Trump v. Barbera shows just how radical the Roberts Court and the modern conservative legal movement are

When Sarah Ishgur and other apologists for the incredibly reactionary and partisan Roberts Court summarize the latest term, they’re sure to highlight the Supreme Court confirming that Donald Trump cannot unilaterally nullify the plain language and purpose of the 14th Amendment and more than a century of precedent. THIS IS A COURT THAT WILL STAND UP TO TRUMP! Needless to say, you shouldn’t buy it:

• Not only was this a 6-3 decision on the judgment, but Brett Kavanaugh held that Trump’s executive order was preempted by statute, with the corollary that Congress can end birthright citizenship. So there was only a bare majority to hold that the first clause of the 14th Amendment means what it says.
• The Court takes up nearly 200 pages to dispose of a legal question roughly as difficult as “Can Donald Trump unilaterally nominate 100 senators from Wyoming?”
• As Paul noted below, what is likely Alito’s parting gift to the Court is a 39-page transcript of a Fox and Friends monologue about immigration. This is a reminder that the justice that best exemplifies Trump’s ascendance within of the Republican Party was nominated by George W. Bush. A symptom, not a cause.

A couple passages from the legal side of Barbera are worth quoting. First, the concluding substantive paragraphs from Roberts’s opinion for the Court:

I also note the irony of the auteur of Dobbs using “medieval” as a pejorative, which is certainly a novel twist.

From Justice Jackson’s concurrence (which I recommend reading in full):

Fast-forwarding…

Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh essentially believe that Andrew Johnson’s constitutional vision should trump — or should I say Trump — the constitutional amendment that repudiated it.

Fast-forwarding again….

It is good that the real 14th Amendment survived this particular off-the-wall challenge. But the spirit of Roger Taney hangs over this Court nonetheless.

In conclusion, I would like to point out that Kavanaugh’s concurrence contains one of the best illustrations of law office not-even-history I’ve ever seen:

For years, originalists have lectured us that they no longer look to "the Framers' intent," but to the "original public meaning" of the Constitution. Here, Kavanaugh throws all that out the window to lash the citizenship clause in his subjective guess as to what its Framers intended it to do.

[image or embed]— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) 10:51 AM · Jun 30, 2026

“We are bound by history, but history doesn’t count if anything has changed since the relevant text was framed and ratified.” We are all originalists, and we are none of us originalists!