US Domestic — 2026-08-08

Trump Signs Two Narrower Executive Orders Restricting Birthright Citizenship Five Weeks After Supreme Court Struck Down Original Order

BLUFFederal courts very likely will enjoin at least one order within nine weeks, as the citizenship provisions extend past the narrow exceptions the Supreme Court just reaffirmed.

President Trump signed two executive orders in the Oval Office on Thursday, five weeks after the Supreme Court's June 30 ruling in Trump v. Barbara struck down his broader birthright citizenship order under the 14th Amendment 12. The first order excludes birthright citizenship for children of alien enemies, foreign government employees, members of foreign terrorist organizations, or parents who obtained citizenship through a commercial transaction, and extends the exclusion to US territories where citizenship is not conferred by federal statute 13. The second delegates authority to the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security to deny visas or entry to foreign nationals traveling to the US for "birth tourism," defined as entering on a nonimmigrant visa to give birth 45. Federal data cited by NPR show fewer than 10,000 such births in 2024, while the Center for Immigration Studies estimated roughly 70,000 in 2023, against 3.6 million total US births 5. ACLU attorney Cody Wofsy said any executive order rewriting birthright citizenship "will meet the same fate as the last one" 1.

Analysis
A federal court very likely enjoins enforcement of at least one order within nine weeks: the alien-enemy and foreign-government-employee categories reach beyond the diplomat and hostile-occupation exceptions the Supreme Court affirmed in Barbara, and the same advocacy network that won that case has signaled suit, with the original order drawing a district-court injunction within days of signing. Confidence is moderate, resting on a single precedent cycle with venue and hearing timeline not yet observable; sourcing itself is strong, drawn from independent primary and secondary reporting rather than a shared wire feed. Trump has returned to the executive-order path Barbara foreclosed rather than pursuing the legislative route the ruling left open, though the narrower exceptions could reflect a genuine effort to operate within what Barbara actually recognized rather than a repeat of a fight expected to lose again. An injunction would let State and DHS shelve visa-denial and document-exclusion machinery already staffed for rollout; absent one, passport and Social Security agencies must begin applying the new eligibility criteria to newborns.

5 sources