The Opinions - There’s a Reason Trump Is Going After Birthright Citizenship

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an executive order to end unconditional birthright citizenship. Lawsuits immediately began pouring in, and a federal judge blocked the order for now. But as the columnist Carlos Lozada and the editor Aaron Retica point out in this discussion, the true impact of the order might not be in changing the law — at least right away — but in challenging the very idea of what it means to be American.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Aaron Redica. I'm an editor at large for the New York Times opinion section. Over the past couple of months, I've been working very closely with one of our columnist, Carlos Lazada, on a series of columns about immigration, about what it means to be an American, and specifically what it means to be an immigrant in the Trump era. Trump is essentially trying to reshape the idea of who belongs in the United States and who does not. And it's happening on a number of fronts.

And a central aspect of this is their executive order on birthright citizenship. So that's where I want to start, Carlos. It's great to have you here to talk about this. Good to be with you, Aaron. So let's start, even before we get to birthright citizenship, let's talk about birthright. What is that? It's a word that does not appear in the Constitution. No. So when we're talking about birthright, what are we first thinking about before we even get to birthright citizenship?

So historically, birthright has been a very exclusionary kind of concept. It's an inheritance of wealth, of status, of land, a title of nobility that's passed on to the firstborn male. So a birthright by definition isn't something you share. It is something that is mine. It's not yours and it's certainly not ours. America's notion of birthright citizenship, which was affirmed in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution right after the Civil War, transforms that understanding. The American birthright is encompassing, it's inviting, it's not exclusionary, it's by definition for all. That's how the 14th Amendment starts. All persons born or naturalized in the United States. So that all is incredibly expansive. All means there is no difference between a citizen, who can trace lineage back to the Mayflower and one whose parents just arrived. And I think most important, all means that U.S. citizenship does not and must not distinguish by race or language or wealth

or education or faith. So that's become an essential part of the national character. The American birthright, instead of excluding, it's a source of equality before the law. It's a starting point for the pursuit of happiness. So now let's go to the executive order. What is it trying to do? And we should say, right, that executive orders are not laws.

They have not been passed by Congress. This one has already been temporarily suspended by a judge in Seattle. But what does it actually say? And then we're going to talk more, obviously, about what they're trying to do. I like getting into what it actually says. That's one thing that you and I do a lot in the, and the columns we work on is try to really get into the text itself. And so just start with the title of the executive order.

It's protecting the meaning and value of American citizenship. Protecting meaning and value. And if you think about it, it's kind of a very impressive sleight of hand because the title is actually the opposite of what the document seeks to accomplish. It doesn't protect the meaning of citizenship. it threatens it because it undercuts what citizenship has meant and how it has long been interpreted. Also, it doesn't enhance the value of citizenship. I think it cheapens it by making it conditional rather than virtually universal.

But the place where I think it gives the game away is in the very first complete sentence of Section 1 of the order, it says the privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift. It's hard to disagree with that, but I'm going to because it is indeed priceless and profound, but calling it a gift, I think, gives the game away. When you think about a gift, the recipient of a gift has no prior right to a gift. The gift is bestowed, is given at the whim of the giver. In this case, according to this order, the whim of the president. My spidey sense starts tingling the moment that you call something that is enshrined the Constitution a mere gift. And then when it gets into the nitty-gritty of why the authors of the order believe that they can change the meaning of the 14th Amendment,

they say that it's never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born in the United States. And that's the classic case of something that is technically true, but entirely misleading, because the exceptions that have been carved out to the 14th Amendment are incredibly limited. Although this is occurring in the context of Trump talking about immigration as a kind of invasion, not a kind of invasion, literally as an invasion. Immigrants, you know, as he famously said last year, poisoning the blood of our country. But just sticking with the order, again, they have to know that, well, they may think

that they may ultimately triumph at the Supreme Court, although who knows, but they have to know that it was going to be suspended almost immediately because it's in direct violation of the Constitution. This is a direct contravention of the 14th Amendment. So they can't have expected that the next day it would be the law. So what is the purpose of this executive order the way you see it? So this order is part of a huge set, as you mentioned, of orders and policies that are affecting the status of immigrants in the United States. But I think this birthright citizenship executive order is a lot more than just an effort to take control of the border

or create a disincentive for future immigrants to the United States. I think what Trump is fundamentally doing is he's seeking to limit and redefine the we, the we the people that make up the United States. He doesn't have to win this battle right away. As you say, I am certain that they expected this pushback. back immediately. Not just expected, welcomed.

