The NPR Politics Podcast - Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

The U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed that virtually all babies born in the United States are citizens, regardless of their parents' immigration status. The ruling — the last one of the court's term ��� invalidates an executive order President Trump signed on the first day of his second term in office. We discuss whether this closes the book on Trump's effort to reverse this long-held principle, plus Supreme Court rulings related to transgender athletes and campaign finance laws.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, Supreme Court and justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Virtually all children born in the United States are U.S. citizens, including those born to parents who are in the United States illegally. That's what the Supreme Court ruled today in a case we have all been waiting for since day one of President Trump's second term in office. Let's get into it. It is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Supreme Court. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. So, Kerry, on President Trump's day one of his second term in office, he signed this executive order that eliminated automatic U.S. citizenship for babies born to parents who lack long-term status in the country. This includes people like people in the United States illegally and also people who are on short-term visas.

But a majority of justices ruled today that he cannot do that. Can you explain this? Yeah, the majority was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, and he really took a march through history. He started an English common law. He went up to the Dred Scott decision, one of the worst decisions in the history of the United States Supreme Court before the Civil War. And then he spent a lot of time on the 14th Amendment, which was passed and ratified after the Civil War. That says all persons born are naturalized in the U.S. and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside. John Robert said the 14th Amendment was the last word there. It meant what it said. And that meant that this effort by the Trump administration, very aggressive effort to try to redefine who counts as an American, was not passing muster with this court majority.

I will note that four justices, though, said that the 14th Amendment does not universally grant citizenship. What was their argument in their dissent? You know, it's a little bit nuanced. Let's start with Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee. Kavanaugh actually agreed that in this case, people challenging Trump's executive order should win. But he thought they should win not on the basis of the Constitution, the 14th Amendment, but a far more narrow ground. The idea that Congress, in 1940 and 1952, passed statutes basically codifying some of what the 14th Amendment had to say into American law. And those statutes were enough for the court to decide that the executive order was not valid. In fact, Justice Kavanaugh said, because he would decide on the basis of those laws, that meant that Congress could go back and amend the law or pass new laws to try to prohibit the babies of people in the country illegally or on work or school visas from becoming citizens.

And then the other dissenters were more aggressive, I'll say. Justice Clarence Thomas said the majority basically misunderstood what the 14th Amendment was about and what they said. Justice Samuel Alito said this is one of the most important decisions in the history of this court, and the court has made a serious mistake. Justice Alito spent a lot of time talking about what he called the problem of birth tourism. This is something President Trump has been talking about, too. Trump is worried about wealthy people from overseas like Chinese billionaires coming to the U.S. having their babies on American soil and those babies becoming American. We don't have data on that, but it certainly was something that Justice Alito was concerned about. Yeah, I remember that coming

up in the arguments as well. Mara, I'm curious for your read on this decision on a day where it did feel like we have all been waiting and waiting and waiting. Every time Supreme Court decisions were coming out, we were like, is this going to be birthright day? And today, day we actually have it. Right, and the reason why we were waiting with such bated breath is because this is a really important fundamental right. And if they had ruled for Trump and against birthright citizenship, the justices would have changed what it means to be an American and who gets to be an American. Donald Trump didn't like the decision. He posted the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship, which is too bad for our country. But then he went on to say, we can easily make it up in Congress through legislation.

Now, that remains to be seen if he's going to actually. demand that Republicans vote on birthright citizenship before November, because that could be pretty politically fraught. What we know from polling on this is that in general, there is strong majority support for the idea of birthright citizenship that everyone, every baby that's born on U.S. soil gets to be an American citizen. But when you ask people, well, what about babies whose parents are undocumented, then, of course, support for that drops. It's not a front and center issue in the midterms, but it was one of the most important decisions before the court. You know, the court majority seemed to think this was pretty settled and it's been settled for like 160 years. But interestingly

