Trump pushes boundaries of Supreme Court losses

President Trump is reframing his Supreme Court losses on tariffs, birthright citizenship and the Federal Reserve as victories in disguise.

Exuding confidence, Trump is pressing ahead with new attempts at all three. But his critics are rushing back to court. 

It tees up key tests of the Supreme Court’s recent blockbuster decisions, putting Trump’s agenda on the line once again. 

The president tends to interpret judicial rulings broadly, testing the boundaries of any opening he sees within the justices’ words to leverage his executive power. 

Where they give him an inch, he takes a mile.  

When the court stopped him from immediately firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook because she was owed due process, he quickly noted that it was on a “strictly procedural basis” and vowed to push on. 

On tariffs, Trump claims the ruling invalidating his first round of global levies made his authority “more powerful and more crystal clear.” 

And when the majority struck down his Day 1 executive order restricting birthright citizenship, Trump latched on to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion that found it only violated federal law. 

Now, Trump’s playbook is being put to the test.  

Trump initially claimed Kavanaugh’s opinion meant he could “easily make it up in Congress,” no constitutional amendment needed. He put to the side that a majority of five justices had also found a 14th Amendment violation. 

Republicans have since introduced proposals to legislatively deal with birthright citizenship, but Trump is now acting alone. His new executive orders signed last week would restrict birthright citizenship for the children of foreign government employees, alien enemies and so-called “birth tourists.” 

Will Scharf, Trump’s new White House counsel, asserted the Supreme Court’s opinion had “queued up” the new policy. 

“There’s absolutely nothing in here that runs afoul of any of the Supreme Court’s opinions,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. 

Or as Trump simply put it, “we’re ending it a different way.” 

But to his critics, it’s the same as the Day 1 policy. 

“This order is a desperate and brazen attempt to bypass the Supreme Court’s decision and expand a very narrow set of exceptions to the 14th Amendment,” Aarti Kohli, executive director of the Asian Law Caucus, one of the groups suing Trump, said in a statement. 

Kohli’s group, alongside the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), delivered its opening shot in court on Tuesday. 

Procedurally, their ask is complex. 

They didn’t file a new lawsuit. Instead, they’ve returned to the trial judge who ruled against Trump last year and was ultimately affirmed by the Supreme Court. They want him to declare that Trump can’t cut off citizenship for anyone covered by that existing class-action lawsuit, no matter what new executive orders the president may sign. 

Expect the center of attention to be in Concord, N.H., in U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante’s courtroom. He’s an appointee of former President George W. Bush.

“Birthright citizenship is the law of the land — period. Cruel attacks on this core constitutional right must not be allowed to stand,” SangYeob Kim, director of the ACLU-New Hampshire’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement as the group filed its new motion.

Exclusive for Hill Insider subscribers: Dive deeper on the constitutional questions that will dictate if Trump’s order survives. 

When it comes to the Fed, Trump is similarly undeterred.

Trump initially tried to fire Cook last August over accusations that she illegally claimed properties in Michigan and Georgia as her primary residences to receive more favorable loan terms. 

But the Supreme Court halted that effort in late June, ruling in a 5-4........

© The Hill