Architect of Trump birthright citizenship order doesn't think president will accept SCOTUS decision

The Supreme Court last week struck down President Trump's 2025 executive order that attempted to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. However, the man who authored the first draft said Tuesday he doubts the fight is over for the president and his supporters.

The author, Theo Wold, a former assistant attorney general and White House deputy assistant for Domestic Policy under Trump who wrote the original draft, said on the John Solomon Reports podcast that neither Trump nor “other folks who have used enormous brain power on these issues will either."

Among those he cited was Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy who since Trump's first term has been one of the president's top immigration policy architects.

Trump posted on Truth Social that the high court's 6-3 decision in Trump v. Barbara  was “too bad for our Country” and called on Congress to enact legislation to address the issue.

Wold said the decision was a "massive defeat," and thinks some of the questions that Trump-appointed Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh asked in the courtroom indicated skepticism of the position Trump’s lawyers argued.

“For well over 60 years, we basically allowed judicial activists in robes, legal academics and the like, to define what American citizenship is, or should be, and the obligations that citizenship imposes on people,” he continued. “You mean a person who just gets on a plane to visit Disney World, and then they give birth, that kid is the same as me? That doesn't seem to make sense."

The first place the decision will manifest as “the next stage of this battle," will be in the insular territories, Wold believes, including Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Each is governed by a series of cases that came out of the early 20th century about whether someone born in American Samoa or Northern Mariana Islands is an American citizen.

“Right now, they have this de facto status that’s basically like you’re an American by nationality, but you’re not an American citizen, and so I think the territories are not governed by the same full import of the 14th Amendment,” Wold said.

While he sees illegal immigration as posing dangers to the U.S. economy, national security and citizens' access to housing, health care and education, Wold thinks even the legal immigration system is "incredibly byzantine," "totally wacky" and needs reshaping – especially in terms of the "11 million visas we give out every year."

Any of those visas, Wold said, is now a potential passport for a foreign worker or national to enter the U.S. and give birth to an American citizen.

He believes the Trump administration will have to push for action, but “wouldn't count Congress out” – he thinks it’s a positive sign that certain members of Congress who aren’t usually attached to the immigration issue as a priority are wanting to work on it.

House Speaker Mike Johnson says he is currently “looking at all angles” to legislatively address the issue, and Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas – while on his way out of Congress – has called for congressional action.

Katherine Pugh is a reporter for Just the News. Follow her on X for more coverage.