Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas appeared on Thursday to support Donald Trump's push to curtail the power of federal judges.

The situation unfolded during Supreme Court arguments over an executive order signed by Trump that aimed to deny birthright citizenship to children born in the United States to non-citizen or non-permanent resident parents.

The Department of Justice has argued that judges on lower-level courts should only have the power to issue rulings on a specific group of people involved in a suit, and not issue nationwide injunctions.

Justice Thomas appeared to support that argument when discussing the history of universal injunctions with Solicitor General D. John Sauer. Justice Thomas asked: "So, we survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions?"