5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Opinion
Birthright Citizenship Is a Promise We Cannot Break
Defending birthright citizenship is not only about protecting children of immigrants. It is about preserving a constitutional framework that recognizes our shared humanity and limits the government’s ability to decide whose rights matter.
Mar 31, 2026
For more than 150 years, the 14th Amendment has been an uncompromising line: If you are born on US soil, you are a citizen. That principle is so foundational, many of us take it for granted.
But that principle is under attack.
On April 1, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments challenging President Donald Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship. At the center of the case is an executive order issued on the first day of Trump’s second term to end Birthright Citizenship for children of undocumented parents.
The justices will now decide whether a president can rewrite one of the clearest promises embedded in American law.
If the court strikes down birthright citizenship, it would let the government decide who counts as American based on the circumstances of their birth.
On the surface, threatening the rights of children born in the United States might seem like an immigration debate. But history tells a different story.
Birthright citizenship was never an abstract ideal. It was a response to America’s long history of dehumanization—a past that Trump and his MAGA allies are now openly trying to resurrect. The 14th Amendment was designed to dismantle a system that denied Black people a political voice, treated us as property, and denied our humanity.
Ratified in 1868, the amendment overturned Dred Scott v. Sandford, which declared that Black people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Birthright citizenship was meant to be simple and permanent so no government could take it away based on race, ancestry, or political whim.
For formerly enslaved people and their descendants, it guaranteed recognition as full citizens in their own country. But the 14th Amendment did more than correct the injustices of slavery: It expanded who counts as American.
The Constitution says plainly that anyone born in the United States and subject to its laws is a citizen. That principle was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which ruled that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents was a citizen, establishing that US-born children of immigrants are citizens. This was despite the fact that Chinese immigrants at the time were barred from naturalization under the Chinese Exclusion laws.
The case now before the court seeks to undo that understanding.
If the court strikes down birthright citizenship, it would let the government decide who counts as American based on the circumstances of their birth.
The 14th Amendment’s authors understood the danger of that approach. Once citizenship becomes conditional, every other right soon follows.
Ending birthright citizenship would affect everyone—not just children of immigrants—in a system that has long questioned the belonging of people of color, including Black Americans.
Who must prove their citizenship? Who is presumed to have it? Who gets stopped, questioned, or detained? Who lives under suspicion?
History answers clearly: Marginalized communities pay the price first.
I write this as someone who has spent more than 15 years organizing for racial justice and as a Black man whose citizenship was once explicitly denied by law. Today, I see how systemic racism—from policing to voter suppression—continues to shape the livelihoods of Black Americans.
And that danger does not stop with birthright citizenship: These attacks threaten the entire 14th Amendment, including the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses that underpin victories against segregation, discrimination, voter suppression, and unchecked government power.
If the government can redefine citizenship, unequal treatment under the law becomes easier to justify. Civil rights become conditional. Equal protection becomes negotiable. State power expands while accountability shrinks.
We have seen this playbook before. After Reconstruction came Jim Crow. During industrialization came the Chinese Exclusion Act. Black workers were excluded from key New Deal protections. The gains of the civil rights movement were followed by voter suppression and mass incarceration.
Each time progress threatened entrenched power, the response was restriction rather than inclusion.
The 14th Amendment was written to break that cycle.
Defending birthright citizenship is not only about protecting children of immigrants. It is about preserving a constitutional framework that recognizes our shared humanity and limits the government’s ability to decide whose rights matter.
So the stakes could not be clearer during these Supreme Court arguments.
Birthright citizenship is more than law. It is the promise that America’s diversity, struggle, and resilience matter. It is the legacy of those who fought to be recognized as fully human—and the foundation of a democracy that must belong to all of us.
Keep Reading
Show Less
The US-Israel War on Iran Is Undermining the Very Foundations of the Rule of Law
Right now, Iranian civilians are paying the highest price. But the collapse of the rule of law makes the future more dangerous for everyone else, too.
Mar 31, 2026
The US and Israeli war has, from its very beginning, violated both US domestic and international law.
The legal consequences go beyond specific violations. Washington and Tel Aviv’s breaches of the United Nations Charter and other legal frameworks also undermine the very foundations of the rule of law. Even while international legal institutions too often lack sufficient capacity to enforce their decisions, they still provide a crucial framework for protest, for pressure on individual governments, and for the hope of a future world where the rule of law is paramount.
