The supreme court birthright citizenship arguments at the high court brought sustained skepticism from multiple justices as Solicitor General D. John Sauer defended President Trump's executive order excluding children of some noncitizen parents from automatic citizenship, and ACLU lawyer Cecillia Wang urged a universal rule for births on US soil.
Chief Justice John Roberts pressed Sauer on the breadth of examples the government used, calling them "quirky" and questioning how those narrow cases justify barring citizenship for a large class of people, and Justice Neil Gorsuch asked how the focus on parents would work for unmarried couples or unclear paternity.
Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson warned about practical problems, asking how officials would adjudicate intent to remain or determine domicile at birth, while Justice Elena Kagan noted the government's view departs from long standing precedent including Wong Kim Ark, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked whether the 14th Amendment is frozen in time.
ACLU national legal director Cecillia Wang told the court the amendment creates a universal rule with a closed set of exceptions, and she urged justices not to reengineer the clause for present day policy concerns, as Solicitor General Sauer framed the clause narrowly as tied to former slaves and their children.
President Trump attended oral arguments, becoming the first sitting president known to be in the courtroom during a hearing, and he left before the plaintiffs' rebuttal concluded, while demonstrators and advocacy groups rallied outside in support of birthright citizenship.
Trump Address On Iran And Reactions
Separately, President Trump delivered a prime time address casting the US campaign in Iran as on track to finish "shortly" and vowed further strikes that he said would "bring them back to the Stone Age" over the next two to three weeks, while offering no clear timetable on ground troops or diplomacy.
NBC News reporting cited military and policy experts who called tactical gains evident but questioned the strategic outcome if Iran retains key levers such as control over the Strait of Hormuz, and Mark Cancian of CSIS described Iran's de facto control of the strait as a monumental failure for allied shipping.
Fact checking by NBC News flagged several of the president's claims as false or mostly false, including assertions about regime collapse, statements on inflation and oil imports through the Strait of Hormuz, and a claim that grieving parents universally urged him to "finish the job," which one parent denied.
Lawmakers split along party lines with Republicans praising the address and Democrats criticizing it, and markets reacted with equity futures falling and oil prices jumping, a move noted in the coverage as translating into higher consumer pump prices since the conflict began.
