2/3/2025

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal begins with a focus on the recent controversy over birthright citizenship that came about with President Trump’s executive order. While supporters of birthright citizenship say the 14th Amendment clearly states that children born on U.S. soil are American citizens, opponents have a fundamentally different reading. They argue that the U.S. rejected appeals to birth by soil in favor of an understanding that parents of children must have complete allegiance to the United States for their children to be automatically citizens at birth. At RealClearPolitics, Bill King goes through this rather complicated history and constitutional interpretation, giving both sides their due. King finds that while it’s questionable whether the president can limit birthright citizenship by executive order without Congress’s input, proponents of unlimited birthright citizenship have a harder case to make that it’s good policy for the United States.

Also on the subject of birthright citizenship is an ongoing symposium at The American Mind, with pieces that question the reigning view of the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause by Edward Erler, John Eastman, Michael Anton, and Linda Denno. More entries in this symposium will be published in the coming days.

Turning to the establishment of centers of civic education in higher education, at Deseret News Robert Burton and Matthew Brogdon highlight the important work of the Civic Thought and Leadership Initiative, which is within the Center for Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University. Since its founding, they note that CTLI has “become the premier provider of K-12 civics professional development in the state, offering over 7,075 training hours to more than 600 K-12 educators and impacting 122,000 K-12 students statewide.” Burton and Brogdon conclude by writing that CTLI is just the beginning: “If we are to foster a renaissance of civic education in our public schools, much more must be done. An understanding of the principles, institutions, and history that comprise our shared constitutional inheritance is indispensable to preserving and improving it for future generations. We neglect it at the peril of our state and our republic.”