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It wasn’t just an ordinary day at the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, as Donald Trump became the first sitting President in U.S. history to attend a session of the Court. Trump was there to watch oral arguments in a case about birthright citizenship, which he vehemently opposes. He sat in the front row of the gallery, with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi- on what would turn out to be her last full day holding the job- by his side; he glared at the Supreme Court justices occasionally, but eventually left before arguments finished, a move that many observers saw as a sign that even Trump sees the case as unwinnable. For added courtroom drama, longtime Trump critic Robert DeNiro was also sitting in the gallery observing the argument; the actor accused Trump afterward of trying to put his thumb on the scale of justice.
WOR White House correspondent Jon Decker was also at the Supreme Court to hear the arguments; he appeared on 710 WOR’s Curtis Sliwa and Larry Mendte in the Morning program to talk about one of the more interesting days in the judicial body’s recent history.
Decker set the scene at the Supreme Court yesterday for Curtis and Larry as Trump watched on from the gallery: “He showed a poker face throughout, he didn’t shake his head or anything like that, but the President also, as you know, sometimes likes to point a finger if things don’t go well, and one individual that he could certainly point a finger at is the solicitor general, John Sauer, who was also unsuccessful in winning the tariffs case at the Supreme Court, I don’t think it’s John Sauer’s fault; I mean, if you’re dealt a bad hand, you’re dealt a bad hand, and I think that is the case, certainly, with the President’s executive order on birthright citizenship. A majority of the justices, liberals and conservatives, were very skeptical, very doubtful about the legal theory being put forward by the solicitor general.”
Decker then explained how the Supreme Court seems reluctant to overturn the precedent-setting 1898 case of “United States v. Wong Kim Ark” that has become the blueprint for birthright citizenship to rationalize his “bad hand” theory: “It’s a landmark decision, and that case was cited repeatedly by the Supreme Court justices. They do not, in any, want to overturn that decision… I think it’s at least 6-3 against the President, like the tariffs case was, and it could be a lot worse than that.”
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