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The Supreme Court just punched America in the gut. In Trump v. Barbara, five justices stole We The People’s most crucial sovereign power of deciding who becomes fellow citizens by illegally constitutionalizing birthright citizenship for the children of Chinese birth tourists, Islamic terrorists, and other illegal immigrants who hate America. That's bad enough. But the rot goes deeper: illegal aliens and temporary visa holders are counted in the census – the process that determines how many U.S. House seats each state gets. That drives the Electoral College, which decides the presidency. This is a rigged game, and it has to end in time for the 2030 census.
Here's how the Fourteenth Amendment actually works: Section 1 grants birthright citizenship to anyone born in the United States and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" -- a provision enacted after the Civil War for the children of the freed slaves, not so Chinese babies born in America can return to Beijing for the rest of their lives, mail in their votes, and even later run for U.S. president. Section 2 apportions House seats based on "the whole number of persons" in each state. The government has made a mess of both.
Pro and anti-Trump demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court, before justices hear oral arguments on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)
Foreign diplomats and invading soldiers are excluded from both citizenship and the census; that much makes sense. But illegal aliens have been counted in the census since Jimmy Carter's administration, and the Barbara decision now pretends these Chinese and other foreign children simply born here are full American citizens. Temporary visa holders – students and workers – are counted too, and their kids get citizenship under Barbara as well. Meanwhile, birth tourists aren't counted in the census, but their children are now citizens. So a woman who flies in for a week to watch a World Cup game, gives birth, and flies home has produced an American citizen, but she herself isn't a "person" for census purposes.
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The current system is a constitutional embarrassment, thanks to five Supreme Court justices – Chief Justice John Roberts, Professor Amy Coney Barrett, and the three liberal women – who put their vanity over our sovereignty. Why does a Chinese birth tourist's child qualify under the more restrictive citizenship standard, while the mother doesn't qualify under the less restrictive census standard? Why do visa holders count as census "persons" while tourists don't, even though both came here legally—unlike illegal aliens, who count for everything?
This incoherent reasoning will lead to devastating outcomes.
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Congress has the fix. The Equal Representation Act limits census counts to American citizens and lawful permanent residents. That definition tracks the correct reading of "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" from United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) and aligns Sections 1 and 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment. "Persons" in Section 2 means inhabitants, or individuals lawfully and permanently domiciled here. Illegal aliens and visa holders don't qualify. The Supreme Court signaled as much in Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992), noting that the Framers understood "persons" to mean permanent inhabitants even when the text didn't use that word explicitly.
President Trump could act by executive order, but Congress must act by statute to lock in this understanding. Trump's term ends in January 2029. That means the next president will oversee the 2030 census. If that president is a leftist, then Trump’s executive orders will get reversed overnight. Legislation doesn't. Pass the Equal Representation Act, get Trump's signature, and dare the Supreme Court to overturn it. In doing so, we will at least partially correct the Court’s catastrophic error in Barbara – where the Supreme Court woefully handed out American citizenship to Chinese birth tourists like cotton candy at a foreign carnival.
The briefcase of a census taker is seen as she knocks on the door of a residence, Aug. 11, 2020, in Winter Park, Fla. Eleven small cities in Illinois and Iowa are the only municipalities so far to have signed agreements with the U.S. Census Bureau for a second count of their residents in 2024, the first year the special censuses can be conducted, in a repeat of what happened during the 2020 census. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)
The Census Bureau is also long overdue for a cleanup. In 2020, Democrats netted roughly half a dozen House seats and Electoral College votes through what was, at minimum, staggering incompetence. Trump v. Slaughter confirmed the president can remove executive branch officials wielding executive authority. That power extends to the Census Bureau's chief operating officer, who runs more of the operation than the director.
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The stakes go beyond politics. The census drives federal Medicaid funding to states. That means illegal aliens and visa holders don't just influence who controls Congress. They determine how much money flows to needy Americans. That’s ludicrous, and sanctuary states exploit it deliberately. The Framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment never imagined illegal immigration, birth tourism, or temporary visa schemes at this scale. We The People, the sovereign citizens of America, certainly never consented to any of this.
And consider the national-security dimension. China, our primary geopolitical enemy, has sent 1.5 million Chinese birth tourists to the United States. Their Chinese children are now citizens under Barbara. China could flood this country with workers and students on visas, pad the census count, and manufacture political representation in Congress — all without firing a shot. Not to mention, again, these Chinese kids can mail in their votes in American elections from Beijing and even run for president of the United States. China has already run a years-long election interference campaign against this country, as detailed in materials President Trump recently declassified. We are handing our enemies a lever to pull inside our own republic.
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Benjamin Franklin said that we have a republic if we can keep it. Even with five narcissists in robes on the Supreme Court who put themselves over our sovereignty, national security, and country, Congress can and must pass the Equal Representation Act. The Supreme Court must uphold it. The alternative is a census permanently distorted by hostile foreigners who have no lawful claim to shape the course of American democracy.
Keeping the republic means fixing our census. Now.
Michael R. Davis is the founder and president of the Article III Project.