Oh, yes, yes, which is part of, was part of the MO in the first term and seems to be recurring in the second. But I think that by even putting birthright citizenship, which is so clearly enshrined in the Constitution, by injecting it into the political and legal debate, he is already eroding its legitimacy. I think that what's really going on here is that, people like Trump, maybe people like Stephen Miller, are hoping to chip away at birthright citizenship over time, much as the right did with Roe v. Wade and abortion rights. So I could imagine at some

point, some iteration of the Supreme Court, you know, liking parts of that, not liking other parts of that, maybe upholding the 14th Amendment in principle, but limiting it and constraining it in practice. And so I think that it's a long game. And it begins. with this kind of blanket statement of completely reinterpreting what the 14th Amendment actually says. So unsettling people is a critical goal here on their part, right? The Western Hemisphere is really the only part of the world where many of the countries have birthright citizenship. But it's actually, as you say, it's a very powerful idea. And, you know, people like to poo-poo the significance of ideas in the way history unfolds.

But that's not how Stephen Miller operates, right? That's not how Steve Bannon operates. That's not how Russell Vaught operates. They do have a contest that they are trying to win in the battle of ideas. And that is unsettling the very notion of what it means to be an American. And sometimes it's about returning it to some previous idea of what it means to American. Sometimes it's something else. But it's always making people they don't like feel unwanted,

which is an essential aspect of it, even if it never comes to fruition. So let me ask you point blank, what do you think their conception of being an American is if it's not the one that is imagined by birthright citizenship? Wow. You know, I'm going to make a wildly unrelated comparison, and that is the war in Iraq. many people in the Bush administration wanted to go to war in Iraq,

but they wanted to go for very different reasons. If you look back and you see what was animating Don Rumsfeld or Paul Wolfowitz or Dick Cheney or George W. Bush, they all had different reasons for wanting to do it. And it all came together after 9-11 in a sort of very compelling, to them rush to war. And in all the books that have been written about this period, of which I have had the joy to read many, the dubious pleasure, I believe, is the term, yeah.

You never know exactly at what moment the decision was made. You just know when it was already made. You just know when it was too late to undo the decision or when it seemed that way internally. And I kind of think about birthright citizenship in a similar way, this move to undo it. I'm sure there are many different reasons and forces that are animating this. I think if you take Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon and other folks who may be either intellectually or directly involved, I think you'll find very different

reasons. You can look at the things they say, right? The executive order itself is this sort of legalistic document trying to parse who is or is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Then you listen to the rhetoric of the campaign. We get a lot of work to do. They're poisoning the blood of our country. That's what they've done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America. Poisoning the blood has nothing to do. with documents, with legality, right? I mean, if I believe poisoning the blood, if I believe that that's the motivation,

then that legal versus illegal distinction is obliterated, right? It becomes meaningless. And you see a progression in the rhetoric. What was Trump's animating impulse, animating slogan in 2016 around immigration? It was to build the wall, right? What is in 2024, it's mass deportations.

So a wall is meant to protect, is to keep people out. Deportations are meant to purify, to kick people out. And that is a progression that has led us to this birthright citizenship debate. And so I see that in far more kind of ominous terms than I did simply the wall. rhetoric, for instance. You know, I was just going to use the word ominous because right now you're at the marrow of why birthright citizenship is a critical part of their argument, right? So, you know, are we headed to, go ahead.

I'm just going to say that I spoke earlier about how the American constitutional tradition of birthright citizenship reverses the standard historical understanding of what a birthright is. If we stay on that trajectory, I think what Trump is doing in effect, regardless of his motivations, is he's seeking to transform that meaning once again. When you are a naturalized citizen of this country, you have to swear an oath. I have sworn it. It's a very elaborate oath. There's nothing like that at any stage for people who are born here. Their allegiance is assumed. But what's interesting about what Trump is doing now to this notion of birthright is that he is treating illegality as the birthright. That is the unavoidable and damning inheritance, right? If your parents

violated the law to come here, then their actions are passed on to you automatically at birth. You are stamped with that. It's the old sins of the fathers laid upon the children. And so now that is the birthright, which when I think about what's going on here, That's how I think that the very notion of birthright and the American interpretation of birthright is being transformed, even if it doesn't happen in practice legally if the courts stop it,

in the way people are being pushed to think of it, that is a transformation that is underway. If you grew up here in the 1970s, as I did, you know, we're constantly talking about the melting pot. We're going to Ellis Island. Let's talk about all the different kinds of people who are here in this class. My wife used to teach you to school where they had all the languages, home languages of the kids up on the walls.

