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The Supreme Court delivered a stunning blow to President Trump's birthright citizenship executive order, which sought to declare that babies born in the U.S. to mothers unlawfully present or in the United States on temporary visas would no longer automatically receive U.S. citizenship. The ruling in Trump v. Barbara was 6-3, with Justices Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Chief Justice John Roberts joining the liberal justices in striking down the order. The ruling was exceptionally long, nearly 200 pages. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a scathing dissent, grounding his reasoning in the view that the 14th Amendment was meant to apply...

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the principal dissenting opinion in Trump v. Barbara, where the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s executive order barring birthright American citizenship for the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens and temporary visa holders is a violation of the 14th Amendment. In his dissenting opinion, Thomas writes that “both the Civil Rights Act and the Citizenship Clause guaranteed citizenship to persons born and domiciled in the United States regardless of their race.” “Neither guaranteed citizenship to persons who were not domiciled in the United States,” Thomas writes: Blacks were...

Heads up, faithful P&E readers: this is big. The Supreme Court has released its decision in Trump v. Barbara, the “birthright citizenship” case that has attracted much attention since President Trump issued his Executive Order 14160 immediately after assuming office for his second term. Cutting to the chase, the Court in an opinion authored by Chief Justice Roberts has today invalidated the Executive Order. While the decision, of course, will have massive impact on 14th Amendment scholarship, it might well have an equal or greater impact on the different, yet related issue of who can be (or who cannot be)...

1776, Not 1608: What the Supreme Court Got Wrong on Birthright CitizenshipChief Justice Roberts forgot the Declaration of Independence.Chief Justice John Roberts begins the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship opinion in Westminster in 1608 with Calvin’s Case and the English law of royal subjectship.I would begin in Philadelphia in 1776.Between those two places—and those two moments—lies the American Revolution. And the Revolution changed more than who governed America. It changed the very foundation of political membership.That is the central problem with the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Barbara. The Court’s opinion is learned, careful, and historically rich. Chief Justice Roberts...

When Senator Jacob Howard explained the Fourteenth Amendment's citizenship clause, he said: "This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States." Most people today read this statement and assume Howard was listing four separate categories of people who would not receive birthright citizenship: Foreigners Aliens People who belong to families of ambassadors Foreign ministers This interpretation has shaped decades of constitutional debate, but it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how Howard structured his sentence....

Official transcript from the US Senate on May 30, 1866. Senator Jacob Howard, who introduced the 14th Amendment: "This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens...” SCOTUS got this ruling 100% wrong. A total travesty.

Since the first days of his second term as president, Donald Trump has been pushing back against a constitutional right he says has been taken advantage of for too long - what he calls "Birthright Citizenship." A new analysis from Pew Research shows, following a 40 percent drop from 2006 to 2016, a rapid rise in the number of births to unauthorized mothers in the United States from 2019 to 2023, which means about 9% of all 3.6 million babies born were to authorized immigrant mothers or those with temporary legal status. (TNND) “It had to do with the babies...

<p>The 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause was a surgical remedy for the unique injustice inflicted on freed black slaves and their descendants — not a blank check for the world’s opportunists. Unless the Court restores its original meaning, this misapplied policy will accelerate the erosion of everything that makes America worth defending.</p>

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of President Trump’s executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship as we have known it. The court’s eventual opinion in the case, Trump v. Barbara, will almost certainly hinge on how the justices interpret the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, which says: “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.” The court will probably also respond to the first words of the president’s March 19 brief, which asserts that...

The case against birthright citizenship seems straightforward and persuasive. Is it really right for an eight-month pregnant Mexican woman to illegally cross the Rio Grande, give birth, and be allowed to stay in America because her newborn child is now a natural born citizen? By the same token, is it just for a Chinese millionaire to have 100 children by surrogacy, arrange for them to be born in the US, and then move them back to China, where they are now US citizens and can later vote in US elections? That’s crazy, right? And these are not hypothetical or imaginary...

(Apr. 3, 2026) — Well, the oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, the “birthright citizenship” case, are over and the matter is now under advisement with SCOTUS. Interested readers can view the transcript here. And as usual, the armchair pontificators are busily at work tapping out their predictions on their keyboards…, not unlike your humble servant. And the fact that President Trump attended the event (although he left before it was over…, arguably not the wisest or most courteous move…, where is Susie Wiles when you need her…?) rendered it even more interesting. Your servant has made his views known...

