Trump officials cite white supremacists in bid to end birthright citizenship

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Trump officials cite white supremacists in bid to end birthright citizenship

An argument heading to the Supreme Court is built in part on a post-Civil War campaign that scholars say was steeped in anti-Black and anti-Chinese racism.

March 30, 2026 at 5:00 a.m. EDT Today at 5:00 a.m. EDT
9 min
By Justin Jouvenal


Demonstrators rally in support of birthright citizenship outside the Supreme Court in May. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Alexander Porter Morse, a Confederate officer during the Civil War and a Louisiana attorney, argued for legalized segregation in the landmark 1896 Supreme Court case that established the “separate but equal” doctrine and buttressed Jim Crow laws.

{snip}

Donald Trump Wants You to Forget Why the Fourteenth Amendment and Birthright Citizenship Exists

Trump's crackdown on teaching slavery and Reconstruction isn't a culture war distraction. It's the instruction manual for his constitutional agenda.

Kevin M. Levin
https://substack.com/@kevinmlevin
Mar 30, 2026

https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/a8bad159-7831-4d86-8d09-fa5a884e12dc_1200x900.avif
“Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner,” by Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, 1869. (Source: Princeton University)

This week the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of President Trump’s executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship. It’s no accident that the executive order in January 2025 and his March executive order calling for the “Restoring of Truth and Sanity in American History” were issued at roughly the same time.

On the surface, one appears to be an immigration dispute, the other a culture war skirmish over school curricula and the work of public historians. But examined together, these campaigns reveal a coherent—if unspoken—ideological project, namely the dismantling of Reconstruction’s legacy, including both its legal architecture and its historical memory.

The administration’s stated rationale for ending birthright citizenship has been immigration enforcement. But the legal structure being attacked is not an immigration statute. It is the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War.

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What is being targeted is not mere ideology in the abstract. What is being targeted is the knowledge that makes the Fourteenth Amendment legible. To understand why birthright citizenship exists, one must understand Dred Scott. To understand why the Civil Rights Act was necessary, one must understand the Black Codes and the systematic terror of Reconstruction’s collapse. To understand why the Voting Rights Act was necessary, one must understand the literacy tests, the poll taxes, the organized violence of disenfranchisement. ... Strip away this history, and the remedial architecture of American constitutional law appears not as hard-won justice but as preferential grievance. This is precisely the “divisive” material the administration claims it to be. ... This is not coincidence.

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[Sweet Rosie Red]

1. New slogans for No Kings

Everyone belongs! No human is alien!

It’s been obvious for some time that the whole point of the “originalism” doctrine is reestablishing the Confederacy.
There is absolutely no excuse for this level of sadism.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. 'Alarm bells' ring as Trump resurrects racist arguments in major legal case: experts

The 14th Amendment is clear to me and the arguments being raised by trump are weak. The authority cited by trump's DOJ is really weak.

'Alarm bells' ring as Trump resurrects racist arguments in major legal case: experts

— Raw Story (@rawstory.com) 2026-03-30T14:30:15Z

https://www.rawstory.com/birthright-citizenship-supreme-court-2676636588

The Trump administration is relying on legal arguments developed by Confederate officers and 19th-century xenophobes to challenge birthright citizenship in a Supreme Court case expected to be decided by summer, drawing criticism from legal scholars who say the administration is recycling deeply racist historical precedents.

The administration's Supreme Court brief cites Alexander Porter Morse, a Confederate officer and Louisiana attorney who advocated for legalized segregation in the 1896 case that established the "separate but equal" doctrine that propped up Jim Crow laws, reported the Washington Post.

"The Trump administration has tapped Morse as an authority in its push to upend long-settled law that virtually everyone born in the United States is a citizen," the Post reported. "Over a century ago, Morse was among a trio of thinkers who spearheaded a failed effort — steeped in anti-Black and anti-Chinese racism — to erase birthright citizenship. The Trump administration is reviving their arguments to make its case today, some legal scholars say."

The administration also relies on arguments from Francis Wharton, a legal scholar who wrote that Chinese immigrants were insufficiently "civilized," and George D. Collins, a San Francisco attorney whose career ended in scandal.

Lucy Salyer, a University of New Hampshire history professor, expressed concern about the administration's approach. "If you know the history and the broader context of what they were trying to achieve, it does ring alarm bells," she said.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. The man behind Donald Trump's push to end birthright citizenship (suspended attorney John Eastman)

John Eastman has been advancing his fringe interpretation of the 14th Amendment for decades.

The man behind Donald Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship www.politico.com/news/2026/03...

— Timothy McBride (@mcbridetd.bsky.social) 2026-03-31T14:08:51.193Z

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/31/birthright-citizenship-supreme-court-john-eastman-00851127

Long before John Eastman helped devise Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election, he had another pet cause: ending birthright citizenship.....

Yet, when Trump signed his order on the subject last year, he made no mention of the former law school dean and Supreme Court clerk’s long advocacy for the cause. And while the Justice Department’s public briefs closely track Eastman’s arguments, they don’t cite his writings or acknowledge his role as the theory’s leading evangelist.

“This is his issue,” said Linda Chavez, a longtime conservative activist and senior Reagan White House official who has sparred publicly with Eastman on the subject. “I’ve known John forever and this has been a bee in his bonnet for as long as I’ve known him.”....

Eastman has been advancing his fringe interpretation of the 14th Amendment since 2005, racking up more than 100 op-eds, interviews, law review articles, debates, speeches and legislative hearings.....

And Eastman is still battling the fallout from the 2020 election. He helped concoct the theory that Trump could cling to power by having Vice President Mike Pence refuse to count some states’ electoral votes. That didn’t persuade Pence, but did score Eastman a speaking role at Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021 rally on the Ellipse, where Eastman aired unproven claims of election fraud.

He subsequently lost his professorship at Chapman University and has been suspended from practicing law in California. He’s appealing a decision calling for his permanent disbarment in that state.

Eastman needs to be finally disbarred. This asshole is a disgrace to the legal profession.