With the Supreme Court nearing the end of this term, it will soon release its ruling in Trump v. Barbara, the landmark case on the constitutionality of President Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025, executive order clarifying and protecting the meaning of American birthright citizenship. Expectation that the court will rule against the president has prompted a recent social media blast from Trump against the unreliable “conservative” justices on the court. Trump predicted that the court will be “ruling against us on Birthright Citizenship, making us the only Country in the World that practices this unsustainable, unsafe, and incredibly costly DISASTER. I don’t want loyalty, but I do want and expect it for our country … Sometimes decisions have to be allowed to use Good, Strong, Common Sense as a guide.”
President Trump is predictably insightful in his analysis of the politics of the court. Despite Chief Justice John Roberts’ desire to preserve the alleged impartiality and supra-political character of the court, it is impossible to deny that the courts have always been political actors in American government. As the president exhorted, the Supreme Court should make its decisions by “Good, Strong Common Sense” and with an underlying loyalty to the United States, which means loyal prioritization of our people, our founding principles, and our national preservation. Fortunately, the original meaning of the 14th Amendment supports President Trump’s position.
Specifically, while U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), which allegedly established the liberal interpretation of birthright citizenship, should ultimately be overturned, there remains a viable path where the court could uphold that ruling’s precedent and simultaneously recognize that the 14th Amendment does not grant citizenship to children of illegal aliens born within the territory of the U.S. This would be a major win and step toward securing and restoring our national sovereignty.
Ed Erler, one of the foremost scholars on the issue of birthright citizenship and the 14th Amendment, has treated this topic in great detail in his compelling book The United States in Crisis: Citizenship, Immigration, and the Nation-State. As Erler demonstrates, the original intention of the 14th Amendment, as expressed by its framers, was to grant American citizenship to former slaves and their children. The clause “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” excludes illegal aliens and foreign citizens, given that they are not fully subject to the jurisdiction of the American regime. They are subject to our laws while they sojourn here, but not subject as loyal citizens, since they owe allegiance to their foreign nations of origin.
Erler relies upon the political principles of the American founders to reject the British common law doctrine whereby anyone born within the territory of the British Empire was a perpetual subject of Britain. Erler further provides evidence from the ratification debates, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Expatriation Act of 1868, and Elk v. Wilkins (1884) to clarify the original meaning of birthright citizenship in the 14th Amendment.
Hellbound and Down 