What happens if the US ends birthright citizenship?

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2026

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

Any day now, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the Trump administration’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship. But beyond the ruling, the fight for who belongs in a country is much older and broader than the United States. Gene talks with Daisy Hernández, the author of Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth, about what we can learn from both other nations’ and our own history about where we might be headed.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	What's good, y'all?
0:02.6	You're listening to Code Switch, the show about race and identity from NPR.
0:06.6	I'm Gene Demby.
0:07.4	And I'm B.A. Parker.
0:10.4	All right, so, Parker, I kind of want to set this banana scene for you.
0:14.4	One you might have missed because of the everything.
0:16.6	I'm gesturing to the world.
0:17.8	The everything going on.
0:18.7	But back in April, Donald Trump went down to the
0:22.7	Supreme Court to listen to oral arguments in this potentially huge and really closely watched
0:27.7	case. Wait, doesn't that violate the whole separation of powers thing? Oh, you would think,
0:32.4	because this was the first time a sitting president has ever done something like that. Ah, breaking with
0:36.6	tradition and decorum, very on brand.
0:39.6	Yeah, very on brand.
0:41.2	So let me just set the scene for you, Parker.
0:43.5	So Trump is posted up in the front row.
0:46.0	And after you got there, he kind of scoched over to the center to get a better view.
0:49.9	And Robert De Niro was in the courtroom for some reason.
0:53.1	I don't know.
0:53.4	I mean, he famously is not a fan of the president.
0:58.2	Yes.
0:58.7	But anyway, the arguments get started.
	...

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