Does the Trump administration really want US families to flourish – or only the ‘right' ones?
But these kids were in the midst of making history: their families were among the first to take advantage of Donald Trump's February executive order granting white South Africans refugee status in the United States, on the grounds that Afrikaner landowners – who make up just 7% of South Africa's population yet, decades after the end of apartheid, control about half of its land – are facing persecution. While the doors to the US refugee program have been slammed shut to virtually everyone else, these Afrikaners showed up in the US earlier this week, their refugee status promising a path to US citizenship.
Days later, the Trump administration took a far narrower view of who deserves access to the American polity. On Thursday morning, a lawyer for the Trump administration argued in front of the US supreme court that the 14th amendment does not guarantee citizenship to the American-born children of 'illegal aliens' – a view contradicted by more than a century of legal precedent.
This split screen raises a vital question: is the Trump administration really interested in helping children and families flourish – or only the 'right' families?
Over the last several months, the Trump administration's policies on immigration, families, and children have been pockmarked by all kinds of contradictions. The administration is reportedly considering numerous policies to convince people to have more children, such as 'baby bonuses' of $5,000 or medals for mothers who have six or more kids. The Department of Transportation has issued a memo directing the agency to 'give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average'. And JD Vance has proclaimed: 'I want more babies in the United States of America.'
These moves are, in part, fueled by the growing power of the pronatalism movement, which believes that the declining birthrate in the US is an existential threat to its workforce and its future.
Why, then, does the government want to exclude an estimated 150,000 babies born every year?
'It's hard to look at any of these policies and not believe that they're created for the purpose of satisfying a political base that was promised some sort of notions of recreating a nostalgia for a white Christian nationalist nation,' said P Deep Gulasekaram, a professor of immigration law at the University of Colorado Law School.
If the fate of the US workforce is really of concern, experts say immigration could help grow it – but the Trump administration has taken a hardline stance against immigrants from the Global South and their children. The administration has not only reportedly turned the refugee agency responsible for caring for children who arrive in the US alone into an arm of Ice, but also slashed funding for legal representation of children in immigration proceedings. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are trying to block parents who lack Social Security Numbers – such as undocumented people – from benefiting from the child tax credit, even in cases where their children are US citizens.
The Trump administration has also unveiled new screening protocols that make it far more difficult for undocumented people to 'sponsor', or take custody of, children who enter the US alone. Just last week, the National Center for Youth Law and the legal advocacy group Democracy Forward sued the Trump administration over the changes, which they say have forced kids to languish in government custody. Between December 2024 and March 2025, kids went from spending an average of two months in government custody to spending an average of six.
'This administration has compromised the basic health and safety of immigrant children in egregious ways,' Neha Desai, managing director of children's human rights and dignity at the National Center for Youth Law, said in an email.
In March, KFF, a charity that conducts health policy research, conducted focus groups of Hispanic adults who are undocumented or likely living with someone who is undocumented. Many spoke of the effect that the Trump administration's policies are having on their families and kids.
'I have a six-year-old child. Honestly, I'm afraid to take him to the park, and he asks me, 'Mom, why don't we go to the park?'' one 49-year-old Costa Rican immigrant woman told KFF. 'How do I tell him? I'm scared.'
'Even the children worry. 'Mom, did you get home safely?' They're already thinking that something is going to happen to us on the street,' added a 54-year-old Colombian immigrant woman. 'So that also makes me very nervous, knowing that there might come a time when they could be left here alone.'
The supreme court arguments on Thursday centered not on the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, but on the legality of lower court orders in the case. Still, some of the justices expressed concerns about what the case could mean for children.
Eliminating birthright citizenship, Justice Elena Kagan suggested, could render children stateless. The high court needed a way to act fast, she said.
If the justices believe that a court order is wrong, she asked, 'why should we permit those countless others to be subject to what we think is an unlawful executive action?'
Both the historical and legal record make clear that the 14th Amendment encapsulates birthright citizenship, Gulasekaram said. But, he said, predicting the supreme court's moves is a 'fool's errand'.
