Federalist Co-Founder Floats ‘Dissolution of the Union’ in Unhinged Post After Trump Loses Birthright Citizenship Case

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File

The Supreme Court’s ruling in the birthright citizenship case sparked a lot of strong reactions, but a social media post by the co-founder of a conservative website raised a lot of eyebrows Tuesday evening.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order on the first day of his second term that purported to end birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants or those who were in the country temporarily.

In Tuesday’s opinion in Trump v. Barbara, the Supreme Court held that the executive order violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s language, which did grant citizenship to those born in the United States “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

As with most Supreme Court activity in modern times, the decision drew a wide variety of responses, with Democrats and immigrant advocates mostly cheering the decision, MAGA Republicans mostly panning it — but several commentators on the right did praise the decision too.

There were some spirited discussions over how to interpret the various concurrences and dissents that addressed various issues, including different analyses applied to children of illegal immigrants residing in the U.S. and those born to people who are temporarily visiting, as well as Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent arguing that Trump’s executive order did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment but did violate the federal statute that codified that constitutional amendment.

Trump reacted by calling the ruling “too bad for our Country” and urging Congress to “start TODAY” to pass legislation to end birthright citizenship. This is far from a simple matter; besides the struggles GOP leadership has had wrangling their narrow majorities in the House and Senate to pass anything at all, revoking birthright citizenship even for children of illegal immigrants does not poll well enough to reassure nervous members of Congress running for re-election, especially in swing districts.

An April 2025 Pew Research poll found that 50% of Americans agreed that children of illegal immigrants should get birthright citizenship and 49% said they should not, with a margin of error of +/- 1.8 percentage points. For Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 74% supported birthright citizenship. That number dropped to 25% for Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.

And for Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, lobbying Congress to pass legislation is an insufficient response to the Supreme Court’s ruling. In a long social media post, Davis accused Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett of having made the “choice” to “nullify the 14th amendment and extra-constitutionally replace it with their own language,” and he offered several “ways forward” from the court’s ruling. Among the ideas he shared were having red states refuse to issue birth certificates to “non-citizens,” packing the court with additional justices, denying entry to all pregnant foreigners, denying entry to all pregnant foreigners, sterilization of all foreign visitors, and even “[d]issolution of the Union,” because “[a] nation which can’t even restrict who gets to be a citizen isn’t a nation.”

The full text of Davis’ post read as follows:

Several ways forward here given the choice of Roberts/Barrett to nullify the 14th Amendment and extra-constitutionally replace it with their own language:

1) Nullification. States issue birth certificates, and they can just stop issuing them to non-citizens. Roberts/Barrett can deal with the fallout and litigate each birth individually.

2) Pack the court. If Robert [sic] wants to be a politician who writes laws instead of a judge, then he can fight with 10 more unelected legislators in robes.

3) Deny entry to all pregnant foreigners.

4) Deny entry to all female foreigners.

5) Require sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry.

6) Dissolution of the Union. A nation which can’t even restrict who gets to be a citizen isn’t a nation.

7) Amend the Constitution. This is pointless, because once a judge decides he can rewrite the Constitution at will (as Roberts and Barrett did today), the actual text is meaningless. But this is what most GOP politicians gravitate towards because they are useless.

If you think all these options are not great, understand that that is what happens when unelected judges decide that they are in charge of the country and get to write its laws.

In his post, Davis made a claim that the U.S. “can’t even restrict who gets to be a citizen,” an argument similar to those made by Trump during the numerous times he has falsely claimed that the United States is the only country to grant birthright citizenship. CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale has debunked this repeatedly, noting “[a]bout three dozen countries provide automatic citizenship to people born on their soil, including Canada, Mexico and the majority of South American countries.”

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