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President Donald Trump offered a path forward when it comes to ending the practice of birthright citizenship, which was upheld on Tuesday at the Supreme Court in the context of the Fourteenth Amendment.
“The Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process,” he wrote in a statement posted to Truth Social.
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 this week that birthright citizenship may be afforded to the children of parents present in the U.S. unlawfully, nixing a previous executive order that President Trump had issued attempting to bring an end to such a practice.
“Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause,” the court wrote in the syllabus.
In his statement on Tuesday, President Trump said that a constitutional amendment would not be necessary to undo the Supreme Court’s ruling, arguing that Congress had the power to immediately address the issue.
“Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship,” he said. “They will have my Complete and Total Support!”
The Supreme Court’s ruling on birthright citizenship has evoked various reactions from conservatives.
“This was not a decision on procedural grounds (ie, POTUS can’t do this through executive order but Congress could legislate it); it is a substantive decision that says the 14th amendment requires citizenship for those born to, among others, birth tourists or those unlawfully present in the country,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), on social media.
He continued, “Will need either a constitutional amendment or a future court to overrule this. Anyway you slice it, the decision is a major defeat.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters that he was “very disappointed in that outcome,” describing the ruling as a “textualist, originalist view.”
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., derided SCOTUS’ decision as “wrong, dangerous, and disastrous for American sovereignty and the American people.”
Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, flamed the high court for making “One of the most destructive and outrageous decisions in the long history of the Supreme Court.”
He concluded, “American citizenship is not the birthright of the world. It belongs only and solely to Americans. No provision of the Constitution can be read to require our national self-obliteration.”