Episode Recording -- "Winnie’s Window, the 14th Amendment"

2:06-6:00: The 14th Amendment’s beginnings and challenge

Winnie Pajcic discusses the birth of the 14th amendment out of a tumultuous post-civil war, reconstruction era. Here, the clear and unambiguous language of the 14th amendment is discussed ,recognizing its extension to “all persons” regardless of their racial, ethnic, or immigration status, who are born on US soil. The amendment quickly faced challenges socially through congressional legislation like the chinese exclusion act and in the courts like United States v. Wong Kim Ark. These challenges eventually re-affirmed that regardless of parental status, individuals born in the United States were United States citizens via Section 2 of the 14th amendment.

6:06-8:33: President Trump’s rhetoric, campaign promises, and passage ofExecutive Order 14160, Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship

Winnie Pajcic explores the explicit language President Trump has used and continues touse when discussing the Executive Order. Using clips from interviews, direct quotations offer the listener a peek into the intentions behind the Executive Order, to bluntly overturn the 14th amendment. Trump’s lack of education on where he receives his power is clearly lacking here. Neither congress, nor the constitution, have given him the ability to unilaterally overturn the 14th amendment. Article V sets out the process by which it must be completed to overturn a constitutional amendment. This process includes both the house, senate, and state vote, none of which have been consulted. This is unconstitutional.

8:33-10:16: Litigation since the Passage of Executive Order 14160

Winnie Pajcic here, dicusess that the courts are not convinced by President Trump’s blatant disregard for the constitution, American people, and his duties. United States District court judges Courghenor, Boardman, and Laplant have issued temporary restraining orders on the Order which have taken permanent effect since. They point out the financial burden this enochs onto states, a duty and power reserved for congress, and the blatant disregard for the spirit, language, and proper interpretation of the 14th amendment that this Executive Order attempts. Freedom and equality is based in the 14th amendment’s promises. These actions represent one of the most important structure of our american democracy, the check.

00:12- 1:53- Introduction

Why, hello, as you heard in the introduction, today is a big one. We are discussing something that impacts the vast majority of US born Americans, citizenship. Specifically the birthright citizenship clause found in section two of the 14th amendment. This birthright clause is found in English common law, and is called Jus Soli, meaning the “right to the soil”. The right of belonging ,based on the land you were born. We will break it down today into three major events that will sew together this tapestry. First, the drafting, passage, and first court challengesto the 14th amendment, reaffirming its promises. Second, Trump's campaign promises to limit illegal immigration, via doing away with birthright citizenship, outright stating that he would unilaterally overturn the fourteenth amendment. This is not only an unconstitutional promise, by breaking the fourteenth amendment, but also violates Article V of the constitution which lays out a multi branch amendment process. Lastly, we will look to how the executive order has been challenged in courts across the United States today, and specifically US district judges, temporary restraining orders, and the language that has left us with a moot order, one that is seemingly dead in its tracks. Join us along to the ride of this student podcasting history on the 14th amendment.

1:53-2:06- Transition music

2:06-6:00- Supporting Point 1: The 14th Amendment

Our first supporting point is the 14th Amendment’s drafting, founding, and eventual passage by all the states. The Fourteenth Amendment, following the Civil War during Reconstruction, a period that reshaped social and political norms, established birthright citizenship as a fundamental privilege for those born on American soil. We find this history in these facts, in Dr. Maginn's reconstruction lecture (Andrew Maginn. 2025. "Reconstruction." Lecture, History of the United States II 202B, Sewanee: The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, January 17, 2025.), and the language of the U. S. Constitution itself (“The Constitution of the United States”, America’ s Founding Documents. The National Archives of the United States, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript), in 1868 amendments drafting. Its language is clear and unambiguous, stating, 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. Section two standard has been upheld for a century and a half of supreme court precedent, congressional recognition, and executive interpretation. However, the amendment has not gone without challenge, but this challenge does not weaken the amendment, but rather strengthens it. Shortly after its passing in 1891 Congress attempted an early example of Trump's executive order, the General Immigration Act, also known as the Chinese exclusion act, which attempted to deny judicial review to immigration hearings. This was found unconstitutional by the court, confirming the plenary power doctrine is applied to aliens. A doctrine enjoyed by citizens and aliens alike during a time when rigid exclusion and radical inclusion collided, social membership and American gatekeeping started soon after the amendment was passed. We see this in Beth Lew Williams, the Chinese Must Go Violence exclusion in the making of an alien in America (Beth Lew-Williams, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), [154-172].). This example shows that even aliens are awarded the  protection of the Constitution, and so the protections under the 14th amendment, no matter the status of their parental citizenship, as seen in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (“United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School.https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/169/649). An 1898 case, which challenged birthright citizenship to a child born in America to Chinese parents, who at the time were excluded from citizenship themselves. This case reaffirmed the 14th Amendment, and found that regardless of the parents' status of citizenship, a child born in the US was, by birthright, a citizen. This precedent has maintained its integrity since its 1898 ruling. The 14th amendment repealed the Tanny court's infamous Dred Scott 1857 decision, and it ensured that state laws could not deny due process or discriminate against particular groups of people. The fourteenth amendment signaled the federal government's willingness to enforce the bill of rights over the authority of the states as seen in the American Yawp (Joseph L. Locke and Ben Wright, The American Yawp Reader: A Documentary Companion to the American Yawp, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2023), ch 15.). Citizenship offers privilege, and throughout American history its promises have been tested time and time again and have withstood challenges.

