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... But Trump is happy to browbeat whomever it takes to get what he wants. And he's reserved some of his most pointed recent criticisms for Supreme Court justices he appointed who have occasionally ruled against him.

So after spending two years floating breaking this norm -- and after suffering his biggest Supreme Court defeat in the chamber's February tariffs decision -- Trump finally did it.

But his decision to go was curious. And it's arguably even more so after the hearing.

Trump seemed to want to send a signal to judges, who have increasingly proven his biggest obstacles in his second term. The fact that he chose to attend even amid the war with Iran -- and hours ahead of a primetime address to the nation on the conflict -- would seem to reinforce that. It's not like he doesn't have other things to do.

But combined with a series of adverse recent court rulings, his presence at the Supreme Court risked reinforcing how little he can control the judicial branch.

The policy at issue on Wednesday was Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship. On the president's first day back in office last year, he sought to effectively overturn the more-than-century-old interpretation that the 14th Amendment grants citizenship to the children born to noncitizens on US soil.

The conventional wisdom has long been that this order stood little chance of surviving the courts -- it's been ruled against at every turn in the lower courts -- and Wednesday's hearing did little to disabuse anyone of that notion.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer faced a barrage of skeptical questions even from the court's conservative and Trump-appointed justices.

In perhaps the most difficult exchange for the administration, Chief Justice John Roberts pressed Sauer on its claims about so-called "birth tourism," or traveling to US soil to deliver a child so they can be a citizen. When Roberts noted that wasn't a problem when the 14th Amendment was ratified after the Civil War, Sauer responded that "we're in a new world now."

To which Roberts shot back: "Well, it's a new world. It's the same Constitution." ...