Kaine Statement Denouncing Trump's Proposal to End Birthright Citizenship

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Tim Kaine released the following statement regarding President Trump’s proposal to revoke the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship provision by executive order:

“President Trump took an oath to support the Constitution. An executive order to eliminate birthright citizenship would be a violation of his oath of office. And it reveals who he is—a man who longs to return to the days when African Americans and members of other ethnic minorities are denied the equality promised by Jefferson and Lincoln that is enshrined in our Constitution as America’s moral North Star.

“Birthright citizenship was added to our Constitution with the passage of the 14th Amendment after the Civil War. It was meant to correct the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, a ruling that held that African Americans, even those born free in the United States, could never be American citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment was truly purchased by the blood sacrifice of the legions who died in slavery and during the Civil War.

“The U.S. presidency is not a dictatorship. Patriotic Americans must rally to defeat the President’s unprecedented attempt to rewrite the Constitution on his own.”

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