Mid-Air Birth Flies Home How Stupid Birthright Citizenship Is
The extreme manipulation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause must end now if the republic is to survive.The extreme manipulation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause must end now if the republic is to survive.We escaped King George. Why do we bow to King Judge?
What do you call an official who claims the final say over the limits of his own power — and everyone else’s? Someone who can slap a “yes” on anything the elected branches do, or a “no” on anything they attempt, and treat his decree as the last word? That kind of power would have shocked America’s founders. In practice, it can exceed anything King George III exercised over the American colonies. Yet we keep granting it to federal judges by treating their overreach as binding even when Congress has said otherwise.
The founders worried most about the branches that wield force and money. The president commands the sword. Congress holds the purse. Both stand for election. Judges do not. Life tenure exists to protect judges while they decide cases, not to hand them an independent mandate to run the country. Judges possess no army and control no appropriations. Their influence depends on the political branches giving lawful effect to their rulings.
No individual right exists to use the courts as a substitute legislature to remain in the country. Judges cannot confer amnesty by injunction.
Those lawful bounds are not mysterious. Congress established the lower federal courts, and Congress defines their jurisdiction. Even the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction is subject to congressional regulation. Article III, Section 2 makes it subject to “such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”
Justice Clarence Thomas put it plainly in Patchak v. Zinke: “When Congress strips federal courts of jurisdiction, it exercises a valid legislative power no less than when it lays taxes, coins money, declares war, or invokes any other power that the Constitution grants it.”
Immigration offers the clearest test case because it sits at the heart of sovereignty. Over no issue do the political branches hold more constitutional authority than determining which foreigners may enter and remain.
As Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote in Galvan v. Press (1954), policies on entry and removal are “peculiarly concerned with the political conduct of government,” and Congress’ exclusive control over them has become “about as firmly imbedded in the legislative and judicial tissues of our body politic as any aspect of our government.”
Congress, then, holds plenary authority over immigration policy and sweeping authority over federal court jurisdiction — especially the lower courts. Yet now, every loser district judge routinely grants standing to illegal aliens to challenge detention and removal, even when Congress has restricted review.
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Take Temporary Protected Status. The Ninth Circuit ordered the Trump administration to continue TPS for Venezuelans, despite the Supreme Court staying the original injunction. Another district judge issued a similar mandate for Haitians — 16 years after Haitians received that “temporary” status under President Obama. What often goes unsaid: Congress barred judicial review over TPS determinations. Federal law states, without qualification: “No court shall have jurisdiction to review any determination” of DHS “in granting or withdrawing TPS.” Other provisions restrict review of many deportation-related challenges — limits judges often treat as suggestions.
Over the past year, judges who view themselves as latter-day Martin Luther Kings have used legal fog to hear cases Congress barred, even after signals from the Supreme Court. That brings the Trump administration to its decision point.
Administration officials argue — correctly — that courts lack authority to issue certain orders. But judges have neither force nor will beyond what the executive supplies. The executive’s job includes enforcing the jurisdictional limits Congress enacted. A court that lacks jurisdiction cannot establish it by decree.
If this judicial coup runs to its logical end, any district judge becomes the final arbiter of any political question: grant standing to any plaintiff, announce standing rules that override statutes, take jurisdiction Congress withheld, then command the elected branches to act. That is not the Supreme Court’s role, let alone a trial judge’s.
It also outstrips anything King George could do at the founding. He needed Parliament for matters like citizenship. We are now told a judge can dictate immigration policy regardless of the law.
Waiting on the Supreme Court to clean up the mess is a fool’s errand. District judges return with a slightly modified case and restart the process. During Trump’s first term, an immigration lawyer summed up the strategy: “May a thousand litigation flowers bloom.”
The numbers tell the story. In Minnesota alone, federal court sees an average of one habeas petition filed every hour. A judge even ordered a previously deported alien brought back. These petitions do not claim Immigration and Customs Enforcement mistakenly detained U.S. citizens. They aim to use courts to stall enforcement in bulk.
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Finality binds parties in cases; it does not bind the political branches into permanent policy submission. Lincoln drew that distinction in his 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas. Courts may decide individual cases. But if courts try to turn those decisions into national political rules, elected officials should not treat them as binding “political rules” that forbid any measure that does not “concur” with a judicial decision.
Lincoln practiced that view as president. His attorney general, Edward Bates, explained the judiciary’s proper scope: Judicial power is ample for justice “among individual parties,” but “powerless to impose rules of action and of judgment upon the other departments.”
Applied to immigration, the point is simple: No individual right exists to use the courts as a substitute legislature to remain in the country. Judges cannot confer amnesty by injunction. Congress has not passed a legislative amnesty in four decades for a reason: It requires majorities in both houses and the president’s signature, and the politicians who vote for it must face the voters. Yet the current judicial pattern grants amnesty through procedure — without hearings, without votes, and without accountability. Life tenure was designed for the opposite purpose.
