Last week, President Trump said in an interview that he would be signing an executive order to “end” birthright citizenship, which contradicts the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution.
“It was always told to me that you need a constitutional amendment.” Trump claimed in an interview with Axios, a news network on HBO. “Guess what? You don’t.”
There are only two ways to properly amend the Constitution. Either two-thirds of Congress (both the House and the Senate) must reach a majority vote to amend it, or two thirds of the state legislatures must vote to call a constitutional convention of states. In other words, Trump is claiming that he can do something that he in fact, cannot do.
This is further proven in an article from National Public Radio. “The 14th Amendment holds that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” Most legal scholars take that as an explicit protection of birthright citizenship — and think it will take much more than an executive order to change that.”
Not only is the general public riled up by Trump’s position on the policy, but they can now come after Trump for the obvious lack of knowledge on the constitutional system. An anonymous PV student says, “It is absolutely abhorrent that our own president doesn’t understand the basic premises of the systems of our country,” they comment. “I learned about how the constitution is amended in government class last year. How does the President of the United States not know this stuff?”
Meanwhile, many students at PV are more opinionated on Trump’s policy position rather than the manner in which he said he’d change it. Another anonymous student says, “I think the rules should stay as they are. Once we start to touch the constitution, more chaos is open to happen,” they point out. “If they can take away birthright citizenship, what’s stopping them from taking away amendments such as the first?”
