The Right’s Birthright Citizenship Freak-Out Shows What’s At The Heart Of MAGA

You would think that Republican Party influencers would be elated that President Donald Trump’s Hail Mary executive order to rewrite the Constitution’s 14th Amendment citizenship clause led four justices on the Supreme Court to side with them, and conclude that the clause does not say what everyone has understood it to say since it was adopted.

Instead, they’re apoplectic.

Tuesday’s decision to uphold the 150-plus-year understanding that the 14th Amendment grants citizenship to all but a select few born on U.S. soil was cause for “Dissolution of the Union,” The Federalist’s Sean Davis wrote online. Right-wing influencer Matt Walsh called it “Total madness. Suicide.” Adding, “Words cannot describe how evil this is.” Others referred to it as turning citizenship into a “joke,” and a “tremendous betrayal.” Trump himself said the decision was “too bad for our Country.”

This five-alarm freak-out comes even though nothing has changed. The Supreme Court merely affirmed the status quo. The country has not committed suicide since the 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, nor has the ruling changed citizenship for any of those freaking out.

That is, unless you have a particular vision about what citizenship looks like — a vision like that of chief White House ideologist Stephen Miller.

“We have people from all over the world, from third-world nations, nations that on their own would have never invented the wheel, let alone modern technology, let alone medicine, let alone air travel,” Miller ranted after the court’s decision. “And they can just come into the country, have a baby at a hospital paid for by you and me, and then that baby is automatically a citizen? That baby can sit on a jury when he turns 18 and sit in judgment of you and sit in judgment of me and sit in judgment of our loved ones? Can decide who our mayors are? Our governors are? Our presidents are?”

He concluded: “Citizenship means nothing if it is open to everyone.”

Citizenship, in this view, is not for everyone of every national origin or race. The American national community must be restricted and expansions of that community rolled back. Citizens have a color and it isn’t the color of those from “third-world nations,” as Miller puts it.

This is the beating heart of Trumpism and the MAGA movement. From birtherism to birthright citizenship, Trump has made the issue of who is or isn’t American the central focus of his political efforts. He has described this mission to redraw the lines of the American national community in existential terms.

But Trump’s effort faced steep hurdles from the beginning. It harkened back to a time before the country truly accepted all, no matter their race, sex, religion or creed, as equal members of the national community ― and the right’s fevered reaction to the decision shows their rage at how difficult it may be for them to turn back time.

That expansion of who counts as American began with the New Deal and accelerated after World War II. This progressed through laws such as the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, court decisions expanding women’s rights, and cultural efforts like platoon movies and increased diversity in film, television, and music. For immigrants, this project culminated in the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which undid decades of restrictive immigration laws that effectively prevented the entry of non-white immigrants into the country.

All of these efforts were rooted in the ideological ground laid out by Abraham Lincoln and the first Republicans, that the country was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The 14th Amendment enshrined this view into the Constitution with its citizenship clause, which overturned the odious 1857 Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. U.S. that said that Black people could not be citizens and “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” while simultaneously preventing politicians or judges from similarly punishing any other group born on U.S. soil in the future.

It is no secret that Trump and his allies would be thrilled to go back to a two-tier system of America, where some have rights, privileges, and membership, and others simply don’t. They have never said the quiet part, well, quietly. But rarely have they had the chance to attack the foundations of America so obviously and openly.