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福善活跃乐龄中心增设分中心 服务更多长者

2026年3月29日 18:51 / 联合早报

福善活跃乐龄中心增设分中心 服务更多长者

社会政策统筹部长兼保健卫生部长王乙康（蓝衬衫者）、三巴旺集选区议员佳馥梅（中）和黄士轩（左二）也出席午宴，上台为年长者献上一曲拿手的《爱拼才会赢》。 （周国威摄）

坐落于三巴旺的福善活跃乐龄中心将在坎贝拉开设新分中心，为新社区的更多年长者提供服务。

福善（Blossom Seeds）星期天（3月29日）举行第六届慈善午宴，逾1500名乐龄人士和义工齐聚一堂。

福善在2021年时为2500名乐龄人士提供服务，如今需求倍增。随着新分中心今年底在Canberra Vista第378座组屋落成，旗下六个据点今年将合计为5000人服务。

福善活跃乐龄中心执行长翁秀卿告诉《联合早报》，坎贝拉是个新区，有不少独居老人居住在二房式灵活组屋，新分中心能把乐龄服务带到他们身边。

“部分乐龄人士住得较远，来回不便。我们希望把活动直接带到年长者的家门口，让中心成为他们真正的第二个家。”

新分中心比现有中心更靠近坎贝拉地铁站，乐龄人士无需转乘巴士便能到达。中心将提供社区咖啡馆、园艺、数码技能班、理财与身后规划讲座及多个兴趣小组等活动。

翁秀卿说，福善的核心理念不只是提供服务，而是通过赋予生活意义来促进健康。“我们鼓励乐龄人士从受惠者变成义工。当一个人觉得自己还能帮助别人，孤独感自然就少了。”

试点计划整合乐龄机构年长者资料 提供更有针对性服务

社会政策统筹部长兼保健卫生部长王乙康、三巴旺集选区议员维凯、佳馥梅和黄士轩也出席午宴。

王乙康在致辞时说，三巴旺是好些乐龄健康计划的试点区。他举例，目前三巴旺正推进一项计划，整合活跃乐龄中心与护联局（AIC）等机构的乐龄人士资料，以更好地了解和为他们服务。

王乙康（左三）在现场给年长者送出红包祝福，左一为福善活跃乐龄中心执行长翁秀卿。（周国威摄）

“接下来，我们打算先在三巴旺集选区的其他地方推行，之后再推广到新加坡其他地区。”

翁秀卿解释，这项跨机构合作计划初期聚焦三巴旺中区，福善活跃乐龄中心已参与约两年，其间包括挨家挨户敲门收集资料了解状况，以及举办活动掌握他们的需求。各机构在第一阶段已整合近7500年长者的信息。

她说，通过整合年长者的背景和需求，各机构能全面地掌握他们在健康、社交需求、居住状况等方面的情况，及时识别高风险的年长人士并提供更有针对性的服务。

“这也能提高服务效率，避免资源重叠。多个团体不必再重复上门敲门，资源能更合理、更及时地分配给年长者。”

98岁独居不孤单 天天到乐龄中心做运动

李英好今年98岁，是中心最年长的乐龄人士之一。她育有六个孩子，与儿子同住逾20年后，两年前女儿在坎贝拉一带为她购置新组屋，目前独居。

她说，平日里她一个人在家，日子过得简单，打扫、看电视，一天就这样过去了。

某次福善义工上门家访，便邀请她来中心参加活动。如今她几乎每天都来做运动、参与游戏，还留下来在厨房帮忙做义工。

张玉丽（右）一开始每天都带李英好（左）来福善活跃乐龄中心，慢慢地，李英好适应了路线，自己就能到中心报到。（周国威摄）

张玉丽（70岁）是中心义工，也是李英好的好朋友。她刚开始的两三个月，每天都上门接送李英好到中心，带领她慢慢适应，李英好现在已经能自己搭巴士前来。

张玉丽说：“如果不是来中心当义工、探访独居老人、陪乐龄人士锻炼，可能我现在还在工作。现在的生活比较有意义。”

2025年大陆赴台人次同比增45% 各旅客来源地增幅榜首

2026年3月29日 19:01 / 联合早报

一名民众在台北松山机场拍摄航班信息显示屏上显示的航班取消情况。 （路透社）

与2024年相比，2025年中国大陆赴台人次增幅达45.4%，增幅为所有旅客来源地中最高。

台湾中时新闻网报道，台内政部近日公布，2025年出入台湾人次合计5486万5000人，较上年增加11.4%。

与2024年相比，去年赴台大陆旅客由43万8212人次，增加至63万7060人次，增加19万8848人次，增幅达45.4%，为所有国家和地区中最高。

另一方面，赴台马来西亚旅客减少4万3940人次，减幅10.2%，为降幅最大。

去年赴台旅客共857万4547人次，其中日本旅客148万3176人次，占比17.3%，人数最多。香港和澳门特区共131万0139人次，占比率15.3%，排第二。第三位的则是韩国旅客，共101万6520人次，占比11.9%。

我国三人男篮止步超级联盟赛八强 积极调整备战大赛

2026年3月29日 19:30 / 联合早报

由徐端阳（红衣左起）、奥法、利亚姆·布莱克尼和钟镇宇组成的我国三人男篮团队，在3×3.EXE八强以12比21不敌日本球队宇都宫皇者，无缘半决赛。 （郑一鸣摄）

在星期天（3月29日）于盛港汇购物中心举行的3×3.EXE超级联盟赛（3×3.EXE Super Premier）中，我国三人男篮以12比21不敌最终亚军、日本劲旅宇都宫皇者，无缘半决赛。

继星期六（28日）以18比17爆冷击败赛事第二的瑞士劲旅卢加诺（Lugano）后，由奥法（Aufa）、利亚姆·布莱克尼（Liam Blakney）、钟镇宇和徐端阳组成的我国队伍在八强战对阵宇都宫皇者。

新加坡队开局以1比4落后。随后，徐端阳一记两分止住颓势，而钟镇宇面对比自己高20厘米的对方中锋比维尔（Biwer）也强势得分，将比分追至6比9。

身高1米89的我国前锋钟镇宇（左）虽然比对方中锋比维尔（2米09，右）矮了不少，但还是利用速度优势屡屡突破得分，引得近百名现场观众一片喝彩。（郑一鸣摄）

然而，在对方的持续紧逼下，我国团队出现多次失误。比维尔连续抢下篮板得分，在防守端也送出抢断，将分差拉开至18比10，最终帮助宇都宫皇者取胜。

虽然对方场面占优，但我国队员还是全力拼搏，利亚姆（红衣）就送出了精彩封盖，只可惜球队还是输给对手。（郑一鸣摄）

我国教练：不担心球队表现 全力备战亚洲杯等赛事

赛后，我国塞尔维亚籍教练拉西奇（Rasic）第一时间和球员们进行复盘。他对《联合早报》说：“我们开局有点紧张，一些我们平时执行得很好的简单战术，在比赛中没有发挥出来。”

