The Trump administration is turning to Civil War-era white supremacists in its challenge to a more than one century-old ruling, based on the 14th Amendment, that states that most children born in the United States are U.S. citizens.

Over a century ago, Confederate officer and Louisiana attorney Alexander Porter Morse “was among a trio of thinkers who spearheaded a failed effort — steeped in anti-Black and anti-Chinese racism — to erase birthright citizenship,” The Washington Post reported. “The Trump administration is reviving their arguments to make its case today, some legal scholars say.”

University of New Hampshire history professor Lucy Salyer told the Post “she was struck that the Trump administration had chosen to elevate those figures and their ideas.”

“If you know the history and the broader context of what they were trying to achieve,” Salyer said, “it does ring alarm bells.”

The Post adds that “Trump administration attorneys cite Morse in their Supreme Court brief to argue the disputed idea that commentators in the 19th century widely agreed that the Constitution ‘exclude[s] the children of foreigners transiently within the United States’ from qualifying for citizenship.”

President Trump is making clear exactly where he stands on the issue of birthright citizenship. On his first day back in office Trump signed an executive order attempting to limit birthright citizenship for certain U.S.-born children of undocumented or temporary-status parents.

On Monday, the president went even further.

READ MORE: Trump Promotes Chilling Iran War Op-Ed Warning of What Could Be Coming Next

“Birthright Citizenship is not about rich people from China, and the rest of the World, who want their children, and hundreds of thousands more, FOR PAY, to ridiculously become citizens of the United States of America,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “It is about the BABIES OF SLAVES!”

“Look at the dates of this long ago legislation – THE EXACT END OF THE CIVIL WAR!” he continued. “The World is getting rich selling citizenships to our Country, while at the same time laughing at how STUPID our U.S. Court System has become (TARIFFS!). ‘Dumb Judges and Justices will not a great Country make!'”

The Post notes that the ACLU calls the administration’s argument “nothing less than a remaking of our Nation’s constitutional foundations.” They say it would apply to tens of thousands of children born in the U.S. every month, and would be “devastating” to families around the country.

“But worse yet, the government’s baseless arguments — if accepted — would cast a shadow over the citizenship of millions upon millions of Americans, going back generations.”

According to the Post, the 1800s campaign against birthright citizenship also relied on prominent legal scholar Francis Wharton, who posited the idea that citizenship be granted to children of European immigrants but not to children of Chinese immigrants.

“Like Wharton, the Trump administration says in its brief a child’s citizenship is dependent on the parents’ nationality, not birth in the United States.”

The Trump administration, also like Wharton, “highlights the 14th Amendment phrase ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof ,’ saying it disqualifies children of illegal migrants and temporary visitors from becoming citizens because they can’t demonstrate the necessary political allegiance to the United States the phrase evokes.”

The case, which will consider the legality of Trump’s executive order, will be argued before the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

READ MORE: ‘Moving the Goalposts’: Rubio’s Iran War Defense Sparks Fierce Backlash

President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio continue to appear at odds with each other’s messaging on Iran, as Secretary Rubio declared four “clear objectives” for the war — objectives Trump has said have already been met, with Rubio describing Iran’s new current leadership as possibly impermanent, while the president praises them.

On ABC News’ “Good Morning America,” Secretary Rubio on Monday said it is unclear if the current Iran regime will “end up being in charge,” according to the Wall Street Journal’s Alex Ward.

“We have to see [if] these people end up being the ones in charge, seeing if they’re the ones who have the power to deliver,” he said.

Also on Monday, President Trump announced that the U.S. “is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran. Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched.'”

READ MORE: Trump Promotes Chilling Iran War Op-Ed Warning of What Could Be Coming Next

“Here are the clear objectives of the operation,” Rubio said, as the State Department posted. “You should write them down: 1. The destruction of Iran’s air force 2. The destruction of their navy 3. The severe diminishing of their missile launching capability 4. The destruction of their factories.”

Opening the Strait of Hormuz — which Trump demanded and critics note was open before Trump began his war thirty-one days ago, is not listed among the four objectives Rubio declared on Monday. Trump has stated previously that the first three have already been met — and he is reportedly preparing to send thousands more troops to the Middle East, possibly for a ground invasion.

Rubio’s stated objectives drew strong backlash.

READ MORE: ‘Blank Check’: Trump’s Board of Peace to Get $1.25 Billion From State Department

“Perhaps the reason Secretary Rubio is having trouble convincing people that these are the only objectives is that none of these goals require thousands of ground troops, which makes it curious why they are flowing into the region right now as I type this tweet,” noted associate professor of political science Christopher Clary.

“No mention of nuclear capabilities, vague language that leaves room for interpretation. Preparing the media space to declare victory and leave?” asked Institute for Military Operations Professor Olivier Schmitt.

“Always good to have clear objectives laid out one month after you start a war,” noted Eli Clifton of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

“Moving the goal posts isn’t the solution Mr. Secretary. What happened to nuclear weapons? Uranium enrichment? Support to proxies? Civilian rising up to challenge the regime? Reopening the Strait of Hormuz?” posited retired U.S. Army military intelligence officer Jon Sweet.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Here are the clear objectives of the operation. You should write them down:

1. The destruction of Iran’s air force
2. The destruction of their navy
3. The severe diminishing of their missile launching capability
4. The destruction of their factories
🎯 pic.twitter.com/SrqCtPLlZB

— Department of State (@StateDept) March 30, 2026

READ MORE: ‘Wrong Answer’: Conservative CPAC Audience Cheers Impeachment

Image via Reuters 

President Donald Trump is promoting a chilling Alan Dershowitz opinion piece that argues the war in Iran is necessary to stop Iran from obtaining and detonating a nuclear bomb — and to avert the possible deaths of millions of people around the world.

Calling Trump’s war a “preventive military action,” Dershowitz writes at The Hill that had a similar effort “been taken against the Nazi regime in the 1930s, it might have saved as many as 50 million lives.”

“If the military attack against Iran succeeds in preventing it from developing a nuclear arsenal, it too may prevent millions of deaths — we will never know how many,” says Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor emeritus.

He warns that if the war is successful the world will never know how many lives it has saved — but if it fails, we will learn the costs “the hard way.”

Dershowitz offers a comparison, saying that had Great Britain and France been more proactive in the period before World War II, and destroyed Hitler’s Nazi regime, thousands of people would still have died. The nations who engaged in such a preventive war “would have been condemned,” rather than “praised for preventing the millions of deaths that ultimately followed, however, since we would never know about them.”

He also blames them for not taking such action, saying they could have prevented World War II.

Dershowitz makes the same argument in favor of Trump’s and Israel’s war against Iran, and asks, aren’t the U.S. and Israel “entitled,” or “obligated” to “eliminate or at least reduce that risk by preventive military action?”

READ MORE: ‘Blank Check’: Trump’s Board of Peace to Get $1.25 Billion From State Department

Image via Reuters