President Donald Trump is turning to Congress to pass legislation on birthright citizenship after an attempt to end the practice via executive order was struck down by the Supreme Court.
The court voted down Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship by a 6-3 vote on Tuesday morning, striking down an executive order that Trump signed on his first day back in office last year.
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The president wrote on Truth Social Tuesday afternoon that the decision “is too bad for our country.”
“We can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the president, that has now been determined during this process. No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary!” he added. “Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship. They will have my Complete and Total Support!”
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, wrote an opinion in the case that outlined a potential way for Congress to clarify who is eligible for birthright citizenship via legislation.
“Congress could—consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment—amend [existing law] or otherwise enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country,” Kavanaugh wrote. “But Congress has not yet done so.”
Lawmakers have introduced at least two bills regarding birthright citizenship, one in the House by Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) and another by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), both of which try to avoid the need for a constitutional amendment by providing further legislative definitions of the 14th Amendment.
Graham underscored his legislative endeavors on Tuesday, promising to make birthright citizenship one of his top priorities if he is Senate Judiciary Committee chairman next year.
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“There should be two pathways to citizenship – one, under the 14th Amendment, to ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ and two, via naturalization,” he wrote. “I disagree with the Supreme Court that children of illegal aliens and aliens only in the U.S. temporarily are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States.”
However, it is unclear whether Babin and Graham’s approach would withstand their own potential legal challenges.
To that end, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) on Tuesday proposed a constitutional amendment, despite Trump’s suggestion that one wasn’t needed.
“The Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship decision is wrong, dangerous, and disastrous for American sovereignty and the American people,” he wrote on Tuesday. “If we can’t fix it with ordinary legislation, then we must do what the Constitution commands in moments of national crisis: We must amend the Constitution and restore American citizenship. We must again put ‘We the People’ first.”
To amend the Constitution, Schmidtt’s measure would have to be supported by a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate or find support from two-thirds of the country’s state legislatures at a national convention. It would then have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states, either through those state legislatures or special ratification conventions.
White House officials declined to say which bill the president supported and referred questions on the subject back to Trump’s post on social media.
Regardless, a former Trump administration official downplayed the Supreme Court’s decision as a defeat for the president.
“This was always going to be one piece of a broader strategy,” the source told the Washington Examiner. “Conservatives will move past this ruling quickly and lean harder into border security and tighter immigration enforcement, where the public is firmly on their side. If anything, this sharpens the contrast heading into next cycle.”
A former White House official from Trump’s first term, however, told the Washington Examiner that the administration’s “hands are, effectively, tied” following the ruling, signaling that the president lacks a viable executive pathway to further press the issue on his own.
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Meanwhile, Democratic National Committee chairman Ken Martin celebrated the win, claiming Tuesday that “since his first days in office, Donald Trump has sought to recycle racist, debunked legal arguments to strip away the constitutional rights of American citizens born to immigrant parents.”
“With Trump v. Barbara, the Supreme Court emphatically rejected his anti-immigrant crusade and reaffirmed what has been enshrined in the clear language of the 14th Amendment,” he wrote in a statement. “If you are born in the United States, you are a citizen. Democrats will continue to defend the rights of every American.”