Key Takeaways
- The Supreme Court’s ruling changed nothing legally, but the online far right treated it as a civilizational catastrophe. Even though the ruling only reaffirmed a constitutional right guaranteed since 1868, it triggered reactions ranging from apocalyptic to violent to explicitly misogynistic and racist across X, Telegram, and Gab.
- The backlash came from the top of the administration, not just the fringes. Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called the ruling “suicide” for civilization, while MAGA-aligned influencers like Benny Johnson, Jack Posobiec, Matt Walsh, and Liz Wheeler amplified the outrage to their audiences, who number in the millions.
- Far-right figures proposed punishing women to circumvent the ruling. Suggestions included banning foreign women or pregnant women from entering the country, requiring sterilization of foreign female visitors prior to entry, and stripping women of the right to vote or hold public office.
- The four female justices, particularly Associate Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson, became targets of rampant racist and sexist abuse. Barrett faced attacks tied to her two adopted Haitian children, and Jackson was branded a “DEI justice” and mocked for her legal writing.
On June 30th, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a Trump administration executive order that sought to end birthright citizenship, part of the administration’s larger efforts to punish immigrants. While a plain-text reading of the Constitution and rulings by lower-court judges showed that this would be the likely outcome, the ruling seemingly came as a surprise to the right.
Rather than accept the decision as confirmation of a right that has been constitutionally guaranteed since 1868, the far-right movement treated it as an existential loss of country and American identity. In the days that followed, Trump administration officials, MAGA influencers, and other far-right users across X, Telegram, and Gab flooded the platforms with reactions that ranged from apocalyptic to violent to explicitly misogynistic and racist.
This reaction is not new and follows an increasingly familiar pattern in far-right online spaces: a ruling that goes against Trump’s desires is seen as betrayal, and that betrayal is blamed on the women of the court, and particularly the women of color or women who have children of color, perceived to be responsible for it. It also continues the growing trend of threats against members of the judiciary who rule against the administration, which Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) has written about previously.
Trump Administration and Allies Boost Panic
Members of the Trump administration, particularly Deputy White House Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, stoked the outrage online and through appearances on cable news. Miller, an anti-immigration zealot, called the decision “one of the most destructive and outrageous decisions in the history of the Supreme Court.” Miller appeared on Fox News’ show Jesse Watters Primetime where he said that the ruling was “suicide” for civilization.
MAGA-aligned influencers were quick to contribute to the online discourse, stoking anger within their fan bases. Far-right political YouTuber Benny Johnson shared Miller’s Fox News appearance on X, calling it the “Greatest On-Air TAKEDOWN of Birthright Citizenship You Will EVER See.” Johnson also wrote a lengthy X post, where he discusses other countries that don’t have birthright citizenship and says that only Americans are “culturally suicidal enough” to maintain this Constitutional right.
Benny Johnson’s post on X celebrating Stephen Miller’s appearance on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime.” (Source: X)
Miller also turned to ridiculous hypotheticals. In one X post, Miller wrote, “If you believe a child born to a foreign mother flying over US airspace is an automatic American then you do not believe in citizenship.” According to a 2020 National Institute of Health Study, there were only 73 infants born on commercial flights from 1929 to 2018. Matt Walsh, far-right commentator for The Daily Wire, wrote on X that the idea a pregnant woman from another country “can sprint across the US border, have the baby 30 minutes after arriving here, and the baby is a magically a citizen of the US, is one of the most r*traded and indefensible notions ever conceived.”
MAGA-aligned influencer Jack Posobiec also shared posts across his social media about the ruling. On X, Posobiec vowed that the right will “end” birthright citizenship before quoting “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” a song popularized by white nationalists, including the racist Proud Boys. On Telegram, Posobiec called the decision an “invitation to invasion.”
Posts by Jack Posobiec on X and Telegram, both of which condemn the birthright citizenship ruling. (Source: X and Telegram)
Other X users shared similar sentiments. One poster wrote that if they had a time machine, they would go back in time and stop the writing of the 14th Amendment, likening it to people who would go back to kill Hitler or stop 9/11. Another user called the notion that America is a nation of immigrants a “slick way of saying we no longer have a country.” The same post called immigrants “3rd world devils that cannot even fathom a proper society.”
A user on X calls immigrants “3rd world devils.” (Source: X)
Calls for Violence and Civil War Loom
On the fringes, many users wrote that they felt this was the “end of America” and should be a call to arms. On Telegram, a user in Posobiec’s channel wrote: “If congress isn’t afraid for their lives that citizens will take action if they don’t put America first, they’ll keep being traitors.” In a different Telegram channel called “MurdertheMedia’s Sporadic Posting,” an offshoot of the former public channel of the white nationalist Proud Boys, multiple users shared similar sentiments, with one writing “civil war is a when question, not an if question.”
A collection of comments made by users on various Telegram channels about the birthright citizenship ruling. (Source: Telegram).
