The ink wasn’t dry on the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship ruling before the vultures started circling.
Signs and billboards advertising birth tourism packages — “Deliveries starting at $4,000” — are already going up along the southern border and across Mexico. Chinese birth tourism operations are ramping back up. Russian nationals are booking flights. The entire industry that the Trump administration spent years trying to shut down just got a Supreme Court green light to operate openly, brazenly, and at industrial scale.
Trump saw the billboards and said exactly what needed to be said: “American citizenship is not for sale!” Then he announced he’s asking the Supreme Court to immediately rehear the case.
Good. Fight every inch of this. Because the Court got it wrong.
The 6-3 ruling in Trump v. Barbara held that the 14th Amendment protects birthright citizenship for children born on American soil to parents who are here illegally or temporarily. Five justices — including, disgracefully, two appointed by Republican presidents — decided that the plain meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” extends to people who entered the country illegally and owe no allegiance to it whatsoever.
