The Wall Street Journal's editorial board has a plea to President Donald Trump: take the loss, and give up on your plan to eliminate birthright citizenship.
The conservative paper's rebuke, which comes after they also criticized him for pardoning violent insurrectionists and trying to get rich off of cryptocurrency offerings to his supporters, comes after a federal judge in Seattle temporarily blocked Trump's executive order, which would declare children born in the United States with no citizen or permanent resident parents invalid for passports and other federal recognition of citizenship.
"Mr. Trump’s order purports to reinterpret the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 to guarantee citizenship for former slaves. It states that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States,'" wrote the board. "The President’s lawyers say the phrase 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof' has been wrongly interpreted by federal courts and Presidents."
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Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, smacked down this argument immediately — as he should have, the board wrote.
"The Supreme Court declared in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) — a case involving a man born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants — that the history and text of the Fourteenth Amendment demonstrate the 'ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory,'" the board continued. And however much he might want to, "Mr. Trump can’t change the Constitution or the High Court’s interpretation of it by decree."
Trump will appeal that order, but it's a waste of time, wrote the board, as the Supreme Court is not going to be any more sympathetic to his views.
"Rather than mount fruitless appeals, DOJ would be wise to deploy more attorneys to defend the Administration’s lawful deregulatory actions against inevitable liberal challenges," the board concluded.