Supreme Shenanigans

This letter to the editor, by Laurie Harmon, appeared in the Hudson Star Observer on April 9, 2026.

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has found the 14th Amendment means babies born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens, with only specific and limited exceptions that apply to the offspring of foreign ambassadors or of foreign occupying soldiers.

But on day one of his second term, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14160, which he created to deny U.S. citizenship to any person born in the U.S. whose parents were not already citizens — regardless of whether they were lawful residents or even legal temporary residents.

This executive order was, of course, immediately challenged in our courts and on April 1, our U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments against this unconstitutional order.

When Trump realized things were not going his way in the courts regarding this executive order, he took unprecedented measures. In a shocking act, he barged into the Supreme Court proceedings, plopped himself down in the front row and attempted to cut an intimidating, ominous, presence in the courtroom, à la mob boss style.

Then, when Trump heard the hard questions from the majority of Supreme Court Justices challenge his executive order, he left the room, found a microphone and a few people to listen to him and pronounced the justices were “stupid people” for thinking they could make decisions independent of him, even though he appointed them. He called out Supreme Court Justices for acting independently — which is in their very job description as outlined by Article III of our U.S. Constitution.

This would be comical if it weren’t so disturbing.

Trump clearly doesn’t care about our constitutional form of democracy. From the start of his second term, he has been attempting to dismantle it via unconstitutional executive orders and he continues to expose himself for who he really is: a cowardly bully who can only find strength in attacking the most vulnerable among us.

Our country, though, is not Trump’s regime. On March 28, about 9 million of us joined together to publicly declare he is not a king and our numbers are growing. Now, we hope, the Supreme Court also will declare it’s had enough.