“What do you think Donald Trump might do if the Supreme Court doesn’t side with him on birthright citizenship?” — Eduardo

Hi Eduardo,

If the president’s reaction to his tariffs loss earlier this year is any indication, then he will complain about how bad he thinks it is for the country while calling the justices who rule against him cowards, disgraces, traitors and embarrassments to their families.

We will likely find out soon. The court usually issues the term’s final rulings by July. The next batch is set for Thursday morning, but the court doesn’t announce ahead of time which cases or how many are coming.

The justices’ questions and comments at the April hearing in the birthright citizenship case strongly suggested Trump will lose like he did in the tariffs case — and quite possibly by a wider margin than the 6-3 tariffs ruling. In a sign of the citizenship case’s importance to him, Trump attended the hearing, in an apparent first for a sitting president. That means he saw for himself the court’s tepid response to his bid to single-handedly redefine U.S. citizenship in the face of the Constitution, federal law and more than 100 years of precedent.

In a Truth Social post after the hearing, the president continued to complain about his tariffs loss while looking ahead to his likely citizenship loss. He called the tariffs defeat “an unnecessary and expensive slap in the face to the U.S.A., and a giant victory for its opponents.” He continued, “If they rule against our Country on Birthright Citizenship, which they probably will, it will be even worse, if that’s possible.” Striking down his executive order that attempts to end automatic citizenship for babies born in the U.S., he wrote, would “cost America its DIGNITY!”

As we await the citizenship ruling, keep in mind that there are important legal differences between that case and the tariffs case that could make the president even angrier if he loses the citizenship case.

That’s because the tariffs ruling didn’t say Trump can’t impose tariffs at all. It said he used the wrong law to impose them in that case. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent emphasized that point and listed other authorities he thought the president could use, leading the Trump-appointed justice to conclude that the ruling “might not substantially constrain a President’s ability to order tariffs going forward.” Indeed, the administration tried again under a different legal theory, which has prompted further litigation in the lower courts that could make its way back to the high court for another ruling someday.

The citizenship case is another story. If Trump loses that one, then there isn’t a readily apparent backup plan for his administration to try. The problem isn’t that he cited the wrong law in seeking to overturn the long-held understanding of automatic citizenship for babies born in this country. The problem is that he tried to do so with an executive order, without going through Congress or amending the Constitution. That’s not a technical foot fault, it’s an attempt to circumvent the constitutional order. “Blatantly unconstitutional” is what one of the several judges who ruled against him in the lower courts called the move.

Therefore, unlike tariffs, where the administration is actively pressing a backup plan, if Trump loses the birthright citizenship case, then his reaction could be confined to commentary. To put a finer point on it, a recent report in The Washington Times was bluntly headlined “GOP senators have no backup plan if Supreme Court kills Trump’s birthright citizenship order.”

And though observers of all political stripes, including the president himself, expect a loss for the administration, it remains to be seen what the court does. Once again, we find ourselves in another June, creeping toward the end of another Supreme Court term, waiting for the justices to tell the country what the latest majority of them think the Constitution means.

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