Activist judges have been working overtime to block Trump's America First agenda.
But conservatives just fired back in a major way.
And twenty-five Republican AGs delivered one blow to activist judges that has Democrats in full panic.
Tennessee leads coalition challenging birthright citizenship interpretation
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti isn't backing down from the biggest constitutional fight of the Trump era.
Skrmetti joined Iowa's attorney general and 23 other Republican state AGs in filing a bombshell amicus brief with the Supreme Court challenging the current interpretation of birthright citizenship.¹
The brief argues that lower courts have twisted the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause beyond recognition.
"The idea that citizenship is guaranteed to everyone born in the United States doesn't square with the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment or the way many government officials and legal analysts understood the law when it was adopted after the Civil War," Skrmetti said.²
The coalition includes attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Trump's executive order on his first day back in office directed federal agencies to stop automatically granting citizenship to children born in the U.S. if their parents are in the country illegally or on temporary visas.³
Every single activist judge who's touched the case has blocked Trump's order.
But Skrmetti knows exactly what's at stake here.
Historical evidence demolishes left's automatic citizenship myth
The Republican AGs aren't relying on modern liberal interpretation of the Constitution.
They brought receipts from the 1860s.
"If you look at the law at the time, citizenship attached to kids whose parents were lawfully in the country," Skrmetti explained.⁴
The brief includes historical evidence from the 1860s through the early 1900s proving that the 14th Amendment was never intended to grant automatic citizenship to everyone born on American soil regardless of their parents' status.
Democrats and their media allies have spent years claiming the 14th Amendment's phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means absolutely nothing.
The Republican AGs are calling that bluff with hard evidence from the era when the Amendment was actually written and ratified.
This isn't some radical new interpretation Trump invented.
The 1898 Supreme Court case United States v. Wong Kim Ark only held that children born to lawful permanent residents were citizens.⁵
That's a far cry from what liberal judges claim today about children of illegal immigrants or temporary visa holders.
Skrmetti's track record proves he's the right AG for this fight
Tennessee picked the perfect fighter to lead this charge.
Skrmetti has been racking up wins against Biden-era overreach since taking office in September 2022.⁶
He successfully sued BlackRock over ESG investment fraud.
He led the coalition that defeated the Biden administration's radical Title IX rewrite forcing schools to allow boys in girls' bathrooms.
And he just won a landmark Supreme Court victory upholding Tennessee's law protecting children from dangerous gender transition procedures.⁷
The Harvard-educated former federal prosecutor knows how to win constitutional battles at the highest level.
His office created a strategic litigation unit specifically to fight federal overreach and protect Tennessee's sovereignty.⁸
When the Biden administration tried to force gender ideology into schools, Skrmetti was the first AG to file opposition letters.
He doesn't wait for the fight to come to Tennessee.
He takes the fight directly to the radical Left.
States have unique interest in ending birthright citizenship magnet
The Republican AGs argue states have a compelling interest in seeing this issue resolved correctly.
The current misinterpretation of birthright citizenship creates a massive magnet for illegal immigration.⁹
"Each child born in this country is precious no matter their parents' immigration status, but not every child is entitled to American citizenship," Skrmetti said in his statement.¹⁰
States bear the financial burden of illegal immigration through strained social services, overcrowded schools, and overwhelmed healthcare systems.
The phony "birthright citizenship" interpretation incentivizes pregnant women to cross the border illegally specifically to give birth in America.
Then those "anchor” babies become the justification for allowing entire extended families to stay.
Democrats love this scam because it imports millions of future voters dependent on government programs.
The Republican AGs are telling the Supreme Court this madness has to end.
Lower courts have lost all credibility blocking Trump's order with absurd rulings that ignore the actual text and history of the 14th Amendment.
Federal judges in Washington state, New Hampshire, and the 9th Circuit have all issued nationwide injunctions stopping Trump from enforcing common-sense citizenship rules.¹¹
These same judges would never dream of blocking Democrat presidents from unilaterally rewriting immigration law through executive action.
But when Trump tries to restore the original understanding of the Constitution, suddenly activist judges discover new powers to micromanage executive branch policy.
The Supreme Court already limited these ridiculous nationwide injunctions back in June.¹²
Now the Republican AGs are urging the justices to go further and rule on the merits.
Every legal expert knows the current birthright citizenship interpretation can't survive serious scrutiny of the 14th Amendment's text and history.
The phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" wasn't included by accident.
It means children of foreign diplomats don't get automatic citizenship even if born in America.
It means children born to occupying enemy forces during wartime don't get citizenship.
And it means children of people who entered illegally or are here temporarily don't have the complete allegiance to the United States that citizenship requires.
Democrats are in full panic because they know this coalition of 25 states just handed the Supreme Court the ammunition it needs to overturn decades of judicial activism on birthright citizenship.
¹ Jonathan Skrmetti, Tennessee Attorney General's Office Statement, October 25, 2025.
² Natalia Mittelstadt, "Dozens of Republican AGs file brief with Supreme Court challenging birthright citizenship," Just The News, October 28, 2025.
³ Donald J. Trump, "Protecting The Meaning And Value Of American Citizenship," Executive Order, The White House, January 20, 2025.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).
⁶ "Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti: A Conservative Powerhouse," The Daily Signal, September 28, 2024.
⁷ United States v. Skrmetti, U.S. Supreme Court, decided June 18, 2025.
⁸ "Tennessee Supreme Court Selects Jonathan Skrmetti As Attorney General," Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts, August 10, 2022.
⁹ "Two dozen states rally behind Trump's birthright citizenship SCOTUS petition," Fox News, October 24, 2025.
¹⁰ Mittelstadt, Just The News.
¹¹ César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, "Misusing history to limit birthright citizenship," SCOTUSblog, October 21, 2025.
¹² Trump v. CASA, U.S. Supreme Court, decided June 27, 2025.
