Trump Freaks After SCOTUS Trashes His Birthright Citizenship Arguments

Supreme Court justices on both sides of the ideological spectrum dismantled the Trump administration’s birthright citizenship arguments, so the president, in turn, accused the nation’s highest judiciary of being gamed by his political opponents.

“The Radical Left SleazeBags, which has no cards remaining in its illegal bag of tricks, is, in a very coordinated manner, PLAYING THE REF with regard to the United States Supreme Court,” Donald Trump posted on Truth Social around midnight Thursday. “They lost the Election in a landslide, and with it, have totally lost their confidence and reason. They are stone cold CRAZY! I hope the Supreme Court doesn’t fall for the games they play. The people are with us in bigger numbers than ever before. They want to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

Birthright citizenship is baked into the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to everyone born or naturalized on U.S. soil. But Trump attempted to end the constitutionally enshrined right mere hours after he was sworn in by signing an executive order stating that children born to immigrants on temporary visas or who are in the country illegally should not be entitled to birthright status. Trump’s order has since been blocked by multiple judges in multiple court circuits.

The Justice Department’s case was an effort by the administration to curb their lower court rulings, hoping to stymy their losses on birthright cases by winning a ruling that judges can only block orders related specifically to the people or areas involved.

The president was apparently still ruminating on it by Friday morning, when he posted on Truth Social that the “SUPREME COURT IS BEING PLAYED BY THE RADICAL LEFT LOSERS, WHO HAVE NO SUPPORT, THE PUBLIC HATES THEM, AND THEIR ONLY HOPE IS THE INTIMIDATION OF THE COURT, ITSELF. WE CAN’T LET THAT HAPPEN TO OUR COUNTRY!”

But both conservative and liberal justices torched the Trump administration’s arguments for ending the program during a Supreme Court hearing Thursday. Justice Elena Kagan questioned why the White House was blatantly ignoring several lower court rulings that the executive order was unconstitutional. Justice Brett Kavanaugh—a Trump appointee—pressed the Justice Department’s lead lawyer into a corner, forcing U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer to admit that the Trump administration didn’t even know how it would actually enforce its birthright citizenship order.

The solicitor general also bewildered Justice Amy Coney Barrett—another Trump appointee—by arguing that Trump has the “right” to disregard legal opinions that he doesn’t personally agree with.

This story has been updated.

It’s time to add yet another instance of blatant insider trading to the Trump administration’s record.

Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 and $5 million of her share in Trump Media on April 2, the same day the president’s “Liberation Day” tariff war announcement broke the stock market, according to reporting from ProPublica. Trump Media stocks specifically fell 13 percent that day.

While it’s hard to confirm exactly what time Bondi sold the stocks, or what she knew beforehand, this type of behavior is par for the course for a president who has been fairly careless about conflict of interest when it comes to his relentless stock market manipulation. Remember that Trump later posted “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT” on Truth Social, a mere four hours before announcing a 90-day pause on most retaliatory tariffs except for China, an announcement that caused the market to shoot up into the green.

Insider trading is a blatantly illegal practice that involves using special or private information to give yourself or your friends a market advantage. Someone with knowledge of a major economic policy change that would cause the markets to shoot back up would sell their stocks if they knew a huge drop was coming, which is likely exactly what Bondi did in this situation—a classic pump and dump.

Bondi’s Justice Department has yet to comment.

The “big beautiful bill” that Donald Trump demanded from Republicans in Congress is facing opposition from Republicans in the House. 

Since the GOP released a draft budget bill earlier this week with devastating cuts to Medicaid and several other government programs, House Speaker Mike Johnson has had a difficult time selling the bill to the rest of his caucus. The bill is going through the reconciliation process to ensure that it can pass with only a simple majority in both the House and Senate, but even that may be a tall order. 

One House Republican left a party meeting about reconciliation Thursday and was not confident about the bill’s chances. 

“We’re cooked. Speaker let this get out of control,” the representative reportedly texted journalist Jake Sherman. 

Republican Representative Glenn Grothman, a member of the budget committee, criticized the bill Thursday for not being “sincere” and hasn’t disclosed how he will vote when the committee meets tomorrow, saying that he plans to tell the committee chair first. Other Republicans on the committee, including Representatives Ralph Norman and Chip Roy, are reportedly voting “no,” and Representative Andrew Clyde is possibly voting “no” as well. 

The bill also has drawn criticism from Representative Mike Lawler and four other Republicans over its $30,000 cap on state and local tax, or SALT, deductions. Lawler narrowly won reelection in 2024 in a battleground New York district that Vice President Kamala Harris carried, and supports higher deductions due to tax rates in New York.  

