Just a little more than a month after the Supreme Court rejected his first illegal effort to end birthright citizenship, Trump signed two new executive orders trying to do the same thing, but in a different way.
The 14th Amendment clearly states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against Trump’s first attempt to break this constitutional rule.
Instead of accepting the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump simply tried again, this time using new executive orders.
The first order says that people who are considered alien enemies, members of foreign terrorist groups, and the children of diplomats or other recognized international officials are not eligible for automatic citizenship.
The second executive order focuses on “birth tourism,” which is when people travel to the U.S.
mainly to give birth so their child automatically gets U.S.citizenship.Trump thinks this is like getting a visa through fraud, even though it’s already against the law.
Trump said, “We had a very unfortunate decision in the Supreme Court about birthright,” but he forgot that the Constitution isn’t meant to change just because he finds it inconvenient.
“It was close, but a very, very unfortunate decision.So, we’re making adjustments because it’s very unfair,” he said.
Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller tried to make people worry about a sudden rise in pregnant tourists planning to have American babies.
But the real numbers show that in 2024, only 9,600 babies were born to mothers with foreign addresses — a very small number compared to the 3.6 million babies born in the U.S.each year.
Trump’s claims about the 14th Amendment are also not accurate.
He said it was for the babies of slaves, but the law applies to anyone born in the U.S., regardless of their background.
There’s a bitter twist here: Trump’s own father, Fred Trump, was born a U.S.
citizen to a woman who came to New York while she was five months pregnant — exactly the situation Trump is now trying to restrict for others.
Even during the Supreme Court arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts didn’t believe the “birth tourism” issue was a valid reason to change the law.
He told Trump’s lawyer that new travel trends don’t change the Constitution: “It’s a new world.It’s the same Constitution.”
Trump lost this fight already.
Signing the same type of unconstitutional plan with a different name doesn’t make it legal — it just wastes more time and money proving he doesn’t respect the rulings of the nation’s highest court, where these new executive orders will likely end up, only to be struck down again.
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