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Even this Supreme Court seems unwilling to end birthright citizenship

At least seven justices appear to believe that the Fourteenth Amendment means what it says.

If you’ve been worried that this Supreme Court might give President Donald Trump the power to strip citizenship away from Americans, you can go ahead and exhale.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, a case challenging an executive order Trump issued on his first day back in office, which purports to strip citizenship from children born to undocumented immigrants and from many people who are lawfully present in the United States but who are not yet authorized to remain here permanently.

Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser.

There is no plausible argument that Trump’s executive order is constitutional. The Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment provides that “all persons” born in the United States are citizens, with one narrow exception that does not apply in Barbara. Just three days after the executive order was issued, a Reagan-appointed federal judge blocked it — after saying that he’s “been on the bench for over four decades” and that he “can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is.”

Trump’s order has never taken effect thanks to lower court orders against it. Many of those orders relied on United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), a Supreme Court case that rejected a similar effort to restrict who can be a citizen of the........

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