Birthright Citizenship Survived — But Three Justices Just Told You the 14th Amendment Doesn't Mean What It Says
The Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause is one sentence: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” It was ratified in 1868. The Supreme Court interpreted it — clearly, and with essentially the meaning everyone has understood it to have for over a century — in 1898. Nobody seriously disputed what it meant for 128 years. On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that meaning and struck down Trump’s executive order trying to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented and temporary-visa immigrants. That’s the good news. The bad news is what it took to get there, and what three sitting justices were willing to argue in order to reach the opposite conclusion. ...