No shortcut exists. The political branches must stop treating lawless judicial opinions as if they carry the force of law — especially when those opinions ignore statutes, exceed jurisdiction, and attempt to seize control of core sovereign functions.
Americans didn’t elect a Boston judge president
How much longer will Congress and the executive branch keep bowing to rogue judges?
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston ordered the federal government to continue reimbursing Planned Parenthood under Medicaid. She warned that cutting funding could cause women to “suffer adverse health consequences,” face more unintended pregnancies, and go without treatment for sexually transmitted infections.
The federal judiciary was never intended to wield this kind of unchecked power.
Congress had already voted to end the funding. The law is on the books. It went through the full legislative process and was signed by the president. But Judge Talwani believes her opinion overrides all of that. She not only reinterpreted the law, she ordered the appropriation of funds to a private abortion business.
That crosses a major constitutional line.
Judges don’t have the power of the purse. They can’t spend money. They can’t fund private organizations. Only Congress can do that. Yet that core principle of the separation of powers now seems optional. We are left with a system where unelected judges act as legislators, executives, and arbiters — and no one challenges them.
Too many conservatives hesitate to confront this reality. They’ll cheer when Trump ignores Congress on TikTok but wring their hands when he considers defying an unlawful court ruling. But judicial opinions don’t carry binding force simply because a judge wrote them. Presidents and lawmakers swear the same oath to the Constitution as judges do. They don’t swear loyalty to the judiciary.
If a court orders the government to fund Planned Parenthood in direct defiance of a law passed by Congress, and the executive branch complies, then we no longer have a functioning constitutional system. We have a judiciary with a veto power over the other branches.
This didn’t start with Talwani’s ruling, and it won’t end here. Judges now routinely issue sweeping decisions that affect the entire country, despite a recent Supreme Court ruling that supposedly reined in nationwide injunctions. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito warned that lower courts would continue to defy precedent unless checked. They were right.
The time for deference is over. If Trump continues to honor every lawless edict from every federal judge, he only encourages more of the same. He entrenches the notion that judges make law and everyone else must obey.
RELATED: Democrats created this court monster — now it’s eating them
Imagine Congress passes and Trump signs a reconciliation bill that strips federal courts of jurisdiction over immigration enforcement or Planned Parenthood funding. Under Judge Talwani’s logic, the courts could simply declare the law unconstitutional and order the executive branch to act against it — up to and including spending money Congress never appropriated. That’s not judicial review. That’s a judge acting like a one-woman super-legislature with a gavel and a god complex. Where does it end?
It never ends. Earlier this month, a judge in California ruled that ICE cannot carry out “roving” immigration enforcement in parts of the state’s Central Valley. The ruling lacked any constitutional basis. The judge simply decided too many illegal immigrants were being arrested and declared the enforcement itself a violation of rights — despite no evidence that a single American citizen had been wrongfully detained.
Rather than overturn the decision, the Ninth Circuit grilled government attorneys about whether ICE had an arrest quota. The implication was clear: Immigration enforcement itself is now suspect.
The federal judiciary was never intended to wield this kind of unchecked power. Congress holds the purse strings. The executive enforces the law. Judges interpret the law in individual cases. That’s the constitutional design.
Abraham Lincoln, in his fifth debate with Stephen Douglas in 1858, warned against treating court opinions as absolute. If citizens and lawmakers accept every ruling without question, Lincoln said, they prepare themselves to accept the next decision “without any inquiry.”
That mindset leads to tyranny. Not suddenly, but step by step.
The judiciary was supposed to be the weakest branch. It was designed that way. It has no army. It has no budget. Its legitimacy depends on its restraint. When judges cast that aside, the other branches must respond.
Otherwise, we will find ourselves governed not by the Constitution but by the whims of unelected lawyers with lifetime tenure.
If Trump does not confront the courts, we will be obliged to implement any rule from any judge who shares the same beliefs as Ilhan Omar or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I’d hate to see what the next decision looks like.
The legal move that could stop anti-Trump lawsuits in their tracks
The Trump administration has been inundated with lawsuits. While this is hardly surprising, the sheer volume — well over 100 as of this writing — and the speed at which unfavorable rulings have been issued against the president are remarkable.
The rapid pace of these cases has muddled key legal issues. Notably, many cases involving contracts, back pay, and civil service protections likely do not belong in federal district court at all. These courts have, in turn, successfully backlogged Trump’s agenda by issuing temporary restraining orders — a unilateral command to back down without any opportunity to appeal.
Most of the lawsuits against Trump don’t belong in the district courts at all — yet they are successfully halting his presidential operations.
The Department of Justice should explore creative legal strategies to steer these cases away from federal courts toward the appropriate venues: the Court of Federal Claims and the Merit Systems Protection Board. At the same time, the White House should take steps to ensure that these are fair venues for claims against the administration rather than partisan courts presided over by residual Biden appointees.
