Kristen Welker’s Question To Trump About Birthright Citizenship Completely Misses The Point
NBC’s Kristen Welker asked President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday if he still planned to end birthright citizenship. Trump affirmed his plans. But the way Welker deliberately misrepresented the amendment reveals not only a glaring need for clarification from Congress or the Supreme Court about whether children born to illegal aliens are citizens but the dangers of a press who are willing to craft law by word of mouth.
“You promised to end birthright citizenship on day one,” Welker said. “Is that still your plan?”
“Yeah, absolutely,” Trump responded.
Welker responded: “The 14th Amendment, though, says that, quote: ‘All persons born in the United States are citizens.’” Welker then asked if Trump will use “executive action” to circumvent the Constitution.
But that’s not exactly what the 14th Amendment says — though it may be what Welker and her other fellow Democrat propagandists wish it said. The media’s insistence on interpreting the 14th Amendment as a blanket guarantee of birthright citizenship fuels widespread confusion — but it’s deliberate. Take for example, that Politico’s Mia McCarthy reported Trump would have to “go around the 14th Amendment” to end birthright citizenship. CNN’s Daniel Dale wrote that the 14th Amendment says “someone born in the U.S. is granted automatic citizenship even if their parents are not citizens.”
Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that.
What the 14th Amendment actually says is:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
As Elad Hakim wrote in these pages, “While opponents to Trump’s proposed action [to end birthright citizenship] opine that the constitutional language is cut and dry, this might not necessarily be the case.”
Welker and others left out the qualifying clause of the amendment, that is, the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Sen Mike Lee, R-Utah, pointed out “Those words matter.”
“Congress has the power to define what it means to be born in the United States ‘and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’” he said in a post on X. “While current law contains no such restriction, Congress could pass a law defining what it means to be born in the United States ‘and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’ excluding prospectively from birthright citizenship individuals born in the U.S. to illegal aliens.”
Senators Debated This Exact Question
The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868 to guarantee that formerly enslaved persons and their descendants would not be denied citizenship. It superseded the earlier Dred Scott decision, which denied citizenship to enslaved people. But while it was being considered, lawmakers debated exactly who would be affected by the amendment.
Sen. Jacob Howard, R-Mich., stated the amendment was not written to give citizenship to “persons born in the United States who are foreigners [or] aliens.”
“This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdictions, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States,” Howard said. “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”
Howard also said the amendment “settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States.”
But as Michael Anton, a former and incoming Trump Administration official, and Jack Roth, Senior Fellow in American Politics at the Claremont Institute said, “The bedeviling citizenship question of the age was how to treat freedmen.”
Meanwhile Sen. Edgar Cowan, R-Penn., who opposed the 14th Amendment, said: “It is perfectly clear that the mere fact that a man is born in the country has not heretofore entitled him to the right to exercise political power.”
Cowan believed the Constitution should not grant birthright citizenship to children of aliens who “owe [the U.S.] no allegiance [and] who pretend to owe none” and to those who “trespass” into the United States.
Cowan further stated that while a foreigner is “to a certain extent” entitled “to the protection of the laws … he is not a citizen in the ordinary acceptation of the word.”
Similarly John C. Eastman, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, argued in an op-ed that “When a British tourist visits the United States, he subjects himself to our laws as long as he remains within our borders. He must drive on the right side of the road, for example. He is subject to our partial, territorial jurisdiction, but he does not thereby subject himself to our complete, political jurisdiction.”
“The same is true for those who are in this country illegally. They are subject to our laws by their presence within our borders, but they are not subject to the more complete jurisdiction envisioned by the 14th Amendment as a precondition for automatic citizenship.”
The Supreme Court Has Yet To Explicitly Clarify
In 1884, the Supreme Court ruled in Elk v. Wilkins that John Elk, a Native American, was not a U.S. citizen and therefore could not vote despite living within the United State’s geographic boundaries because Elk owed allegiance to his tribe, not the United States.
The court would later rule in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that Wong Kim Ark, who was born to Chinese parents who were legally residing in the United States, was automatically a citizen.
But the Supreme Court has never explicitly ruled on the citizenship of children born to parents residing in the United States illegally.
Still, there are some who contend the question is already settled, such as Judge James Chiun-Yue Ho, who sits on the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Ho argues, in part, that the 1982 Supreme Court case of Plyler v. Doe “put to rest” the question. The case involved whether children who were not “legally admitted” into the United States had a right to public education. The court ruled in part that even persons in the United States illegally were “within the jurisdiction” of the states wherein they reside.
While the case did not explicitly address the issue, Ho argues this decision “put to rest” questions about the children born to illegal immigrants because “all nine justices agreed that the Equal Protection Clause protects legal and illegal aliens alike. And all nine reached that conclusion precisely because illegal aliens are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the U.S., no less than legal aliens and U.S. citizens.”
Ho further cites a decision by Justice Byron White in INS v. Rios-Pineda that stated, in part, “respondent wife [an illegal alien] had given birth to a child, who, born in the United States, was a citizen of this country.” Notably, this case was not brought to settle or address such a question nor did the justices deliberate the constitutionality of such statement.
Ho, in an article explaining why the 14th Amendment likely confers birthright citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants, argues a myriad of points which can be read here.
As the debate over birthright citizenship intensifies, it’s clear the issue is far from settled. At a time when millions of illegal immigrants are invading the country and having so-called “anchor babies,” it’s imperative that the Supreme Court weighs in (if provided the chance) to clarify whether the 14th Amendment was ever intended to grant citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.
In the meantime, the media’s misrepresentation of the amendment only adds to the confusion. Reporting like Dale’s, Welker’s, and others implies that it’s a settled question and that Trump is trying to upend the Constitution willy-nilly, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
But hey, isn’t that what a propaganda press is for?
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
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