Without birthright citizenship, these celebs might not be Americans
On June 27, the Supreme Court lifted temporary blocks preventing Trump's order from taking effect, but left it to lower courts to consider the constitutionality of Trump's executive order. Whether Trump will ultimately be able to repeal the longstanding legal precedent that grants citizenship to all children born on American soil is unclear.
Here are some well-known actors and politicians who would not have been American citizens when they were born if birthright had not existed.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 54, is the son of Cuban immigrants who did not become naturalized U.S. citizens until 1975, years after their son was born.
Rubio has previously said he does not agree with repealing birthright citizenship.
Diane Guerrero
Actress Diane Guerrero, who starred in the hit television show "Orange is the New Black," was born to undocumented immigrants from Columbia who were deported when she was 14, she told NPR in 2019.
In an interview with the outlet, she said, "This is a country of immigrants. People forget - they like to forget that their ancestors came here with the same dream, with the same hopes, with the same fears. And it's unfair to say that because people are coming later that they don't deserve to be here."
Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, was born in South Carolina to immigrants from the Punjab region of India, according to her autobiography.
In 2015, she told The State news outlet that her parents were in the United States legally but did not become naturalized citizens until after her birth, and the non-partisan American Immigration Council considers her a U.S. citizen because of her place of birth.
Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee, the martial arts icon who starred in films such as "Enter the Dragon" and "Fists of Fury," was born in San Francisco while his parents were traveling with the Chinese Opera.
The National Archives notes that under birthright citizenship he was considered a citizen - though he would not be under Trump's revision to the law. "Lee's parents filed for a Return Certificate on his behalf ... enabling him to return to the United States if he later wished to do so. Lee did return at the age of 18 and grew into the iconic martial artist and film star known across the world."
Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship may have been designed explicitly against his November rival for the presidency, former Vice President Kamala Harris.
David Bier, of the Libertarian Cato Institute, posted on X the day Trump signed the order: "As I predicted, Trump's birthright citizenship EO includes a Kamala Harris clause, specifically designed to deny the legitimacy of her US citizenship as the child of someone with a temporary status."
Trump's order specifies that someone wouldn't be entitled to birthright if their mother was on a temporary visa - like the student visa Harris' mother was on at the time of her birth - and their father wasn't a citizen, as hers wasn't.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech billionaire and 2024 Republican presidential candidate, told NBC News in 2023 that his father never became a U.S. citizen and his mother only naturalized after he was born.
Ramaswamy, who Trump endorsed in next year's Ohio gubernatorial race, has repeatedly called for an end to birthright citizenship.
Contributing: Maureen Groppe, Eduardo Cuevas, Sara Chernikoff, Ramon Padilla and Bart Jansen, USA TODAY
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
‘No one is coming to save us': Trans people are planning to move overseas rather than live in Trump's America
Isabella remembers the moment she knew she needed to leave the U.S. It was March 2023, when Daily Wire host Michael Knowles gave a chilling speech to one of the most influential conservative gatherings in the country. "There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing," Knowles told the Conservative Political Action Conference. "For the good of society, and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen victim to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely: the whole preposterous ideology, at every level." To Isabella, who is trans, this declaration was a clear sign of the Republican Party's increasing embrace of hardcore anti-trans politics — and a potential harbinger of "genocidal action." This spring, after years of preparation, she moved to Chile. She is not alone. In the wake of the Supreme Court's recent decision in US v Skrmetti, which upheld Tennessee and other red states' rights to ban transition healthcare for minors, four trans people told The Independent that the case had solidified their plans to escape the USA. Like every single person interviewed for this story, Isabella would only speak under a pseudonym out for fear of reprisals from far-right extremist groups, or perhaps even government officials. And while the Skrmetti decision only concerned trans children, those who spoke to The Independent feared that the Court's reasoning could make it easier to restrict trans healthcare for adults too — as Republicans are already trying to do nationally. "Before the 2024 election, my timeline for relocating abroad was more like five to ten years out, if at all. Before today, I was considering sometime within the next year or two. But now, I am thinking of moving by the end of the summer," said Wayne, a trans man in his late forties in Washington state, on the day the Skrmetti ruling came down. Though he also has personal reasons to leave the country, he said the Skrmetti ruling was "another falling domino." "I don't want to leave my country, but things have been on a downward trajectory for trans rights for the past several years," he said. "We have transitioned from a system of democracy into an electoral autocracy... no one is coming to save us." 