比赛结束后，我国教练拉西奇（中）和队员们在球场旁边进行了快速复盘，总结球队在本场比赛的不足。（郑一鸣摄）

我国团队将在4月于加冷汇（The Kallang）参加三人篮球亚洲杯和世界杯资格赛，并在7月首征共和联邦运动会。拉西奇提到，球队正在为这些大型赛事做准备，在心理层面上有起伏比较正常。

“我们的目标始终是争取赢球。要注意的是，我们参与这项运动的时间，与其他国家相比还有差距……不过目前，我并不担心。”

我国队长奥法则说，会根据这场失利进行调整，不断提升自己，希望能在亚洲杯等赛事登上领奖台。

而宇都宫皇者在击败新加坡队后，杀入当天傍晚的决赛，但以15比21不敌卢加诺，错失冠军。

瑞士劲旅卢加诺（图）在决赛以21比15击败日本对手日本球队宇都宫皇者，夺得冠军。（郑一鸣摄）

两所大学遇袭 伊朗恫言向中东美以学府以牙还牙

2026年3月29日 18:55 / 联合早报

伊朗放话要袭击以色列与美国在中东地区的大学。图为以色列中部城市贝特谢梅什（Beit Shemesh）附近一栋房屋星期六遭袭击，救援人员随即到场展开工作。 （法新社）

（德黑兰/华盛顿综合电）为报复美以空袭摧毁伊朗两所大学，伊朗伊斯兰革命卫队恫言瞄准以色列境内大学以及中东地区的美国大学以牙还牙。革命卫队也警告，将对敌人的军事和经济体系予以更致命打击。

伊朗伊斯兰革命卫队星期天（3月29日）发声明，谴责美以再次袭击伊朗大学。声明称：“从此刻起，所有以色列大学和设在西亚地区的美国大学都会界定为合法目标，直至有两所大学被击中，实现对伊朗大学被摧毁的报复行动。”

伊朗外交部发言人同日说，美以过去30天在对伊朗的军事行动中，蓄意打击高校和科研机构等目标，遇袭的包括伊斯法罕理工大学和位于德黑兰的伊朗科技大学。

革命卫队限美国政府在德黑兰时间星期一（3月30日）中午（新加坡时间星期一下午4时30分）前发表官方声明，谴责对伊朗大学的袭击，否则将对更多美国大学实施报复。

声明建议中东地区所有美国大学的教职员、学生与附近居民，远离校舍至少一公里。

一些美国大学在波斯湾地区设有校区，如得克萨斯农工大学和西北大学都在卡塔尔有分校，纽约大学则在阿联酋设有分校。

与美国军航业关系密切 阿联酋巴林铝厂遇袭

革命卫队星期天在另一份声明中称，已有效打击了阿联酋环球铝业公司（EGA）与巴林铝业公司（Alba）的工厂。声明指，这两座铝厂与美国军事和航空航天业有关，此次袭击是对美以从波斯湾国家基地袭击伊朗工业基础设施作出的反击。

声明还誓言，将对敌人的军事和经济体系予以更致命打击，而不再只是做出对等反制。

阿联酋环球铝业是中东最大铝生产商，也是全球市场的主要铝供应商。公司说，它在阿布扎比的最大金属制造厂星期六在伊朗空袭中受到严重破坏，六名员工受伤。巴林铝业公司也证实工厂于星期六遇袭，伤及两人。

霍尔木兹海峡被封后，波斯湾地区的能源和金属生产商向全球市场供应中断；这类袭击恐怕会进一步延宕战后生产运营恢复正常化。

分析：伊朗报复力未消反蓄 恐加大海外独狼式恐袭

《纽约时报》指出，近日对中东地区的一系列空袭显示，伊朗并未丧失报复能力。

华盛顿智库史汀生研究中心高级研究员格里埃科分析相关数据后发现，伊朗的袭击命中率实际上有所上升，自3月10日来已翻了一倍多。

格里埃科指出，美军可能把伊朗袭击行动减少，误判为袭击能力降低；但相较于袭击次数，是否有效使用武器库才是更重要指标。“迹象显示，伊朗不像是个被击败的对手，更像是正在不断适用学习，设法造成足够破坏以实施战略的对手。”

恐怖主义专家和美国执法官员警告，美国向中东增派军力为地面入侵做准备之际，伊朗恐怕也正加大力度，煽动独狼式袭击、主导网络攻击，或在海外实施暗杀行动。

美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）报道，伊朗近年采取“无所不用其极”的海外袭击策略，渗入美国本土煽动袭击，或雇用犯罪分子来刺杀敌人。美国司法部就挫败过多起针对总统特朗普等美国高官与伊朗异议人士的暗杀阴谋。

伊朗也通过社交媒体、聊天室等网络渠道，在全球范围煽动独狼暴力袭击和破坏行为。美以伊冲突爆发首周，美国境内就发生四起恐怖袭击，包括造成三人死亡的奥斯汀枪击事件。

官员也担心，伊朗可能会启动所谓的潜伏小组（sleeper cell），这些人隐藏在美国国内，随时待命发动恐怖袭击。

Brad Raffensperger runs for Georgia governor and tries to defy Republicans who called him ‘repugnant’

2026-03-29 05:00 AM ET / CNN

By Fredreka Schouten

Updated Mar 29, 2026, 6:34 AM ET

PUBLISHED Mar 29, 2026, 5:00 AM ET

Georgia Secretary of State and Republican gubernatorial candidate Brad Raffensperger speaks at an event in Duluth, Georgia, on January 9, 2026.

Erik S. Lesser/EPA/Shutterstock

Alpharetta, Georgia—

Brad Raffensperger generally avoids the explosive topic that made him famous.

As the state’s top election official, Raffensperger refused Donald Trump’s demand to “find” the votes needed to overturn the president’s 2020 loss in the Peach State. Now, as a candidate for the Republican nomination for Georgia governor, he prefers to talk about making state government leaner and lowering costs — even as Republicans either talk about their anger at him or just want him to go away.

