Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Impeached

How the Inferior Courts are Living Up to Their Name

The U.S. Constitution does not mention the “federal courts” we hear so much about these days. Instead, in Article III, Section 1, the Constitution describes the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) and how it is to be set up. The Constitution also gives Congress the power to create “inferior courts” or courts lower than SCOTUS. (No court can be higher than SCOTUS.) But just as the Constitution giveth, the Constitution taketh away. Congress also has the power to eliminate these inferior courts (they prefer to call themselves “lower courts” but the better term is “inferior,” I think). These inferior courts

• Are set up by Congress and serve a limited jurisdiction

• Their judges are in office for life but can be impeached

• They were never given power to override Congressional laws, Executive Orders, or Supreme Court rulings

• They can be abolished by Congress

• Congress also has the right to reorganize them and how they are structured and even limit their jurisdiction or the types of cases they may hear

Inferior courts at the federal level were set up as early as 1789, giving each state “federal district courts” and some “circuit courts” which were intended to travel from location to location. This was part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 (an old law that will come in handy to know later on…)

Right now we’re having a wee bit of a Constitutional crisis because we have inferior courts (lefty media outlets prefer to call them “federal courts” but the Constitution calls them “inferior courts”) that are issuing nationwide injunctions (sometimes called “universal injunctions”) against things like federal laws and Executive Orders (EOs). Some of these inferior courts are even getting involved in lawsuits when no party to the suit itself is before the court. Right now, inferior court judges are nullifying work by the Executive and Legislative Branches. They’re past going rogue—they’ve gone insane. Talk about authoritarianism and a threat to democracy, we have it right here in the inferior court system.

Here is a sad example of where we are now. Let’s say Trump issues an EO. An inferior court—say in California—jumps in and declares it void—not just for California but for the whole nation. That’s what is going on, and it’s not what was ever intended. Right now, these inferior courts are allowing Congress to make laws and Trump to issue EOs, but they have 100% power to nullify anything they don’t like and their word instantly and automatically applies to the entire nation. (We just recently had a “No Kings” protest—I think perhaps they were talking about the renegade judges on these inferior courts—they’re usurping the power once wielded by an old-school monarchy!)

• The current activities of some of these inferior courts is allowing one individual judge, who is not even elected, to overrule Congress or the Executive Branch

• It means that any inferior court judge can determine for the entire nation whether an EO or a law passed by Congress should stand or not

• That inferior judge’s decision applies to the entire country immediately or whenever the judge says it applies

• Nobody votes and the decision is made quickly and expected to go into effect in a matter of days

• The actions of one inferior court judge in one court apply to the whole nation

The CASA Case

Now there is a case at the Supreme Court called Trump vs. CASA, Inc. This case is about the complicated and controversial issue of birthright citizenship. Trump issued Executive Order (EO) No. 14160 which attempted to define birthright citizenship.

Birthright citizenship is already but inadequately defined in the 14^th amendment to the Constitution, but this amendment was written to assure the rights of citizenship to former slaves. It is not clear how the 14th amendment applies to the millions of illegal immigrants in 2025 America, so Trump offered an EO to better spell out what “birthright” citizenship means. An inferior court invalidated the EO for the whole country and shut down the case. In other words, Trump had no right to issue an EO on the matter and the case was closed because one inferior judge said so.

The first thing to know about CASA is that the current legal battle in no way addressed the underlying issue of birthright citizenship. Trump smartly went to the Supreme Court to get a decision as to whether inferior courts—a creation of Congress and not the Constitution—could overrule a presidential EO. In specific, could one inferior court judge nullify an EO… for the entire country?

The Supreme Court said no. Trump won in this decision 6 to 3 with Justice Amy Coney Barrett writing the opinion in favor of Trump. Note that we have three bonafide crackpots on the Supreme Court (Jackson, Sotomayor, Kagan) so a 6 to 3 decision means every sensible justice took a stand against the inferior courts. Note that these three crackpot justices (Jackson, Sotomayor, Kagan) think inferior court judges should be allowed to overrule them! I told you they were not playing with a full deck. Who votes that an inferior judge can overrule the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch and even the Supreme Court? Answer: Jackson, Sotomayor, Kagan.

