Free Republic

On the very day Donald Trump became president again, he signed an executive order prospectively eliminating birthright citizenship for children born to aliens unlawfully present in the United States. Immediately, lawsuits were filed in a half-dozen jurisdictions across the country challenging this order. The groups bringing these suits claim the order disrupts long-standing legal norms governing citizenship. Yet, in fact, Trump’s contention — that birthright citizenship is not possessed by children of illegal aliens under the “correct interpretation of the law” — is exactly right. Birthright citizenship is conventionally understood to apply to any child born in the United States,...

Attending oral argument last week in the case touching on birthright citizenship pending before the Supreme Court, I observed a combination of confusion, omissions, and outright lies from some of the justices. As the lawyer for one of the amici, I witnessed the Court address the propriety of the nationwide, universal injunctions that have been issued by several district court judges blocking the execution of President Trump’s day-one executive order on birthright citizenship. Let’s begin with the lies. Early in the argument, Justice Sotomayor unequivocally stated that the Court had held 127 years ago that anyone born on U.S. soil...

Washington, D.C.—The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, led by Dr. John Eastman, submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court in support of President Trump’s executive order, Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, and related legal challenges disputing an expansive interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Birthright Citizenship Clause.Three separate activist judges have blocked this lawful executive order, their rulings resting on the premise that children born in the United States to parents here only temporarily or unlawfully are automatic citizens.Our brief demonstrates that the Fourteenth Amendment was understood to grant citizenship only to those born in...

During this week’s broadcast of FNC’s “Sunday Morrning Futures,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) offered an optimistic take on the Trump administration’s challenge to the country’s existing birthright citizenship policy currently being considered by the Supreme Court. “Look, Jason, this is a fascinating case,” he said. “It’s a close case. It can be won. No one knows the outcome for sure. But one thing that’s important for everyone to keep in mind, this case is not about whether birthright citizenship exists, nor does it undermine the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship promise. This is, rather, about what the contours of birthright citizenship...

The US Supreme Court agreed to hear oral arguments in response to President Trump’s emergency request to stop nationwide injunction against his birthright citizenship executive order. President Trump asked the Supreme Court to stay the nationwide injunctions issued by the federal judges. The high court agreed to an expedited schedule and set arguments for May 15. ABC News reported: The Supreme Court on Thursday said it would hear expedited oral arguments next month over President Donald Trump’s emergency request to rollback nationwide injunctions against his executive order to end birthright citizenship. The nation’s highest court set arguments for May 15...

A third appellate court has upheld a block on President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship. The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals made the ruling Tuesday, denying a motion from Trump’s legal team to immediately overturn a block issued by a federal judge in Massachusetts. Trump’s executive order would block automatic citizenship for any child born in the U.S. to someone who is in the country illegally, as well as children born to someone with temporary legal status if the child’s father is not a citizen or legal permanent resident. Roughly two dozen states have sued over the executive...

While trying to catch President Donald Trump’s solicitor general nominee in a “gotcha” moment, Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin apparently defended enforcement of the infamous Supreme Court ruling that upheld the internment of more than one hundred thousand Japanese Americans during World War II. “Let’s go back to Korematsu — describe for me that circumstance that you think relieved an official from obeying a court order,” Durbin said to solicitor general nominee Dean John Sauer. “As bad as it was, that court order was followed for years, was it not?” In Korematsu v. U.S., the Supreme Court upheld the internment of...

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that President Donald Trump cannot end birthright citizenship with his executive order, likely setting up a battle about the issue in the Supreme Court. The Justice Department had filed an emergency request for the court to lift a Seattle judge’s freeze on the policy, but the appeals court denied it on Wednesday. CNN reports: The 9th Circuit panel – made up of a Trump appointee, a Jimmy Carter appointee and a George W. Bush appointee – said that a closer review of the case will move forward in its court, with...

President Donald Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship for illegal aliens, tied to the invasion on the border, tees up a major Supreme Court case that could become a historic Trump win that fixes a growing, decades-long problem.