Billionaire health care executive Rick Jackson kicked off his campaign last month with an ad that compared Raffensperger’s actions to those of Judas. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who served as a false Republican elector in 2020 and is running now with the president’s endorsement, has cast Raffensperger as a member of “Team Never Trump.”

Delegates to a state party convention last year approved a resolution that labeled him “repugnant” to the party brand and sought to bar him from seeking any office as a Republican.

“The Republican Party does not like Brad Raffensperger,” said Alex Johnson, chairman of the conservative Georgia Republican Assembly, which recently endorsed Jones. “That’s the one thing everyone is in agreement on.”

And as Trump demands election investigations, the FBI recently seized 2020 ballots from the Atlanta area, pushing the drama back into the spotlight just as the May 19 primary heats up.

Raffensperger, a soft-spoken businessman-turned-politician who survived Trump’s wrath to win reelection as secretary of state four years ago, still insists he has a viable path forward. How he fares will suggest not just the mood of the GOP in a critical swing state, but whether candidates who defy the president have a place in Trump’s Republican Party.

It’s hard to find Republicans who stood up to Trump on his false claims about elections and still have current positions in the GOP — much less who’ve secured promotions. Many have retired or lost primaries, and a few have switched parties, like former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who is running in this year’s Democratic primary for governor.

“I don’t know of a single Republican that actually believes the election was rigged in 2020, yet Donald Trump has not created the permission structure for them to actually say that out loud,” Duncan said in an interview with CNN.

So how can Raffensperger win?

“I just need to continue to be Brad,” he told CNN recently between campaign stops in suburban Atlanta. “People are looking for someone who has integrity, that will do the right thing, no matter what.”

A $5 million investment in his own bid

On the stump, the lanky 70-year-old leans into his biography as a math-loving engineer who built successful construction and manufacturing companies before entering politics in his 50s. He rose from a suburban city council seat to the state legislature and won statewide office for the first time in 2018. He’s now wrapping up his second term as secretary of state.

Raffensperger has put $5 million of his own money into the campaign so far. His team recently reserved more than $3 million in advertising that will start airing in April.

As Georgia governor, he argues, he would help deliver business-style service and efficiency to state government. Raffensperger also made public safety a priority. His eldest son, Brenton, died in 2018 of a fentanyl overdose, leaving behind a wife and children. Brenton, Raffensperger said, went through multiple bouts of sobriety and then drug use and sobriety again and served time in jail.

“The deepest loss any parent will ever have is when they lose a child,” he said softly during the interview.

His campaign is as low-key as his demeanor.

While his rivals bombarded the airwaves on a recent Tuesday, Raffensperger took his campaign pitch to the twice-monthly meeting of the Rotary Club of North Fulton.

As more than two dozen Rotarians lunched on salads, turkey sandwiches and tater tots inside Alpharetta’s Brimstone Restaurant and Tavern, Raffensperger talked up bread-and-butter issues. That included calling for a cap on soaring property taxes, the expansion of school choice options and pushing for a return to phonics to boost fourth-grade reading performance.

He barely mentioned elections, except to tout lower Election Day wait times and faster ballot tabulation. And he made a glancing — but positive — reference to Trump, praising the president for working to “reshore” manufacturing jobs from overseas. (In his interview with CNN, Raffensperger said he supports Trump and his policies.)

But the campaign appearance underscores the difficult balance Raffensperger is trying to strike.

After all, it was the public release of a recording of a phone call in which Trump implored Raffensperger to “find 11,780” votes he would need to claim victory in Georgia that catapulted Raffensperger into the national spotlight.

Raffensperger testified about his refusal to accede to Trump’s demands during a televised hearing of the January 6, 2021, committee. And he wrote a 2021 book, “Integrity Counts,” that chronicled the 2020 election drama and the threats he, his family and Georgia election workers endured.

A transcript of a phone call between Donald Trump and Brad Raffensperger appears on a screen during a hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol, held on June 21, 2022.

Al Drago/Pool/Reuters/File

Some went directly to the cell phone of his wife of 49 years, Tricia. Read one: “please pray. we plan for the death of you and your family every day. Im sorry.”

Raffensperger still handily beat former Georgia Rep. Jody Hice, his Trump-backed primary challenger, in 2022.

Years later, he’s reluctant to dwell on the drama of those elections as he tries to build a big enough coalition to survive the primary in May. Four years after his last race, the political landscape has shifted some.

For one thing, Trump has returned to the White House, more focused than ever on settling political scores.

“Most people have moved on,” Raffensperger said when asked about the lingering effects of 2020 on the race. “There’s a subset” of people who cling to the election fraud claims, he said.

“I try to be gentle about it, but they just don’t have the facts.”

The FBI’s recent seizure of 2020 ballots makes clear, however, that some people have not moved on. Present at Fulton County to see the execution of the search warrant was Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, who has made relitigating election claims a priority.

Asked about the FBI’s seizure, Raffensperger responded mildly, saying, “I don’t see what they are going to get out of it.”

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks at an event in which dice are rolled to determine the random selection of presidential election ballot batches chosen for audit, at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta on November 14, 2024.

Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters/File

Does he have a path to the runoff?

All four major GOP candidates — Jackson, Jones, Raffensperger and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr — recently visited a Baptist church in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta for a leadership roundtable organized by the Georgia Faith & Freedom Coalition, an arm of Ralph Reed’s conservative network.

Despite the growing intensity of the battle to replace the term-limited GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, the event was free of acrimony. As Reed looked on from the audience, each candidate had equal time individually on the stage to talk about their lives and faith, reaffirm their opposition to abortion, voice support for Israel and Georgia’s Jewish population, and commit to cutting regulatory red tape.

In recent weeks, however, the GOP contest has turned into a big-spending brawl between Jackson and Jones that risks pushing both Raffensperger and Carr to the sidelines.

Jackson, the founder of a health-care staffing company, has spent more than $39 million on advertising ahead of the primary, according to AdImpact, which tracks political advertising. That’s a record for this point in a Georgia gubernatorial primary, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Jones’ camp has spent more than $13 million.

The attacks between the two have grown increasingly personal. Jones has tried to portray Jackson as disloyal to Trump, citing the billionaire’s past financial support for the campaigns of former Trump rivals for the presidency, including former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

Jackson has called Jones “lazy” and sought to cast him as relying on his family’s fortune to prop up his campaign. Jackson has donated $1 million to a Trump-aligned super PAC, federal records show. He recently attended a dinner with Trump and other major donors at the president’s Mar-a-Lago private club in Florida, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Even as Jackson seeks to cultivate ties to the president, Trump has stuck by Jones, something the lieutenant governor eagerly noted at the Faith & Freedom gathering.

