{"id":818,"date":"2025-03-22T14:12:03","date_gmt":"2025-03-22T14:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/03\/22\/there-are-132-lawsuits-against-trump-pay-attention-to-these-two-vox-com\/"},"modified":"2025-03-22T14:12:03","modified_gmt":"2025-03-22T14:12:03","slug":"there-are-132-lawsuits-against-trump-pay-attention-to-these-two-vox-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/03\/22\/there-are-132-lawsuits-against-trump-pay-attention-to-these-two-vox-com\/","title":{"rendered":"There are 132 lawsuits against Trump. Pay attention to these two. – Vox.com"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There are many lawsuits challenging allegedly illegal actions by the Trump administration \u2014 132 of them<\/a> as of March 21, according to the legal news site Just Security. That\u2019s a lot to keep track of.<\/p>\n

Two issues raised by some of these suits stand out, however, as Trump\u2019s most blatant violations of the Constitution, and therefore as matters to pay particular attention to. <\/p>\n

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SCOTUS, Explained<\/h2>\n

Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/form>\n<\/div>\n

One is the question of whether Trump can simply cancel federal spending that is mandated by an act of Congress, an issue known as \u201cimpoundment.\u201d As future Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in a 1969 Justice Department memo<\/a>, \u201cit is in our view extremely difficult to formulate a constitutional theory to justify a refusal by the President to comply with a congressional directive to spend.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other issue is birthright citizenship. The Constitution is absolutely clear<\/a> that anyone born in the United States and subject to its laws is a citizen, regardless of the immigration status of their parents. As one Reagan-appointed judge said of Trump\u2019s attempt to strip citizenship from some Americans born in this country, \u201cI\u2019ve been on the bench for over four decades, I can\u2019t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The current Supreme Court is not just very far to the right, it is alarmingly partisan<\/a>. The Court\u2019s spent the last several years settling old grievances, overruling decades-old cases that the Republican Party has long found objectionable<\/a>. It even ruled that Trump, the leader of the Republican Party, is allowed to use his official powers to commit crimes<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

So it is reasonable to worry that a majority of the justices will simply do whatever a Republican administration wants them to do.<\/p>\n

This is why the birthright citizenship and impoundment cases are such important bellwethers. No competent lawyer, and certainly no reasonable judge, could conclude that Trump\u2019s actions in either case are lawful. There is no serious debate about what the Constitution says about either issue. If the Court rules in favor of Trump in either case, it\u2019s hard to imagine the justices offering any meaningful pushback to anything Trump wants to do.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, there are early signs that this won\u2019t happen. On the impoundment issue, the Supreme Court recently rejected the Trump administration\u2019s request<\/a> to block a lower court order compelling the administration to make approximately $2 billion in payments to foreign aid organizations. <\/p>\n

The vote was 5-4, and the Court\u2019s decision likely turned on a careless mistake by Trump\u2019s lawyers<\/a>. Still, even a small defeat for Trump indicates that most of the justices aren\u2019t so eager to bail out the leader of the Republican Party that they will jump on the first opportunity to do so.<\/p>\n

Similarly, three cases raising the birthright citizenship issue recently landed on the Court\u2019s shadow docket<\/a> \u2014 emergency motions and similar matters decided, often very rapidly, outside of the Court\u2019s normal schedule. So far, the Court\u2019s only issued brief orders indicating that the justices won\u2019t even start to consider the case until April 4<\/a> at the earliest, more than three weeks after the Trump administration asked them to intervene. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s not a definitive sign that birthright citizenship is safe, but the fact that the Court decided to wait three weeks before looking at lower court orders that protected birthright citizenship suggests that most of the justices don\u2019t take the Trump administration\u2019s arguments very seriously. If they had, they likely would have heard the cases sooner \u2014 in the foreign aid case where four justices sided with Trump, for example, the plaintiffs were given just two days to respond<\/a> to the Justice Department\u2019s arguments.<\/p>\n

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The legal arguments for impoundment are really, really bad<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Trump has claimed sweeping authority to cancel spending appropriated by Congress<\/a>, including dismantling entire agencies like the US Agency for International Development (USAID). He also issued an executive order purporting to strip citizenship<\/a> from many children born to undocumented mothers, or to parents who are temporarily present in the United States. Thus far, the courts have treated both of these actions with skepticism \u2014 as they should because they are clearly unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

Rehnquist\u2019s dismissive response to impoundment speaks for itself. There\u2019s simply nothing in the Constitution that supports the argument that the president can impound funds that Congress commands him to spend. Indeed, the only language in the Constitution that seems to speak to this issue cuts against Trump. Among other things, the Constitution says that the president \u201cshall take care that the laws be faithfully executed<\/a>.\u201d So the president has a duty to faithfully execute any law providing for federal spending.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting, moreover, that at least two of the Court\u2019s Republicans have previously expressed skepticism about impoundment. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a 2013 opinion that \u201ceven the President does not have unilateral authority to refuse to spend<\/a>\u201d funds appropriated by Congress. And Roberts wrote in a 1985 White House memo on impoundment that \u201cno area seems more clearly the province of Congress than the power of the purse<\/a>.\u201d (Though it is worth noting that Roberts also suggested, in an attachment to that memo, that the president may have greater authority over spending relating to foreign policy.)<\/p>\n

