Why Trump Won't Stop Until He Ends Birthright Citizenship
The pattern is always the same: wrap bigotry in legal language and claim you’re protecting “real Americans.”
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Who is an American isn’t a difficult question. Despite what four politicians in black robes tried to tell us yesterday, the 14th Amendment is incredibly clear, written in language anybody can read and comprehend: “Any persons born or naturalized in the United States.” It’s simple: If you’re born here, you’re an American, and entitled to all our country’s blessings. And it used to be pretty widely agreed upon that this was an asset that this set our country above other nations as a beacon of freedom.
When I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, I knew this was part of the deal. And I served in uniform alongside people that would have proudly given their life for their country, even if their parents were born somewhere else.
But since the 14th Amendment’s adoption, there has been a movement trying to weaken this consensus and tear the country apart, which Trump and his allies have weaponized to their own corrupt ends. Yesterday’s ruling was both a relief—that this bedrock principal was upheld—and a travesty, because the four dissenting justices (and you know who they are without looking it up) left the door open for Trump to keep this malignant movement alive.
Ending Birthright Citizenship is the reason they get out of bed in the morning. Let’s be very clear about this: Trump and his allies are not going to stop trying to end Birthright Citizenship, and whoever succeeds him will pick up that mantle.
Deciding “who is an American” is central to the MAGA project; it is among the very first steps in their playbook. If you think this is an overstatement, just look at one response yesterday from a prominent MAGA stooge—the CEO of the right-wing magazine The Federalist—suggesting, that the U.S. should “require sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry.” This is psychotic stuff, but it shows you that these guys are not just going to shrug their shoulders and move on.
There’s real danger here. If they control who gets to be an American, it unlocks their ability to control every other aspect of our lives. That’s what Trump wants and what we can’t let happen.
Only minutes after the ruling was announced, Trump took to Truth Social, staking out his preferred course of action”
Speaker Mike Johnson was predictably compliant while Trump’s MAGA allies in the Senate announced they’re still going to go the Constitutional Amendment. Of course, amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states—38 states total. That’s an intentionally high bar, designed by the Founders to prevent exactly this kind of political weaponization. But the flashing warning sign for me was what the four dissenting justices signaled. My read of it was essentially that Clarence Thomas, the husband of a January 6th co-conspirator, and company gave a roadmap for circumventing Congress entirely, suggesting Trump reinterpret birthright citizenship through executive action. It’s clear they’re going to use any means necessary to get what they want.
As these MAGA trolls joining the long tradition of redefining citizenship to exclude people they don’t like, we are watching history repeat itself. The pattern is always the same: wrap bigotry in legal language and claim you’re protecting “real Americans.” Each time, the justification was the same: my claim to citizenship is more important, more worthy, than theirs. They’re too different, too foreign, too dangerous. They’ll never be “real Americans.” For Trump and Stephen Miller, there are only those who can have their citizenship questioned and those who never will.
Now some of the braver right-wingers will at least try to pretend as if there’s some substantive argument to be made here. They say that birthright citizenship has hurt America, that it’s draining our resources or our services—that this is all one big economic misunderstanding. Only their economic argument holds up about as well as Trump’s hair in a downpour. Americans born here to non-citizen parents aren’t draining the treasury, they’re filling it. They start businesses, pay taxes, serve in the military, and contribute to Social Security and Medicare. Studies consistently show that immigration, including birthright citizenship, generates more tax revenue than it costs.
Consider the math: a child born in Texas to Mexican parents grows up speaking English, graduates from an American high school, starts a small business, and spends sixty years paying federal and state taxes. Under the MAGA vision, that person—an American in every way—would somehow be less deserving of citizenship than someone whose great-great-grandfather arrived on a boat from Germany.
What makes America exceptional is the idea that citizenship isn’t about bloodlines or tribal membership—it’s about our shared commitment to a set of principles. It is a big, sprawling, living and breathing Democracy. This is what sets us apart from nations that define citizenship by ethnicity or religion. A Shining City on a Hill isn’t meant to be admired in the distance, it is an actual place with people, industry, traditions and faith.
And that gets us to the core of MAGA. The movement to end birthright citizenship isn’t trying to make America stronger. It’s trying to make America smaller, more fearful, more divided. It’s trying to turn the Constitution into a weapon against the very people it was designed to protect. Ultimately, Trump wants a smaller citizenry, a smaller democracy and a smaller America—in every sense of the word.
A perfect example of this is Stephen Miller, who decried the ruling last night on social media, saying, “American citizenship is not the birthright of the world. It belongs only and solely to Americans. No provision of the Constitution can be read to require our national self-obliteration.”
This is an existential fight for him, for Trump and for the sociopaths they’ve got running the government right now. It is the skeleton key to the fascist takeover so many of them pray for each night. So the fight continues because they will never stop. America, as they know it, cannot exist with birthright citizenship in place because they believe it diminishes them. And, to me, that’s what makes the MAGA movement so weak and pathetic. They want to make being born here a curse, when the rest of us know it is an immense privilege.
If those are the battle lines, then I for one know which America I swore an oath to defend and which America I’m fighting for.
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