“I’m endorsed by President Trump, by the way, I don’t know if you all know that or not,” Jones quipped to scattered chuckles from the audience. “He’s not done it once, not twice but three times now.”

Raffensperger’s aides believe Jackson and Jones could split the MAGA-aligned vote, creating a path for him. Georgia law requires a candidate to receive more than 50% of the vote to win the primary election outright; otherwise, the top two vote-getters would compete in a June 16 runoff.

Charles Bullock, a veteran political scientist at the University of Georgia, said that’s possible. “There could be some share of the voters that say, ‘I don’t want to vote for either Jackson or Jones. They both sound like scoundrels, so Raffensperger sounds like the best bet.’”

Jay Morgan, a former executive director of the Georgia Republican Party who now runs a public affairs firm, said Raffensperger faces a tough path. A decent share of the state’s Republican electorate likely will take its cue from Trump, even if voters grow weary of the Jackson-Jones infighting, he said. And Raffensperger, he said, “is clearly the guy Trump would least like to see on the ballot.”

In interviews, some voters said they were open to Raffensperger’s ideas but not yet sold on his candidacy.

“Let’s be frank, Raffensperger is the most hated,” said Lisa Babbage, who serves as first vice chair of the Georgia Black Republican Council and listened to all four candidates at the Faith & Freedom event. “But when he told the story about his son, I couldn’t help but connect to that and truly believe that he cares.”

CNN’s David Wright contributed reporting.

In Supreme Court fight over birthright citizenship, a great-grandson hears echoes of 1898

2026-03-29T10:02:48.608Z / Reuters

Summary

A Trump directive would limit birthright citizenship
Supreme Court will mull directive’s legality on Wednesday
Its 1898 ruling confirmed citizenship by birth on US soil
US Constitution’s citizenship language in the spotlight

March 29 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s challenge to the longstanding rule that anyone born in the United States, with only narrow exceptions, is automatically a citizen echoes a similar dispute that took place on the shores of San Francisco more than a century ago.

In the late 19th century, amid a wave of fervent anti-Chinese sentiment, the U.S. government sought to prevent a young man named Wong Kim Ark from re-entering the country upon returning by steamship from a trip to his parents’ homeland of China, ​contending that, despite being born in the United States, he was not a citizen.

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On March 28, 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, recognizing that the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment grants citizenship by birth on U.S. soil, including to those like Wong whose parents were foreign nationals.

A DESCENDANT WORRIES

Now ‌his great-grandson, a San Francisco area resident, worries that the principle enshrined by his ancestor’s case may be in peril.

“Wong Kim Ark knew he was an American. And he demanded that his citizenship be recognized. He was willing to stand up,” Norman Wong, 76, said in an interview. “Wong Kim Ark didn’t make the rule. He affirmed the rule.”

That 128-year-old understanding will be contested again at the Supreme Court on Wednesday when the justices hear arguments over the legality of Trump’s executive order that would deny automatic citizenship to babies born in the United States if neither parent is an American citizen or legal permanent resident.

Though he was unaware of the legacy of his great-grandfather for most of his life, Norman Wong has since spent years learning about it, and last year visited his family’s ancestral village in China. ​The Trump administration is offering “fake arguments and fake reasons” to accomplish a dangerous goal that is contrary to the American dream, the retired carpenter said.

Trump’s fight at the Supreme Court “was settled 128 years ago,” Wong said. “We’re just revisiting it.”

The Republican president’s directive, issued in January 2025 on his first day back in office ​as part of a sweeping crackdown on immigration, carried through on threats Trump had made for years to try to restrict birthright citizenship.

The administration has said automatic citizenship creates incentives for illegal immigration and leads to “birth tourism,” by which foreigners travel to ⁠the United States to give birth and secure citizenship for their children. Critics call Trump’s directive a plainly unconstitutional action rooted in racially discriminatory anti-immigrant views.

Trump’s order would refuse to recognize the citizenship of babies of immigrants who are in the country illegally or whose presence is lawful but temporary, such as university students or those on ​work visas.

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has repeatedly let Trump expand mass deportation measures on an interim basis while legal challenges play out – such as ending humanitarian protections for migrants or allowing them to be deported to countries where they have no ties.

The court last year gave Trump an initial victory in the birthright citizenship context in a ruling ​restricting the power of federal judges to curb presidential policies on a nationwide basis. That decision, though arising from the administration’s challenge to judicial rulings declaring his birthright citizenship directive unconstitutional, did not resolve the legality of Trump’s action – something Wednesday’s case is expected to do.

UPHILL BATTLE

Many legal experts have said that, given the nation’s long tradition of birthright citizenship in addition to the precedent involving Wong Kim Ark, the administration faces an uphill battle as it seeks to reinterpret the 14th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War of 1861-1865 that ended slavery in ​the United States. It overturned the Supreme Court’s notorious 1857 decision called Dred Scott v. Sandford, which had declared that people of African descent could never be U.S. citizens.

“Every single method and source of constitutional interpretation confirms that it applies to everyone born in the United States with extremely narrow common law exceptions,” University of Virginia law professor Amanda ​Frost said.

The primary exception relates to children born to foreign diplomats, who would not have birthright citizenship.

Trump’s Justice Department contends that for generations the U.S. government has mistakenly conferred citizenship on people who do not qualify – namely, those present illegally or temporarily.

If the Supreme Court endorses that view, the practical consequences would be enormous, affecting the legal status of as many as 250,000 ‌babies born each year ⁠in the United States, according to some estimates, and requiring the families of millions more to prove the citizenship status of their newborns.

Though Trump’s directive specifically targets babies born after it goes into effect, critics have expressed concern that it later could be applied retroactively.

“While the order is formally prospective … the arguments the government is making about what it claims the Constitution means cast a shadow over the citizenship of millions of other people who have lived their entire lives as American citizens, potentially going back generations,” said Cody Wofsy, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the challengers to Trump’s directive.

“Even beyond that, I think a decision in favor of the government here would signal open season on challenges to the citizenship of fellow Americans, even those whose parents are not non-citizens in these particular categories” of people targeted in Trump’s directive, Wofsy said.

The lawsuit before the Supreme Court challenging Trump’s order was brought in New Hampshire by the ACLU on behalf of parents and children whose citizenship would be threatened. U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante let the ​plaintiffs in that case proceed as a class, allowing Trump’s order to be blocked nationally.

