Trump Seeks to Upend Citizenship Rules at Supreme Court

When Donald Trump suggested he might end automatic birthright citizenship by executive order in 2018, the idea was unimaginable enough that then-House Speaker Paul Ryan dismissed it. The president, he said, “obviously cannot do that.”

Ryan, a Republican who stepped down months later, pointed to the text of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, a post-Civil War provision long understood to guarantee citizenship to virtually everyone born on US soil.