’s nine fanciest lawyers spending God knows how many hours pondering a question about the Fourteenth Amendment’s meaning that a bright sixth-grader could have answered without difficulty in roughly 30 seconds. The fact that a bare majority of the Court eventually arrived at the howlingly obvious, so-simple-it-feels-like-a-trick-question result—and only after months of forcing noncitizen parents wonder if their children would soon be rendered stateless—is not evidence of the justices’ boundless intellect or analytical rigor. It is a damning indictment of an institution that is teetering on the brink of stuffing the entire enterprise of constitutional governance in the garbage.
The fact that FOUR sitting Supreme Court justices were willing to greenlight Trump's racist attack on the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of birthright citizenship is a national embarrassment. Tear down the institution, it is beyond saving.
— Jay Willis (@jaywillis.net) 2026-06-30T17:08:07.385Z
June 30, 2026
Clarence Thomas is such a fucking disgrace, the most unworthy replacement of Justice Thurgood Marshall 😑
June 30, 2026
Leah Litman - I cannot fucking believe that birthright was 5-4!
I cannot fucking believe that birthright was 5-4! On whether the Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship!
— Leah Litman (@leahlitman.bsky.social) 2026-06-30T14:41:08.700Z
June 30, 2026
🚨 SCOTUS strikes down Trump's attack on birthright citizenship
The fact that this is news is a terrible sign of where we are in politics.
Final #SCOTUS ruling is birthright citizenship.
— Steve Vladeck (@stevevladeck.bsky.social) 2026-06-30T14:35:03.237Z
For a 6-3 majority (Thomas, Alito & Gorsuch, dissenting), Chief Justice Roberts *strikes down* President Trump's executive order purporting to limit which individuals born in the United States would automatically be US citizens; preserves status quo:
Justice Kavanaugh dissented from the majority's constitutional holding, so it's 5-4 on that. But he agreed that the executive order violates the existing federal *statutes,* so the underlying judgment is 6-3.
— Steve Vladeck (@stevevladeck.bsky.social) 2026-06-30T14:37:11.900Z
BREAKING: The Supreme Court holds that the Fourteenth Amendment protects birthright citizenship, blocking Donald Trump's executive order to end it.
— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner.bsky.social) 2026-06-30T14:38:21.103Z
Roberts has the opinion for the court, which is 5-4 on the constitutional question and 6-3 on whether federal law protects birthright citizenship.
The Supreme Court strikes down Trump's attack on birthright citizenship. By a 5–4 vote, it holds that the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to children born of unauthorized and temporary immigrants. Roberts and Barrett join the three liberals. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) 2026-06-30T14:35:46.109Z
BREAKING: Supreme Court rejects Trump effort to limit birthright citizenship. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney.bsky.social) 2026-06-30T14:36:02.395Z
Birthright Citizenship is in. The court strikes down Trump's executive order. It's 6-3, with Roberts, the liberals, Kav and ACB. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissent.
— ElieNYC (@elienyc.bsky.social) 2026-06-30T14:36:00.381Z
it's actually 4 - Kavanaugh says the order doesn't violate the Constitution
— Leah Litman (@leahlitman.bsky.social) 2026-06-30T14:39:48.972Z
BREAKING: The Supreme Court rules 6-3 to strike down Trump’s bid to eliminate birthright citizenship as part of his attack on immigration in all forms.
— Democracy Docket (@democracydocket.com) 2026-06-30T14:36:04.360712081Z
The ruling affirms unanimous lower court decisions that blocked the effort for violating the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause.
Profile Information
Member since: Sun May 27, 2018, 06:53 PMNumber of posts: 12,928