There are losses you sit with and there are losses you immediately bury under a press release about a different ruling, and the Trump political operation chose the second option Tuesday with a speed that would be impressive if it weren’t so transparent.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Tuesday that Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, with Chief Justice Roberts writing the majority opinion and Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson joining him, a coalition that crossed ideological lines specifically to tell the president no. Roberts wrote: “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.” Even Justice Kavanaugh, who concurred in the judgment on separate grounds, agreed the executive order could not stand. This was Trump’s marquee immigration policy. It died with five Republican-appointed justices voting against him, which is not the bipartisan coalition the campaign promised.
According to the Washington Examiner, published the same morning, Trump’s political team is “prepared to turn on the money spigot for the final months of the 2026 midterm election cycle,” riding a different Supreme Court ruling from the same week that struck down limits on party spending coordination with candidates. The RNC has $125 million on hand. Trump’s own war chest sits near $350 million. The timing of the fundraising announcement, arriving hours after the birthright citizenship defeat, suggests a White House communications strategy built entirely around which ruling gets the press release.
The birthright citizenship order would have denied automatic citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to parents who are undocumented or here temporarily, a reversal of the legal standard set by the Supreme Court in 1898 and unchallenged for 128 years until Trump tried it. The lawsuits started immediately. The block held for 15 months. The Supreme Court just made the block permanent, in a 6-3 vote, with the Chief Justice citing the 14th Amendment’s original purpose of reversing Dred Scott, which is a historical comparison that Trump’s legal team presumably did not want made in the majority opinion of the case they lost.
The same week the administration absorbed this defeat, Trump posted on Truth Social demanding gasoline retailers cut prices “IMMEDIATELY!” and warning of “big problems” if they didn’t, in all caps, with an exclamation point, about an industry that does not report to the Oval Office and was never going to.
When the marquee immigration policy dies 6-3 with five Republican appointees against you, and the response is a fundraising email about a different case, which loss is actually being managed?
Sources
Fox News: Supreme Court rejects Trump’s bid to overturn birthright citizenship, upholds 14th Amendment protections
Washington Examiner: GOP prepared to flood midterm elections with cash following Supreme Court win
Washington Examiner: Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order
