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.

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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.