WONG ​KIM ARK’S SAGA

When Wong Kim Ark, a cook in his 20s, returned from ⁠a months-long trip to China in 1895, customs officials in San Francisco declared him a non-citizen. Though he was born in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood, the officials said that because his parents were Chinese nationals, so too was he, and as such he was ineligible for entry due to an 1882 law called the Chinese Exclusion Act that restricted Chinese migration and citizenship.

The Supreme Court rejected the government’s bid to place limits on citizenship based on the 14th Amendment’s language conferring citizenship to only those born in the ​United States who are “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

The latter phrase was meant to exclude from citizenship by birth on U.S. territory the children of foreign diplomats and occupying enemies – which did not apply to Wong Kim Ark – and “not to impose any ​new restrictions upon citizenship,” the court said in ⁠a 6-2 ruling. Native Americans were also included among the exceptions, although they were accorded citizenship by statute in 1924.

To hold otherwise, the court added, “would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German or other European parentage who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States.”

Trump’s administration has argued that his directive complies both with the 14th Amendment and the 1898 ruling because it allows citizenship for some immigrants with lawful “domicile” in the United States, including permanent residents.

At the time of his birth, Wong Kim Ark’s parents had permanent domicile and residence in the United States, the administration has said, citing the court’s ruling in the case. Those in the United States only temporarily or illegally do ⁠not meet this standard, ​according to the administration.

“I just don’t think it’s correct to say that Wong Kim Ark (as a legal precedent) decided the question of the citizenship status of children born to temporary visitors or to people ​here illegally,” University of Minnesota law professor Ilan Wurman said.

That precedent “strictly speaking, focused on law domiciled parents,” Wurman said, adding: “There is good language in that case supporting either side of this case.”

FAMILY LEGACY

Norman Wong, who like his ancestor was born in San Francisco, now embraces the chance to warn others about the Trump administration’s quest to limit citizenship.

“I didn’t see the executive order … as an end. I saw that as a beginning, ​that they would chip away at citizenship until they can do away with the people that they don’t want. And they’ll always have a reason, you know?” Wong said. “We’re talking about the soul of America, who we are as a people.”

Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham

Supreme Court fight over birthright citizenship threatens ‘chaos’ in proving newborns’ status

2026-03-29T08:00:54.794Z / CNN

By John Fritze

4 hr ago

PUBLISHED Mar 29, 2026, 4:00 AM ET

Demonstrators rally outside the Supreme Court on May 15, 2025.

Matt McClain/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a fired-up prosecutor last year as he shot off a withering series of nuts-and-bolts questions about how President Donald Trump would carry out his plan to rewrite of the way birthright citizenship has been understood in the United States for more than a century.

Would hospitals have to change the way they process newborns? Kavanaugh demanded. Would state governments have to do something different? How would federal officials determine citizenship if a birth certificate no longer sufficed?

“Federal officials will have to figure that out essentially,” US Solicitor General D. John Sauer managed to say amid a fusillade of rapid-fire queries.

“How?” Kavanaugh pressed.

“So, you can imagine a number of ways —” Sauer began.

“Such as?” Kavanaugh interjected.

As the Supreme Court prepares to consider the merits of Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship on Wednesday, most of the same practical questions Kavanaugh raised a year ago remain unanswered. Some of those questions speak to the bureaucratic nightmare that Americans — including US citizens — might face documenting a child’s immigration status. Others go to the very heart of what it means to be a US citizen.

Most of the court’s arguments this week will deal with the history of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause, which makes clear that “all persons born” in the United States who are “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens. Written arguments from both Trump and the groups challenging the policy focus heavily on what the framers meant by “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

Related article Supreme Court justices will consider the future of birthright citizenship. Here’s how their families came to America 11 min read

Buried beneath that theoretical debate is uncertainty about how Trump’s order, which he signed on the first day of his second term, would be implemented if the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court lets it take effect. Kavanaugh’s inquiries last year suggested not only that Trump’s idea was radical, but that it might also be unworkable.

Federal agencies have rolled out a series of guidance documents explaining how people would apply for passports, Social Security numbers and safety-net programs under Trump’s plan. But some of those materials have raised as many questions as they’ve answered.

If allowed to take effect, the policy would create “a tidal wave of legal confusion and chaos,” predicted Jill Habig, the CEO of Public Rights Project, a nonprofit that provides legal support to state and local governments and that filed a brief in the case opposing the administration.

“This is the problem with trying to change hundreds of years of the constitutional text and precedent with what is essentially a memo,” Habig said. “Every system that we have in this country to prove citizenship is typically based on just a birth certificate.”

When the high court delved into birthright citizenship last year, it was dealing with a technical issue about whether courts could halt a presidential directive on a short-term basis while it considered its legality. In late June, the court voted 6-3 to limit the ability of lower courts to block such policies on a nationwide basis under a widely used procedure at the time. But the court left the door open to other avenues to pause such policies — like class-action suits — and Trump’s birthright order was put on hold again days later.

But this time, the court will debate the legality of the order itself. A decision is expected by the end of June.

Barbara, a 35-year old pregnant asylum-seeker from Cuba, poses for a portrait in Louisville, Kentucky, on May 9, 2025.

Kevin Wurm/Reuters

Kavanaugh is often highly deferential during oral arguments, but his animated back-and-forth with Sauer offered a window into the thinking of a key vote in the court’s conservative wing. Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee regularly sides with the administration, and he was in dissent when the court struck down Trump’s emergency tariffs earlier this year.

In response to the blistering inquiries, Sauer said at the time that federal agencies would seek documentation from the parents of newborns to demonstrate “legal presence in the country.” For a person working in the US on a temporary basis, he said, the government could perhaps run a check on their name across government visa databases.

But that, Kavanaugh noted, meant the government would have to run checks on the parents of more than 3.6 million babies born in the United States each year.

“For all the newborns?” Kavanaugh fired back. “Is that how it’s going to work?”

Soil and blood

Trump has insisted the executive order is aimed at combatting “birth tourism,” immigrants who come to the United States briefly for the purpose of having a child.

The 14th Amendment was adopted to grant citizenship to freed slaves and their children, the administration has said, not people temporarily in the country illegally. And only since the court handed down a landmark precedent upholding the idea of birthright citizenship in 1898, the government says, has a “latter-day misconception” of the clause’s scope taken hold.

“That interpretation is untenable,” the Department of Justice told the Supreme Court.

And, it says, it has “incentivized illegal entry into the United States and encouraged ‘birth tourists’ to travel to the United States solely to acquire citizenship for their children.”