Now, however, that future is in more danger than any other time in recent memory. Right now, Iranian civilians are paying the highest price. But the collapse of the rule of law makes the future more dangerous for everyone else, too.
What Are the Laws of War?
On the domestic front, the US Constitution is very clear that only Congress, not the president, has the power to declare war. But President Donald Trump did not even consult with Congress before attacking Iran, let alone receive a congressional declaration of or even authorization for war.
This US war against Iran is deepening the ongoing delegitimization of the rule of law—something that must be taken seriously if future wars are to be averted.
This is nothing new, of course. In recent years, successive Congresses have abandoned their constitutional prerogative, allowing various presidents of both parties to initiate and continue the use of massive military force without even the pretense of asserting their power to declare war.
Indeed, both houses of Congress voted, in overwhelmingly partisan votes, to reject War Powers Resolutions which could have prevented or at least constrained Trump’s reckless and illegal war. They didn’t even hold votes at all until the United States and Israel had already launched their war against Iran.
International law is equally clear. The Nuremberg trials following World War II determined that the “supreme international crime” was that of aggression. The International Military Tribunal ruled in 1946 that initiating a war of aggression differed from other war crimes because “it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” War crimes, crimes against humanity, and all the related international crimes, therefore, are understood to stem from that fundamental crime of going to war illegally.
The US and Israel went to war illegally. They are waging a war of aggression against Iran. The UN Charter declares that no country may attack another country, and that “all Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.” It also prohibits UN member states from using “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”
There are only two exceptions to that prohibition on the use of force. One is if the Security Council itself authorizes the use of military force. The other is for immediate self-defense, which applies only “if an armed attack” occurs and then only “until” the Council decides collectively how to deal with the crisis.
Neither of those happened here. The Council was never asked, and certainly had not authorized anything, and Iran had not attacked the US or Israel. The US claim that it “had to” attack Iran to prevent some potential imagined retaliatory attack at some unknown point in the future does not legitimize so-called “preventive” use of force when no such imagined future attack had occurred.
The Danger of International Lawlessness
Despite the dangerous trends toward international lawlessness in recent years, it wasn’t that long ago that US leaders at least made a pretense of trying to follow them.
In 2002, George W. Bush officially won congressional authorization for war against Iraq and grudgingly acknowledged the need for a UN Security Council authorization as well. For months he tried—using lies, threats, and pressure—to get a Security Council resolution passed that would authorize a US-U.K. war. Those efforts failed.
In the absence of global institutions able and willing to enforce international law, these popular movements are essential. Without them, there’s no one to hold the powerful to account.
The Council majority stood defiant, and the Bush-Blair team finally launched the war illegally, without UN approval, and without any “armed attack” by Iraq that might have justified a claim of self-defense. International law didn’t stop the war, but it lent moral and political weight to a global anti-war movement that the Bush administration was forced to contend with.
But today, Trump has consistently refused to acknowledge any need for either congressional approval or UN authorization of his war against Iran. Trump himself dismissed international law entirely, saying that the only limit on his global power was “my own morality. My own mind….I don’t need international law.” Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, infamously said that his Pentagon would have “no stupid rules of engagement” to limit its killing.
Practically no one—not the UN, not Congress, not the mainstream press, and few among foreign governments too often cowed by Trump’s threats—seems to be even mentioning the UN Charter’s restrictions against launching new wars. And although Congress debated new War Powers Resolutions designed to prevent a rogue presidential decision to go to war, there were not enough votes to pass them.
In short, this US war against Iran is deepening the ongoing delegitimization of the rule of law—something that must be taken seriously if future wars are to be averted. The weakness and lack of political will in both Congress and the United Nations have failed to prevent the US and Israel from launching a destructive new war.
Their lack of enforcement capacity means that people—in social movements and civil society organizations in the US and around the world—must step up to demand their governments actually follow the law. In the absence of global institutions able and willing to enforce international law, these popular movements are essential. Without them, there’s no one to hold the powerful to account.
The war in Iran has already killed thousands of people, displaced millions more, and put millions of others throughout the region at risk as it continues to expand. It’s created what some are calling the “Gazafication” of Tehran, causing a vast humanitarian and economic crisis that is continuing to spread. It’s undermining the very foundations of international law and the institutions created to uphold it.
And if this war continues without accountability, it threatens even more dire consequences in years ahead.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Everyone But Egomaniacal Trump Knows His Iran War Is Reckless, Unjustified, and Strategically Incoherent
The US president, trapped by his own ego, has wrought unparalleled destruction to the people of Iran, the Middle East, and the world.
