IN HIS INAUGURATION speech, Donald Trump promised that in his administration, “we will not forget our constitution.” The promise did not last long. Before the day was over, Mr Trump had signed an executive order that, if implemented, would apparently end birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the constitution. According to the plain text of the amendment, “all persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States”. It doesn’t mean what it appears to mean, Mr Trump claims.

Under Mr Trump’s order, from next month the federal government will refuse to issue “documents recognising American citizenship” (presumably passports) to newborns unless they have one parent who is either a citizen or a permanent resident of the United States. The children of unauthorised immigrants born in America would thus be excluded. But so too would those of around 3m people living in America on tourist, work or student visas.

Relatively few rich countries automatically extend citizenship to everyone born on their territory (though Canada does, as do most countries in Latin America). America started doing so at the end of the Civil War. The constitution was amended then to overturn the Dred Scott decision of 1857, which held that black people were not Americans. The 14th Amendment ensured that freed slaves and their children would henceforth be citizens.

Mr Trump’s argument is that the 14th Amendment “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States”. Narrowly speaking, this is true. The American-born children of foreign diplomats, who have immunity from prosecution, have always been excluded from American citizenship, under the clause about jurisdiction. Until the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924, so too were some native Americans who belonged to sovereign tribes. But Mr Trump seems to think the jurisdiction clause allows him to exclude the children of even some legal immigrants from birthright citizenship.

To justify this he draws on fringe thinking, which has gained adherents on the right since the early 1990s. Republican representatives in Congress have repeatedly introduced laws ending birthright citizenship, though none has got out of committee, notes Peter Spiro, an expert in citizenship at Temple University in Philadelphia. The argument made is that when the framers of the amendment wrote “jurisdiction” what they in fact meant was “allegiance”. As argued by Hans Spakovsky, of Heritage, a right-wing think-tank, the children of temporary residents and undocumented migrants are “subject to the political jurisdiction (and allegiance) of the country of their parents”, and so not that of the United States. The argument “just looks reversed-engineered onto the text”, says Mr Spiro.

Since 1898, when United States v Wong Kim Ark was decided by the Supreme Court, American law has held that birthright citizenship applies to the children of foreigners, says Alison LaCroix, of the University of Chicago’s law school. In that case, the child of Chinese migrants in San Francisco sued because he was refused entry into America after traveling, as an adult, to China to visit his parents. “That’s been the consistent treatment” ever since, says Ms LaCroix. A president cannot overturn over a century of precedent about how to interpret a constitutional amendment with an executive order. Had it been applied in the 1960s Mr Trump’s rule would have stopped Kamala Harris, the former vice-president, from becoming a citizen.

And, although work visas and the like are nominally meant to be temporary, in reality, many people have them (legally) for decades, and start families during that time. In particular, because of a federal cap on the number of green cards available to citizens of any one country, people from India and China find it almost impossible to convert to permanent residency. Now their children may be excluded from citizenship, too. Indeed, it is unclear what legal status those children would have. In effect, some legal immigrants would give birth to undocumented “immigrants”.

For all these reasons Mr Trump’s order seems unlikely to survive legal challenges, even with a friendly Supreme Court. But even if it does, implementing it would be difficult. When applying for passports Americans now have to submit only a birth certificate to prove their citizenship; these do not now record the citizenship or legal status of parents. Birth certificates are also issued by local governments, and so that is unlikely to change soon, at least in Democratic states. To exclude foreigners’ children, everyone would have to provide documentation proving their status, notes Muzaffar Chishti, of the Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank.

The effect of ending birthright citizenship, combined with America’s current immigration law, would be to create a growing class of second-class residents–non-immigrants who can never become citizens. Fortunately, Mr Trump probably lacks the power to bring that about. ■

AN “INVASION”. On the campaign trail, that’s how Donald Trump described the millions of migrant encounters at the southern border during Joe Biden’s presidency. During his inaugural address the 45th, and now 47th, president echoed the same sentiment, but this time with a note of triumphalism. “For American citizens, January 20th, 2025 is Liberation Day,” he crowed.