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on the Trump administration’s challenge to the decades-long practice of interpreting the 14th Amendment to allow foreigners to obtain American citizenship simply by being born within the boundaries of the country. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of this view, allowing any foreigner circumstantially (or intentionally) born on U.S. soil to be automatically adopted into the Union as a citizen, it will mean the end of actual American citizens taking the high court seriously. As Justice Clarence Thomas pointed out, the purpose of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship to...

(Mar. 20, 2026) — Author’s Note: If parents have existing foreign citizenship, the 14th Amendment ‘born in the United States’ citizenship at birth clause DOES NOT APPLY to their children. WHY? Because the child already has the citizenship of their parents. The 14th Amendment was drafted from the 1866 Civil Rights Act to ‘cure’ stateless children whose parents had no nationality to confer, NOT to create ‘dual’ or ‘hybrid’ citizens which is a Conflict of Law. Modern nationality law began in the 1700’s, changing with the age of exploration, colonization, and the decline of feudal monarchies. The jus feudalis ‘feudal’...

(Mar. 20, 2026) — As we enter the final days leading up to the oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, it may be prudent to review the briefs on the merits of President Trump and his opponents, as well as the myriad amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs that have been filed. To begin with, as your humble servant has posited here, the merits Opening Brief of the President, authored by Solicitor General D. John Sauer, is not merely persuasive, it is compelling. Read it for yourself. And as for the opposition’s merits brief, your servant has made his...

...In a newly filed brief at the Supreme Court, the Trump admin. isn’t arguing politics or modern talking points, like so many experts thought they would... They’re arguing history. And once you see what they put on the record, it’ll be clear to you why this entire “birthright” debate has been shut down for so long.What Team Trump put in front of the Supreme Court of the United States was a very long paper trail showing how birthright citizenship has been understood for decades after the 14th Amendment was ratified... The 14th Amendment doesn’t say that anyone born on US...

Attorney General Letita James shuts down Jewish group for fighting back. After two years of Hamas supporters assaulting NYPD officers and Jewish community members, besieging synagogues, blocking streets, vandalizing buildings and making death threats, New York Attorney General Letitia James finally took action. Against Jews. In a press release, AG James, who had previously worked to shut down the NRA because she disagreed with its politics, announced that she had closed down Betar, a pro-Israel group , for appearing at synagogues to defend them from Muslim mobs, for claiming that “that all devout Muslims ‘hate America’, and for making derogatory...

On Monday’s broadcast of WBUR’s “Here and Now,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said that he wouldn’t protest in a church, and “it doesn’t take place in Minneapolis. What I can say is, in Minneapolis, we’ve had tens of thousands of peaceful people peacefully protesting.” And “If the goal here is peace and order, then there’s a very easy antidote to achieve it, which is for ICE and the troops and anyone else to leave.” He also stated that violent protesters in the city have been punished.Frey said, “I can’t speak for the church protest, and, obviously, it doesn’t take place...

Somewhere out there in the great cosmos, Saul Alinsky is cackling with glee over the way Democrats are providing top cover for the commie radicals running roughshod over the rule of law in Minnesota. The latest elected official to earn Alinsky's approval, while also making a mockery of law and order, is Minnesota's Attorney General himself, Democrat Keith Ellison. Ellison, who is Muslim and the top law enforcement officer in the state, appeared Monday on Don Lemon's livestream to discuss the Sunday ambush of services at Cities Church in St. Paul by a horde of anti-ICE agitators. Lemon, it should...

The battle over who qualifies as an American at birth has officially reached the highest court in the land. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the historic challenge to President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order restricting birthright citizenship, setting the stage for what could be the most consequential interpretation of the 14th Amendment in more than a century. Trump’s order—one of the signature actions of his America First immigration agenda—asserts that children born to illegal aliens on U.S. soil do not automatically receive citizenship, countering decades of bureaucratic interpretation and closing what critics call one of...

@ThomasEWoods Trump is right about birthright citizenship (14th Amendment )