Right weighs next step on birthright citizenship
By: Zac Anderson
USA Today
..... Some prominent conservatives suggested there could be a need for extreme measures - including impeaching judges, sterilizing foreign visitors and dissolving the union - in the wake of a Supreme Court decision upholding birthright citizenship.
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The court found that Trump's executive order last year [2025] targeting birthright citizenship was invalid under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which says, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."
..... The ruling sparked widespread outrage on the right, which has rallied around President Donald Trump;s push to restrict the constitutional provision granting automatic citizenship to anyone born in the country.
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Sean Davis, the CEO and co-founder of The Federalist Online magazine, wrote on social media there are "several ways forward" after the ruling. Among them: Adding more justices to the Supreme Court and mandating "sterilization of all foreign visitors prior entry."
..... Davis also mentioned resolving the union, writing "A nation which can't even restrict who gets to be a citizen isn't a nation."
.....Jack Posbiec, another conservative media figure, said in a social media post that "the court never said we can't mandate spot pregnancy tests for foreigners."
..... Many on the right lashed out at conservative justices who joined the majority decision.
..... "Impeach rogue, activist judges," Representative Nancy Mace, R-South Carolina, wrote on social media. "we're looking at you Amy Coney Barrett."
..... The outpouring of anger on the right spurred push-back from some other conservatives.
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"The right-wing meltdown over the citizenship case is shockingly dishonest," wrote Gregg Nunziata, an aide for Secretary of State Marco Rubio when he was in the Senate and now the executive director of the Society for the Rule of Law, a group founded by conservative legal figures from previous Republican administrations.
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"The ruling preserves the status quo," Nunziata added. "the [court] majority landed where most conservative scholarship has been."
..... Trump has pushed a hard-line immigration agenda centered around mass deportations, but targeting birthright citizenship may have been his most aggressive move. It clashed with how the Constitution has long been understood and sought to dramatically redefine who gets to be a citizen. Trump was deeply invested in the case., attending Supreme Court arguments, a first for a sitting president.
..... The president described birthright citizenship as a "anchor" wrapped around the country's neck, but chief Justice John Roberts, writing fro the majority, said, "Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights - to freely participate in our political community."
..... "The Framers of the Fourteenth amendment extended that promise to "every free-born person in this land:' We keep that promise today," [06/30/2026] Roberts added.
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The loss had some conservatives lamenting about the path forward.
..... Vice President JD Vance, appearing on fox News, said the ruling was a "major, major mistake," but noted that it had a "silver lining."
..... It showed there is significant support among the justices for ending birthright citizenship, which Vance said is "hanging by a thread." Four of the justices said Trump's executive order didn't violate the 14th amendment, although one said it violated a 1952 mitigation law.
..... "We have to keep fighting because we actually have an opportunity to reverse this decision," Vance said.