But if allowed to take effect, Trump’s order would have an impact far beyond the people it ostensibly targets. Critics say it would fundamentally change the meaning of US citizenship from a concept that is tied to geography to one that is linked instead to parentage. And that, they say, is a sharp departure from what the founding generation had in mind.

“We shouldn’t view this birthright citizenship question in isolation. We should view it as part of the American experiment and the repudiation of continental ideas of bloodlines and lineage,” said Vikram Amar, a University of California, Davis, School of Law professor who has written extensively on the issue. “The whole American experiment is about basing your opportunities and your future on who you are and what you make of your own equality rather than which family and which bloodline you were born into.”

After the Supreme Court ruled in the first birthright citizenship case last year, the Trump administration began making public a series of guidance documents explaining the implementation of the order. Among those documents is one from the State Department that explains how officials would “request original proof of parental citizenship or immigration status” to proceed with processing a passport application. To obtain a passport, in other words, a person born after the order took effect would need to document that their parents were citizens.

To obtain a Social Security number, the agency would first check its own database for parents’ records. One problem with that approach is that the Social Security Administration itself has acknowledged for years that potentially millions of its immigration records are inaccurate, in part because the system relies on individuals to update their own records when their status changes.

“It’s just not a system for demonstrating citizenship,” Habig said. “It is a system for listing Social Security numbers, and that is not the same thing.”

Lower courts touched only briefly on the practical considerations of implementing the order, which were important mainly for establishing that the people challenging Trump had standing to sue. In July, a San Francisco-based federal appeals court upheld a Seattle judge’s ruling that blocked Trump’s policy nationwide in a case brought by a group of Democratic-led states. A separate decision earlier that month by a New Hampshire judge barred enforcement of Trump’s order against any babies who would be impacted by the policy in a class-action lawsuit.

Trump appealed both rulings to the Supreme Court, but the justices agreed to hear arguments in only the New Hampshire case.

Dealing with the Brits

Despite the anxieties that have cropped up over implementation the president’s order, the Trump administration notes that plenty of other countries have a similar system in place. Sauer is likely to raise that point when he returns to the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

The early American view of birthright citizenship drew heavily from the United Kingdom’s approach, which granted near-universal citizenship to babies born on English soil. But Trump’s allies point out that changed in 1983 when the Brits abolished automatic birthright citizenship.

“Hardly any developed country retains a rule of citizenship that resembles the United States’ current approach,” the administration told the Supreme Court.

Critics counter that, in the case of the UK, Parliament enacted a law. Trump, by contrast, is attempting to change the meaning of birthright citizenship through executive order.

And several briefs point out that the experience in the UK was far from smooth. Some of the same concerns groups are raising before the Supreme Court today were previously experienced overseas. Caribbean immigrants who moved to the UK after World War II by invitation from the government, or their children, struggled to prove their citizenship status in what became known as the Windrush scandal.

Under the 1983 law, those immigrants and their children were no longer able to prove citizenship with a birth certificate.

“The theory may have appeared simple but the practice was brutal,” a group called Reprieve said of the UK experience in a brief submitted to the Supreme Court in February. “A system built on a bright-line rule gave way to one that bureaucracy could not administer, leaving people who had lived their whole lives as British unable to prove it on paper.”

American-born Israeli soldier killed in combat in Lebanon

March 29, 2026 / 7:47 AM EDT / CBS News

An American-born Israeli soldier was killed in combat in southern Lebanon, Israeli officials said Sunday.

Sgt. Moshe Yitzchak Hacohen Katz, 22, was born in New Haven, Connecticut, according to a post from the Israel Defense Forces. He was posthumously promoted from corporal to sergeant, the military said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Katz enlisted in the IDF’s Paratroopers Brigade after moving to Israel. He did not specify how long Katz had been serving. The IDF said that Katz was a member of its 890th Battalion.

“On behalf of all citizens of Israel, we embrace the family of the late Moshe in their difficult time and wish a speedy and complete recovery to our soldiers who were injured in that incident,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “May his memory be blessed.”

Rabbi Yehoshua Hecht, Katz’s great-uncle, told Israel’s Army Radio station that his great-nephew was a “very special young man” who “enjoyed every moment of life,” according to the Associated Press. Hecht described Katz as religious and a good student.

The military did not specify how or where Katz died except to say that it was in combat in southern Lebanon, where Israel has been fighting a second front parallel to its joint operation in Iran with the United States. Israel has engaged in combat with the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

The United Nations’ refugee agency has warned that Lebanon is facing a humanitarian crisis that may become a “catastrophe.” One in five residents of the country, or a million people, have fled their homes, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Israel has told civilians in dozens of towns and villages across southern Lebanon to flee as it attacks alleged Hezbollah sites.

According to the independent National Institute for Security Studies in Israel, at least 1,116 people have been killed during the Israeli attacks in Lebanon since the war in Iran began.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/lebanon-dire-straits-us-israeli-war-iran-world-food-programme-official/

‘JD or Marco?’: Iran war raises 2028 stakes as Trump weighs Vance vs. Rubio

2026-03-29 10:03:47 UTC / Reuters

By Steve Holland and Nandita Bose

March 29, 2026 10:03 AM UTC Updated 58 mins ago

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U.S. President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters while Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio look on, as they attend a meeting with oil industry executives, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 9, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Summary

Vance cautious on U.S. military involvement, Rubio aligns with Trump’s hawkish stance

• Trump’s approval rating drops amid Iran war and rising fuel prices
• Trump weighs Vance and Rubio as potential successors

WASHINGTON, March 29 (Reuters) – As the war in Iran threatens to imperil President Donald Trump’s legacy, the political stakes also are rising for two of his top lieutenants: Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The pair, widely viewed as potential successors to Trump, have been thrust into still-developing negotiations to end the war at a moment when ​the Republican Party is already weighing its post-Trump future.

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Vance has taken a cautious approach, reflecting his skepticism toward prolonged U.S. military involvement, while Rubio has aligned himself closely with Trump’s hawkish stance and emerged as one of the ​administration’s most vocal defenders of the campaign.

Trump has said both men were involved in efforts to force Iran to accept U.S. demands to dismantle its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and allow oil traffic to pass freely through the Strait of Hormuz.

With the next presidential election due in 2028 and term limits barring Trump from running again, the president has been putting the succession question to allies and advisers in private, asking “JD or Marco?,”, two people familiar with his views said.

