CBS News97%
Trump says he will attend Supreme Court arguments on birthright citizenship case 66%
4/1/2026, 12:15:43 PM
BS Summary: This video contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Availability Heuristic, and Hasty Generalization, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 31% saturation with 231 hits. Analysis detected 1,895 faulty-reasoning hits from 744 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 60.4% and a BS Rank of 66% (5,768 of 16,813 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 65.70% of the video peer group.
Welcome back. Later this morning, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could have a major impact on the children of immigrants across the country.
On the first day of his second term, President Trump signed several executive orders.
And among them was an order to deny citizenship to the children of certain non-citizens.
That order claims citizenship, quote, does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States.
End quote. The text calls into question the interpretation of the 14th amendment.
As you may remember, in that part of the Constitution, there's something called the citizenship clause, which says, quote, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." CBS News legal reporter
Katrina Kaufman joins us now in studio to kind of break down what could happen here.
Katrina, good morning. Great to have you on this um topic.
Flesh out what we've just explained there.
What is the administration arguing and what can we expect the counter to be from the other side?
>> mean Errol, this is a case that could change who gets to be an American citizen.
What the Trump administration argues is that the 14th Amendment, they say it was only meant to apply to formerly enslaved people and their descendants.
And they point to some of that language you just talked about where they say subject to US jurisdiction.
They say that children who are born to undocumented immigrants, people who are unlawfully in the US are not actually subject to US jurisdiction.
So they want a new interpretation of the 14th amendment.
What the challengers argue is that Errol, this is wellestablished law.
The Supreme Court has upheld the interpretation of the 14th Amendment for over a hundred years.
And there's this very significant case of a man named Wong Kim Arc.
He was born in the US, but his parents were born in China.
He had left the country and when he was coming back he was denied entry because of his Chinese ancestry.
He took his case all the way to the Supreme Court and they determined that he was in fact an American citizen.
So this is very wellestablished law but today we will hear arguments on it and try to get a sense of what the justices are feeling about this.
>> And the president has been insistent on his position. He's not known for adhering to tradition or trends.
And he says he will physically attend the arguments uh this morning. He here's what he told reporters yesterday in the Oval Office.
>> And I'm going because I have listened to this argument for so long. And this is not about Chinese billionaires who are billionaires from other countries who all of a sudden have 75 children or 59 children in one case or 10 children becoming American citizens. This was about slaves.
>> How unusual is this? And what do you make of his point there?
>> This would be the first time that a sitting president has attended Supreme Court arguments if Trump does in fact show up today.
um his point I mean I've actually been working on a story about Chinese nationals who are having children in the US.
So this is something that happens but really this is not the crux of the issue.
This is something that's going to impact hundreds of thousands of undocumented of children born to undocumented parents.
It will cast doubt on citizenship of so many people.
And for Trump to come to court today, it just goes against precedent.
because it's always been viewed as something that could be seen as putting pressure on the court or intimidating them, something that goes against the separation of powers.
He's already being represented by the Department of Justice in the courtroom.
Trump had previously wanted to attend the tariff arguments,
but I think he's really always been swayed against going, so we will see if he shows up today.
>> The there's no cameras allowed in the courtroom. Um, we may be able to listen to the audio.
There will be protests outside, so it will be even more of a spotlight. Um, if there weren't already.
Katrina, thank you so much.
>> Thank you.
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