Other Republicans, such as Roy and Senator Mike Lee, don’t like the bill’s proposed Medicaid cuts because they feel they don’t go far enough, while 12 GOP representatives wrote a letter to Johnson earlier this month warning that they would “not support a final reconciliation bill that includes any reduction in Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations.” 

None of this includes Democratic lawmakers’ opposition to the bill, which would necessitate near-unanimous support from the GOP. But with so many Republicans publicly expressing their problems, this budget bill may soon be a big beautiful corpse.

The largest organization devoted to survivors of sexual abuse is caving to Donald Trump and dropping support for immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and other marginalized groups, out of fear of losing federal funding. 

The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, or RAINN, has directed staff at its crisis hotline not to direct callers to resources that would violate the White House’s executive orders against diversity, equity, and inclusion, The New York Times reports. 

A list of organizations that staffers are authorized to refer callers to has been stripped of specialized mental health hotlines for gay and transgender people; the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a group that educates students about sex-based discrimination; and books about male-on-male or female-on-female sexual violence. The changes went into effect three months ago, a RAINN spokesperson told the Times.  

RAINN operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline, one of the country’s largest crisis hotlines for survivors of sexual violence, which served 460,000 people in 2024. It also operates a federally funded hotline for military service members. The move to drop support for resources to help immigrants and LGBTQ+ people, groups that are at particular risk of facing sexual violence, has not gone over well with RAINN’s volunteers. 

In February, a group of those volunteers signed a letter urging the organization’s leaders to restore the prohibited resources, and sent another letter to RAINN’s board of directors sharing their concerns. In the second letter, the volunteers wrote, “When trans, queer, Black, brown, Asian and undocumented survivors come to the hotline in crisis, we are not allowed to provide them with the same level of supportive care as other survivors.”

“RAINN may face uncertain risks in the future if we stand by marginalized survivors, but we are certain to lose our values now if we do not stand with them today,” the letter stated. 

RAINN’s actions show how easily one of the largest resources can be intimidated by the Trump administration. Trump in his second term has sought to punish organizations and institutions that defy his executive orders, by withdrawing federal funding, and now RAINN has joined the ranks of Columbia University and others who have complied. In the process, the most marginalized and vulnerable Americans have lost support in combating sexual abuse.

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan railed against the Trump administration’s attack on birthright citizenship during oral arguments before the court on Thursday.

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship prevents “the percolation of novel and difficult legal questions,” while the courts are operating “asymmetrically” by “forcing the government to win everywhere.” Sauer also posited that the courts can only grant relief to individual plaintiffs.

“Let’s just assume you’re dead wrong,” Kagan replied to the solicitor general. “Does every single person that is affected by this E.O. have to bring their own suit? How do we get to the result that there is a single rule of citizenship that is the rule we have historically applied rather than the rule that the E.O. would have us do?… How else are we going to get to the right result here, which is on my assumption that the E.O. is illegal?”

Kagan continued to chide Sauer.

“You’re losing a bunch of cases: This guy over here, this woman over here—they’ll have to be treated as citizens, but nobody else will. Why would you ever take this case to us (on the merits)?” she asked. “I’m suggesting that, in a case where the government is losing constantly, there’s nobody else who is going to appeal, they’re winning—it’s up to (the government) to decide to take this case to us. If I were in your shoes, there’s no way I’d approach the Supreme Court with this case. So you just keep on losing in the lower courts, and what’s supposed to happen to prevent that?”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also provided input.

“Your arguments seem to turn our justice system—in my view, at least—into a ‘catch me if you can’ regime from the standpoint of the executive, where everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people’s rights,” she said. “Let’s assume for the purpose of this that you are wrong about the merits, that the government is not allowed to do this under the Constitution. Yet, it seems to me that your argument is, ‘We get to keep on doing it until everyone who is potentially harmed by it figures out how to file a lawsuit and hire a lawyer.’ I don’t understand how that is remotely consistent with the rule of law.”

Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Florida Farm Bill into law Thursday, officially banning fluoride from public water.

The bill does not call out the enamel-strengthening ingredient by name but effectively ends its inclusion in Florida drinking water by banning “certain additives in a water system.” The law goes into effect July 1.

“Yes, use fluoride for your teeth, that’s fine, but forcing it in the water supply is basically forced medication on people,” DeSantis said while announcing the new law. “They don’t have a choice, you’re taking that away from them.”

In making S.B. 700 law, Florida has become the second state in the nation to ban the naturally occurring mineral. Utah took the lead by banning fluoride in March. Their law just went into effect last week.

But not everyone in Florida wants the fluoride gone. When Miami-Dade County voted to strip fluoride from their drinking water last month, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava overrode it with a veto, citing public interest and the recommendations of medical experts.

“Medical experts also stress that there are serious public health risks of ending fluoridation that go beyond dental care,” Levine Cava said in a statement. “Removing fluoride will have long-term consequences for children’s health, especially for our most vulnerable children who lack access to regular dental and medical care.”

