Citizenship Clause

But in this particular case, it's a territorial situation.

And so the question is, does the president have more power there than he has in other places? And is it now going to be possible to say that anybody who comes and gives birth in Guam is not a citizen of the United States? Because essentially what's happened is they're not covered by the Equal Protection Clause, because even though they're covered by the Citizenship Clause, it turns out that the protection that you get under the Equal Protection Clause is not going to be there.

I don't know what the answer is going to be to that.

And there's also another question nobody's quite sure about.

Now, Judge Boardman said the order is basically unconstitutional in reference to the Supreme Court's recent ruling on this matter in June.

That ruling said children born in the U.S. to parents who are here illegally on American soil are in fact protected by the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause.

And it even prevents federal agencies like the State Department and DHS from refusing to recognize their citizenship.

But folks, there's still an ongoing and open question about people who abuse these systems and what happens in those cases, some of which are documented.

here.

So I want to start with the central question of this whole debate, the executive orders coming from the White House.

Does the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and its citizenship clause protect the children of parents who were here either temporarily or even illegally?

It does.

I'll just jump to the points of contention here.

The majority opinion in Barbara effectively read out of the 14th Amendment two crucial phrases in the Citizenship Clause.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, is one of the phrase, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

Those phrases have to be given meaning and not be relegated to mere surplusage, and that is a common principle of constitutional interpretation.

The Biden appointee judge has struck it down, but that is going to be something to be litigated in and of itself.

And again, it's a bad decision by an activist Democrat judge going against the clear intent of the 14th Amendment Citizenship Clause.

Well, I want to pick your brain on that because this is something that I think people have a hard time understanding, and I've looked into it, and so I'd love for you to explain it because to me, the 14th Amendment was always intended for the post-Civil War reconstruction, but birthright tourism has taken over this interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

Can you explain the argument the Trump administration has with respect to interpreting the subject to the jurisdiction thereof argument?

Today, President Trump is making a historic field trip of sorts to the Supreme Court, where the justices are, just as we're speaking here, they're hearing oral arguments about birthright citizenship.

This is Trump versus Barbara, and it will turn largely on how the justices interpret the meaning of the 14th Amendment Citizenship Clause.

Here's Grazia Pastor.

She's the Associate White House Counsel previewing the administration's argument last night on Fox News.

No presidential executive order can undo what the Supreme Court in a 35 page by any means that could survive legal scrutiny.

Quote, since his second term in office began on January 20th, 2025, he wrote, the president has tried through executive order to upend our country's longstanding tradition of birthright citizenship and eliminate for large swaths of Americans the right to citizenship by birth, a right enshrined in the Constitution and in the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment.

While she stressed that it was too soon to find that the order itself was unconstitutional, the judge wrote that it already appeared clear that it was unconstitutional as applying to the class of babies defined when immigration groups initially sued last year to block Trump's first order.

It is extraordinary.