Mar 31, 2026
The judgment on the Trump administration’s war on Iran is already largely settled across mainstream media, public opinion, and much of the analytical sphere.
What remains supportive of the war is limited to two predictable camps: official government discourse and the president’s most loyal supporters, along with entrenched pro-Israel constituencies.
Beyond these circles, the war is widely understood as reckless, unjustified, and strategically incoherent.
Among the wider American public, this conclusion is not abstract. It is shaped by growing unease, economic anxiety, and a mounting sense that the war lacks both purpose and direction.
A defeat in Iran would not simply be a policy failure; it would represent the collapse of that identity. For a leader driven by narcissistic imperatives, such a collapse is existential, threatening not only his political standing but his relationship with his own base.
Since the outbreak of the war on February 28, 2026, polling has consistently pointed in one direction. A Pew Research poll in late March found that 61 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the conflict.
Another AP-NORC survey showed that six in ten Americans believe US military action against Iran has already “gone too far,” while even Fox News polling found 58 percent opposition.
These numbers confirm a broader trend that began early in the war and has only intensified. Reuters reported on March 19 that just 7 percent of Americans support a full-scale ground invasion.
In that same reporting, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they believe Trump is likely to pursue one anyway, highlighting a growing disconnect between policy and public will.
Days later, Reuters noted that Trump’s approval rating had dropped to 36 percent, with rising fuel prices and economic instability cited as key drivers.
The longer the war continues, the more its consequences are internalized by ordinary Americans, turning distant conflict into immediate economic pressure.
Among the American intelligentsia, opposition is no longer confined to traditional anti-war circles. It now spans ideological boundaries, including segments of Trump’s own political base.
Reporting from the 2026 Conservative Political Action Conference, The Guardian observed that many MAGA supporters warned the war risks becoming another “forever war.”
This convergence is significant, reflecting not a passing disagreement but a deeper structural shift in public perception.
Yet mainstream media—from CNN to Fox News—has largely avoided confronting what many Americans already recognize: that the war aligns closely with the agenda of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Within Washington itself, unease is also becoming more explicit. The Wall Street Journal reported in March that lawmakers from both parties are increasingly skeptical of the administration’s approach.
At the strategic level, the war’s foundational assumptions have already begun to unravel. Israel’s early calculations that escalation might trigger internal collapse in Iran have failed to materialize.
Iran’s political system remains intact, its leadership stable, and its military cohesion unbroken under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
At the same time, Tehran has demonstrated its ability to retaliate across multiple fronts, targeting Israeli territory and US military assets in the region.
Its geographic leverage over the Strait of Hormuz continues to exert pressure on global energy markets, amplifying its strategic position despite sustained attacks.
The structural reality is therefore unavoidable. Regime change in Iran would require a massive ground invasion, a broad coalition, and a prolonged occupation.
Even under such conditions, success would remain uncertain, as the experience of Iraq has already demonstrated with devastating clarity.
This raises the central question: why continue a war whose strategic premises are already collapsing?
Part of the answer lies not in strategy, but in psychology. A substantial body of political psychology research, frequently cited in relevant 2026 analyses, describes Trump’s leadership style as deeply narcissistic. Traits such as grandiosity, hypersensitivity to criticism, and an overriding need to project dominance are not incidental—they actively shape decision-making.
Trump’s rhetoric has long relied on humiliation, domination, and spectacle, framing politics as a contest of strength rather than negotiation.
Within this framework, escalation becomes a psychological necessity. To retreat risks appearing weak, while compromise risks humiliation.
For a leader whose identity is built on projecting strength, such outcomes are politically and personally intolerable.
This dynamic is reinforced by the broader culture of the administration, where senior officials have repeatedly relied on language such as “obliteration” and “total destruction.”
Such rhetoric, however, has not been matched by evidence of a coherent long-term strategy, exposing a widening gap between performance and planning.
At the same time, the administration’s fixation on masculine power—on dominance, strength, and spectacle—has contributed to a profound underestimation of its adversary.
Iran is not a fragmented state waiting to collapse, but a regional power with decades of experience in asymmetric warfare and strategic resilience.
Yet Trump appears to have operated under the assumption that American power alone guarantees outcomes, an illusion reinforced by past displays of military force.
