Since President Donald Trump’s first day back in office, Republicans in Congress have been desperate to gut federal judges’ power to block his administration’s unlawful executive orders, policies, and threats. On Friday, the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority gave them what they wanted, further weakening the judiciary as an effective check on a White House that was already ignoring court orders with impunity.

“No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,” wrote liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent she read from the bench, calling the ruling “an attack on our system of law.”

The case stems from the Trump administration’s attempt to eliminate birthright citizenship via an executive order issued hours after Trump was sworn in. Three different district court judges quickly blocked the executive order as unconstitutional under both the text of the Constitution and more than a century of Supreme Court precedent.

Friday’s decision did not address the merits of the executive order, but instead how the judges went about ensuring the core constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. In a ruling written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court’s six-member conservative wing drastically limited courts’ authority to issue injunctions even in the face of galling illegality affecting millions of people.

The three judges had issued a “universal” injunction against the birthright citizenship executive order, which meant the Trump administration could not enforce it anywhere in the country. A more limited injunction would have protected just the rights of the specific........

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