Federal judge pauses Trump's "Birthright Citizenship" order
Get the Point!
As the reality of the second Donald Trump administration set in this past Monday following the inauguration events, and the torrid pace with which the new president signed multiple executive orders that were drawn straight from the xenophobic Project 2025 playbook that he denied knowing about on the campaign trail, the one thing that provided me some measure of calm was realizing that there are federal courts all across America that will be called upon to check his worst instincts in the same way that they checked some of his worst instincts during his first term from 2017-2021.
Perhaps no executive order caused more media buzz on Monday than Trump declaring an end to "birthright citizenship" with one stroke of his pen. By so doing, he was immediately exalted by media on the right, pilloried by media on the left, and threw paralyzing fear into the hearts of U.S. citizens and expectant immigrant mothers alike who fear being rounded up and deported.
While Trump grimaced like a toddler who had just successfully used a potty for the first time after signing the order, I, along with just about every other person who ever graduated from law school, passed the bar examination, and/or practiced law for any period of time immediately knew one simple truth, which is that Trump's order is UNCONSTITUTIONAL on its face!
To make it plain, in every academic subject, there are certain truths that simply are NOT subject to debate! In English, there must be subject-verb agreement when writing a proper sentence! In mathematics, if Trayvon has two apples—and Breonna gives him two more apples—Trayvon now has four apples! In history, Christopher Columbus didn't "discover" the "New World" because there were millions of Native inhabitants already living all across the Western Hemisphere! These “facts” can never be changed due to some imbecilic difference of opinion!
In similar fashion, in the field of law, "birthright citizenship" is PLAINLY written within the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, one which was ratified in 1868 and immediately gave citizenship rights to the millions of formerly enslaved Blacks who had been freed following the end of the Civil War. The 14th Amendment provides in pertinent part:
"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..."
I placed BORN in bold above because the 14th Amendment does NOT express "born to a mother who is already a U.S. citizen." Nope, if a woman gives birth on U.S. soil, that child is a bona fide American citizen no matter how Trump and his not so bright MAGA followers offer their shallow opinions to the contrary!
My beef isn't with the legions of "not so bright" MAGA minions who are blissful in their ignorance, but I hold the ones in contempt who know better—the lawyers and advisors who know good and well that Trump's order is a farce but yet are still willing to argue that the Earth is flat if it pleases the culturally illiterate base!
It seems that United States District Judge John C. Coughenour has the same beef and holds the same contempt, and in a hearing yesterday on a petition from 22 state attorneys general to temporarily enjoin (place on hold) Trump's order, his Honor remarked, “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” adding, “frankly, I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.”
Judge John C. Coughenour
Yes sir, it boggles my mind, too, that any Trump administration lawyer who has read the 14th Amendment or the 1898 SCOTUS case of United States vs. Wong Kim Ark, the decision that upheld the plain language that children born in the U.S. to immigrant parents are citizens no matter what their parents' immigration status may be (unless the parents are diplomats or foreign nationals of an enemy country occupying American territory), were willing to go to court and basically argue that 2 + 2= 5!
But alas, they did—and they will continue to do so—all because they are testing to see whether the federal judiciary will go along to get along with the MAGA/Project 2025 agenda—even when blatantly unconstitutional! You see, Trump and his flunkies know that the only way to really repeal birthright citizenship is to repeal the 14th Amendment with a new amendment, but they also know that there aren't enough red states in America to make that happen, thus, this bogus executive order route with hopes that it will reach the Supreme Court at some point where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority.
But even in that right wing hope for long term judicial validation, in the latest case, Judge Coughenour, the same one whose mind was boggled that any lawyers signed off on this nonsense, was appointed by conservative Republican Ronald Reagan four decades ago, which means that he, too, was and likely remains a conservative! And while we know that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are partisan hacks who will carry the Trump administration's water to Hell and back, there have been a few signs that the other four conservative justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts and the three Trump appointees (Gorsuch/Kavanaugh/Coney-Barrett) may not be so willing to risk their judicial legacies by creating a legal fiction out of the legal facts of the 14th Amendment when it eventually reaches their judicial chambers.
Stay tuned...