Carrie Johnson

Or do we rule on the basis of those two prior enacted laws by Congress in 1940 and 1952?

And when you're an advocate arguing before the Supreme Court and a justice asks you basically how you want to win, you're probably feeling pretty good about yourself.

And a narrow path, a narrow path is usually what this court wants to take.

And they could just decide to affirm Juan Kim Ark, as Justice Kavanaugh said, and keep it short and sweet.

I'm Carrie Johnson.

I cover the Supreme Court and justice.

On his first day back in the White House, President Trump signed an executive order that was designed to prevent children born to immigrants in the country without long-term legal status from automatically becoming citizens.

He said U.S.

citizenship is a priceless gift.

He talked about the 14th Amendment and it's guaranteed that people born or naturalized in the U.S.

and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens.

And he talked about how that amendment basically

overturned the Dred Scott decision and the idea that enslaved people who are newly freed and their children should become American citizens was like basically the whole intent of the 14th Amendment.

But he cast some doubt or cast a shadow over people who were in the U.S.

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.