It was like more than 100. It was like 150. It was a crazy number of languages. Somehow all of that to these guys, and it is mostly guys, is anathema, right? The very thing that makes a huge part of what makes living in New York City great, makes living in the United States grade, right, they don't like. If the goal is what I've been calling an unmilting pot, right, if the goal is a certain kind of purity, not mixing the crayons,

but like single colors, I'm wondering sort of how you think about that, because you've written, actually, that Trump's words strike at the hopes and insecurities that I always bear. This is not just about the people who are subject to the order and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, right? This is about all of us because it's changing what the idea of an American is. So now that they have actually won and they're doing all this and they're doing it in spades, how are you feeling now? I will say for the benefit of our listeners like Carlos, who was born in Peru, could not be more quote unquote American, right?

All-American, right? I mean, he's a huge college football fan, right? He's like, as people, insurface you can be a super All-American and be a New York Times columnist, like, he's our guy, right? And yet this pushing the constant pushing and pushing and pushing, immigrants, immigrants, poisoning, invasion, war zone, it's taking a toll on you, right? This is not a word, but they've, like, re-immigranted people, right? I'm constantly thinking about it myself. So I am wondering how you feel about it. So I came here when I was three years old, lived in California in the Bay Area until I was 10. Then my family, we returned to Peru, and I did my middle school and high school there, and then I came back here for college. But then I've basically lived here for the last several

decades. Obviously, not just this moment of the debate over birthright citizenship, but sort of what's been going on for the last decade or so in the quote unquote Trump era in which the presence and impact and role and acceptance of immigrants has been such a contested issue. It's forced me to kind of rethink my own identity as an immigrant in ways that I thought were kind of settled for me. And it's forced me to think about whether immigration is something you do, right, age, a passage, a move, a decision, or whether it is something you are, whether you're always marked by that passage, by that decision. And you ask how I feel, the way it feels now, even more so than before, is that this country is answering the question for me and is saying, no, no, no, no,

not just something you did when you were a child, it's something you are. And I hadn't heard of the concept of being re-immigrantized that you mentioned. That's why you haven't heard about it. But I think that's part of how it feels, right? You're always marked by it. And so you're kind of stuck in this in-betweenness that now under Trump is being paraded as the only thing about you, that you don't exactly belong anywhere. The sense of belonging, right?

that's in part what they're trying to shatter. That's how they are trying to make people feel. Don't come here, don't feel comfortable here, you know, don't have children here. But can we say that this is contrary to our values as a country? Can we still say that? Or do we have to start thinking about whether that is, in fact, true? America from the beginning has always been aspirational.

We the people. we the people, right, the opening words of the Constitution, who counted as the people was a very circumscribed set in that moment. And the fight of America has been to figure out how best to define we the people from the very beginning. So the 14th Amendment that enshrines birthright citizenship is not just part of the Constitution. It points to the group that gives the Constitution legitimacy. That's what makes this attack on birthright citizenship so much more than a legalistic dispute of who is under the jurisdiction thereof.

It gets to the fundamental question of belonging in America and of who gives our Constitution, our supposed moral, legal, organizing document, who gives it legitimacy, who counts? I guess that if the attacks on immigration and non-immigrants are sort of re-immigrantizing or whatever your verb was to me as well, I think that's fine. I don't mind it. It doesn't bother me.

I think it reminds me of something very vital in who I am, how so much of the way that I think and that I feel, even the way I work. I think I write so much about American history and American ideas and American debates because I'm trying to prove that I belong. And I'm grateful to have the chance to do that

and to have the opportunity to perfect this union along with all the rest of you. All right, well, Carlos, it's not easy talking about these things, right? That's part of the madness of this whole situation. So thank you. Thank you, Aaron. If you like this show,

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