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      Trump Might Have a Case on Birthright Citizenship

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      On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order that purports to end birthright citizenship for certain children. It does so despite Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which declares, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”The central question raised by Mr. Trump’s order is what it means to be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. The answer most legal observers give is that it includes virtually anyone born on American soil, including those whom the order is meant to exclude, namely children born to parents in the country illegally or temporarily. Indeed, on Monday, the American Bar Association described the order as an attack on a “constitutionally protected” right. Federal judges in four states have enjoined the order, with one claiming that it “conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment.”Not necessarily.The Supreme Court has held, in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, that children born here to permanent residents are citizens. But it has never squarely held that children born to those illegally present are citizens. When the court addresses that question — which it almost certainly must — it should consider the 14th Amendment’s original purpose and the common-law principle of “jus soli,” or birthright citizenship, which informed the original public meaning of the text. Both relate to the idea of social compact and contradict today’s general assumption that the common-law principle depends solely upon place of birth.The 14th Amendment’s RootsAt the time of its adoption, the publicly known purpose of the 14th Amendment was to extend the benefits of the social compact — including, specifically, the privileges and immunities of citizenship — to African Americans newly freed after the Civil War. (Due in large part to a series of egregious Supreme Court rulings gutting the original letter and spirit of the amendment, that promise of equal citizenship was largely denied for decades.)Abraham Lincoln’s administration, rejecting the reasoning of Dred Scott v. Sandford, had already acknowledged that free African Americans were citizens. As Edward Bates, Lincoln’s first attorney general, wrote in 1862, in an official opinion, “The Constitution uses the word ‘citizen’ only to express the political quality of the individual in his relations to the nation; to declare that he is a member of the body politic, and bound to it by the reciprocal obligation of allegiance on the one side and protection on the other.”The equal protection clause, also found in Section 1 of the amendment, provides that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This clause was based on the same allegiance-for-protection theory enunciated by Bates.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Court Denies TikTok’s Request to Freeze Sale-or-Ban Law

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      TikTok had sought to temporarily freeze a law that requires its Chinese parent to sell the app or face a U.S. ban next month. The case may now head to the Supreme Court.A federal court on Friday denied TikTok’s request to temporarily freeze a law that requires its Chinese parent company to sell the app or face a ban in the United States as of Jan. 19, a decision that puts the fate of the app in the Supreme Court’s hands.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in a filing late on Friday that an injunction was “unwarranted,” and that it had expedited its decision so that TikTok and its users could seek an emergency freeze from the Supreme Court.A week ago, three judges in the same court unanimously denied petitions from the company and its users to overturn the law. TikTok then asked the court on Monday to temporarily block the law until the Supreme Court decided on TikTok’s planned appeal of that decision, and sought a decision by Dec. 16.The court said on Friday that TikTok and its users “have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court.”It isn’t clear whether the Supreme Court will agree to temporarily freeze the law and hear the case, though experts say that is likely.Michael Hughes, a spokesman for TikTok, said, “As we have previously stated, we plan on taking this case to the Supreme Court, which has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech.” He said that American users’ voices would be “silenced” if the law were not stopped.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme Court to Hear Catholic Charity’s Bid for Tax Exemption

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      The justices agreed to hear an appeal from a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that the charity’s activities were insufficiently religious to qualify.The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether Wisconsin was free to deny a tax exemption to a Catholic charity on the grounds that its activities were not primarily religious.The court has been notably receptive to arguments from religious groups, and the new case will give the justices another opportunity to explore the limits of the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty.The case concerns a Wisconsin law that exempts religious groups from state unemployment taxes so long as they are “operated primarily for religious purposes.”Catholic Charities Bureau, the social ministry of the Catholic Diocese in Superior, Wis., has said its mission is to provide “services to the poor and disadvantaged as an expression of the social ministry of the Catholic Church.” State officials determined that the charity did not qualify for the exemption because it “provides essentially secular services and engages in activities that are not religious per se.”The Wisconsin Supreme Court said it accepted the charity’s contention that its services were “based on Gospel values and the principles of the Catholic social teachings.” But the court ruled that the group’s activities were “primarily charitable and secular” and did not “attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith nor supply any religious materials to program participants or employees.”The court added that “both employment with the organizations and services offered by the organizations are open to all participants regardless of religion.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Here’s What Led to Tennessee’s Ban on Gender-Affirming Care

