Congress should start “TODAY” to end birthright citizenship, President Donald Trump said on Tuesday following the Supreme Court’s highly anticipated ruling.
The Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh — who filed a concurring opinion on the outcome — said he believes President Trump’s executive order violates federal law but not the 14th Amendment, specifically. In other words, Congress could work to change the federal law.
Trump believes that should happen.
“The Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process,” Trump wrote on Truth Social following the ruling.
“No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary!” he claimed. “Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship. They will have my Complete and Total Support!”
As Breitbart News detailed, “Trump’s January 2025 order determined that ‘the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States,’ not extending to an individual whose mother was ‘unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth’ or an individual whose ‘mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary… and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.'”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said that birthright citizenship has been “grossly abused” following the ruling.
“It’s been abused. It’s one of those things that was intended to serve a noble, important purpose, and has been thwarted and overused and abused, and so I’m sure that we’ll continue to look at that,” Johnson said.
“I’m sure the conclusion from this opinion is going to be that… you’ve got to amend the Constitution to fix that,” he added.
“It’s only happened 27 times in our whole nation’s history, and the reason is because you’ve got to have two thirds of both chambers of Congress and three fourths of the states to ratify. It’s usually at least a many years-long process, and very complicated,” Johnson continued. “We’ll see. I’m sure there’s gonna be lots of discussion about that. I will say I’m very disappointed in that outcome. I think it subjects the country to serious challenges going forward, and we’ll have to deal with it as a Congress.”