On May 15, 2025, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments about the constitutionality of President Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants.

Hello, friends. I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center,

and welcome to We the People, a weekly show of constitutional debate.

The National Constitution Center is a nonpartisan nonprofit, chartered by Congress,

to increase awareness and understanding of the Constitution among the American people.

In this episode, Gabriel Chin of the University of California

Davis School of Law, Amanda Frost of the University of Virginia School of Law, Kurt Lash of the

University of Richmond School of Law, and Ilan Wormon of the University of Minnesota Law School,

join we to people for a debate about the scope of the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Enjoy the show.

Thank you so much for joining us, Jack Chin, Amanda Frost, Kurt Lash and Alon Warman.

Amanda Frost, let's start with you.

On January 20th, the Trump administration issued an executive order, which said that children

born in the United States would only be granted citizenship if at least one of their parents

is a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident.

Tell us why you have concluded that that executive order is inconsistent with the text,

history, and precedent surrounding the 14th Amendment.

Yes, and thank you for having me, and I'm looking forward to the conversation with this group.

Let me just say there's lots of interesting and hard constitutional

questions out there, and I don't think this is one of them. And the reason I say that is because

every method of constitutional interpretation supports what I'll call as a matter of shorthand,

the universalist view. That is the view that everyone born in the U.S. is a citizen with a few narrow exceptions

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