Republican Meltdowns over Birthright Citizenship Decision, Ranked in Order of Sanity

The right is incandescent with rage over the Supreme Court’s (closer than expected) rejection of the Trump administration’s bid to rewrite the Constitution via executive order. In a 6-3 ruling (but really 5-4 on constitutional grounds), the Court ruled that children born on American soil to undocumented immigrants or those temporarily present are citizens, despite a Trump executive order to the contrary. For Republicans, controlling every lever of government is simply not enough; if their Supreme Court turns in anything but a 100% win rate, it’s cause for prolific online tantrums. The cope ranges from the jokey to the unhinged. Let’s dive in. Code Yellow: Gently airing our concerns over dinner As hard as it is to believe, the master of social media meltdowns himself, President Donald J. Trump, only rated inclusion in the “cause for least concern” category. “The Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process,” he Truth Socialed. “No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary! Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship. They will have my Complete and Total Support! President DONALD J. TRUMP.” Setting aside the fact that you can’t change the Constitution through legislation (unless you’re listening to Brett Kavanaugh), channeling disappointment with a Court ruling into legislative action is downright democratic! Ditto to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who said that he’s “very disappointed” but that “you could say that’s an originalist, textualist view.” (He also spouted some “birth tourism” stuff, but wait ‘til we get lower in this list, he is comparatively a scholar and a gentleman.) Last is Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX), who admittedly proposed a 10-year immigration moratorium, but at least did it in a tone that’s more racist uncle at Thanksgiving and less Stormfront message board. “We gotta put a bedsheet ― a big bedsheet ― over the Statue of Liberty,” he said. “She’s gotta go to sleep for a while ’cause we’re not letting anybody in anymore.” “Instead of having a torch, maybe it needs a stop sign,” he added, miming the torch arm. Code Orange: He’s a great guy, but he has a Woman Problem The problem with pitching a fun, lighthearted story about the right to sweep your beleaguered readers into the holiday weekend is that it isn’t really all that fun: these chuds can’t feel any emotion without lashing out at whatever woman is closest. Unfortunately, that means that our middle tier features misogyny (relatively) lite. Lots of right-wingers are just boiling over at Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who, in another decision released this week, had the gall to vote against a fairly piddling attempt to restrict vote by mail (after helping deliver Republicans the south for the foreseeable future by killing the Voting Rights Act) and who then committed a graver sin: upholding birthright citizenship. Chief Justice John Roberts joined her in both of those majorities — and also ruled against letting Trump fire a Federal Reserve governor, which Barrett dissented from — yet fascinatingly, mysteriously, bafflingly, his name is going unslandered. “It turns out that Amy Coney Barrett is a DEI hire, little better than Kentanji Jackson,” wrote right-wing commentator Matt Walsh. “Terrible pick. When’s the last time we had a Republican president who didn’t put a liberal justice on the court?” And, as a bonus, someone has made a really horrifying AI woke Barrett, which is making the rounds on MAGA Twitter. Code Red: Bring in the nice men in white coats And here’s about the point where this assignment got distinctly unpleasant and I regretted bringing it up in the first place. The vitriol against pregnant immigrants was universal and violent, by far the longest section of my list. We can’t even have a little bit of fun in Trump’s America. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), perennial weirdo, introduced the “Anchors Away Act.” “Under my bill, under my legislation, we fix that and go back to what our founders intended,” he said in a shaky TikTok-style video. “So in short, what this bill does is if you are a pregnant woman, you can’t come into this country. You got to be a citizen, be here, you have to be a green card holder. So if you’re pregnant and you don’t have one of those statuses, no admittance allowed.” “The State Department should IMMEDIATELY cease to give out visas to pregnant applicants,” tweeted Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO). “Sorry, Birth Tourism cannot continue.” “The idea that you could have a cruise ship filled with foreigners and they just dock at a port for an hour, and someone has a baby, Jesse, the baby’s an American citizen!” an increasingly hysterical Stephen Miller said to Fox News’ Jesse Watters. “They can vote in every election for the rest of their lives! They could be living in a foreign country and be cashing welfare checks for American citizens!” And trumping the rest is Federalist CEO Sean Davis, who retweeted such invective as “Our primary target for removal should no longer be ‘the worst criminals.’ It should be women. All of them. There’s not a moment too soon. If they’re actively giving birth, hurl them into Mexico.” His original work is just as horrifying: He produced a list of remedies to the Supreme Court decision including “deny entry to all pregnant foreigners,” “deny entry to all female foreigners” and “require sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry.” Well. This was fun. Hurl them into Mexico . . . . As $melania famously said, Be Best. Signs seen at the airport: Customs and Border Control Foreign Nationals (Men Only) Enter Here Customs and Border Control Foreign Nationals (Women Only) Enter Here (currently experiencing a 3-hour delay) Thank you for documenting this, Kate. The combination of being trapped in right-wing echo chambers (especially Twitter) and needing to ratchet up rhetoric to compete with other pundits/grifters is fueling an enormous amount of what I can only describe as sadism porn.