This past Friday, MSNBC anchor Symone Sanders Townsend ripped into the Supreme Court’s decision on the birthright citizenship executive order, describing it as “insane” during her debate.
“The whole idea that we are debating the constitutionality of the Fourteenth Amendment is unbelievable to me. Yes, that is really insane. Additionally, I apologize, but someone needs to say, “this is crazy.” Their question is this: They want us to disregard what our senses of sight and hearing have told us. What they want us to do goes against all of our beliefs. “This is absolutely bonkers,” Sanders Townsend said.
On Friday, the Supreme Court gave Trump a huge win in his fight against lower courts’ ability to issue nationwide injunctions, which had previously invalidated several executive orders and measures taken by his administration. Although the decision does not explicitly address the birthright citizenship order at issue, it does permit lower courts to grant injunctions in certain circumstances, as the Justices found 6-3.
Three merged cases involving so-called universal injunctions issued by federal district judges in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington state were accepted by the Supreme Court this year.
According to the Trump administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court, the lower courts had prevented the statewide implementation of Trump’s ban on birthright citizenship, which the president had said was too expansive.
When asked if the Executive Order violates the Citizenship Clause or the Nationality Act, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated for the majority that the applications do not bring that point up, thus they do not address it. “The issue before us is one of remedy: whether, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, federal courts have equitable authority to issue universal injunctions.”
In response, Michael Steele of MSNBC said, “this is the landscape we find ourselves on now.”
The fact is that they’ve been really successful, you know. According to him, Trump and his cronies in the administration have done an excellent job of laying the groundwork for the many storylines they want to see realized.
Another opponent of the decision was Mark Joseph Stern of Slate, who maintained that nobody could clarify the practical implications of Trump’s order.
The doctor does not check the parents’ immigration status or citizenship status when a kid is born in the United States. Just a birth certificate proving they were born in this country would do. Everyone born into this country has the right to vote, including you and me. Stern contended that the present conservative majority is selective in its empathy, and that advocates must make their case to the Supreme Court in a clear and compelling manner to prevent the government from removing this protection and replacing it with a new, chaotic system that depends on parents’ immigration status and punishes individuals whose parents are not in compliance.
