President Donald Trump does not like being told no. He doesn’t believe that anyone, including the Supreme Court, can tell him what to do. And he certainly doesn’t believe that the Constitution can restrict him in any way.
So he’s coming for birthright citizenship again, because when it comes to ways to enshrine his unhinged bigotry into law, he’s got infinite ambition. This time around, he’s issued two new executive orders to try, try again.
Trump seems to have determined that, when the Supreme Court ruled against his last bigoted tirade dressed up as an executive order to undo a constitutional right, they were really telling him to go home and figure out a new set of magic words.
Hell, even Justice Brett Kavanaugh—one of Trump’s strongest, worst soldiers—was only able to come up with the suggestion that birthright citizenship could be swept away if Congress were to change a federal statute.
Trump loved the title of his first unconstitutional attack on birthright citizenship so much that he’s treating one of these new orders like a little sequel, dubbing it “Continuing to Protect the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.”
Trump no doubt thinks this sounds soaring, very rah-rah, much patriotism. But it actually, to be frank, is disgusting.
The meaning and value of American citizenship is simply that it applies to anyone born here. There’s no world where Trump or anyone else has to stand strong and protect it, because all he’s really saying is that he believes he gets to decide who deserves citizenship, and that some people—any non-white, non-racist, non-wealthy immigrants—somehow cheapen the brand.
That’s nothing but treasonous garbage.
It also ostensibly changes which foreign diplomatic staff can be considered to fall outside of the protections of the 14th Amendment. Foreign ambassadors and their immediate families have always been outside of that protection, but this order would expand it to the children of noncitizens who work in embassies in the United States, for example.
It also pretends to change the citizenship status of people born in U.S. territories, which isn’t surprising, given Trump’s deep and abiding racist animus toward Puerto Rico in particular.
But even Trump’s thick head contains the knowledge that this would require an act of Congress. Lucky for him, some of the most racist MAGA types have already introduced this sort of garbage in the House.
Related | The Constitution is clear on birthright citizenship. Alito doesn’t care.
It would also eliminate birthright citizenship for the children of “alien enemies,” a group that is basically whoever spittle-flecked ghoul Stephen Miller says it is.
Here’s noted constitutional scholar Miller spewing hate about how the Supreme Court and Congress and all of history are wrong:
“As the president mentioned, the 14th Amendment was passed exclusively in the aftermath of the Civil War, so that to ensure that the children of slaves would be citizens. It had no other meaning and purpose outside of that, and that’s been clear, obviously, since the day that it was passed.”
Buddy, if it’s so clear and obvious, why couldn’t you even get five votes from the scuzziest, most racist, most ahistorical set of Supreme Court conservatives? How is it that only you and Trump know the real truth?
Another order bans “birth tourism,” which isn’t a real thing, of course.
Out of 3.6 million total live births in the United States in 2024, less than 10,000 were born to people with foreign addresses. That’s about 0.27%, in case you were wondering.
White House staff secretary Will Scharf, who is actually a lawyer—though not a good one—explained that “organized rings, at times criminal rings” are funneling tens of thousands of people here to drop a baby on our shores and leave with a fresh U.S. citizen.
Meanwhile, Fox News has been breathlessly reporting about birth tourism centers in Miami, where evil foreign residents are brought, presumably by evil Democrats, to have their babies on U.S. soil and take all of our precious resources.
I’m willing to lay serious odds that these same nitwits thought that The Onion story about the $8 billion Planned Parenthood Abortionplex was real.
Now we’re going to have to go through the whole executive-order-to-lawsuit-to-a-zillion-lower-court-losses-to-Supreme-Court pipeline again, just to see if this newest strain of virulent racism will net five votes.
Terrific way to run a country.