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      Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s announcement of a new transgender clinic in 2018 did little to draw attention to its practice. The four-paragraph news release amounted to a location, hours and the names of two senior staff members.The spotlight came four years later, when Matt Walsh, a conservative political commentator at The Daily Wire in Nashville, published a series of posts and videos about the clinic. Those posts said that a staff member there had privately characterized gender-affirming medication and surgery as “moneymakers,” and used caustic terms to describe the center’s treatments.The medical center, which is separate from Vanderbilt University, pushed back. In a statement at the time, the center said that the clinic’s mission was to serve a “high-risk population for mental and physical health issues” who “have been consistently underserved by the U.S. health system.”The medical center said that it had not provided care to children younger than 18 without the consent of a parent, and that it would not force any employee who disagreed with the care because of personal or religious beliefs to provide it.Conservatives called for an investigation into the clinic, and Republican leaders spoke at a rally Mr. Walsh organized in Nashville in October 2022 in opposition to gender-affirming care for children. When Tennessee legislators convened in January 2023, lawmakers designated a proposed ban on gender-affirming care as Senate Bill 1. The bill passed over objections from transgender people and most Democrats. More

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      Which States Have Passed Bans on Treatment for Transgender Minors?

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      The challenge to a Tennessee law before the Supreme Court this week traces its roots to the spring of 2021, when Arkansas became the first state to pass a law prohibiting gender-transition treatments for minors. Alabama followed in 2022. Tennessee’s was part of a coordinated deluge: Of 28 states where Republicans control the legislature, 24 now restrict doctors from providing puberty blockers, hormone therapies or surgery to transgender minors. Two more, New Hampshire and Arizona, ban only surgeries.Why the flood? In exploring the motivation behind Florida’s ban, one federal district judge, Robert Hinkle, concluded that some of the state’s lawmakers acted on “old-fashioned discriminatory animus.” But Republican lawmakers in many states have said that they are seeking to shield adolescents from a path that has become more common, with consequences they are too young to fully comprehend. Republican strategists, for their part, have said that elevating the issue was a winning strategy leading up to the 2024 election.United States v. Skrmetti, the challenge to Tennessee’s ban, is one of 18 filed over the last three years, with mixed results. The highest courts in two states, Texas and Nebraska, have upheld their restrictions. By contrast, two federal district judges — Judge Hinkle in Florida and Judge James M. Moody Jr. in Arkansas — struck down bans in those states. But their decisions are being appealed, and preliminary injunctions on enforcement of the bans in Alabama and Indiana, each issued by a federal district judge, were reversed by separate appeals courts. Eleven other cases are in various stages of litigation.How the Supreme Court rules on Skrmetti will almost surely affect how lower courts handle the challenges to similar statutes in states across the country. But the outcome may not be universal.“If Tennessee wins, the states will say ‘Skrmetti controls,’ and vice versa,” said Jim Campbell, chief counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal advocacy group that is helping to defend Idaho’s ban on transition treatments for minors. “And then the other side, the losing side, will say, ‘No, it’s actually different, and here’s why.’” More

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      End of Trump Cases Leaves Limits on Presidential Criminality Unclear