Reuters reported in late March that Trump is now increasingly pressured to “end the war” quickly, as the administration confronts what it described as “only hard choices.”
The same report cited officials acknowledging that there is no clear exit strategy, leaving the administration caught between escalation and political fallout.
One official told Reuters that there are “no easy solutions” left, underscoring the depth of the strategic impasse.
Another added that any withdrawal would have to be framed carefully to avoid appearing as a defeat, reflecting the administration’s concern with optics as much as outcomes.
This is where the psychological dimension becomes decisive. Trump has constructed a political identity rooted in strength, dominance, and victory.
A defeat in Iran would not simply be a policy failure; it would represent the collapse of that identity. For a leader driven by narcissistic imperatives, such a collapse is existential, threatening not only his political standing but his relationship with his own base.
This is why some analysts—and even figures within Trump’s own orbit—have begun to float a theatrical exit strategy. As Reuters reported on March 14, White House adviser David Sacks stated bluntly that the United States should “declare victory and get out” of the war on Iran, calling for disengagement despite the absence of a clear strategic outcome.
Such a move would allow Trump to claim success while disengaging from an increasingly untenable conflict, preserving the image of strength even in the face of strategic failure.
But this reveals the deeper truth of the war. The “victory” being pursued is not military—it is psychological.
The US-Israeli war on Iran is therefore not only a moral and legal crisis. It is also a geopolitical catastrophe shaped, in no small part, by the psychology of a leader unwilling to confront the consequences of his own disastrous decisions.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Building Beyond 'No Kings'
Why there is cause for both celebration and concern.
Mar 31, 2026
It’s easy to both celebrate and criticize the “No Kings” marches—and perhaps some of both is warranted.
The latest “No Kings” march in San Francisco, like others, featured a broad and diverse forest of protest signs spanning from moderately liberal to strongly left/progressive. There were American flags (many appropriately upside-down), copies of the Constitution, basic urges to rescue democracy and the vote; there were signs against Trump’s murderous and illegal war on Iran; signs for Palestinian rights and freedom; signs denouncing oligarchy and the billionaire class; and a wide array of others (one of my personal favorites from a friend’s octogenarian mom read, “I have dementia and even I know better.”)
It was inspiring to be among tens of thousands locally and more than eight million nationwide. When you get a record eight million people into the streets protesting fascism, war, and bigotry (and a host of other concerns), that’s something to celebrate. It’s no minor feat to mobilize so many millions nationwide to spend hours of their weekend marching and chanting for our rights and our future.
Before we get to the criticism and growing calls for change within this change movement, it’s important to honor the accomplishment of providing this avenue for mass dissent. “No Kings” and related movements have created a valuable space for public uprising and expression, a space that encourages and could enable other forms of dissent, disruption, and organizing.
I’ve been to every “No Kings” and dozens of other protests and marches against this insane, viciously destructive administration. It has been both inspiring and at times frustrating. It is remarkable we have assembled so many millions so quickly against Trump and his horrendous, harmful policies. It’s also true that the messages have been diffuse and diverse, lacking in concrete demands or impact. Weekend marches every few months have limited effect, but they’ve been an important start that we should build on now.
If we’re going to build a meaningful and lasting resistance movement that creates real impact and change, we need both the broader masses of liberals and moderates and the strong, sharp voices of progressives and the left.
“No Kings” and affiliated groups are a broad and loose yet growing coalition of liberals, moderates, some Republicans and former Trump supporters, as well as more progressive and left-wing activists. This coalition of dissent is united in at least a few things: we are against Trump and his assaults on democracy, the Constitution, government for the people, as well as on immigrants and core human values like diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Promisingly, evolving research shows that a strong and growing majority of “No Kings” protesters are being organized through a protest infrastructure and are motivated most by outrage at Trump’s illegal, murderous war on Iran, as well as by attacks on immigrants and protesters.
At the same time, it is problematic and concerning when “No Kings” features top Democrats in Congress who receive huge amounts of AIPAC funding and who have offered meager, milk toast resistance to Trump and who have helped uphold Israel’s genocidal war crimes and annihilation of Gaza. It is a very real problem and limitation for a movement to provide a platform for (and to align closely with) Democrats who, other than some basic opposition to Trump, have maintained this country’s murderous and deeply inequitable status quo. As some have pointed out, most “No Kings” protests featured little mention of the war on Iran or the US-aided Israeli annihilation of Gaza.
