President Donald Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship for illegal aliens, tied to the invasion on the border, tees up a major Supreme Court case that could become a historic Trump win that fixes a growing, decades-long problem.
A plurality of Americans “strongly support” changing the federal law to ensure illegal migrants cannot get citizenship for their newly born children, according to a poll by Emerson College.
One of the biggest issues of the new Trump term is birthright citizenship. The president is pushing back against it with an executive order. He has a valid, constitutional argument.
There is a common misconception in the United States that the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution mandates that the US government grant citizenship to anyone and everyone born within the borders of the United States.
Claremont Institute scholars, including me, Ed Erler, Tom West, John Marini, and Michael Anton, President Trump’s incoming Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, have been contending for years—decades, really—that the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause does not provide automatic citizenship for everyone born on U.S. soil, no matter the circumstances.
We now have an ideological agenda that runs contrary to our fundamental perspective of individual rights, freedoms, and liberties.
If you have the “wrong” opinion on healthcare, school lunch menus, or whether the M-5000 BlasterTank should be funded in next year’s military budget, you’re a racist. Those who wear uniforms and face-covering hoods, while demanding others repeat “correct think” phrases under threat of violence cluelessly call other people Nazis and fascists — and with a straight face. And rights? Anything coveted by more than one woke individual is now a “right.” Listening to the nightly news and politicians’ bloviation, one might think it’s protecting its citizens from themselves. Perhaps the purpose of government is to provide for national security. Or maybe it’s providing a safe, stable, and level playing field for its citizens. Some believe government’s role is to provide for the national welfare, whatever that means. Looking at a founders’ view of government, the purpose is to protect the natural rights of those who elect to be governed.
