Washington, D.C. (September 3, 2026)—Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, led Judiciary Democrats in condemning Republicans’ continued efforts to undermine the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship after President Trump’s first attempt to strip citizenship from American-born children was rejected by the courts. The hearing included testimony from: Jonathan T. Weinberg, Professor of Law at Wayne State University Law School; Kris Kobach, the Attorney General of Kansas; Ken Cuccinelli, Senior Fellow for Immigration and Homeland Security at the Center for Renewing America; and Rosemary Jenks, Policy Director of the Immigration Accountability Project. The Supreme Court came to the same conclusion reached by every lower court: President Trump’s Executive Order violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. - Rep. Summer Lee said: “Birthright citizenship doesn’t depend on your skin color, or your religion, or your wealth, or who your parents are. The 14th Amendment is clear. If you’re born here, you’re one of us.”
- Rep. Pramila Jayapal said: “Here we are again, because Trump’s executive order attempting to eliminate birthright citizenship is continuing in different forms, not because the law changed, not because the Court left the door open, but because Donald Trump refuses to accept no for an answer. Trump’s response to the Court’s clear decision wasn’t to comply with it, but rather to sign two more executive orders dressed up in new language, chasing the same unlawful goal.”
- Rep. Becca Balint said: “The Supreme Court has spoken. The Court confirmed what any law student can tell you: the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to the people born in this country. Asked and answered. Black letter law remains black letter law.”
- Ranking Member Mary Gay Scanlon and Professor Weinberg clarified the record: “Is Trump v. Barbara the ultimate law of the land?” “It is, yes.” In Trump v. Barbara, did the Supreme Court uphold birthright citizenship?”“It did.” “Has the Supreme Court ever struck down birthright citizenship?” “It has not.” Ranking Member Scanlon continued: “I have a neighbor from Texas, and he said that it’s a famous saying there that when the horse is dead, it’s time to dismount. I would urge our colleagues on this committee to dismount because this is just increasingly nuts.”
Despite the contributions of Americans born to immigrant parents and the ruling of the Supreme Court, Republicans continue to defy the Constitution to punish children. - Ranking Member Mary Gay Scanlon said: “So why are Donald Trump and our Republican colleagues continuing to question the plain, long-settled meaning of the 14th Amendment? Why are they peddling obviously unconstitutional proposals to end birthright citizenship, even after the Supreme Court settled the matter? Once again, it’s because Donald Trump and his Republican flunkies think they can profit at the polls if they strip away from an entire group of our American neighbors their rights, their votes, and their identities, and turn them into a permanent underclass. These Republicans want to pick and choose who is worthy of citizenship, based solely upon who someone’s parents are and where their parents are from.”
- Rep. Becca Balint said: “Why are we here? Why are we having this hearing? We are here because conservative legal activists are playing the long game. That’s what this is about. This is about history. I’m a former history teacher and it’s about a historical pattern that they are trying to establish. It’s a deliberate, bad-faith strategy and effort to strip people of their citizenship and expel Americans from this country. Extremist conservatives have worked for decades to mainstream this idea. The Supreme Court said no, and yet they are still grasping.”
Republicans have only called this hearing to distract the public from their complete failure to hold the Trump Administration accountable for numerous constitutional violations. - Ranking Member Raskin said: “Stripping rightful Americans of birthright citizenship is not this administration’s first descent into authoritarianism. Alas, the President and his extremists have built a masked paramilitary force in ICE and unleashed it, along with CBP agents, to harass, attack, arrest, and even kill American citizens simply for exercising their First Amendment rights to record and protest government actions without any legal justification.”
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