255,000 children per year at risk
Roughly 255,000 children are born in the U.S. each year to non-citizen parents; overturning birthright citizenship would have left them stateless.
Snapshot · The Rest Is Politics: US
201. Trump’s A Crypto Billionaire While Americans Are Getting Poorer
Explore episode
Jul 2, 2026
Where this was said
The 14th Amendment's Origins: Dred Scott, Lincoln, and Moral Repair
At 34:55 · chapter starts 31:50
Scaramucci pauses to give listeners the constitutional history they need to understand what's actually at stake [1] — Anthony Scaramucci "The Dred Scott decision declared Black Americans could never be citizens. The 14th Amendment was the direct response, codifying citizenship…" 31:50 . The Dred Scott decision of 1857 was as stark as American jurisprudence gets: Chief Justice Taney declared that Black Americans, free or enslaved, could never be citizens and had no rights 'which the white man was bound to respect.' It enraged Abraham Lincoln and contributed to the conditions that produced the Civil War. By 1868, the 14th Amendment codified citizenship explicitly — not as a loophole for immigrants, but as a direct act of constitutional repair, an effort to bring the African-American community into full legal standing. Scaramucci argues that framing attacks on birthright citizenship as 'originalism' is historically illiterate. He then walks through the practical catastrophe that would have followed a different ruling: approximately 255,000 children born annually to non-citizen parents would have been left stateless, because there's no guarantee the parents' home countries would have accepted them as citizens either.
The 14th Amendment Was Written to Heal the Constitution
The Dred Scott decision declared Black Americans could never be citizens. The 14th Amendment was the direct response, codifying citizenship to repair that wound. Attacking birthright citizenship isn't originalism — it's undoing one of the Constitution's most important acts of moral repair.
Marco Rubio also affected
Marco Rubio, born in the U.S. to Cuban parents who were not yet citizens, would also have been stripped of birthright citizenship under the proposed executive order.
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