The notion that America is being invaded has become the defining theme of Mr Trump’s immigration policy. Hours after his inauguration the president issued ten executive orders on immigration and border enforcement “to repel the disastrous invasion of our country”. This is despite the fact that encounters at the border are the lowest they have been in four years, thanks to increased enforcement by Mexico and asylum restrictions implemented last year. The executive actions generally fall into three categories: the rescission of Mr Biden’s policies and reinstatement of Mr Trump’s first term plans, flashy things meant to project toughness, and more extreme measures that range from probably illegal to flagrantly unconstitutional.

In the first group Mr Trump issued a sweeping order modelled on one from his first term that aims to increase detention, force countries to take back their citizens, enlist local police to help with immigration enforcement and punish sanctuary cities by withholding federal funds, among other things. He intends to bring back Remain in Mexico, a policy introduced in 2019 that forced migrants to wait on the other side of the border while their asylum claims were adjudicated. But because Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, has to agree to that—and she has already registered her opposition—the order is more of a signal of intent than an immediate policy change. Mr Trump promised during the campaign to shut down CBP One, a government app set up by the Biden administration that allowed migrants to schedule an appointment to apply for asylum. Migrants waiting for those appointments on the Mexican side of the border found their meetings abruptly cancelled as soon as Mr Trump took the Oath of Office.

During his first term, the number of refugees relocated to America plummeted. This time he has completely suspended all refugee resettlement for at least four months. According to Reuters, soon after Mr Trump was inaugurated nearly 1,700 Afghans who were cleared to be resettled in America had their flights cancelled. Another order increases vetting for migrants and directs agencies to identify countries from which travel should be banned, something that will sound eerily familiar to those who remember the travel ban Mr Trump implemented on mostly Muslim-majority countries almost exactly eight years ago.

Next consider the policies that sound tough but may not change very much. The same order that discontinued CBP One also demands physical border barriers, detention and deportation. That is “just calling for enforcing laws that are already on the books”, says Julia Gelatt of the Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank. Additionally, Mr Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border, which allows the secretary of defence to send troops to help secure the frontier with Mexico. This is hardly unprecedented. George W. Bush (Operation Jump Start) and Barack Obama (Operation Phalanx) did something similar. Federal law limits soldiers’ roles in domestic affairs to non-law enforcement activities such as transportation and logistical support, rather than actually arresting migrants. Mr Trump’s order suggests that he doesn’t plan to cross that line. The national emergency also unlocks construction funds from the Department of Defence for the fortification of the border wall, a move the president also made in 2019.

That leaves the most extreme orders. The new president kickstarted the lengthy process of classifying drug cartels as foreign terrorist organisations by arguing that they “threaten the safety of the American people, the security of the United States, and the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere”. Some Republicans have wanted that for more than a decade. The worrisome bit of that order directs top officials to prepare for the possibility that Mr Trump will invoke the Alien Enemies Act. This law is the only piece of the Alien and Sedition Acts, passed in 1798 when America was feuding with France, that was not repealed or allowed to lapse. It permits the president to summarily detain and deport citizens of countries with whom America is at war. It was last invoked to detain Germans, Italians and Japanese during the second world war—hardly a proud moment in American history. Yet America is not at war, and drug gangs are not sovereign nations, even if they do control some territory.

This is where Mr Trump’s talk of an “invasion” becomes more than rhetorical bombast. Framing the cartels as terrorist organisations invading America is meant to legitimise his use of the law—though it is doubtful the courts will see it that way. And because America is being invaded, Mr Trump argues, he can block anyone from crossing the border, in effect suspending asylum until he decides that the invasion is over.

Mr Trump also decided that the meaning of the 14th Amendment to the constitution, which says that “all persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States”, is up for debate. He declared that from next month, children born to parents who are neither citizens nor permanent residents would be denied passports. The order applies not only to the children of unauthorised immigrants but also to those of people living in America on work or student visas. To justify this, Mr Trump argues that all foreigners are not in fact “subject to the jurisdiction” of its government. Since the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924, which gave citizenship to Native Americans belonging to sovereign tribes, only foreign diplomats have been considered immune from American law under that clause.

This executive order seems extremely unlikely to survive in the courts. But it could be intensely disruptive for new parents in the meantime. If implemented, in effect American-born children will become illegal “immigrants” on exit from the womb. American birth certificates do not include information on the citizenship of parents, and so it is unclear exactly how Mr Trump expects officials to gather the information necessary to refuse passports. Still, it is exactly what the president promised he would do.■

THE TRADITIONAL point of an inaugural address is to transcend the politics of the campaign and draw the country together. Donald Trump’s second inaugural was not that. But it stuck with tradition in other ways—it’s just that the traditions in question were much older.