'I won't accept second class status' In the past few years, 25 U.S. states have passed laws restricting banning transition healthcare for minors, according to the pro-LGBT+ Movement Advancement Project — covering an estimated 37 percent of all trans under-18s. Some states have also enacted restrictions on adult care, and Republicans in Congress have made repeated attempts to defund or limit access at the federal level. Meanwhile, conservative rhetoric about trans people has become ever more venomous. Knowles likened them to "demons." One Republican candidate claimed pro-trans teachers should be "executed." Multiple serving GOP legislators have falsely claimed that random mass shooting suspects are trans, while Donald Trump Jr has alleged — contrary to all available evidence — that trans people are "the most violent domestic terror threat" in the country. Then came Donald Trump's second inauguration, and his blitzkrieg effort to centralize federal power under the office of the president. Since then migration has become a regular topic among trans people both online and in person, along with acidic social media debates about the ethics and class politics of fleeing one's country. "My plans for emigration have been in a holding pattern,' said one trans lawyer in her forties, who began transitioning roughly 25 years ago and is now considering leaving the country. "Getting all the documents and background checks and apostilles to be able to move, and contacting contractors... but not making any decisions yet in the increasingly vain hope that abandoning my family and home country won't become a necessity,' she said. "This [Skrmetti] decision definitely made me get back into planning mode. I had begun to build up some steely resolve about fighting for my country... but days like this really suck out all the air. "When you find yourself crying at random songs, no matter how limited their emotional appeal would be in any other situation, it's hard not to look at your hands and then up and the sky and say 'where do I go now?' "I won't accept being a pariah, or being denied hormones despite being post-[surgery]. I won't accept second or third class status." The lawyer also argues that the SCOTUS ruling may be widened, since there is "nothing in the decision that indicates it will remain confined to pediatric care questions." Stacy Davis, a 42-year-old Nashville realtor who has a trans child, told The Independent that her family will stay in Tennessee as long as they possibly can, even if it means traveling regularly for medical care at great expense. But if they are forced to move, it would probably be abroad. 'I think it would have been easier to move from Tennessee to a blue state if [Kamala Harris] would have won, because at least then we would have had some reassurances that on a federal level we would be more protected,' she said. But now, 'it almost feels like a blue state can't save us.' Multiple groups have sprung up to help trans people migrate, either within the U.S. or internationally. Some are open and legally incorporated, such as the Denver-based non-profit Trans Continental Pipeline. "At the heart of it, we're glorified movers, trying to help people get where they want to go and out of traumatic situations," founder Keira Richards told Mother Jones last year. Other groups are more secretive and ad-hoc, fearful of attacks and harassment by anti-trans extremists. "We've had a few people today contact us and/or announce their desire to emigrate faster from the USA, considering the broader implications of this ruling," a member of one such group told The Independent. "People of course are stockpiling hormones and getting passports in order if they can... I can tell you our top destinations are Canada, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Thailand, and the Netherlands in particular." The group includes trans people in countries across the world, this person said, including some lawyers who help people understand the implications of new U.S. anti-trans policies. In some places, they have contacts who can help trans immigrants get settled in and find community. Group members gather and share information on immigration pathways, visa requirements, and the level of freedom and protection available to trans people in various countries. 'We've read our history books. We know where this goes' The story of one trans woman we'll call Rachel illustrates how individual areas and then the entire USA have become progressively more hostile to trans people. Back in 2023, having already moved from the Tennessee countryside where she grew up to the big city of Nashville, she felt forced to flee her home state entirely. "At that time I was highly skeptical that it would ever get to the point where I had to emigrate," Rachel told The Independent. "I have to say that I completely stand corrected." Initially, Nashville had felt safe enough for her to finally transition. But beginning in around 2020, when conservative news site The Daily Wire moved its headquarters to Nashville, she felt a major "tonal shift." Relatives who'd once been supportive began to turn against her. Nazi flyers were stuffed into her mailbox. She received "direct threats" from people she believes were probably her neighbors, and suffered repeated housing discrimination despite having a steady income. Daily Wire host Matt Walsh, a prominent anti-trans activist, held a "rally to end child mutilation" at the state capitol. In March 2023, on the same day Tennessee's Republican governor Bill Lee signed the healthcare ban at the heart of the Skrmetti case, someone draped a huge swastika-emblazoned banner from a Nashville bridge thanking him for "tirelessly working to fight trannies and fags." At another point, Rachel recalls, someone projected the words "TRANS-FREE TENNESSEE" on a local building. Rachel even had a brush with Skrmetti himself: that is, Tennessee's attorney general Jonathan Skrmetti, against whom the Supreme Court lawsuit was filed. In 2022 he demanded detailed patient records from Rachel's trans healthcare