The World Cup has moved into the knockout stages by now, with Germany the first major team to be upset in the first-ever round-of-32. Amusingly, on Canada Day we have the U.S. playing a round-of-32 match (against Bosnia), while on Independence Day we’ll have Canada playing a round-of-16 match (against Morocco).

As expected, today SCOTUS released its opinions in the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara; and as expected, the decision was adverse to the administration. The opinions ran to almost 200 pages:

• Writing for a 5-justice majority that included Barrett and the 3 liberals, Chief Justice Roberts wrote a compact 26-page opinion ruling that the Executive Order on birthright citizenship violates the 14th amendment;
• Thomas wrote a 91-page dissent, joined only by Gorsuch;
• Jackson wrote a 20-page solo concurrence, largely for purposes of rebutting Thomas;
• Alito wrote his own 39-page solo dissent;
• Gorsuch wrote a 3-page solo dissent;
• Finally, Kavanaugh wrote his own 10-page opinion in which he disagrees with the majority’s conclusion regarding the 14th Amendment, but concludes on statutory rather than constitutional grounds that the Executive Order cannot stand.

As such, on the core question at hand — does the 14th Amendment mandate the long-held belief that any child born in the U.S. (other than the children of foreign diplomats) is automatically a U.S. citizen, without regard to the immigration status of the child’s parents? — the ruling was 5-4.

A lot of the reactions I’m seeing to today’s ruling from the left are along the lines of, it’s ridiculous that this wasn’t 9-0, and the fact that it wasn’t reflects poorly on the Court. I think that perspective is misguided.

Recall that what is at issue here is how to interpret the following phrase from the 14th Amendment: “born … subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.” Today we are all originalists, so the question becomes, what were those words understood to mean in 1868? Roberts puts forward one view of how those words should be read in light of relevant history; Thomas puts forward his own view. The Roberts view focuses on British common law and the notion that “the child owed an implied allegiance to the sovereign who protected him at his birth—no matter how “momentary and uncertain” his presence in the King’s realms.” The Thomas view focuses on the concept of domicile as being integral to the concept of citizenship. I think it’s ill-advised to treat Thomas’ perspective either as being obviously wrong, or as having been offered up in bad faith to produce a Trump-favored result.

What if we weren’t all originalists now? What if we still ascribed to the notion of a living constitution, that the interpretation of these words in 2026 could and should differ from how they were understood in 1868, on account of changes in our society? The world of 1868 didn’t facilitate a concept like birth tourism, nor was there really such a beast as “illegal immigration” back then. Is it in the national interest, today, to read “subject to the jurisdiction of” in a manner that produces such a maximalist outcome with respect to the question of which set of U.S.-born babies are automatically U.S. citizens? I don’t know that it is.

Honestly, I feel like Trump handled this situation badly, albeit characteristically so, and that a less heavy-handed approach might have produced a different outcome. Imagine that a new President took office and, instead of immediately issuing an Executive Order that was contrary to more than a century of settled understanding, gave an address to the country along the following lines:

“My Fellow Americans, I speak to you tonight from the Oval Office on a manner of the greatest importance to our great nation: The meaning of U.S. citizenship. Over a century-and-a-half ago, in the 14th Amendment, we adopted a constitutional rule that any child born, quote, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, unquote, was automatically entitled to citizenship. In the intervening years, this phrase has generally been interpreted as implying that any child born in U.S., even to parents who are temporarily visiting or studying in the U.S., or whose presence in the U.S. is not lawful, is automatically a citizen. You may have heard the term ‘birthright citizenship’ used to describe this interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

My administration believes that other interpretations of the 14th Amendment are equally viable, interpretations that would provide our government with greater flexibility to determine which U.S.-born children are automatically entitled to citizenship and which are not. On public policy grounds, we believe that it is in the national interest going forward for automatic citizenship at birth to be granted only to U.S.-born children of citizens and lawful permanent residents. We recognize, however, that the current body of constitutional law would prevent us from immediately enacting such a change in policy.

To that end, we will soon be initiating litigation in which we advance an alternate interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s phrase ‘subject to the jurisdiction of’, in order to facilitate our government’s ability to adopt new citizenship policies that in our view further the national interest. The Supreme Court is the only court that can provide the relief we seek, and as such we intend to get this case to that court as expeditiously as possible. While we believe our legal arguments are meritorious and should prevail, in the event that the Supreme Court were to disagree with us, we intend to follow up by working with Congress to propose and enact a new Constitutional Amendment, amending the language in the 14th Amendment to be more clear and more relevant to the challenges we face as a nation in the 21st century. Thank you for your attention, and God bless the United States of America.”

I think that type of framing would have forestalled a lot of the public angst of the past 16 months on this issue, and focused the national discussion on the following question: Is there an honest debate to be had over what “subject to the jurisdiction of” means and, to the extent there is, what should we want the phrase to mean in today’s world? Instead, we had a national discussion focused on Trump having unilaterally taken actions that were contrary to established law, forcing people to sue in order to restore the status quo.

In other news, a new NYTimes poll of the Texas Senate race between Paxton and Talarico has it in a dead heat, 47-47. They also polled the Maine Senate race, giving Platner a 49-47 lead over Sen. Collins. Somewhat expectedly, Talarico is doing better in this poll than generic House Democrats (45-51) while Platner is doing worse (53-42).