January 21, 2025 01:08 PM UTC

Colorado Challenges Trump's (First) Unconstitutional Penstroke

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• by: Colorado Pols

One of the flurry of executive orders signed by newly sworn-in President Donald Trump yesterday was an order directly challenging the established interpretation of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which holds that any person born on American soil is an American citizen. This deliberately contentious executive order is intended to kick off a court battle, and within hours of the order being signed Colorado’s Attorney General Phil Weiser joined seventeen other states in challenging its constitutionality. AP reports via the Aurora Sentinel:

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced earlier today that Colorado would join the effort to ask the courts to snuff the attempt by Trump.

“The White House executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship is flatly unconstitutional,” Weiser said in a statement. “The idea that a president could override the Constitution with the stoke of a pen is a flagrant assault on the rule of law and our constitutional republic,” said Weiser.

More from AG Weiser’s release today:

President Trump yesterday issued an executive order fulfilling his repeated promise to end birthright citizenship, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Section 1401 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. To stop this unlawful action, Weiser is filing suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, seeking to invalidate the executive order and to stop any actions to implement it.

As the lawsuit explains, birthright citizenship dates back centuries—including to pre-Civil War America. Although the Supreme Court’s notorious Dred Scott decision denied birthright citizenship to the descendants of slaves, the Fourteenth Amendment plainly protects citizenship for children born in the country, honoring our national motto of e pluribus unum—out of many, we are one. Since adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court has twice upheld birthright citizenship, regardless of the immigration status of the baby’s parents.

Under the President’s executive order, individuals who are stripped of their U.S. citizenship lose their most basic rights and are threatened with the risk of deportation. Under this order, these individuals will lose eligibility for a wide range of federal benefits programs, their ability to obtain a Social Security number and, as they age, to work lawfully. And they will lose their right to vote, serve on juries, and run for certain offices.

Of all of Trump’s executive orders yesterday pertaining to immigration, it’s the proposed rollback of citizenship rights for some children born in the United States most likely to provoke outrage due to its potential impact on individuals whose citizenship was not previously subject to question. The order was intentionally given 30 days before taking effect to allow for legal challenges that will almost certainly hold up implementation in the short run. Those affected by this order if it survives court challenges are in circumstances that many whose family includes recent immigrants have experienced, or at least can relate to.

But as CBS4’s Shaun Boyd reports, freshman GOP Rep. Gabe Evans, who happens to be the grandson of a Mexican immigrant, remains 100% on the Trump Train:

Many of [Trump’s executive orders] focused on immigration – declaring a national emergency at the southern border, resuming construction of the border wall, ending birthright citizenship, and classifying drug cartels and certain gangs as foreign terrorist organizations subject to immediate arrest and deportation.

Colorado Congressman Gabe Evans, a Republican representing Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, says it’s about saving lives.

“And when we look at the death toll of Americans who have died as a result of things like fentanyl poisoning, it’s well in excess of the Americans who were killed in the attack on Sept. 11,” said Evans. [Pols emphasis]

Once again, and it’s a point that’s been made repeatedly as fentanyl deaths have become the subject of political blame-gaming in recent years, that most fentanyl brought into the United States comes through legal ports carried by American citizens. To use fentanyl importation as an excuse to justify Trump’s executive order challenging birthright citizenship makes no logical sense whatsoever, unless it’s Evans’ contention that babies born in America are somehow being used to smuggle drugs out of Mexico.

Invoking distractions like fentanyl and 9/11, Evans’ immediate goal is to forestall a rational discussion about Trump’s agenda.

The worse it gets, the harder it will be for Gabe Evans to make excuses.