Good evening from New York. I'm Catherine Rampel in for Chris Hayes. Today, the conservative

supermajority on the Supreme Court, including the three justices that Donald Trump appointed,

took an unusual step. They decided to neuter their own colleagues by stripping other federal courts

of the most powerful tool available to limit the Trump administration's lawless attempts at

authoritarian rule. It started with Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship, which is a

constitutional right enshrined in the 14th Amendment.

Multiple judges around the country had issued nationwide injunctions halting that plan.

Trump's lawyers argued, however, that those judges in lower courts shouldn't be able to stop him

from doing what he wants to do nationwide.

And the Supreme Court agreed with him.

Writing for the conservative majority, Trump appointee Amy Coney-Barritt said that, quote,

universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts, unquote. Before this ruling today,

more than a thousand federal judges in nearly 100 districts nationwide had the power to issue

orders that could stop in a legal government policy around the country. Conservatives never seem to mind those injunctions

in the past when they were issued by, say, I don't know, a Trump appointee in Texas who banned

Miffipristone nationwide. Yes, that happened. But now they are getting in the way of Trump's own

agenda. So Scota says those judges' rulings

can only apply to the actual very specific plaintiffs who sued. In a blistering dissent

against the majority, liberal justice Katanji Brown Jackson wrote, quote, make no mistake,

today's ruling allows the executive to deny people's

rights that the founders plainly wrote into our Constitution so long as those individuals

have not found a lawyer or asked a court in a particular manner to have their rights protected, unquote. She added that it was a sad day for

...