“Water fluoridation is a safe, effective, and efficient way to maintain dental health in our county—and halting it could have long-lasting health consequences, especially for our most vulnerable families,” she added. County commissioners voted to override her veto last week.

Fluoride was first introduced to U.S. water in 1945 as part of a public health decision to reduce cavities and tooth decay in adults and children. It was remarkably successful, dropping the cavity and decay rate in both groups by as much as 25 percent, according to the American Dental Association. In 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed water fluoridation as one of the 10 greatest public health achievements in the twentieth century, for that reason.

Furthermore, fluoride levels in public water are lower than they’ve been in decades. In 2015, the Obama administration dropped the maximum level of fluoride per liter of water to 0.7 milligrams from the previous guidance issued in 1962, which allowed levels to range between 0.7 and 1.2 milligrams per liter in an effort to further waylay instances of dental fluorosis (discoloration and poor mineralization of the tooth.)

“The benefits of fluoride for oral health considerably outweigh the risks,” Rodrigo Lacruz, a professor at New York University’s College of Dentistry, said in 2020 after he published a study on the effects of high fluoride ingestion.  

But research hasn’t stopped conspiracists from doubting the dental aide. Under Donald Trump’s helm, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has sworn to remove fluoride from all public water systems. Last month, Kennedy said he was assembling a task force on the issue, with plans to tell the CDC to end its fluoridation program for good.

Georgia’s LIFE Act is killing at least one family, as it keeps a brain-dead woman on life support against the wishes of her family—all because she was nine weeks pregnant at the time of her death.

Atlanta mother Adriana Smith has been transformed into a human incubator due to Georgia’s heartbeat law, which bans abortions once a heartbeat is detected in the fetus. That can happen as early as six weeks into pregnancy, making it one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the nation. One in three people discover they’re pregnant at the sixth week of pregnancy or later, according to the University of California San Francisco’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.

Smith, a 30-year-old registered nurse for Emory University Hospital, was declared brain-dead more than 90 days ago. In early February, she began experiencing intense headaches and sought treatment at Northside Hospital, where she was given medication and released.

“They gave her some medication, but they didn’t do any tests. No CT scan,” Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, told 11AliveNews. “If they had done that or kept her overnight, they would have caught it. It could have been prevented.”

Smith woke up the following morning gasping for air. Two hospital trips later, CT scans at Emory University Hospital revealed multiple blot clots in her brain.

“They asked me if I would agree to a procedure to relieve the pressure, and I said yes,” Newkirk said. “Then they called me back and said they couldn’t do it.”

Smith had been declared brain-dead, but the state is the one not letting her go—and her family is having to foot the mounting hospital bills.

Smith’s medical team is legally required to keep her alive until they believe the fetus can survive outside of the womb, at approximately 32 weeks’ gestation. Doctors advised Smith’s family that they are not legally allowed to consider alternatives, reported 11Alive. Newkirk said Smith is currently 21 weeks pregnant.

“I think every woman should have the right to make their own decision,” said Newkirk, who described seeing her daughter’s still-breathing body as “torture.”

“And if not, then their partner or their parents.”

Georgia’s LIFE Act bestows legal personhood on unborn fetuses. It was passed in 2019 and went into effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022.

Pro-abortion activists have long warned that fetal personhood, an ideology that calls for providing equal human rights to a fetus (even if it’s just a cluster of cells), will effectively strip pregnant people of their own rights. The legal language behind fetal personhood also effectively categorizes any person receiving an abortion at any stage as a murderer.

“How many different ways can they prove to us that they do not see us as human beings?” asked abortion columnist Jessica Valenti in a video reacting to the news of Smith’s situation. “You are a vessel, you are an incubator, but you are most certainly not a human being.”

“Corpses have more rights than a pregnant person in these states with abortion bans,” Valenti continued. “How many families are they going to devastate?”

The language of “fetal personhood” has already reached the national stage by way of sneakily drafted executive orders. One of dozens of executive orders signed by Donald Trump the evening of his inauguration cemented language at the executive level to delegitimize transgender identities. But within the fold of that order, titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government,” the Trump administration also decided to legally brand a person’s gender identity as beginning “at conception.”

“‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” the order read in part. “‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”

New York University is penalizing student commencement speaker Logan Rozos for condemning Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza by withholding his diploma while the school pursues “disciplinary actions.”

In his remarks Wednesday, Rozos started out by nervously saying, “As I search my heart today in addressing you all, my moral and political commitments guide me to say that the only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine.”

This was met with heavy applause from the crowd, but Rozos wasn’t done.

“I want to say that the genocide currently occurring is supported politically and militarily by the United States, is paid for by our tax dollars, and has been livestreamed to our phones for the past 18 months,” Rozos continued, his voice cracking at times.