(Remember those names, they are working against the best interests of our country.)

Justice Barrett can be unpredictable, but she argued the sensible and Conservative cause here, stating that allowing an inferior court to make broad injunctions was a power not “traditionally accorded” to these lower courts. This only makes sense. We can’t have an un-elected judge in one court be able to hamstring the lawful activities of the federal government. While Democrats acted incensed at the ruling, I suspect they were glad, too, because what the inferior courts were doing to Trump they could one day turn around and do to a Democrat president.

Now there are some knuckleheads (Jackson, Sotomayor, Kagan) who think that one un-elected judge should have the power to make a broad injunctions that apply to every state when a ruling might “hurt a lot of people” or if the EO is unconstitutional. However, the Supreme Court is there to rule on constitutionality and as for an EO “hurting a lot of people,” the Supreme Court can handle that, too. Courts should stay in their lane, particularly inferior courts.

And if you think it is disrespectful that I call Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson a knucklehead, you should see what Justice Amy Coney Barrett did. Ouch!

The founders never intended in the Judiciary Act of 1789 to afford a series of un-elected judges across the nation powers that exceed those of Presidents, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Congress could wipe out the inferior courts altogether right now. We can also impeach the rogue justices. It’s weird how these federal courts assumed they could kick the Supreme Court in the shins and get away with it—not to mention how they are hurting the American people.

Remember, Congress can snuff out every inferior court in the country if it wants. Of course, that would involve Congress’ actually doing something, which is why it is but a dim hope.

Blood and Dirt

This decision (Trump v. CASA) was NOT about birthright citizenship. This Supreme Court ruling was simply about whether these inferior courts had the power to issue nationwide injunctions.

Now let’s come to birthright citizenship itself. Americans are a people of perpetual astonishment, likely due to the Department of Education running the national school system. There is just so much we don’t know. Many Americans believe that birthright citizenship is universal, standard, accepted everywhere.

Far from it!

Birthright citizenship is relatively rare and exists mainly in the Americas. We have it, so does Canada, and so do many nations in Latin America. The only Asian nation with birthright citizenship is Pakistan. It’s rare in Africa and conditional in parts of Europe.

• For instance, if you’re born in the United Kingdom, you’re only a citizen if at least one parent was a citizen or permanent resident when you were born

• A person born in France has a pathway to citizenship after age 18 if they have lived most of their life in France. But they still have to go through naturalization; citizenship is not automatic

• A person born in Ireland only is an Irish citizen if both parents were legal resident aliens or citizens and had lived in Ireland at least four years before the child was born

• Australia does not offer birthright citizenship unless one parent is a legal resident alien or citizen, but a person born in Australia who has resided there 10 years has a path to citizenship. Again, this means such a person has a pathway to get naturalized if they want

So it gets complicated. In legal terms, birthright citizenship is “jus soli” or right of the soil. In other words, if you’re born on American dirt, you’re an American. But there is also “jus sanguinis” which means right of the blood. If one or both parents are U.S. citizens, then a child born anywhere can be counted a U.S. citizen through the bloodline(s) of the parent(s). However, there are some statutory requirements. An American citizen can pass citizenship to a child born anywhere providing that American parent

• Is a citizen

• Has resided no less than five years in the United States

• And at least two of those years were over the age of 14

So it gets tricky. All citizenship and immigration questions end up getting tricky.

A Relic of Slave Days?

The 14^th amendment addresses birthright citizenship in a very broad way, but it was actually written to address a very real but narrow and historically limited legal issue in post-slavery America. Were the slaves in America full U.S. citizens or not? They had not been considered full citizens, or even full persons, prior to the Civil War. So now that the Civil War ended, the question arose as to whether or not these former slaves and their descendants would be considered U.S. citizens.

Slavery was abolished in 1865 by the 13^th amendment but many former Confederate states enacted “Black Codes” to restrict the rights of African-Americans, even if they were technically now free. (Did I mention those Confederate states were Democrat?) Blacks had limited rights to own property, to move or change residence, or to enter into legal contracts. The 14^th amendment is sometimes called the “equal protection clause” since it did away with Black Codes and gave all citizens equal protections under the law.

