As the race for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination begins in earnest, we’re already starting to see candidates look for ways to impress the GOP base with far-right promises. NBC News highlighted Donald Trump’s latest vow yesterday:
Former President Trump said in a campaign video Tuesday that he would ban birthright citizenship through an executive order if elected president again. Declaring the order would ensure that the children of undocumented immigrants “will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship,” he said he’d sign the executive order on the first day of his presidency if elected in 2024.
At issue is the debate over a policy known as “birthright citizenship” and the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment. “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,” it reads.
The amendment has been interpreted to mean that those born in the United States are citizens of the United States. Trump, evidently, intends to return to the White House and sign an executive order to end the constitutional guarantee.
Right off the bat, there’s an obvious legal problem: Presidents don’t have the authority to announce that certain parts of the Constitution no longer count because they say so. Were the Republican to make such an attempt, a difficult legal fight would soon follow.
But after seeing Trump’s video on this, a related question came to mind: Hasn’t he said this before?
As regular readers might recall, during the GOP’s last presidential primaries, several contenders announced their opposition to birthright citizenship, including Trump, who announced his opposition to the constitutional principle in 2015.
After taking office, the Republican largely forgot about the issue, at least until the 2018 midterm elections approached, at which point Trump announced he could end birthright citizenship with an executive order.
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