Carrie Johnson

either illegally or on a short-term status like with work visas or student visas or travel that they had overstayed.

Yeah.

For many, many, many decades, birthright citizenship has been taken as a given kind of a foundational principle.

And yet over the last several years, people like John Eastman, a lawyer who helped

President Trump, basically with the legal theory that Trump used to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election, John Eastman and some other scholars along those lines have been really advancing a reimagining of the 14th Amendment and this concept of birthright.

And so they've been talking kind of in the wilderness.

Now the Supreme Court is taking this seriously.

And it's really a major, major issue.

Right.

The ACLU and a number of groups have challenged this executive order.

They basically argue that if you look to the history, the text of the 14th Amendment, and the American legal tradition, they win on all of those counts.

I listened to a call last week that included Cody Wofsey from the ACLU.

Here's what he had to say.

And remember, the Supreme Court actually heard something related to birthright citizenship last year.

In that case, the court did not cover the merits, the substance of the issue.

Instead, it issued a ruling about universal injunctions.

And so this is kind of the court's second crack at the issue.

And now this birthright issue is fundamental to the case.

A senior Justice Department official this week basically said that the 14th Amendment was designed in the era after the Civil War.

And very clearly the intent of that amendment was to ensure that the children of newly freed slaves were citizens of the U.S.