On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough dragged out that empty, shopworn claim to be a "small-government conservative" like he was as a Republican congressman in the 1990s. But that was belied by what followed, full-throated scaremongering about Republicans killing people by pausing USAID funding for a week: "Question number one, when are we going to finally see the lawsuits move on USAID and actually an injunction that stops that, all of those actions right now that are literally, unless the reports are exaggerated, literally killing people across the globe right now, this morning, this instant. "Get the rest of the...

GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday is set to hear arguments over temporarily pausing President Donald Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship for anyone born in the U.S. to someone in the country illegally. Trump's inauguration week order is currently on temporary hold nationally because of a separate suit brought by four states in Washington state, where a judge called the order “blatantly unconstitutional." In total, 22 states, as well as other organizations, have sued to try to stop the executive action. U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman is set to hear arguments in Maryland federal...

I was having lunch with some conservative gal pals yesterday, and the subject got around to birthright citizenship. I was quickly able to sum up the arguments in favor of Donald Trump’s position (many of which have been made on this site), so I thought I’d give you a handy-dandy guide to these arguments. The predicate for this discussion, of course, is this clause from the 14th Amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. (Emphasis mine.)One. English common...

If you were wondering how long it would take for Democrats to sue the Trump administration, we have an answer. With the ink barely dry, eighteen Democrat state attorneys general, four additional Democrat state AGs, and a collection of outside groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union all filed federal lawsuits over President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. Their argument, that the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that the 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship for practically anyone born here, is flatly wrong as a matter of law. The courts should...

The 14th Amendment does not confer automatic citizenship. Claremont Institute scholars, including me, Ed Erler, Tom West, John Marini, and Michael Anton, President Trump’s incoming Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, have been contending for years—decades, really—that the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause does not provide automatic citizenship for everyone born on U.S. soil, no matter the circumstances. Other prominent scholars, such as the late University of Texas law Professor Lino Graglia, University of Pennsylvania Professor Rogers Smith, and Yale Law Professor Emeritus Peter Schuck, have come to the same conclusion based on their own extensive scholarly research. Claremont...

In the giddy hangover of our tumultuous celebration of American liberation, let’s chat about some of the legal aspects of what’s happening and what’s going to happen because there are a lot of bad legal takes out there (follow the essential Twitter account of the same name), and you don’t want to be repeating the same kind of nonsense that other people do. Let’s be clear about something. I’m not telling you what I think the law should be. I’m telling you how the law actually is. And then I’ll give my opinion, which might be wrong. Of course, my...

I have said it before and I will say it again, the 14th Amendment is by far the worst amendment to the Constitution. It broke every possible rule of constitutional government beginning with simplicity and timelessness. The 14th is a sprawling mess meant to deal with immediate problems that used sloppy broad language and quickly became a magnet for every leftist effort to conduct backdoor rewrites of the law. Consider that in just the last few years, Democrats used 4 of the 5 sections of the 14th to argue that… 1. That Trump was ineligible to hold office 2. That...

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson 🚨BREAKING: Trump signs Executive Order clarifying birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. From Trump War Room 7:03 PM · Jan 20, 2025

Two Democrat legal experts are calling on Congress to take immediate action to prevent President-elect Donald Trump from taking office, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Evan A. Davis, the former editor in chief of the Columbia Law Review and David M. Schulte, the former editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal, called for Trump’s disqualification in an opinion piece for The Hill, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Davis is a New York City attorney and a former president of the New York City Bar Association. He worked on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry...

The Constitution provides that an oath-breaking insurrectionist is ineligible to be president. This is the plain wording of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. “No person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” there is the bipartisan inquiry of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol....

resurfaced video shows Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) unveiling a plan for Congress to implement “civil war conditions” and disqualify former President Donald Trump if he wins the November presidential election. According to Legal Insurrection, Raskin’s comments were given in February during an appearance at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C., prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling that individual states could not prohibit Trump from appearing on the ballot by using the 14th Amendment. “The court is not going to save us,” Raskin said. “And so that means the only thing that really works is people in motion amending...