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The legal arguments against birthright citizenship are even worse<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The case for birthright citizenship is even more straightforward. The Fourteenth Amendment<\/a> provides that \u201call persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.\u201d Someone is subject to US jurisdiction if the federal government can enforce its laws against that person. Undocumented immigrants and their children are obviously subject to US law, otherwise they could not be arrested or deported.<\/p>\n

As the Supreme Court held in United States v. Wong Kim Ark<\/em><\/a> (1898), the \u201csubject to the jurisdiction\u201d exception to birthright citizenship is narrow and primarily applies to the children of \u201cdiplomatic representatives of a foreign state,\u201d who have diplomatic immunity from US law, as well as children \u201cborn of alien enemies in hostile occupation.\u201d<\/p>\n

At least three courts have issued orders blocking Trump\u2019s attack on birthright citizenship. In a brief asking the Supreme Court to narrow these orders, the Trump administration claims that the word \u201cjurisdiction\u201d actually means \u201callegiance.\u201d So someone is not a citizen if they don\u2019t owe \u201cprimary allegiance to the United States rather than to an \u2018alien power.\u2019<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

But there are two reasons to doubt that even the Trump administration agrees with this argument. One is that Trump\u2019s executive order only purports to strip citizenship from some children born to foreign nationals<\/a> \u2014 a child of two lawful permanent residents, for example, remains a citizen. But if the Fourteenth Amendment doesn\u2019t apply to anyone who owes \u201cprimary allegiance\u201d to an \u201calien power,\u201d that would mean that all children of foreign nationals should be stripped of their citizenship. The Constitution makes no distinctions based on whether a child\u2019s parents are legally present in the United States, nor does it draw lines based on whether those parents are temporary or permanent residents.<\/p>\n

The second reason is that, in its brief to the justices, the administration does not even ask the Court to fully reinstate Trump\u2019s birthright citizenship order. Instead, it asks the Court to narrow the lower courts\u2019 decisions so that they only apply to the plaintiffs in the specific lawsuits challenging that order. If Trump\u2019s lawyers thought they had a winning argument, they almost certainly would have asked the justices to consider the merits of this case.<\/p>\n

The question of whether lower court judges may issue what are known as \u201cnationwide injunctions<\/a>,\u201d orders that suspend a federal policy in its entirety rather than permitting the plaintiffs in an individual case to ignore that policy, has lingered for quite some time. It\u2019s these orders that are blocking Trump\u2019s attack on birthright citizenship. Trump\u2019s Justice Department pushed the Court to limit these nationwide injunctions during his first term, as did the Biden administration<\/a>. But the Court has thus far allowed at least some of these broad orders to stand.<\/p>\n

While there are strong arguments against these nationwide injunctions<\/a>, the Court has resisted efforts to limit them for years. It would be quite aberrant for the justices to suddenly decide to strip lower courts of their power to issue these nationwide orders in the birthright citizenship cases, where Trump\u2019s arguments on the merits are frivolous.<\/p>\n

In any event, the only outward sign the justices have given regarding their views on birthright citizenship suggests that Trump is going to lose. When the Justice Department asks the justices to stay a lower court\u2019s decision, one of the justices typically asks the other party in the case to respond to that request by a short deadline \u2014 sometimes as little as a few days, and rarely more than a week. In this case, however, the Court gave the plaintiffs arguing in favor of birthright citizenship three full weeks to respond<\/a>. <\/p>\n

So long as the Court does nothing, the lower court orders blocking Trump\u2019s attack on birthright citizenship remain in effect. And the justices are unlikely to do anything until they read the plaintiffs\u2019 response. So, by stringing this case out for an additional three weeks, the justices ensured that Trump\u2019s executive order wouldn\u2019t go into effect any time soon.<\/p>\n

All of which suggests that the Supreme Court appears unlikely to back Trump on his two most clear-cut violations of the Constitution. That does not mean that this Court will act as a meaningful check on many of Trump\u2019s other illegal actions. But it does suggest that at least some members of the Court\u2019s Republican majority will occasionally say \u201cno\u201d to the leader of their political party.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are many lawsuits challenging allegedly illegal actions by the Trump administration \u2014 132 of them as of March 21, according to the legal news site Just Security. That\u2019s a lot to keep track of. Two issues raised by some of these suits stand out, however, as Trump\u2019s most blatant violations of the Constitution, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}