provider Vanderbilt University, leading to accusations that he was trying to compile a "list" of trans people. "Skrmetti seems like the ghost that will hound me for the rest of my life," complained Rachel. "It's always Tennessee! It's a state out of which the current manifestation of conservative politics has grown. And I was there to witness it.' Now those politics have taken root in the White House, and Rachel is applying for citizenship in the foreign country where one of her parents was born — something she's always been eligible for, but only recently started seriously working on. For her, the new Supreme Court decision changed nothing. But listening to the oral arguments before Trump's inauguration, and anticipating which way the case would go, was part of what made her plan to leave in the first place. Even though she isn't totally sure whether she'll go, Rachel wants to be ready at short notice. She keeps many of her belongings in storage, and has abandoned some of her hobbies for fear that the equipment would weigh her down. "I think that everything is on the table at this point," she said. "The same rhetorical patterns, in some cases precisely the same accusations, that are being levied at trans people were being levied at the Jewish population [in Nazi Germany]. "We've read our history books. We know the outcome of that is... I think it's naive to think that it's impossible in the United States." (Knowles, for his part, has insisted that his 2023 CPAC speech was not a call for cultural genocide against trans people because they are not a group with shared genetics, and also because they are "not a legitimate category of being.") To Isabella, living in Chile has been both a challenge and a relief. She's still figuring out her medical care, still learning Spanish, still trying to meet new friends. "Winter and summer are flipped, which is so weird to me," she said. Not everyone could have made the move, she notes. She was lucky enough to have some local contacts and a job that she could keep doing from her new country, as well as the financial resources necessary to uproot her life. But she no longer has to deal with the daily drumbeat of assaults on her rights and unashamed demonization of her identity. "You feel like you can breathe better, and you're not worried that you're gonna be the victim of some terrible attack," she said. Even so, she can't completely stop worrying. Conservative politicians across the world have found trans people a tempting punchbag, including in nearby Argentina. The feminist philosopher Judith Butler has argued that transphobia is a central element of modern fascism, from to Hungary to Brazil to the USA and beyond. "You never know, these days, because transphobia is global," said Isabella. "The question is, is it going to come to Chile? That's always a fear. So I'm always keeping my eyes open."
Daily Record
an hour ago
- Daily Record
American living in the UK left floored as he admits one thing is 'really different'
An American who is obsessed with visiting different cities around the United Kingdom to rate them in a series of viral videos has been left "impressed" by a shopping centre as it's "insane" An American living in the UK was left flabbergasted by UK shopping centres, branding his native American malls as subpar by comparison. TikToker @kjordyy, who rates different cities across Britain, was awestruck by Kent's Bluewater Shopping Centre and expressed his thoughts in a video captioned: " are we doing? British malls are genuinely insane". He enthuses about the UK malls in the video, claiming they "blow his mind" and insists it's "so much more than a shopping experience". "I don't think you truly understand the complexity of these malls," he declares, amazed at the offerings. His tour showed him that "first of all", the architectural prowess of every centre he visits is "insane". He then marvelled at the discovery of "a moat outside of the mall". Diving into details, he reveals it houses over 280 stores, boasts a cinema with 17 screens and even an adventure park complete with ziplines and skydiving options. Bemused, he noted that such attractions are unheard of in US malls, admitting: "If I were a kid, I just wouldn't leave this place," due to the variety of available activities. Emboldened, @kjordyy announced his intent to try skydiving on-site, something not possible in American shopping hubs. However, after approaching the skydiving and zip line areas, he faced disappointment being told he was "too heavy" to participate. Undeterred, he concluded: "Just the sheer fact that a mall has this, I'm impressed. I'm sad I've got too swole a body for them, but you know what, maybe next time". In the comments, one person encouraged him to "go to the Trafford Centre" for its remarkable features. "Especially the ship area with the restaurants," another added. An individual recounted their astonishment during a visit to the Trafford Centre, saying it "blew their mind". Some commenters were quick to point out that "Bluewater is not an accurate representation of UK 'malls'." One commenter reminisced: "Metrocentre used to have an indoor funfair including a rollercoaster!! It's no longer there now". The impact of the internet on shopping centres was debated, with some arguing that "people are too lazy to go and walk round" nowadays, while others defended the irreplaceable experience of in-person shopping. A woman queried: "Are malls shutting down over there the way they are here? Even our giant mall only has about two stores in it now". Another boasted about their local centre: "I mean my local one is all outside and has a cinema, like 20 shops and 6 restaurants, but there's better further away". Meanwhile, a UK resident described their local centre as having just "a Greggs, McDonald's and the absolute bare minimum of stores," reassuring the TikToker that this isn't the norm.
NBC News
an hour ago
- NBC News
Can this game maker figure out Trump's China tariffs before they sink him?