A jurisdiction problem
The trouble with these cases is that they probably don’t belong in district court at all. Congress — which has plenary power over the lower courts — has determined that contract disputes belong in the specialty Court of Federal Claims.
Similarly, cases involving adverse personnel actions under civil service laws are designated for the Merit Systems Protection Board. Yet many of these cases end up in the district courts.
The Department of Justice has urged the Supreme Court to force district courts to abide by their jurisdictional limits. However, the Trump administration has another weapon in its arsenal to force the issue sooner: invoking the ancient writ of prohibition.
Revive the writ of prohibition
The writ of prohibition, originating in English common law, was popularly used to resolve jurisdictional court disputes. If a court improperly exercised jurisdiction over an ecclesiastical matter, for instance, the King’s Bench could issue a writ of prohibition to divest it of authority.
In the United States, this writ was initially rare but gained broader applicability with the creation of modern circuit courts of appeal, allowing appellate courts to act in aid of their jurisdiction. According to one appellate court, to invoke the writ, there needs to be a clear instance of a court violating its jurisdiction without any other available way to challenge its actions — precisely the situation Trump faces.
In many of these lawsuits against the administration, the district court simply lacks jurisdiction. For example, if a plaintiff seeks to force USAID to pay out a contract, that case would fall under the jurisdiction of the CFC, not a federal district court. The same principle applies to personnel actions, which should be heard before the MSPB rather than in district courts.
If the district court grants a temporary restraining order in both cases, the government effectively has no way to appeal. Trump, therefore, has a right to seek a writ of prohibition to prevent district courts from exceeding their jurisdiction when given no adequate appellate remedy. That’s exactly why the writ exists.
Replace Biden appointees
This jurisdictional battle highlights another critical issue for Trump: his appointments. If the Department of Justice succeeds in redirecting contract cases to the CFC, they would currently land before a Biden appointee. Trump has the authority to change that immediately, and he should.
The situation at the MSPB is more complex. Trump previously dismissed its chairman, who subsequently sued him. However, a vacancy remains on the board. Trump should move quickly to fill it, ensuring the MSPB is well positioned to handle the influx of personnel claims.
“Government by temporary restraining order” will persist until a higher court intervenes. The writ of prohibition is an underused but powerful legal remedy that the Justice Department should consider pursuing.
Meanwhile, Trump must ensure that if cases are rerouted to the CFC and MSPB, those bodies are not controlled by Democrats when they don’t need to be. The president has the power to make the CFC and MSPB great again — and he should use it.
Strong Voter ID Laws Confirm Not Just Who You Are But Where You Live
Voter ID can and should be used to prove we live where we say we live, as that location determines our 'jurisdiction.'Group of Democrats wants to strip the Supreme Court of appellate jurisdiction over a pro-choice bill and more
A group of House Democrats has joined together in a letter urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to support an effort to block the Supreme Court from scrutinizing the constitutionality of the Women's Health Protection Act, a piece of pro-choice legislation. They want to block the high court from scrutinizing their plans on other issues as well.
"We write to urge your support for restricting the Supreme Court's appellate jurisidiction in the areas of abortion, marriage equality, non-procreative intimacy, and contraception," the liberal lawmakers wrote. "In doing so, we can ensure that, as Congress takes legislative action to codify each of these fundamental rights, a radical, restless, and newly constituted majority on the Court cannot further undermine the protections we would enact."
\u201cCongress is granted the authority to remove the Supreme Court\u2019s jurisdiction under Article III. To protect marriage equality, contraception, and more, we need to limit the power of the far-right Court that\u2019s already overturned Roe v. Wade.\u201d— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) 1657833992
Leftists have been up in arms about about the Supreme Court decision issued last month that enabled states to ban abortions. Liberals were also disturbed by Justice Clarence Thomas's concurrence in which he suggested that the high court should eventually strike down other decisions including the Obergefell v. Hodges gay marriage ruling.
Thomas wrote that "in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell." He also wrote that, "After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated."
In their letter, the left-wing lawmakers claimed that Congress can restrict the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction over legislation.
"The solution is to prevent the Supreme Court from reviewing the constitutionality or legality of the WHPA, which can be done in the next version of the WHPA that we pass this term," the letter says. "Alongside the WHPA, similar provisions must be included in our bills that seek to codify Americans' fundamental rights to marriage equality, non-procreative intimacy, and contraception."
"As we Democrats plan for further legislative action to protect and enshrine abortion rights, as well as the three other fundamental rights called into question in Justice Thomas' concurring opinion in Dobbs, we urge the exercise of Congress' constitutional powers under Article III to include language that removes the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction over such legislation. Congress can instead assign exclusive appellate jurisdiction to another federal court, such as the D.C. Circuit."
The letter is signed by Democratic Reps. Mondaire Jones of New York, Marie Newman of Illinois, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Jamaal Bowman of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Cori Bush of Missouri, Mark Takano of California, and Kaiali'i Kahele of Hawaii.
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