History has taught us what happens when a single individual decides he has the power to rip up the thing that holds a country together.
Donald Trump just ripped up the 14th Amendment to deny birthright citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants.
Shortly after becoming the 47th president, Trump issued a slew of executive orders targeting migrants, drug cartels and, yes, U.S. citizens.
He declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, directing the “Armed Forces” to take control. He designated cartels as terrorist organizations and cracked down on asylum seekers.
All that was met with cheering from his supporters and even some Democrats who have decided it is best to jump on Trump’s bandwagon. They foolishly believe the guy cares about “common ground.”
Ending birthright citizenship was once a fringe idea
But what got some gasping was Trump’s order to unilaterally end birthright citizenship.
“If you’re born in America, you’re an American,” Arizona Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly said on X, formerly Twitter. “That’s a great thing about our country and in the Constitution. Presidents don’t get to just change that.”
Well, guess what? Trump just did.
The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 to give U.S. citizenship to enslaved Black people who had been emancipated.
The first sentence reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
In 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed those citizenship rights in the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
Trump is running roughshod over the Constitution
Until now, any talk of ending that birthright had been viewed as fringe or pure fantasy.
But now Trump is president again.
And this time, nothing is stopping him, not even the U.S. Constitution that he swore to defend and protect.
The American Civil Liberties Union immediately filed a lawsuit challenging the executive order’s constitutionality, and other lawsuits will almost certainly follow. On Tuesday, a coalition of attorneys general from 18 states filed their own lawsuit.
“We will not let this attack on newborns and future generations of American go unchallenged,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. “We will ultimately prevail.”
Let’s hope U.S. Supreme Court justices ultimately see the danger of letting a single individual unilaterally dismantle a constitutional amendment. The consequences are terrifying.
And don’t be foolish to think that this is just about penalizing undocumented parents. This is much bigger than that – it’s the kind of destructive power that is hard to contain once it goes unchecked.
History has taught us what happens when a single individual decides he has the power to rip up the thing that holds a country together. In our case, that thing is called the U.S. Constitution.