6:00- 6:06- Transition music

6:06- 8:33- Supporting Point 2, Trump Era Politics That brings us to our second supporting point, Trump era politic. Here we will follow Trump's campaign promises and inflammatory rhetoric on the trail. Here's a clip from December 8 on NBC News. “Let me ask you about some of your other promises on this topic. You promise to end birthright citizenship on day one. Is that still your plan? Yeah, absolutely. The 14th Amendment says, though, ‘all persons born in the United States are citizens’, Can you get around the 14th Amendment with an executive action? Well, we’re gonna have to change, we might have to go back to the people, but we have to end it. We’re the only country that has it, ya know/ Through an executive action? You know we're the only country that has it, do you know that if somebody sets a foot, just a foot, one foot, you don't need two on our land, Congratulations you are now a citizen of the United States of America. Yes, we're going to end that because it's ridiculous 14th Amendment. It's ridiculous. Through executive action? Well we cna through executive action”. (NBC News. 2025. "Trump Says He’d End Birthright Citizenship through Executive Action If He Can." Meet the Press, NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/trump-says-he-d-end-birthright-citizenship-through-executive-action-if-he-can-226490949990.) Claims that the 14th amendment is quote, “ridiculous”, that he would “absolutely” end birthright citizenship, and that we are the only country that has birthright citizenship, a false statement, as at least 33 other countries have birthright citizenship, he made his promise. Odn January 18 he reaffirmed this statement, saying that he was committed to pursuing an ending birthright citizenship. BBC News documents that he tried to do this during his first administration and is now making good on campaign promises. (BBC News. 2025. "Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Executive Order Faces Legal Challenge." BBC News, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c983g6zpz28o.) In a CBS news clip, Trump says he believes he can end birthright citizenship with “with a stroke of his pen you can definitely do with an act of Congress, but now they're saying I can do it just with an executiveorder.” (CBS News. 2025. “Trump Says He Wants to End Birthright Citizenship.” CBS Evening News, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDLW7iLDQ78.) Though once again this 2015 promise is moot. Neither the executive branch has been given this constitutional power, nor Congress. Congress itself could not actually legislate out the Fourth Amendment promises. To overturn the Constitution, the amendment process laid out in article five must take place.

8:33- 10:16- Supporting Point 3, Litigation on the Executive Order This brings us to our last supporting point, litigation since. In North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Maryland U. S. district judges, John C. Coughenour, Deborah Boardman, and Joseph N. Laplante, have found this order unconstitutional. You can follow the executive orders’ trail since its enactment, on a litigation tracker that tracks the legal challenges to the Trump administration actions broadly and specifically the executive order of 14160 (Just Security. "Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions." Just Security, April 7, 2025. https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/.) . Judge Corner stated that due to the loss of federal funding, forcing state agencies to incur substantial financial costs, to provide essential and legally required medical care and social services to children, causes irreparable harm, and deprives the constitutional right to citizenship that the fourth amendment provides, including all associated rights and benefits (U.S. District Court. 2025. Temporary Restraining Order on Trump Executive Order on Birthright Citizenship. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25502861/tro-on-trump-executive-order-birthright-citizenship.pdf.). This deprivation, as seen in the temporary restraining order’s language in the US district court, causes irreparable harm to the public interest and is unconstitutional. Two more judges have judged in line with the historical interpretation of the 14th Amendment as inalienable. In an image in the American Yawp, we see an idealized mending of the north and south during reconstruction. The image exemplifies that all men are born free and equal. It exemplifies that free and equal birth means enjoying freedom through birthright citizenship (Joseph L. Locke and Ben Wright, The American Yawp Reader: A Documentary Companion to the American Yawp, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2023), ch 15.).

10:16- 10:50- Closing

Today, we have looked over 150 years of precedent, interpretation and history to locate me and you in our modern day period. The birthright guarantees of the 14th amendment stand tall once again through its continued challenge, but I call you citizens, you listeners to action. Future politicians, administrators, leaders as followers. I hope you enjoyed today’s segment of the 14th amendment’s strength through challenge. Like and subscribe, and inform yourself, so that you can stand up for your rights. I'll see you next week on Winnie's window.

10:50-10:55- Outro Music