enough, Justice Katanji Brown Jackson, a Biden appointee, felt strongly enough to write about this separately. And she basically said for certain people being born on U.S. soil is not going to be enough to confer citizenship. But she says the 14th Amendment should forever be the death knell for that kind of claim. And I think the reason she went out of her way to write that is because she knows the political process. She knows this is going to continue to be an issue in American politics, even though the court decided this way today. Well, I am curious about this idea of Congress acting on this, because you have the president bringing this up in reaction. You mentioned Kerry that Kavanaugh mentioned this as well. I will also note it's not unheard of globally for the idea of birthright

citizenship to be revoked. Ireland did it something like 20 years ago. I'm wondering, Mara, you know, Republicans do control Congress and have the presidency. Is this realistic? Well, that's a really good question because Donald Trump recently has come up against the limits of his power with the Republicans in the Senate, which is kind of shocking because they've been very, very loyal to him. But they're not willing to vote for everything he wants when he wants it. And depending on exactly what he would want them to vote on, I mean, he seems to be suggesting that he might want them to vote soon, what exactly are they voting on, that babies born in the United States cannot automatically. be citizens, that's very unclear. This is an election that has not been about immigration. Immigration used to be top of mind for voters, but the economy and affordability is now. So it really is an open

question of whether Donald Trump wants to make this birthright citizenship a focus for the last couple months of the midterm campaign. I mean, the president does have a lot of leeway when it comes to immigration policy, but I do wonder if today's decision essentially presents some sort of guardrail on that authority. I think, it does. I mean, the story of the court has been that they are pretty much in line with Trump's view of executive power, which is it should be expanded. But there are certain limits like today, like birthright citizenship. I mean, clearly immigration policy is something that the Constitution does give to the executive branch. Trump has been very aggressive about using it. The Supreme Court

has backed him up almost every single time, but this is a much more basic constitutional issue. It's not really just about immigration. It's about who gets to be an American and who decides who's an American. You know, one of the things that struck me today is the reaction from some of the people who helped bring this challenge, like at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Jeney Nelson, who runs that group basically said, this was supposed to be an easy, easy case. It was supposed to be, in some ways, nine to nothing, a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court to reaffirm our understanding of a law for over 100 years. And look, at how divided the Supreme Court opinion is on the issue. So I don't think we're done talking about

this, but I do think the court has taken a stand here. Well, you know, this is about Trump pushing the Overton window, which is the parameters of a debate. And before this, birthright citizenship was outside the parameters of debate. Now it's inside. And this debate is going to continue, even though Trump got a legal loss today. I also think in some weird way it's a political whim for him because if they had ruled for him, there would be tremendous chaos. A baby's born, how would they be registered and who does this apply to? And that could have hurt his party in the midterms. But now he gets the message without the headache. That's really similar also to I feel like what we talk about with the SAVE Act.

With the SAVE Act not passing, he could basically point to it and say, well, if we had passed it, we'd have secure elections. It's like he's really good at turning losses into wins. All right. Let's take a quick break and more on the other decisions from the Supreme Court today in just a moment. And we're back. So, Carrie, today was the last day of the Supreme Court's term, and the court issued two other major opinions. The first dealt with whether transgender girls and women can be banned from female sports teams. Can you explain what the court decided? This was a pair of cases out of West Virginia in Idaho, raising the question about whether state bans on trans athletes playing on girls and women's teams violated the law. Justice Brett Kavanaugh

delivered the majority opinion here. About half of the states have these kinds of bans, and according to the court majority, they're okay. These bans do not violate Title IX, which is an important federal law that governs programs that receive educational programs that receive federal funding, and they're not supposed to discriminate on the basis of sex. And the court majority also found this doesn't run afoul of the equal protection clause of the Constitution. So, for now, schools that receive this kind of federal funding can maintain women and girls sports for biological girls and women. And I should say, we don't have good data on this, but this appears to such a very tiny number of athletes around the country. Yes, but through the miracle

of social media, it has become a very gigantic issue, even though it affects a minuscule percentage of the population. So I do think in terms of the culture war, this is a big win for Trump and MAGA. Transgender athletes is something that they feel really helps them in the campaign. They feel that most parents are against transgender women playing on girls' teams in high school. And the Democratic Party has really struggled to find an answer to this, to being, standing up for the civil rights of transgender people, but also understanding that there are some practical common sense issues around especially high school sports. It also just makes me wonder if this is just not going away now. If you have the courts basically saying these sort of bands seem to be fine and you're saying, Mara, Democrats haven't really found a successful way to stand up for these sort of athletes or these people, is there any reason to believe that this is going to not continue?