“I do not wish only to speak to my own politics today but to speak for all people of conscience who feel the moral injury of this atrocity, and I want to say that I condemn this genocide and complicity in this genocide,” Rozos continued, receiving a warm response from the audience.

NYU’s response to his remarks wasn’t warm at all.

“NYU strongly denounces the choice by a student at the Gallatin School’s graduation today—one of over 20 school graduation ceremonies across our campus—to misuse his role as student speaker to express his personal and one-sided political views,” the university said in a statement Wednesday. “He lied about the speech he was going to deliver and violated the commitment he made to comply with our rules.”

It doesn’t make sense to describe what human rights organizations and the International Criminal Court have described as a genocide and crimes against humanity as “one-sided,” but NYU appears to be adopting the tack of many universities in trying to shut down any protests against Israel’s war on Gaza.

That may be because they are wary of provoking Trump, who has already withdrawn federal funding from other universities, such as Columbia and Harvard, for failing to abide by the White House’s executive orders against supposed antisemitism. But NYU’s decision to withhold Rozos’s diploma is wildly excessive and goes against the right to free speech, as well as academic freedom. He should be lauded for his courage, not punished for his dissent.

Walmart’s Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey warned Thursday that shoppers could begin to feel price increases on consumer goods as soon as next month as a result of Donald Trump’s tariffs.

“We’re wired for ‘Everyday Low Prices,’ but the magnitude of these increases is more than any retailer can absorb,” Rainey told CNBC. “It’s more than any supplier can absorb. And so I’m concerned that the consumer is going to start seeing higher prices. You’ll begin to see that, likely towards the tail end of this month, and then certainly much more in June.”

The CFO explained that Walmart imports a third of its merchandise and food from other countries, with China being the largest supplier, followed by Mexico, Canada, India, and Vietnam. The retail giant is therefore vulnerable to supply chain disruptions sparked by Trump’s sweeping reciprocal tariff policy.

Rainey said that it wouldn’t be easy to adapt to changes in demand sparked by fluctuations in pricing.

“We’ve not seen a period where you’ve had prices go up this high, this quickly. We’re well equipped and experienced in dealing with elasticities or price increases that are going up 2 or 3 percent, but not 30 percent,” Rainey said.

He promised the company would “keep prices as low as we can, for as long as we can.”

Rainey also told CNBC that while Walmart had yet to cancel any orders as a result of the president’s tariffs, they had reduced some on occasion.

CNBC reported that Walmart is not giving guidance for second-quarter operating income due to the wide range that it would have to give, because it uses a cost-to-sales price ratio that would be nearly impossible to predict. The company still held its annual operating income predictions. Rainey did warn that there could be “sharper swings in margins and earnings” as a result of quickly changing prices.

“Keep in mind, just a week ago we were at 145 percent tariffs. Now, we’re very appreciative of the progress the administration has made to get them down to this level, but I would say it’s still too high for consumers. We’d like to see them come down more,” he added.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Monday that U.S. tariffs on China would temporarily decrease from 145 percent to 30 percent for the next 90 days. On the flip side, China said it would lower its import tariff on American products to 10 percent from 125 percent. While the announcement caused investors to breathe a sigh of relief, market experts were wary that the agreement was not an actual deal—and the agreed rate was far lower than the ones Trump had been spouting for weeks.

The Qatari government used Trump to pawn off a hunking chunk of metal that it had been trying to get rid of for five years, according to reporting from Forbes.

The president—easily swayed by gifts—likely just saved this foreign government thousands if not millions of dollars in storage fees and maintenance by accepting the “palace in the sky,” a super-luxury Boeing 747 that the Qatari government has been trying to sell since 2020. Trump intends to use it as a “temporary Air Force One.”

“Qatar, like many modern states, is shifting toward leaner, more versatile aircraft, which offer better economics and more discreet presence for official travel,” said Linus Bauer, a managing director of aviation consulting firm BAA & Partners. Qatar’s decision to give the plane to Trump is “a creative disposal strategy” and “a farewell to a bygone model of geopolitical theater in the skies.”

This plane, of which the Qatari government owns three, has been phased out of air fleets across the world for the last decade due to its unreasonable gas guzzling and the security risk that its ginormous size presents.

“These things are big targets,” said aerospace consultant Richard Aboulafia. “There are a lot more airports you can get into if you have a narrow body, and many more still if you have a traditional business jet.”

The temporary jet will need to be disassembled and searched for bugs before it is reinforced to the level Air Force One is required to be. Former Air Force acquisitions chief Andrew Hunter estimated it could cost tens of millions to do a full security sweep of the plane.

“I can’t imagine any well-trained senior Air Force officer saying this is a good idea,” Aboulafia said.