The Hard Right Hates Neil Gorsuch: How the freakout over Gorsuch’s comments reveals a deeper rift between constitutionalists and nativists. (Daniel Ruggles, May 18, 2026, The Bulwark)
During a media blitz this month to promote his new children’s book, Heroes of 1776: The Story of the Declaration of Independence, Gorsuch repeated the same message over and over: The United States is a “creedal” nation—that is, a nation unified by common belief in rights, liberties, and democratic institutions. Yes, he explained, we are a people with a singular “heritage,” but it’s one of ideals, not ethnicity. Being an American requires not lineage, but belief.
It was a gentle rebuke of nationalism—and it drove the hard right nuts.
Americans largely agree with Gorsuch that, when it comes to citizenship, belief in American ideas trumps genealogy. In an earlier dispensation, his comments would have been taken as an innocuous, even saccharine, idealism about the nation’s founding and self-rule—totally typical for a conservative jurist.
But we are not in that earlier dispensation. Gorsuch’s repeated references to “creed” exposed a stark divide between far-right ideologues (with their nativist America First agenda) and the conservative originalist old guard. For decades, the right has campaigned to fill courtrooms with self-professing originalists. Now, that old guard—personified by Gorsuch, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and Chief Justice John Roberts—is something of a wild card on the Supreme Court. And it’s causing tension, especially as the court gets ready to rule on birthright citizenship.