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      Donald J. Trump is set to regain office without clarity on the scope of presidential immunity and with a lingering cloud over whether outside special counsels can investigate high-level wrongdoing.The end of the two federal criminal cases against President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday left momentous, unsettled questions about constraints on criminal wrongdoing by presidents, from the scope of presidential immunity to whether the Justice Department may continue to appoint outside special counsels to investigate high-level wrongdoing.Both cases against Mr. Trump — for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his later hoarding of classified government documents and obstruction of efforts to retrieve them — were short-circuited by the fact that he won the 2024 election before they could be definitively resolved.Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought both cases against Mr. Trump, asked courts on Monday to shut them down. The prosecutor cited the Justice Department’s longstanding view that the Constitution implicitly grants temporary immunity to sitting presidents, lest any prosecution distract them from their official duties.The result is not just that Mr. Trump appears set to escape any criminal accountability for his actions. (Mr. Smith left the door open to, in theory, refiling the charges after Mr. Trump leaves office, but the statute of limitations is likely to have run by then.) It also means that two open constitutional questions the cases have raised appear likely to go without definitive answers as Mr. Trump takes office.One is the extent of the protection from prosecution offered to former presidents by the Supreme Court’s ruling this summer establishing that they have a type of broad but not fully defined immunity for official acts taken while in office.The other is whether, when a president is suspected of committing crimes, the Justice Department can avoid conflicts of interest by bringing in an outside prosecutor to lead a semi-independent investigation into the matter.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ¿La Corte Suprema podría decidir estas elecciones presidenciales?

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      Los expertos señalan que es poco probable que el tribunal termine ejerciendo un papel importante en el resultado, pero es posible. Te contamos por qué.Es día de elecciones y la contienda entre la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris y el expresidente Donald Trump parece estar empatada, lo que lleva a algunos a temer que la elección se alargue y la Corte Suprema de EE. UU. pueda determinar el resultado.Un puñado de disputas relacionadas con las elecciones ya han llegado a la Corte Suprema. La semana pasada, el tribunal emitió decisiones que permitieron a Virginia eliminar a 1600 personas de su censo electoral, se negó a retirar a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. de la papeleta electoral en dos estados disputados y permitió a los votantes de Pensilvania cuyos votos por correo se habían considerado inválidos emitir votos provisionales en persona.La cuestión sigue siendo si las elecciones presidenciales serán tan reñidas que el tribunal, que tiene una mayoría conservadora de 6-3, se ocupará en los próximos días o semanas de un caso que decida quién ocupará la presidencia.Según los expertos en elecciones, es poco probable que la Corte Suprema acabe desempeñando un papel importante en el resultado, pero es posible. Esto es lo que hay que saber.¿Qué papel podría desempeñar la Corte Suprema?Por lo general, la Corte Suprema ha tratado de mantenerse al margen de las luchas políticas y electorales, y la mayoría de los litigios relacionados con las elecciones permanecerán en los tribunales inferiores. Pero una vez que un caso está en el sistema judicial, es posible que la Corte Suprema decida asumirlo.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At Women’s March in Washington, Hope That They Will Hold Off Trump

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      Nearly eight years after the first Women’s March in Washington demonstrated a furious backlash to the election of Donald J. Trump, thousands of women gathered again in the capital and across the country on Saturday, this time with the hope that Vice President Kamala Harris would triumph at the polls and prevent his return to the White House.The rally and march, taking place three days before the election, was much smaller than the original in 2017 that drew at least 470,000 people — three times the number of people who had attended Mr. Trump’s inauguration the day before. But the mood was far more optimistic, if also somewhat combative.The rally at Freedom Plaza was primarily focused on threats to women’s reproductive rights and other liberties.Cheriss May for The New York Times“We will not go back!” was the rallying cry on Saturday, echoing what has become a signature line for Ms. Harris on the campaign trail. While the march was primarily focused on threats to women’s reproductive rights and other liberties, speakers and signs expressed support for a wide array of Democratic and progressive policy positions. Those included gun control, transgender rights and support for Palestinians. The speakers also urged people to vote, and to take others to vote, although many people in the crowd said they had already cast a ballot for Ms. Harris.“I just hope that all these people — not just women, but men — convince a few people to vote and vote the way we want them. Vote for democracy and our rights, reproductive rights,” said Janice Wolbrink, 69.Ms. Wolbrink was joined by her two sisters, each carrying a bright pink sign that read, “Now you’ve pissed-off Grandma.” Together, the three of them had 24 grandchildren.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More