The Daily Fuckup

The Supreme Court’s June 30 decision in Trump v. Barbara rejected the administration’s attempt to strip automatic citizenship from children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present. The court held that those children are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment, leaving the executive order at the center of the case in legal limbo and preserving the long-standing rule of birthright citizenship for now. ([supremecourt.gov](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-365_4hdj.pdf))

The official docket does not support the claim that the administration simply let a July 28 rehearing deadline expire. Instead, the docket shows that a rehearing submission tied to the case was not accepted for filing on July 6, with a corrected PDF note to follow, and that a petition for rehearing was filed on July 8. The case was then distributed again on July 23. That sequence matters: whatever procedural argument the government is trying to make, the record shows an active rehearing effort in early July, not a silent lapse at the end of the month. ([supremecourt.gov](https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/25-573.html))

The June opinion itself was a substantial loss for the administration on the merits. The court’s syllabus says children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are subject to U.S. jurisdiction and are citizens at birth. It also traces that conclusion through the common law, the Civil War era, and the court’s own precedent in Wong Kim Ark. ([supremecourt.gov](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-365_4hdj.pdf))

The ruling does not end the wider legal fight over immigration policy or the separate dispute over how far courts can go with nationwide injunctions. But on the citizenship question itself, the court’s June 30 decision is the controlling one, and the docket shows the administration did not miss a July 28 rehearing deadline in this case because that is not the timeline the Supreme Court record reflects. ([supremecourt.gov](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-365_4hdj.pdf))