{"text":[[{"start":7.65,"text":"The Supreme Court has rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to end automatic citizenship for those born on American soil, dealing a blow to the president’s plan to rewrite a fundamental tenet of US immigration policy."}],[{"start":21.700000000000003,"text":"In a 6-3 decision, the justices struck down Trump’s executive order limiting citizenship for US-born children whose parents are not citizens or permanent legal residents."}],[{"start":32.650000000000006,"text":"The right to citizenship for “all persons born or naturalised in the United States” is enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the US constitution. But Trump had sought to limit it on the first day of his second term in office."}],[{"start":46.85000000000001,"text":"“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land’. We keep that promise today.”"}],[{"start":67.5,"text":"Tuesday’s decision confirms a legal principle enshrined in the constitution after the US civil war and largely unchallenged from a Supreme Court ruling more than 125 years ago until Trump’s intervention. Lower courts had already put the president’s order on hold while the case was heard."}],[{"start":85.9,"text":"The high court’s ruling is another significant rejection of Trump’s agenda in recent months after it threw out the bulk of his sweeping tariffs in February."}],[{"start":95.2,"text":"On Monday, the justices knocked back Trump’s effort to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook but sided with the president in a second case that will give him greater power to fire officials at federal agencies. "}],[{"start":107.15,"text":"Trump’s public attitude towards the court has soured since the tariffs ruling, even though he appointed three of its nine justices. He has repeatedly lashed out at it and predicted the justices would hand him a defeat on birthright citizenship."}],[{"start":121.95,"text":"The president called Tuesday’s decision “too bad for our Country” and urged Congress to eliminate birthright citizenship through legislation. "}],[{"start":129.9,"text":"“Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform."}],[{"start":139.5,"text":"Later on Tuesday the Department of Justice published a memo announcing it would prioritise investigations into what it called “birth tourism” schemes where people come to the US under “false pretences” to give birth and obtain citizenship for their children. "}],[{"start":156.3,"text":"The court was narrowly divided in the birthright citizenship case. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump-appointed conservative, and the court’s three liberal justices joined Roberts’ majority opinion."}],[{"start":168.05,"text":"Another Trump appointee, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, rebuffed the notion that the president’s order was unconstitutional but agreed with the outcome reached by the court based on different legal reasoning."}],[{"start":179.45000000000002,"text":"Justice Clarence Thomas said in a dissent joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch that the decision “devalues” American citizenship, while Justice Samuel Alito said the ruling was a “serious mistake”."}],[{"start":192.25000000000003,"text":"In a sign of the case’s importance to Trump, he attended the oral arguments over his executive order in April, making him the first sitting president to observe the justices during arguments."}],[{"start":203.85000000000002,"text":"His administration argued that the long-accepted interpretation of birthright citizenship — that almost anyone born on US soil is automatically a citizen — was wrong. "}],[{"start":214.60000000000002,"text":"The heart of the case rested on a phrase in the 14th Amendment that says citizenship is guaranteed for everyone “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US. Traditionally, the phrase has been seen to apply to nearly everyone born in the country. "}],[{"start":230.25000000000003,"text":"But US solicitor-general John Sauer argued the phrase meant the 19th-century amendment intended to confer citizenship on formerly enslaved people rather than children of visa holders or non-citizens in the country without legal status."}],[{"start":246.20000000000002,"text":"He claimed misinterpretation of the clause had allowed hundreds of thousands of people to obtain US nationality who are not qualified for birthright citizenship. "}],[{"start":256.20000000000005,"text":"Alito wrote in his dissent that the court’s interpretation of the law “preserves a powerful incentive” for people to enter or remain in the country illegally."}],[{"start":266.00000000000006,"text":"Lawyers for the parents who sued had argued that adopting the government’s position would turn a longstanding constitutional provision on its head."}],[{"start":274.50000000000006,"text":"House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat, celebrated the decision, saying the ruling proves Trump’s “disgraceful actions” relating to birthright citizenship to be “clearly unlawful and an assault on our way of life”."}],[{"start":295.50000000000006,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1782868446_3814.mp3"}