Following a major legal defeat at the nation’s highest court, President Donald Trump has called on Congress to take legislative action to end automatic birthright citizenship, asserting that lawmakers could “easily” resolve an issue that has sparked decades of intense political debate.
The president’s demand came just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a 5–4 ruling upholding the traditional interpretation of the 14th Amendment, effectively striking down a January 2025 executive order that sought to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants or temporary visa holders.
“Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship,” Trump announced on his Truth Social platform, characterizing the court’s decision as “too bad” for the nation while promising his “Complete and Total Support” for a legislative overhaul.
While the president insisted that a legislative remedy is entirely feasible, his strategy runs directly into a wall of constitutional precedent and congressional gridlock. Numerous legal experts have long maintained that altering or ending birthright citizenship would require a formal constitutional amendment rather than standard legislation—a reality acknowledged by several prominent members of the president’s own party.
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Capital Hill Republicans expressed deep disappointment with the high court’s ruling, though their assessments of the path forward varied significantly. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) noted that birthright citizenship was originally “intended to serve a noble, important purpose,” but argued it has since been “thwarted and overused and abused.” Johnson conceded that the judicial opinion implies a permanent fix would ultimately require amending the U.S. Constitution.
Other lawmakers echoed the call for a structural overhaul. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) proclaimed on social media that “the long fight for a constitutional amendment begins now,” while Representative Brian Babin (R-Texas) argued the ruling “only reinforces why Congress must act” to restore what he described as the original intent of the 14th Amendment.
However, more moderate or cautious Republicans pointed out the logistical near-impossibility of such a maneuver. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) reminded colleagues that passing a new constitutional amendment demands a two-thirds supermajority in both chambers of Congress, followed by ratification from three-fourths of the states.
Furthermore, public opinion remains highly polarized. An AP-NORC poll conducted in April revealed that while American adults are evenly split on whether automatic citizenship should be granted to children of undocumented immigrants, roughly two-thirds firmly support birthright citizenship as a universal rule for all children born on American soil.
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Despite his sharp rebuke of the citizenship ruling, Trump used the moment to highlight other significant judicial victories handed down during the Supreme Court’s session. He heavily praised the court’s 6–3 decision in Trump v. Slaughter, which granted the executive branch expanded powers to dismiss leaders across approximately two dozen independent regulatory agencies, significantly strengthening White House control over the federal bureaucracy.
The president also celebrated the court’s separate rulings upholding state-level bans on transgender female athletes in public school sports and striking down federal campaign finance limits for political parties.
“We had other good Victories, too, and we also had the Birthright Citizenship loss, which we will work to correct in Congress, but the big SLAUGHTER, was SLAUGHTER,” Trump wrote. “The Republican Party was treated very fairly by the United States Supreme Court.”
The contrast in reactions within the administration was sharp. While Trump struck a pragmatic tone regarding his broader judicial scorecard, his chief immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, lambasted the birthright citizenship verdict, labeling it “one of the most destructive and outrageous decisions” in the history of American jurisprudence.
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In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. firmly closed the door on executive reinterpretation of the text, writing that the framers of the 14th Amendment extended the promise of citizenship to “every freeborn person in this land,” concluding simply:
“We keep that promise today.” Conversely, dissenting Justice Samuel Alito warned that the court had made a “serious mistake” that would ultimately serve to exacerbate illegal immigration.
