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A referendum in Italy on easing citizenship rules and enhancing workers' rights has been declared invalid. Around 30% of voters participated - well short of the 50% threshold required to make the vote binding - in the poll, which began on Sunday and ran until 15:00 (14:00 BST) on Monday. The ballot featured five questions covering different issues, including a proposal to halve the length of time an individual has to live in Italy before they can apply for citizenship from 10 to five years. The referendum was initiated by a citizens' initiative and supported by civil society groups and...

The German government handed out a record number of citizenships to immigrants last year, rising to nearly a quarter of a million passports, with Syrian and Turkish nationals representing the largest cohorts. According to data collected by 13 of 16 federal states in Germany and provided to the Welt Am Sonntag newspaper, 249,901 foreigners were granted citizenship in 2024, the highest number since records began in 2000. This number surpassed the previous record set in 2023, when 200,095 people were awarded citizenship. Last year’s record naturalisation number is likely much higher, given that the states of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and...

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...

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,...

A Danish man living in Mississippi for a dozen years has been imprisoned in Louisiana for more than a month after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers took him into custody because of a “paperwork miscommunication” during his effort to become a naturalized U.S. citizen, his wife says.......................... ......For years, Kasper went through the process of trying to become a U.S. citizen, and Savannah Eriksen – now homeschooling their children and pregnant with their fifth baby, due in August – said her husband’s move toward citizenship appeared to be on track. He received notice last September that his naturalization application was...

Business mogul Elon Musk has warned that Democrats are planning to steal more federal elections by allowing people who are not U.S. citizens to vote.

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Arena,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship was “a loser.” Host Kasie Hunt said, “I want to start with what the Supreme Court discussed here today. They seemed open to limiting the ability of district court judges to issue nationwide injunctions. Do you think there’s potential validity to that?” Raskin said, “Not really. It would mean, for example in this case on birthright citizenship, that every family in America that might be affected or every person who might be affected would have to go themselves to court...

SummaryTrump order targeted children of certain immigrants Three judges issued orders blocking policy nationwide Administration challenges nationwide injunctions WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court wrestled on Thursday over Donald Trump's attempt to broadly enforce his executive order to restrict birthright citizenship, a move that would affect thousands of babies born each year as the Republican president seeks a major shift in how the U.S. Constitution has long been understood.The court's conservative justices, who hold a 6-3 majority, seemed willing to limit the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide, or "universal," injunctions, as federal judges in Maryland,...

The Supreme Court heard oral argument on Thursday in three (consolidated) cases involving challenges to President Donald Trump's executive order regarding birthright citizenship. I listened to the argument and have a few takeaways that I'll share here, but there are some preliminary matters to address before I do that.First, as explained previously, today's argument was not about the merits of the executive order (though they necessarily were discussed to a degree), nor was it about the merits of nationwide or universal injunctions in all contexts. Second, even the most learned legal scholars (which I most assuredly am not) will tell...

At 10:00 a.m. today, the Court will issue opinions in one or more of the cases pending for the October 2024 term. Scotusblog will be liveblogging as the opinions are released. You can follow that blog at:Scotusblog opinion release A list of the pending cases can be found here:October 2024 casesAfter the release of Opinions, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the government's implementation of Trump's Executive Order on birthright citizenship. I'm not sure how much the Court will address the actual merits of the case since the main issue is the constitutionality of federal judges issuing national...

For more than 150 years, almost all people who were born within U.S. territory automatically received citizenship – regardless of their parents’ immigration status. President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order on birthright citizenship – stating that children born in the U.S. to parents who are not in the country legally, or who are not permanent residents, cannot receive citizenship – threatens to upend this precedent. The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the case on May 15, 2025. This comes after federal judges in three cases that took place in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington banned Trump’s order...

For far too long, the American legal and political landscape has been distorted by a fundamental misunderstanding of the 14th Amendment: that merely being born on U.S. soil makes one a citizen. This misconception contradicts the original intent of the amendment’s framers. Furthermore, it undermines the foundational principle that citizenship arises from allegiance, not geographic happenstance. On May 15, the Supreme Court will take up three cases, consolidated under the name Trump v. CASA. It will address Donald Trump’s bold and necessary attempt to end the unconstitutional practice of granting citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of parental...

During his first term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the Census Bureau to add a question about citizenship status to the 2020 national survey. There was good reason for this. The Census is used to count the population. Population numbers are then used to determine how many congressional seats are allocated to each state. Given illegal aliens aren’t citizens and ineligible to vote, they should not have representation in Congress and Democrats shouldn’t benefit from additional congressional seats based on an illegal population. “If unauthorized immigrants were excluded from the apportionment count, California, Florida and Texas would...

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...

The state requires voters to prove their citizenship. An error led to chaos, suspicion and confusion, signaling broader challenges for Republican-led efforts across the country.PHOENIX — For 30 years, no one questioned Danny Dobosz’s citizenship when the lifelong Republican cast his ballot. So when a letter arrived from a local election official last month asking him to send back a copy of his birth certificate to prove he was an American citizen who was eligible to vote, he tossed it in the trash at his home in Yuma, Arizona. Dobosz, an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump who was born...

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Thursday blocked a portion of President Donald Trump’s executive order on election integrity, specifically provisions related to providing documentary proof of citizenship before being allowed to register to vote. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia handed down the order in response to lawsuits filed by three separate groups of plaintiffs over five different provisions in a March 25 Trump executive order relating to election integrity. While Kollar-Kotelly dismissed requests to block three of the provisions, requests to block two other provisions pertaining to a proof of...

A federal judge on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump from implementing an executive order that requires voters to show documentation proving their U.S. citizenship to cast a ballot in federal elections. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Bill Clinton appointee, granted a preliminary injunction stopping the Trump administration from going forward with the proof-of-citizenship requirements as a lawsuit plays out, the Associated Press reported. The lawsuit, filed by the Democratic National Committee and leftist voting rights groups, claims that Trump’s order is “an unlawful action that threatens to uproot our tried-and-tested election systems and silence potentially millions of Americans.”

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

The Trump administration had asked the justices to lift a nationwide pause on the policy as lower court challenges continue.The Supreme Court announced on Thursday that it would hear arguments in a few weeks over President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship.The brief order by the justices was unsigned and gave no reasoning, as is typical in such emergency cases. But the unusual move is a sign that the justices consider the matter significant enough that they would immediately hold oral argument on the government’s request to lift a nationwide pause on the policy.The justices announced they would defer any...

See Order as noted