U.S. President Donald Trump can be likened to “a juggler” who “has thrown several balls into the air” and many are now dropping — from Iran to the proposed border peace for Gaza, and now birthright citizenship. By attempting to abolish it via executive order, “he tried to redesign the United States, to rewrite American history,” but because “there is a risk of worsening his standing” ahead of the midterm elections, after the Supreme Court decision he will likely be forced to “back off to avoid losing support.” He may “hurl insults and make bold statements,” but realistically, from now until November he will not take any decisive action, historian Gregory Alegi, professor of U.S. history and politics at Luiss, told Adnkronos. Regarding Trump’s appeal to Congress, asking lawmakers to pass a statute on birthright citizenship, Alegi explains that “such a law is so politically sensitive that it would provoke a broad parliamentary debate and pose a major risk for the Republicans.” In fact, the historian notes, the GOP “picked up many votes from Latinos in the last elections,” so “the Latino minority, once assumed to be solidly Democratic, has actually shifted substantially to the right. If they try to legislate on birthright citizenship, they will lose the midterms. Guaranteed.”

Alegi says that, “like a juggler,” Trump “has tossed many balls into the air” and “at first it went well,” but now “he cannot keep them all aloft; some are falling.” One is Iran; the effort for a border peace in Gaza is not going anywhere. His tariffs were rejected, the attempt to change birthright citizenship was rejected, his effort to drastically limit mail-in voting was rejected, as was his bid to remove members of the Federal Reserve. Therefore, “I don’t think that at this moment, with polls doing poorly, with the war and the embarrassment over the Iran episode, he will seek another fiasco” by insisting on abolishing birthright citizenship, the historian emphasizes.

Alegi examined the Supreme Court’s 192-page decision and noted that “120 pages, or 60%, are dissents,” which shows “how intense the clash was.” For the analyst, “Trump wanted to accelerate the process to keep an electoral promise, but it was a legally improper shortcut.” Substantively, it was an attempt to change the Constitution — the Fourteenth Amendment, which defines citizenship and rights in “a country of large immigration that in the mid-19th century had very fluid borders,” where the idea that anyone born in the United States automatically became a citizen was almost a necessity. But the Fourteenth Amendment defines American history, and attempting to modify it effectively means rewriting that history; “that was what was at stake.” So it was not merely a technical issue, and one must ask whether it would have applied only to children of undocumented immigrants, Alegi wonders, recalling conspiracy theories that questioned whether Obama was born in the United States and warning that banning birthright citizenship “would have become an uncontrollable weapon.”

Alegi also reflects that in the United States “the defining minority is the Latino population,” as shown by “the last two censuses. So from the standpoint of ethnic composition and, unfortunately, a certain widespread racism, they are a major concern.” He adds that “Latinos are Catholic,” so “they are not evangelical, not Protestant, not part of the MAGA base.” Around the debate on birthright citizenship is the broader change in the country’s composition, because immigrants and lower socioeconomic groups typically have higher fertility rates. Alegi cites “American demographic projections” indicating that whites are likely, in not too distant time, to become a relative majority — meaning no longer over 50%, perhaps 49.9% rather than 50% plus one. Therefore, “beyond the technical question, there was a very large political issue,” and abolishing birthright citizenship “would have been the first step in the Republican right’s plan to redraw the United States. A first step to redesign the country.” (By Melissa Bertolotti)