Decisions like that have led many lefties to diss and dismiss “No Kings” in ways that are both partly accurate and also simplistic and counterproductive. Some have repudiated “No Kings” as merely an AIPAC-run front group for the mainstream Democratic Party; others have announced they’re not attending because they believe “No Kings” is mostly a bunch of flag-toting liberals and moderates who aren’t allies with long-term left movements (and they are at least partly right). These are old, old divisions and wounds, nothing new. But if we’re going to build a meaningful and lasting resistance movement that creates real impact and change, we need both the broader masses of liberals and moderates and the strong, sharp voices of progressives and the left.
Why? Because, as an extra-astute op-ed in the New York Times explained, our troubles are not just about Trump—they are about this country as well. While we need a massive “big tent” resistance against this horrendous man and moment, we also need a sustained and independent mass movement against America’s bipartisan wars, its bipartisan military-industrial complex, its bipartisan marriage to corporate power and interests. As nightmarish as things are now, they sure weren’t “great” under Biden or previous Democratic administrations—they just weren’t as disastrously awful, in most ways. While Trump is enabling Israel’s sickening assaults on Gaza, Lebanon, and elsewhere, Biden did that as well.
This moment requires more both/and thinking and strategy. We need both the huge, unifying if diffuse mass protests and more concrete, impactful actions, whether huge or not. We need both a big Democratic victory in the midterms and a strong resistance movement that is independent of the party. We need to both celebrate and critique (and change) the “No Kings” rallies.
There is room and reason for both support and criticism of “No Kings.” The important thing is to be engaged and constructive. Build up, don't tear down. Come out and support the massive marches even if you have criticisms and frustrations. Create alternative actions, work with any allies you can, and build those up. Sneering and sniping from the sidelines isn’t useful. It’s also not helpful if we merely defend “No Kings” against that criticism. We must be a part of making this movement and moment all it needs to be.
If we are serious about stopping Trump’s atrocious policies, we must grow not only in numbers but in our focus and strategy.
As a writer and activist with more than 40 years of experience in the streets, I urge liberals and leftists to move through these age-old disputes and seek common ground wherever and whenever possible. We will often continue to disagree. I want to see more liberals at antiwar and pro-Palestine protests and more radical actions. I want more liberals to see that our real common enemy is the corporate neoliberal establishment; the military-industrial “forever war” complex; this country’s deep racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia; and America’s grotesque inequality and deprivations amid insane private wealth. Liberals and lefties will never agree on everything and won’t always support the same candidates or causes; but we must collaborate and coalesce to every extent possible.
As a writer and activist on the left who has participated in and analyzed movements for decades, I think it’s time for a significant shift in the “No Kings” movement, toward greater political independence and separation from the Democratic Party. Yes, many if not most of us will work hard to help Democrats win the midterms—but the movement must be separate if it is to grow and have greater impact. We can’t have a resistance movement closely allied with a party that, as a whole (with some notable exceptions), enables genocidal war crimes and forever wars.
If we are serious about stopping Trump’s atrocious policies, we must grow not only in numbers but in our focus and strategy. Weekend marches every few months are not nearly enough. “No Kings” has created a vast platform and momentum—the question is, what do we do with it now, and how do we create concrete, meaningful change? How do these movements directly confront and challenge power?
One promising answer is the upcoming May Day “general strike” actions, including mass work stoppages and boycotts. As Common Dreams reported, Indivisible and other groups are supporting this more confrontational and potentially impactful effort. A similar general strike by Minnesota activists in January following ICE’s murders of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti has provided an inspiring model for upcoming actions.
In the months and years ahead, there will be challenging ongoing questions about where this resistance movement puts its dollars and energy; about people’s varying willingness and abilities to put their time, energies, and bodies on the line against intensifying fascism and war; and about the need to build “big tent” mass movement unity and/or (I emphatically say “and”) more targeted and consequential actions to stop or slow Trump’s machinery of death and destruction.
Much like the divisions around the Democratic Party between centrists, liberals, and progressives, these divides and questions in the resistance will persist and, to some extent, may never get fully resolved. In this critical moment, having amassed eight million in the streets, we have an opportunity, in fact an obligation, to forge new alliances, and work with and beyond our differences—both to help stop today’s Trumpian “MAGA” insanities and to create meaningful long-term change toward peace, justice, and greater equality, no matter who wins the next two elections. I’ll be here for it all, and hope you will, too.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Most Popular