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The outcome of the U.S. military operation now in its fifth week could shape the two men’s 2028 prospects, political analysts and Republican officials said. A swift end to the war that favors the U.S. might bolster Rubio, ​who also serves as Trump’s national security adviser and could be seen as a steady hand during a crisis. A prolonged conflict could give Vance space to argue he reflected the anti-war instincts of Trump’s base without openly breaking with the president.

Trump’s own standing is also at stake. ​His approval rating fell in recent days to 36%, its lowest point since he returned to the White House, hit by a surge in fuel prices and widespread disapproval of the Iran war, a four-day ⁠Reuters/Ipsos poll completed last week found.

Some Republicans say they are watching closely for which senior aide Trump appears to favor as the Iran conflict unfolds. Some see signs of Trump leaning toward Rubio but note he could change his mind quickly.

“Everyone is watching the body language that ​Trump makes on Rubio and not seeing the same on Vance,” a Republican with close ties to the White House said.

The White House rejected the idea that Trump is signaling a preference.

“No amount of crazed media speculation about Vice President Vance and Secretary Rubio will deter ​this administration’s mission of fighting for the American people,” spokesman Steven Cheung said.

FROM TRUMP RIVALS TO LIKELY HEIRS

Vance, 41, a former Marine who served in Iraq, has long argued against U.S. entanglements in foreign wars. His public comments on Iran have been limited and calibrated, and Trump has noted the two have “philosophical differences” on the conflict.

Once a self-described “never-Trumper,” Vance wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in 2023 saying Trump’s best foreign policy was not starting any wars during his first four years in office between 2017 and 2021.

The White House has downplayed any rift between the president and vice president. Standing alongside Trump in the ​Oval Office earlier this month, Vance said he supported Trump’s handling of the war and agreed with him that Iran should not obtain a nuclear weapon.

Vance could take on a more direct role in negotiations if Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner make sufficient ​progress, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

“Vice President Vance is proud to be a part of a highly effective team that, under President Trump’s bold leadership, has had incredible success in making America safer, more secure and more prosperous,” a Vance spokeswoman said.

A senior White House official, who ‌like others in ⁠this story was granted anonymity to speak freely about a sensitive topic, said Trump tolerates ideological differences as long as aides remain loyal, adding that Vance’s skeptical views have helped inform Trump about where part of his voter base stands.

A person familiar with Vance’s views told Reuters the vice president will wait until after the November midterm elections before deciding on whether to run in 2028.

Rubio, 54, has said he will not run for president if Vance does, and sources familiar with Rubio’s views say he would be content as Vance’s running mate.

But any perceived vulnerability for Vance could encourage Rubio and other Republicans eyeing bids.

“Trump has a long memory,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. “And he may call out Vance for his lack of allegiance. And if Trump remains popular with the MAGA base, that could hurt him by not getting the endorsement of the ​president.”

Trump has floated the idea of Vance and Rubio running together, suggesting ​they would be hard to beat.

“Trump doesn’t want to anoint ⁠anyone,” the senior White House official said.

A March Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 79% of Republicans have a favorable view of Vance, while 19% viewed him negatively. Some 71% had a positive view of Rubio, while 15% viewed him unfavorably.

In comparison, 79% of Republicans viewed Trump favorably and 20% unfavorably.

Rubio, whose 2016 presidential aspirations were snuffed out after a bitter confrontation with Trump, has long since set aside any frictions with the ​president.

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said Rubio “has a great relationship, both professionally and personally” with Trump’s team.

Rubio and the White House were forced into damage control after he angered some of Trump’s conservative backers ​when he suggested that Israel pushed ⁠the United States into the war. But in the weeks since, Trump has praised Rubio’s efforts.

Asked whether Rubio was concerned that a protracted war might damage his political future, a senior State Department official said, “He has not spent a second thinking about this.”

DIFFERENCES ON DISPLAY

Matt Schlapp, a conservative leader who runs the Conservative Political Action Conference, said the Iran campaign will have big political consequences.

“If it is seen as successful at getting the job done…I think people will be politically rewarded for doing the right thing,” Schlapp said. “If it goes on and on and on… I think the politics are ⁠tough.”

Republicans remain broadly ​supportive of the U.S. military strikes against Iran, with 75% approving compared to just 6% of Democrats and 24% of independents, Reuters/Ipsos polling showed.

At a televised Cabinet ​meeting on Thursday, the contrast between Rubio and Vance was on display.

Rubio gave a full-throated defense of Trump’s attack on Iran. “He’s not going to leave a danger like this in place,” the secretary of state said.

Vance was more measured, focusing on options for depriving Iran of a nuclear weapon. He closed by wishing Christians and U.S. troops in the Gulf ​a blessed Holy Week and Easter.

“We continue to stand behind you,” he said to servicemembers, “and continue to support you every step of the way.”

Reporting by Steve Holland and Nandita Bose; additional reporting by Nathan Layne, Bo Erickson and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Alistair Bell

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Supreme Court prepares to review Trump executive order on birthright citizenship

2026-03-29T06:52:07-04:00 / Fox News

The executive order would deny citizenship to children born after February 19, 2025 to undocumented or temporary-visa parents

By Shannon Bream , Bill Mears Fox News

Published March 29, 2026 6:40am EDT | Updated March 29, 2026 6:52am EDT

The Supreme Court is poised to answer a fundamental constitutional question largely ignored for more than a century:Who qualifies as an American citizen?

The justices on Wednesday will hold oral arguments to review President Donald Trump’s efforts to limit birthright citizenship in the U.S., a landmark case with the potential to upend the lives of millions of Americans and lawful residents.

At issue is the executive order the president signed on his first day back in office, which would end automatic citizenship for nearly all persons born in the U.S. to undocumented parents, or parents with lawful temporary status in the country — a seismic legal, political, and social shift that critics note would break with more than 150 years of legal precedent.

A ruling is expected within three months but until then, Trump’s plans remain on hold.

HOW TO MAKE PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION PAUSE STICK IN COURT

The Supreme Court is seen on Friday, Feb. 20, 2026.(Annabelle Gordon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The case is the fourth of a five-part series of appeals the Supreme Court will consider this term on the merits of Trump’s sweeping executive agenda.

The nine-member bench has already tossed out his reciprocal tariffs on most other countries, which relied on an economic emergency law. A separate dispute over ending protections for migrants with temporary protected status will be argued later in April.

Still pending are rulings on the president’s ability to fire members of independent agencies, including Federal Reserve governors.

