“Children have rights” made him lose control,” wrote X user @welchmeyer after watching a clip of Johnson’s angry reaction.
“A reporter said, ‘Birthright citizenship, which hasn’t been decided yet, helped hundreds of thousands of formerly enslaved people in Louisiana.’ Then they asked, ‘As a constitutional lawyer and a representative to the descendants of some of those enslaved people, do you agree with the President that this should be eliminated?
It helped so many people, but it hasn’t come down yet.Do you support the President’s view?'”
“The House Speaker replied, ‘What— What was the— I missed the first part of the question.
What—'”
The reporter explained they were talking about birthright citizenship.
“Oh, birthright, sorry, birthright citizenship,” said Johnson.
“Yeah, okay, look, yes, as a constitutional lawyer, I’ve got plenty of opinions on this.Okay, I understand what the framers did, and when we added this to the Constitution, I knew what the intent was—”
” Oh, it just came down,” someone in the room whispered.
“Oh dear, what did they rule?” Johnson asked.
“A reporter read, ‘Children born in the United States, to parents unlawfully or temporarily present, are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and are citizens at birth under the 14th Amendment Citizenship Clause.’ What’s your reaction to that?”
Johnson let out a low, angry growl, taking a deep breath in frustration as he looked around at the audience.
“Well.
Uh.I need to read the opinion, okay?” he said.”But obviously, that’s, I mean, you could say that’s a textualist, originalist view.However, I do think, umm, that this has been grossly abused in recent years, okay?”
The court ruled 6-3 that Trump violated the 14th Amendment by signing an Executive Order to end birthright citizenship.
The decision is a big loss for the President’s racist, nativist agenda.White nationalists are losing their minds on social media.
This is a rare time when a Republican-controlled court made the right call, because birthright citizenship is clearly written in the Constitution.
The same conservatives who claim the founding document is unchangeable and should be interpreted as the Founders intended are quick to abandon that view when it helps their political goals.
In Johnson’s case, it’s not that he strongly supports Trump’s immigration policies (even though he likes the idea of a whiter America), but he wants to please the xenophobic MAGA base so they’ll vote Republican as he pushes toward his real goal: a Christian Nationalist theocracy.
With that in mind, every failure for this administration is a win for democracy and a loss for Johnson.
About the Author