Checkbook Chronicles Dan Linden developed a new table game and worked with suppliers in China to bring it to life. Now, he's unsure just how much tariffs will hit his bottom line. June 29, 2025, 8:03 AM EDT By Rob Wile Dan Linden likes games. He likes trying to figure out the answers. But one tricky puzzle has him stumped: What is the actual percentage he now owes for tariffs on toys and games imported from China? Linden, a 38-year-old Seattle resident, told NBC News he still doesn't know how much he'll have to pay to import the game he created and has staked his financial future on. 'I'm not a millionaire or anything,' Linden said. 'These $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 tariff hits are going to take a significant chunk out of my own pocket.' As it turns out, the entire toy industry is confronting the same problem. A representative for The Toy Association, the industry's chief trade and lobbying group, told NBC News it could not comment on the current tariff level because it was 'gathering new data about tariff impact on toy companies.' Linden estimates he's invested some $25,000 from his own savings to develop the game, Offshoots, a tabletop contest to see who can build out a 'tree' using wood-based, branchlike pieces without toppling the trunk. Think Jenga meets K'nex. He said he has plenty of orders lined up — and is racing to get more shipped across the sea before President Donald Trump changes his mind and increases the duty level. Business highlights After two years and two dozen iterations, Linden developed Offshoots into what he felt was a potential smash. He said it received rave reviews at a game expo in March and has won praise from other industry pros. Thanks to contacts made through his full-time job at a larger toy developer, Linden was able to work closely with Chinese manufacturers to produce an initial prototype of the game that worked out to a $29.99 retail price. Toy fair contacts said if he could get that down to $24.99 per game, he had a 'slam dunk,' Linden said. His first official sale came last July. Since then, he's sold about 2,200 — and has placed an order for another 2,500 that he hopes will not be fully subject to Trump's import duties. But the price point is hanging in the balance. Already, it's gone back up to $29.99 to cushion the potential tariff blow. 'My game is getting a really good response by the public so I have to stay the course and try to grow it,' he wrote in an email. 'However I feel like I am continuing to invest significant money and all it would take is another tariff increase to tank the whole thing.' Tariff impact Toys and games had previously been exempt from tariffs altogether. In his most recent social media post on the subject, Trump said duties on Chinese-made goods would be as high as 55%. In theory, that calculation incorporates the 30% in new tariffs Trump has imposed in his second term: 20% for fentanyl-related issues, plus the president's new 10% baseline. That 30% is added to the existing average tariff level of 25% on Chinese goods that was in place when Trump took office. But if toys and games faced zero tariffs before, what do they face now? Linden said he remains in the dark — but that the final answer could clobber his income from the game. Before Trump announced his China tariffs, Linden was seeing a 23% profit margin on Offshoots games sold through a distributor, and about 50% when they were sold directly to a retail shop. With 30% tariffs, that fell to 6% profit through the distributor and 39% through the retail shop. If he ends up having to pay a 55% duty, he said, he will have to rethink his entire distribution strategy. Looking ahead Linden's concerns ultimately go beyond getting his game off the ground. The company where he works his day job is also facing headwinds from the tariffs. Should something happen to it or his role there, Linden fears he won't be able to successfully transition into another field in what has been a gradually weakening labor market. 'I don't have the work experience to change careers very easily, so I've had a lot of fear over what happens if these tariffs put the toy company out of business,' he said. 'And then if they put the new game out of business, I don't have a lot of marketable skills outside of the toy industry, and I can't imagine people are going to be hiring like crazy anytime soon.' Linden said he has no objection to making the game in the United States and has even begun taking orders for a version that is American-made — though at a $5 higher price point. Linden said matching Chinese quality is significantly more expensive and more logistically complicated. He said he must string together disparate parts of the manufacturing process in the U.S. that, in China, tend to be under the same roof, or at least closely coordinated. In Linden's experience, consumers who like to talk about 'buying American' tend to ultimately choose the option that provides the most bang for their buck, wherever it happens to be made. Linden said a recent visit to another specialty toy fair showed his concerns about the state of the overall industry are widespread. 'It felt kind of spooky,' he said in a follow-up email. 'I think everyone in the business is aware of impending price increases, but almost no one was willing to talk about it. This uncertainty has a lot of people stuck in limbo waiting to read what the morning news will bring.' Linden said he hopes that by the end of the summer, 'something will change,' or at least there will be clarity about the final tariff number. Thoughts about the current administration Linden said he did not support Trump in the presidential election for numerous reasons, and was not surprised that the president has made tariffs the primary tool of his economic policymaking, given his campaign rhetoric. Still, he said he has been taken aback by the toll Trump has allowed the process to take on the business community. 'He said he was going to do all this,' Linden said. 'I knew what he was going to do. I guess he kept that promise at the expense of the businesses I'm involved in.' Rob Wile Rob Wile is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist covering breaking business stories for