The only one of his predecessors President Trump spent any discussing—other than excoriating the administration of the outgoing Joe Biden—was William McKinley, in his telling “a great president”, though he is not one many Americans would put in their pantheon. The reference came in a passage about restoring the 25th president’s name to Mount Denali, an idea that combines two Trump obsessions. America’s tallest mountain was officially given its koyukon (native Alaskan) name in 2015—which he considers a rewriting of history in deference to liberal sensibilities that is evidence of a woke mind virus. And the president who signed that change into law was Barack Obama, so reversing it undoes an Obama achievement too. But Mr Trump’s homage to McKinley, a fellow Republican, did not end there.

McKinley, who was inaugurated in 1897, presided over the negotiations that created the Panama Canal. He loved tariffs, both as a way to fund the government and to protect domestic industry. And he courted, and was courted by, robber barons of the Gilded Age.

President Trump has a thing about the Panama Canal. He thinks the terms of the treaty signing it over to its host country have been broken, and that it is controlled by China (it is not, though the Chinese government has gained influence in Panama). The single most attention-grabbing line in the speech, at least for those who are used to having an American president who respects other countries’ sovereignty, was: “we are taking it back.”

The treaty ceding the Panama canal was drawn up during Jimmy Carter’s presidency in 1977. Even back then this was opposed by conservatives as an unpatriotic betrayal by naive liberals, a perennial theme of Mr Trump’s (it is not just his taste in music that regularly defaults to the era of the Village People). To Panama, where the 82nd Airborne Division dropped in a decade later, when Mr Trump was in his 40s, this line sounds more menacing than many Americans realise.

So does the talk of territorial expansion, a theme no president has pursued seriously in over a century. The last president who increased America’s acreage substantially, as it happens, was William McKinley. Territories including Cuba, Hawaii and the Philippines were added to America in his first term, the latter as a consequence of a victory over Spain. “The truth is I didn’t want the Philippines,” McKinley said, “and when they came to us, as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do with them.” America got bogged down fighting an insurrection there. For Mr Trump the point of territorial expansion is clear. (And extraterrestrial too—he thinks it is the country’s manifest destiny to plant its flag on Mars.) America must be “a growing nation” once again.

Back in the present day, America’s greatest foreign-policy challenges are managing the competition with China, conflict and instability in the Middle East and Russia’s occupation of Ukraine–not the fees paid by American warships to sail through the canal. But Mr Trump mentioned China only in the context of the canal. The Middle East made an appearance in a self-congratulatory passage about hostages. He did not mention Ukraine at all, except to allude to America providing “unlimited funding” to protect foreign borders while refusing to defend its own (claiming that “millions” of criminal migrants were crossing into the country). Even what he means by taking “back” the canal is uncertain. Would he actually settle for lower transit fees? Mr Trump has been president for four years, has been campaigning for the past four, has a reputation for blunt speaking—and on the biggest questions he is opaque.

The same applies to tariffs, where his worldview overlaps with McKinley’s. The 25th president signed the Dingley Act in 1897, which sent tariffs above 50%. In his first inaugural address McKinley said that this was to preserve the domestic market for American manufacturers, among other things. In an address to a joint session of Congress that he convened to pass tariffs, he presented them as a prudent act to fund the government without raising tax. Mr Trump thinks the same way. “We will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens,” he said. “It will be massive amounts of money pouring into our treasury, coming from foreign sources.” Here too, it is not yet clear what Mr Trump will actually do.

After McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist, that approach to protecting manufacturing became associated with the Democratic Party. The McKinley formula combined what is now seen as a left-leaning policy with a closeness to big business associated with the right. Mr Trump, like McKinley, brings them back together in his Republican Party. McKinley’s 1896 campaign received a $250,000 donation from J.P. Morgan and the same amount from Standard Oil (approaching $10m apiece in 2025 money). Mr Trump’s inauguration reserved prominent seats for Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, all of whom gave money to the inaugural committee. The president announced the arrival of a new “golden age”. But on tariffs, territorial expansion and a fixation with Panama what he seems to want is a return to the gilded one.■