Get ready for the next Roe v. Wade — only this time the Supreme Court decision that threatens to split the country isn't about abortion; it's about "birthright citizenship."
Trump v. Barbara is before the Court this week, and with it comes the very question of who is an American.
On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order clarifying that the children of illegal immigrants or temporary residents aren't American citizens just by virtue of being born on American soil.
People born here to at least one citizen parent are automatically citizens, and Trump's order recognizes the children of lawful permanent residents as birthright citizens, too.
But that's not enough for those who insist the Constitution's 14th Amendment establishes a radical definition of birthright citizenship:
Since even illegal immigrants are "subject to the jurisdiction" of the federal government while they're in this country, the amendment's language — "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States ..." — means their children, too, are American citizens.
There's a string of Supreme Court rulings and federal laws that defenders of that sweeping interpretation cite to back up their claim.
But the bottom line is they think no executive order, or even congressional legislation, can moderate the meaning of birthright citizenship:
If you don't like the most wide-open definition of birthright citizenship, there's nothing you can do about it except try to pass another constitutional amendment.
And of course, with this reading of birthright citizenship rewriting the very composition of America's citizen body, the odds of passing an amendment to restore sanity are tall indeed:
Democrats need the voters manufactured by the anything-goes version of birthright citizenship to stay competitive — and if they can transform the electorate through immigration and birthright citizenship, they hope to lay permanent claim on power.
Yet it's not only domestic political factions that are using the loose construction of birthright citizenship to their advantage. America's opponents abroad are doing so, too.
What could be more useful for an enemy than to have agents with all the "privileges and immunities" of American citizens?
China has exploited the liberal interpretation of "birthright citizenship" to maximum advantage.
Analyzing the results from decades of "birth tourism" — which brings pregnant Chinese women or other foreign nationals to our soil, including territories like our Northern Mariana Islands, for the express purpose of giving birth and acquiring American citizenship for their offspring — Peter Schweizer, in his book "The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon," estimates "at least 750,000 and possibly as many as 1.5 million Chinese, who are also American citizens by virtue of being born here, are now growing toward adulthood in China."
And birth tourism seems almost quaint compared to a new scheme that Chinese nationals have lately been perfecting: using surrogacy to turn foreign embryos into American citizens.
That's what Guojun Xuan, and his partner Silvia Zhang, were doing with a breeding program that was exposed in Arcadia, California, last year.
Through a surrogacy firm that Xuan ran, the couple had more than two dozen of their own embryos brought to term by American women, not only in California but across the country in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Georgia as well.
Birthright citizenship, as liberals understand it — and as they hope the Supreme Court will uphold it — leads to absurdities, and worse.
It incentivizes and rewards lawbreaking by granting the invaluable prize of American citizenship to the children of people who enter this country in knowing violation of our laws.
It gives foreign powers easy access to America's domestic politics, through the full rights of citizens.
And the liberal approach thwarts American democracy itself, by preventing voters from assigning limits to birthright citizenship through the ordinary channels of representative government — that is, through their choices for president and Congress.
The purpose of the 14th Amendment was to enshrine the rights of black Americans as natural-born citizens, not to grant citizenship to the offspring of non-Americans in this country illegally.
It certainly wasn't written to allow foreign powers to obtain for their own citizens or subjects a useful secondary citizenship as Americans.
Citizens of foreign nations are not naturally subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, though anyone can be temporarily subject to that jurisdiction by breaking the law to come here.
Children are by default subject to the jurisdiction that their parents are subject to — not temporarily, but permanently and in the ordinary course of life.
Trump's executive order made the right distinctions: between permanent residence and temporary status and between citizens and illegal aliens.
Now it's up to the Supreme Court to make the right distinction between radical legal arguments and constitutional common sense.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Previously:
• 03/17/26: Why Are Senate Dems Making Air Travel Worse?
• 03/10/26: Cuba Should Accept Trump's 'Friendly Takeover'
• 03/03/26: Immigration Enforcement Saves Lives
• 02/24/26: How a Party Offends Its Voters
• 02/17/26: Why Are Anti-ICE Activists Building Borders?
• 02/10/26: A Japanese Lesson for Troubled Britain
• 02/03/26: The Trump Coalition Wins But the GOP Brand Doesn't
• 01/27/26: Canada Should Warm to Trump's Arctic Plans
• 01/20/26: From Rock to Tech, Talent Flees Taxes
• 01/13/26: Woman Who Weaponized Car Against I.C.E Endangered Her Life -- and Yours
• 01/06/26: Tim Walz Personifies Dems' Decline
• 12/30/25: Harvard Says Yes to Discrimination, No to Western Civ
• 12/23/25: JD Vance Gets America's Creed and Heritage Right
• 12/16/25: Trump's Inflation Trap
• 12/09/25: Biden's Immigration Debacle Is the Media's, Too
• 12/02/25: 'Iryna's Law' and the Bad Judges Who Make It Necessary
• 11/26/25: Marjorie Taylor Greene's Exit Is a Warning to Republicans
• 11/19/25: Trump Hasn't Lost Hispanics (Yet)
• 11/11/25: Trump's Tariffs on Trial
• 10/28/25: MAGA Makes Allies Great Again
• 10/21/25: How To Make the AmericaS Great Again
• 10/16/25: Columbus Day Celebrates Our Civilization
• 10/09/25: Why Sharpies Are Made in America Again
• 09/30/25: Assata Shakur and Other Parents of Political Violence
• 09/09/25: Who's Accountable for Autopen Pardons?
• 09/02/25: Gender dysphoria is a mental-illness, NOT an all-encompassing delusion
• 08/26/25: Trump's Industrial Policy Is Realism, Not Socialism
• 08/19/25: Is Gavin Newsom the Dems' Answer to Trump?
• 08/12/25: Just Say No to More Marijuana
• 08/05/25: Will the GOP Make Libs Generous Again?
• 07/30/25: Trump's Trade Lesson for Economists (and the World)
• 07/22/25: Whose Politics Canceled Stephen Colbert?
• 07/08/25: A Big Beautiful Test of GOP Principles and Discipline
• 07/01/25: Dems Need Populism, But Not Zohran's Sort
• 06/25/25: Secure Borders Win Wars Like This One
• 06/18/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/17/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/04/25: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
• 05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
• 05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
• 05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
• 05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
• 04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
• 04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
• 04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
• 04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
• 03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
• 03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
• 03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
• 03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
• 02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
• 02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
• 01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
• 01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
• 01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
• 01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
• 12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
• 12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
• 12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
• 11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
• 11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
• 11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
• 10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
• 10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
• 10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
• 10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
• 09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
• 09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
• 09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
• 09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
• 08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
• 08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
• 08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
• 08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
• 08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
• 07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
• 07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
• 07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
• 07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
• 06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
• 06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
• 06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
• 06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
• 05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
• 05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
• 05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
• 05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
• 05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
• 04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
• 04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
• 04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
• 04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
• 03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
• 03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print