Users on Gab, a fringe platform like X, which is rife with violent rhetoric, shared similar sentiments. One user lamented that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts “killed America.” Another stated that the five justices who voted to uphold birthright citizenship are “out to destroy the USA from within,” and that “PATRIOTS WILL STAND UP FOR THE CIVIL WAR 2 THAT WILL FOLLOW [the] RULING.”
Two posts made by users on Gab about the birthright citizenship ruling. (Source: Gab).
Some Suggest Banning Women from Entry, Sterilization
As a result of the ruling, many on the far right turned to the idea of punishing women to prevent children from being born on U.S. soil. Sean Davis, founder and CEO of The Federalist, a far-right online magazine, opined in a lengthy post on X that some possible ways forward to end birthright citizenship are to “deny entry to all female foreigners” and to “require sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry.”
Liz Wheeler, a far-right influencer with over 1 million followers and host of The Liz Wheeler Show, stated that a workaround for the court’s decision was to “close the border especially to pregnant women.” Other users wrote similar sentiments, including that “all women of childbearing age” or “all women” need to be banned from entering the county.
Others online called for the removal of all women from public life, restricting their right to vote and hold public office. Lauren Witzke, a far-right influencer with over 260,000 followers, wrote that “women should never have been granted the right to vote,” because they “vote their emotions.” Other users demonized women, with one writing that they will “destroy your heritage” and then wonder why people desire to restrict their civil rights.
A user on X claims women seek to “destroy your heritage” because of the birthright citizenship ruling. (Source: X)
Targeting the Women of SCOTUS
For the online far right, the decision on birthright citizenship can be laid squarely at the feet of the four female justices of the Supreme Court, Associate Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Amy Coney Barrett. Following the ruling, racist January 6th rioter Jake Lang stood outside of the Supreme Court building holding a sign that read “Ban women from Supreme Court.” In a post about his one-man protest, Lang wrote: “REMEMBER THE TRAITORS NAMES!!!!”
Jake Lang’s post on X where he calls for banning women from the Supreme Court and brands the female justices as “TRAITORS.” (Source: X).
One of the primary targets of online rage is Barrett, likely because she was appointed to the court by Donald Trump in 2020 and is now perceived as disloyal to the president. Barrett also, notably, has two adopted children from Haiti, making her a target of many racists who see her adoptions as a betrayal of the white race.
One user wrote on X, “the pivotal ruling on birthright citizenship hinges on a White woman with 2 Haitian children.” In the replies to the post, the same user shared a screenshot of Armie Hammer from the new racist film Citizen Vigilante, seemingly to imply that Barrett should be the target of vigilante violence because of her vote in the case. Another X user shared an image of Barrett that referred to her as a “worthless c*nt that adopts n*gger children.”
An image of actor Armie Hammer from the racist film “Citizen Vigilante,” posted as a reply to a post about Barrett’s birthright citizenship vote and her two Haitian children. (Source: X).
These comments were not solely confined to X. In his Telegram channel, Posobiec posted about the decision multiple times. In one post discussing the decision, a user commented, “Traitors. But you knew the woman who bought Haitian kids wasn’t going to rule our way anyway.”
A Telegram user calls Amy Coney Barrett and other women on the Supreme Court “traitors.” (Source: Telegram).
Barrett was not the only female justice directly targeted. Many users, primarily on X, were outraged that Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, seemingly used internet slang in her concurring opinion on the case. Jackson used the phrase “understood the assignment” when writing about the post-Civil War drafting of the 14th Amendment. “Understood the assignment,” according to Urban Dictionary, is commonly used online to say that someone did a specific thing very well.
The attacks on Jackson appear designed to simultaneously undercut her qualifications for the bench while suggesting that she only used the phrase because she is black. Chaya Raichik, who goes by her online screen name Libs of TikTok, posted that Jackson was “an embarrassment to our country” and referred to her as a “DEI justice.” Another user said the use of the phrase was “DEI in action.”
Chaya Raichik, also known as Libs of TikTok, claims on X that Ketanji Brown Jackson is a “DEI justice” and “an embarrassment to our country. (Source: X).
The birthright citizenship ruling changed nothing about the current status quo, simply rejecting Trump’s attempt to unilaterally rewrite the Constitution by executive order. Yet, the response from the Trump Administration and its allies treated the decision as an attack to be met with escalating rhetoric: fantasies of civil war, proposals to bar or sterilize foreign women, calls to strip women of the vote, and a wave of racist, sexualized abuse directed at the Court’s female justices, most acutely Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
That this rhetoric came not only from anonymous accounts but from a sitting White House official and influencers with audiences in the millions underscores how thoroughly these ideas have moved from the fringe into the mainstream of the online right. The gap between the actual stakes of the ruling and the scale of the backlash is itself the story: it shows a movement primed to interpret any check on executive power, especially one delivered by and centered on women, as proof of civilizational collapse. It also shows, yet again, how far-right actors are willing to respond to democratic decisions they don’t like with threats of violence.
