Justice Department has 'gone off the rails' for Trump's 'pretzel logic': analysis

The Justice Department is bending to what Donald Trump wants to happen on the birthright citizenship case, a legal analyst has warned.

Joyce Vance, the former US state attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, warned that the DoJ has lost its way in its willingness to back the president's executive order. Trump signed an executive order into law on January 20, 2025, detailing new guidelines for what would and would not constitute birthright citizenship.

The move from Trump's administration was challenged by at least 10 lawsuits, with the Supreme Court now holding a hearing on whether the executive order can stand. Trump's team has argued that the birthright citizenship featured in the 14th Amendment had been exploited.

Vance has since analyzed the response from two conservative judges, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, with their stance on the executive order deemed contradictory to their previous statements regarding other legal hold-ups.

Vance also named Solicitor General D. John Sauer as a person using the Justice Department to back Trump's executive order in her recent Substack post.

"Conservative justices, including Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, have all strongly opposed using foreign law to interpret the Constitution, rejecting it as undercutting our democratic sovereignty," Vance wrote. "Conservative justices objected to the use of foreign precedents when they were the dissenters in cases involving the death penalty for juveniles and laws regulating sexual conduct.

"But now, and in a case where it’s the opposite of U.S. law, the Solicitor General felt free to call upon foreign precedent.

"I’m belaboring this relatively minor point from the argument to show just how far this Justice Department, including the Solicitor General’s office, which is uniquely powerful and traditionally independent, has gone off the rails in service of what Donald Trump wants.

"Sauer’s willingness to wade in with this argument shows how willing this Justice Department is to contort itself into pretzel logic in service of Trump and abandon long-established conservative beliefs.

"But it’s also unlikely that this argument scored points with any of the justices who weren’t already inclined to go along with it no matter how contrary to existing law. It was a show for the audience of one who reclined in the courtroom, where he didn’t belong."