Should all babies born in the United States be citizens?
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2026
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, Supreme Court and justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Supreme Court and the Justice Department. |
| 0:11.6 | And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, the Supreme Court hears arguments tomorrow about whether all baby is born in the United States should be granted automatic |
| 0:21.9 | U.S. citizenship, arguably one of the biggest cases before the court this term. |
| 0:25.7 | Carrie, before we get into the details of this, can you remind us what prompted this? |
| 0:29.9 | On his first day back in the White House, President Trump signed an executive order that was |
| 0:33.6 | designed to prevent children born to immigrants in the country without long-term legal |
| 0:38.3 | status from automatically becoming citizens. He said U.S. citizenship is a priceless gift. |
| 0:44.5 | He talked about the 14th Amendment, and it's guaranteed that people born are naturalized in the U.S. |
| 0:50.5 | and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens. And he talked about how that |
| 0:56.3 | amendment basically overturned the Dred Scott decision and the idea that enslaved people who |
| 1:03.8 | are newly freed and their children should become American citizens was like basically the |
| 1:09.2 | whole intent of the 14th Amendment. But he cast |
| 1:12.9 | some doubt or cast a shadow over people who were in the U.S. either illegally or on a short-term |
| 1:20.5 | status, like with work visas or student visas or travel that they had overstayed. And Domenico, I want to talk about the politics of all |
| 1:29.5 | this. What is President Trump trying to accomplish here? Well, obviously, immigration has always been a |
| 1:35.2 | huge animating factor for him and for his base. I mean, it was one of the first things he talked |
| 1:39.5 | about when he launched his political campaign in 2015. And here we are, you know, a decade later. And |
| 1:46.2 | it's really still the thing. And coming into the second term for Trump, they really had a very |
| 1:51.5 | clear agenda on dealing with immigration. And it was less about him trying to understand what |
| 1:56.7 | the White House meant or how to figure out power. He came in on day one and had an executive |
| 2:02.0 | order about wanting to undo birthright citizenship. And, you know, the backdrop to that is that |
| 2:08.0 | a lot of conservatives in the country have been really irritated with the demographic change in |
... |
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