It'll continue, but I still think, again, the big issues in this election are the economy, how hard it is to buy a home, how hard it is to fill up your gas tank. I don't know if Republicans will be able to be successful at elevating culture war. issues above kitchen table economics. Okay. Well, turning to the other case, which is one regarding campaign finance issues, can you explain what the court ruled there, Carrie? Sure. This is a big win for the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party generally. The court struck down limits on coordination between political parties and candidates, which could allow more money to flow. This is something the RNC had been fighting for for a long time, and it's yet a another step the High Court has been taking to strike down guardrails that Congress have been trying to put up around campaign finance issues and money in politics. You know, the Supreme Court has long

been arguing that this is a First Amendment issue, not a corruption issue. The flow of money to them is speech. And that's how the conservative majority decided here. Do we have any sense more on how voters will feel this in the election system this decision? This was a clear straight-up win for Republicans and conservatives. They already have so much more money than Democrats. The Republican campaign committees have hundreds of millions of dollars more than Democrats do this cycle. This will allow them to coordinate with Republican candidates more easily. It will allow them to buy advertising at lower rates. So in general, I think it's just a clear political win. Now, do voters care about campaign finance? The campaign finance system has been pretty

effectively dismantled by this Supreme Court. I don't know if this is a voting issue for a lot of people, but it does fit into the overall argument that Democrats are making this election year, which is that Trump and his party are corrupt. They only care about billionaires. They're raking in money for themselves and their families, and they don't care about you. I want to hear from both of you on today being the last day at the Supreme Court term, bigger picture about the themes of this term. Mara, let's start with you. I mean, this feels like a term that felt, to me, very Trump-centric. I mean, today, this birthright citizenship decision on something that he ran on and an executive order that he signed on day one in office. How do you feel like this term went for Trump specifically?

Well, I think overall it was a big, big winning term for Trump. The court expanded executive power. That is exactly what Trump wants. They share his conception of the executive branch as pretty much unchecked. all-powerful. He has said famously Article 2 allows me to do whatever I want. So I think that the term was a big winner for him, with some exceptions. And obviously, the biggest one is birthright citizenship. So I think in general it was a very good term for President Trump. We come out of this term with the executive being more powerful. We no longer have three co-equal branches of government.

We have a very powerful executive and two other branches, one of whom has really abdicated its role as long as there's a president of their own party in the White House? Yeah, I tend to agree. I mean, Trump lost the tariff case, which is a big loss for him. The Supreme Court also ruled against him on his effort to send the National Guard to Chicago. But the slaughter decision from yesterday, the slaughter decision, which basically gives the president the power to fire at will, many federal workers at formerly independent agencies could extend further down into the Civil Service, and it really will allow the President, even more than he already has, to reshape the federal workforce and ways that we could be feeling for a long, long time. And even

in the Lisa Cook case, which went against Trump, at least provisionally, not allowing him to fire the Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, at least not now. That's to be determined. She still could face some problems with her job while that case continues in the lower courts, if Trump can show she might have done something wrong. You know, and Carrie makes a really important point. People don't understand how the civil service is a guardrail of democracy. I mean, these are nonpartisan professional people who keep the government running. And we're supposed to have left kind of Tammany Hall and patronage civil service long behind. But it's coming back because Trump definitely sees the entire executive branch all of the tens of thousands of people who work in it as people who work for him, not for the public or the Constitution.

Yeah, to the victor goes the spoils. And this would be the spoil system all over again. All right. Well, we can leave it there for today. I'll also note for a fuller discussion of the slaughter decision and the Cook decision, people can find our podcast yesterday, which was a great discussion with Carrie as well. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Supreme Court. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.