The 14^th amendment says that “all person born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside.” The key here is “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” For instance, if a foreign couple came to the United States in order to work at their nation’s Embassy in the United States and if they had a baby during their time in the United States, that baby would not be under the jurisdiction of the U.S. because his or her parents were citizens of somewhere else. So the right of the dirt, so to speak, has limits.

The 14th amendment makes sense for emancipated slaves, though. Many African-Americans in that era were born on American soil and subject to the laws of this nation. But does this apply to the baby born to a Chinese refugee who enters this country illegally to give birth? And does that citizenship extend to that child if the mother takes him back to China to raise him? Can that child return to the United States at age 30 and run for Congress? Be mayor of a major city?

There was an interesting Supreme Court case from San Francisco called the U.S. vs. Wong Kim Ark. Wong Kim Ark was born to Chinese parents in San Francisco but there were laws in place at the time which made his parents ineligible to become citizens. Ark was born in California and grew up there, but his parents were not citizens. (They might have gotten naturalized had that pathway been allowed to them.) The Supreme Court said that Wong Kim Ark was a citizen because he was born on American soil and also under the “jurisdiction” of American and not Chinese law. In other words, his parents were residents and the laws that applied to Ark were American and not Chinese laws. This is sometimes used to argue that anyone born on U.S. soil is instantly and automatically a U.S. citizen.

But if all it takes is being born on U.S. soil to get citizenship, we have a problem. A lot of Democrats so denigrate the United States, our Constitution, and our principles of government that they misunderstand how incredibly valuable U.S. citizenship is. Most Democrats are plotting to leave this “fascist,” “nazi,” and “authoritarian” nation and are unaware that many people consider U.S. citizenship to be a privilege and even a treasure. U.S. citizenship is handled by Democrats as something trivial and inconsequential. Like the flag, they think it’s enlightened and educated to spit on it. They think that anyone entering this country illegally has the same rights as a full citizen—which makes the citizenship of native-born and naturalized Americans virtually meaningless.

It’s 2025, so let’s think about modern issues.

• What about maternity hotels and the very legal practice of “birth tourism”? These are businesses that allow pregnant foreign women to come to the United States (for a fat fee, of course), stay in a nice care facility, and give birth. Once the baby is old enough to travel, mother and baby head back home with their U.S. birth certificate. This is a real business and a big one—mainly for Chinese and Vietnamese women. This practice is not only not illegal, it isn’t even regulated. We don’t know how many people have U.S. birth certificates from this practice

• What about illegal aliens who enter the United States without proper paperwork and have children here outside of birthing hotels? Under the right of the soil, these children are legally American citizens. And sometimes they become “anchor babies” in that the rest of the family can facilitate naturalization through them. With millions of illegals in the country, doesn’t that denigrate the meaning of citizenship?

• Birthright citizenship creates a powerful incentive for families to migrate to the United States, even if they have to do so illegally under the cover of darkness and upon payment to the cartels. Some families may be willing to risk it all to give their children the precious gift of American citizenship. (Isn’t it funny how the cartels and the Democrats are always on the same side of any issue?)

• What about national sovereignty? If a person can be born on U.S. soil and then carry a U.S. passport, do they actually have skin in the game as a true American? In our global era, it may be possible for a child to be born here, raised in some other country, and have allegiances and loyalty to that other country. Does it make sense to let them vote here? I’m not mentioning any names, but I’m thinking about a group whose initials are Somalians in Minnesota

• Why are we always the odd country out? Most developed nations in the world use only “right of the blood” for citizenship. It makes it easy for them to fight birth tourism or have people holding political office in their country while fighting for the interests of a foreign nation. Maybe we should get with the program

• Let’s not be historically illiterate. The 14th amendment was put in place to assure emancipated slaves the full rights and privileges of citizenship and to shield them against the Democrats who were trying to pass Black Codes to re-instate a lighter-weight version of slavery. We can’t retrofit the 14th amendment to solve the problems of global migration

It’s time to get clarity. Otherwise, birthright citizenship will be yet another one of those quaint American practices that sets us apart from the rest of the world, like tipping at restaurants or putting ice in everything.