The administration was never going to win the birthright citizenship case before the Supreme Court. Changing something as fundamental as our current practices regarding membership in the national community shouldn’t be changed by executive order.
But the real losers from Tuesday’s decision are the American people.
That’s because the high court didn’t just strike down Trump’s January 2025 executive order on “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” Rather, by a 5-4 vote, it said that Congress did not have the authority to change our current practice of granting U.S. citizenship to almost everyone born here, even children born to tourists, foreign students, visa workers, or illegal aliens. This removes the issue from normal democratic politics.
The only way to reform the rules now is a constitutional amendment. But that requires a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures — so at a time when Republicans have a tiny House majority, and Democrats are sending literal communists to Washington, D.C., it’s a safe bet that this ruling will be with us for a while.
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