But the administration has been winning most of the emergency appeals at the Supreme Court since Trump took office again, which dealt only with whether challenged policies could go into effect temporarily, while the issues play out in the lower courts– including immigration, federal spending cuts, workforce reductions, and transgender people in the military.

Constitutional Meaning

Trump’s order now before the high court for final review would reinterpret the 14th Amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” — a provision the president argues has been misinterpreted.

Executive Order 14160, entitled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” would deny it to those born after February 19, 2025 whose parents are illegal immigrants, or those who were here legally but on temporary non-immigrant visas.

And it bans federal agencies from issuing or accepting documents recognizing citizenship for those children.

“The privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift,” says part of the order. “But the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”

A Supreme Court ruling on the issue could have sweeping national implications for an issue Trump officials argue is a crucial component of his hardline immigration agenda, which has become a defining feature of his second White House term.

BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP SUPPORTERS GET THE LAW WRONG BY IGNORING OBVIOUS EVIDENCE

Demonstrators hold up an anti-Trump sign outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 27, 2025.(ALEX WROBLEWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

In its high court petition, the Trump Justice Department said all lower court decisions handed down last year striking down the executive order had relied on a “mistaken view” with potentially “destructive consequences.”

“The lower courts’ decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security,” said John Sauer, U.S. Solicitor General, who will make the case in person at oral arguments.

“Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people,” he added.

Opponents argue the effort is unconstitutional and “unprecedented,” and would threaten some 150,000 children in the U.S. born annually to parents of non-citizens, and an estimated 4.6 million American-born children under 18 who are living with an undocumented immigrant parent, according to data from the Pew Research Center.

Separate coalitions of about two dozen states, along with immigrant rights groups, and private individuals — including several pregnant women in Maryland — had filed a class-action lawsuit.

The plaintiffs — including those originally from Taiwan and Brazil — seek to preserve access to citizenship-related benefits including Social Security, SNAP, and Medicaid.

To date, no court has sided with the Trump administration’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment, and blocked the order from taking force.

The ACLU and other immigrant advocacy groups in the U.S., have accused Trump of attempting to “unilaterally rewrite the 14th Amendment.”

“The federal courts have unanimously held that President Trump’s executive order is contrary to the Constitution, a Supreme Court decision from 1898, and a law enacted by Congress,” said ACLU legal director Cecillia Wang, who will argue for the plaintiffs in the courtroom session. “We look forward to putting this issue to rest once and for all in the Supreme Court this term.”

The Arguments

Much of the public session is expected to focus on a phrase in the Constitution that the government asserts limits the citizenship right.

“The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’” said Trump’s original order, which the Justice Department essentially interprets as “being subject to U.S. law” — which would give the government discretion to exclude those whose parents are in the country illegally.

But lawyers for the plaintiffs say a century-old Supreme Court ruling affirmed the phrase only excluded automatic citizenship to children born to foreign diplomats or hostile forces.

Supporters of a broad, traditional interpretation point to the 14th Amendment’s origins — passed after the Civil War to end the practice of excluding individuals of African descent, including slaves and free persons, from ever becoming U.S. citizens.

TRUMP ADMIN PUTS KEY BIDEN-ERA IMMIGRATION POLICY ON NOTICE: ‘UNSUSTAINABLE CYCLE’

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference in the James S. Brady Briefing Room at the White House, on June 27, 2025, in Washington D.C., following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that limits the application of birthright citizenship. (Photo by Mehmet Eser / Middle East Images via AFP)(Getty Images)

Thirty-one years after its enactment, the Supreme Court for the first time decided the status of children born in the U.S. to alien parents, creating the precedent of how the Citizenship Clause would be applied in future cases.

Plaintiff Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco and became a cook, but was subject to the Chinese Exclusion Act and denied reentry to the U-S after a trip abroad.

In its landmark ruling, the high court concluded, “A child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States… becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States, by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.”

The Impact

A recent Pew Research poll asked Americans whether they wanted children of immigrants, temporary immigrants or any immigrants lawfully present in the United States to be citizens, and 94% said yes.

Critics of the administration’s plans fear a chaotic and unfair patchwork of enforcement that would apply in some states and not others, some families and not others, and that it could be sweeping in scope.

“Under the executive order, that child is born a non-citizen,” Amanda Frost, director of the Immigration, Migration and Human Rights Program at the University of Virginia School of Law. “Denied all the benefits and privileges of citizenship and theoretically deportable on day one of their life. And then every single American family having a child will now have to prove their status before that child is considered a citizen by the U.S. government. And that doesn’t matter if they go back to the Mayflower. That’s what everyone will have to prove going forward.”

But immigration reform advocates point to what they call abuses in the system.

JUSTICE JACKSON AUTHORS UNANIMOUS SCOTUS OPINION HANDING TRUMP AN IMMIGRATION WIN

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Elena Kagan, Associate Justice Brent Kavanaugh and Associate Justice Mary Coney Barrett attend the State of the Union address during a Joint Session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on February 24, 2026, in Washington, DC.(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“That is the exploitation of America’s birthright citizenship policy… particularly those by nationals of the People’s Republic of China,” Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute. “Birth tourism is essentially an industry that provides concierge service at every step of the way for a foreign national, in this case China, to pay the firm roughly $100,000, they will transport them to the United States, arrange medical care, arrange citizenship for the child,” he added. “And as soon as the child is old enough to travel, they will return back to China.”

In oral arguments last May when the Supreme Court first looked at Trump’s birthright citizenship order, many on the bench were skeptical of the Trump administration.

The government’s position “makes no sense whatsoever,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, saying it could leave some children “stateless.”

“So as far as I see it, this order violates four Supreme Court precedents,” added Sotomayor. “And you are claiming that not just the Supreme Court, that both the Supreme Court and no lower court can stop an executive from universally violating those holdings by this Court.”

“On the day after it goes into effect — it’s just a very practical question of how it’s going to work,” asked Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “What do hospitals do with a newborn? What do states do with a newborn?” when it comes to determining citizenship on the birth certificate.

“I don’t think they do anything different,” replied Sauer. “What the executive order says in Section Two is that federal officials do not accept documents that have the wrong designation of citizenship from people who are subject to the executive order.”

“How are they going to know that?” asked Kavanaugh, shaking his head.

The case is Trump v. Barbara (25-365), a pseudonym for a Honduran citizen who fears for her and her family’s safety. Her child was born in the U.S. in October, months after she joined the lawsuit as the named plaintiff.

Shannon Bream currently serves as anchor of FOX News Sunday. She joined the network in 2007 as a Washington, D.C- based correspondent covering the Supreme Court.