'There's really no way of getting around the the conclusion that this is a call to some form of racial threat and racial solidarity as a way of shoring up support from a particular part of the of the of the Trump base,' Gulasekaram said. 'Citizenship and the acquisition of citizenship has always been racially motivated in the United States.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Fed Found Over 22,000 Mortgages Like Those Pulte Is Flagging
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump and his allies are demanding Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook resign over alleged owner-occupancy fraud — a practice the central bank itself has found to be 'broad-based' across the US. Philadelphia Fed researchers in a 2023 report assessed the number of 'fraudulent investors' in the mortgage market, which they defined as those who had more than one owner-occupied home purchase loan within four quarters after the first one was originated. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte has said that Cook took a mortgage on a property in Ann Arbor, Michigan, stipulating that it would be her primary residence, and then two weeks later declared the same for another mortgage on a Georgia property. Why New York City Has a Fleet of New EVs From a Dead Carmaker Trump Takes Second Swing at Cutting Housing Assistance for Immigrants Chicago Schools Seeks $1 Billion of Short-Term Debt as Cash Gone A London Apartment Tower With Echoes of Victorian Rail and Ancient Rome The paper's data set consists of 584,499 loans made from 2005 to 2017. Of those, 22,431 were considered fraudulent. The share of those claiming occupancy for better mortgage terms peaked ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, though remained steady for much of the ensuing decade at about 2% to 3%. The findings are based on a subsample of data, meaning the number of mortgages fitting the central bank's criteria could be higher. The researchers also caution that there are likely cases of accidental occupancy fraud, such as when borrowers were unable to sell their original home because of a worse-than-expected real estate market. Scrutinizing the mortgages of Cook, who was nominated to the Fed by former President Joe Biden, appears to be the latest way in which Trump and his allies are using novel methods to pressure the central bank to lower interest rates. The president said Wednesday that Cook 'must resign now,' while Pulte claimed his accusations give him 'cause to fire' her. If she were forced out, it would create another opening for Trump to appoint someone who would likely push for more aggressive rate cuts. Pulte said 'anybody can go look at these public documents' from Cook in a CNBC interview Wednesday. He cited four criminal statutes for Attorney General Pam Bondi to probe for potential charges. No charges have been filed and it's not clear whether she will investigate. Ronel Elul, a senior economic adviser and economist at the Philadelphia Fed who co-authored the 2023 report, didn't elaborate beyond what was in the paper when reached for comment. The Fed declined to comment. Cook, in a statement Wednesday, said she has 'no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet.' She added that she is 'gathering the accurate information to answer any legitimate questions and provide the facts.' David Joffe, a federal criminal defense attorney in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said in his experience, occupancy cases are rare. Still, 'like anything else, if you look at it under a microscope you're bound to find something that's wrong,' he said in an interview. Mortgage fraud cases tend to relate to overstating assets and income rather than misstating a primary residence, said Stephen Cazares, a former federal prosecutor who's now a defense lawyer at Foundation Law Group. Those based solely on a home being falsely identified as a primary residence are 'unusual' but 'not unheard of,' he said. They're rare because the theoretical loss to a financial institution is lower in cases based on primary residence, where the lender 'basically got cheated out of a higher interest rate' rather than the value of the home, Cazares said. The Philadelphia Fed report found that about a third of all property investors misrepresent their status as owner-occupants. It found that doing so allowed them to obtain lower interest rates and higher loan-to-value ratios. 'This type of fraud is difficult to detect until long after the mortgage has been originated,' the researchers said in their paper. Cook's mortgages in question were from 2021. Trump's administration has also made mortgage fraud allegations against California Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Both are Democrats and political foes of Trump. --With assistance from Erik Larson. (Updates with Cook statement starting in ninth paragraph.) Foreigners Are Buying US Homes Again While Americans Get Sidelined What Declining Cardboard Box Sales Tell Us About the US Economy Women's Earnings Never Really Recover After They Have Children Survived Bankruptcy. Next Up: Cultural Relevance? Americans Are Getting Priced Out of Homeownership at Record Rates ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
New York Post
17 minutes ago
- New York Post
Trump isn't trying to ‘erase history' at Smithsonian — he's reversing a destructive woke takeover
Liberals were up in arms this week after President Trump said he wanted a review of the Smithsonian Institute — saying their displays were too negative, and too focused on slavery. But Trump isn't trying to 'erase history,' he's looking to reverse a woke movement that has indeed rewritten the American story to highlight suffering rather than providing a balanced picture of our past. Trump's criticism that the Smithsonian is overly focused on slavery is not unreasonable: In nearly every exhibit, critical race theory in general, or slavery specifically, makes an appearance. For instance, its new Benjamin Franklin exhibit on his innovations includes a whole section on slavery — with assumptions, but no proof, that slaves assisted Franklin in his electrical innovations. Even if they hadn't, the curators argue that without their work around the house, Franklin couldn't have spent the time on his experiments! 'Franklin held people enslaved during the time he pursued his electrical experiments. Their labor in his household helped make time that he could use to study electricity. Family, friends, and visitors directly participated in electrical experiments. The records are few and unclear, but enslaved people may also have directly assisted his research.' Another example of the obsession with slavery comes from the National Portrait Gallery; nearly every early Founding Father's description includes a statement on slavery. For example, the description for Thomas Jefferson includes the statement: 'Although Jefferson once called slavery 'an abominable crime,' he consistently enslaved African Americans, including his late wife Martha's half-sister, Sally Hemings, with whom he had several children.' The overemphasis on the history of slavery is a fairly recent development, an offshoot of the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2019, Lonnie G. Bunch III took over as the Secretary of the Smithsonian. Prior to that, Bunch was the founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is nearly exclusively focused on the legacy of slavery, with exhibits such as In Slavery's Wake, Slavery and Freedom, and Make Good the Promise, which deal with the history of slavery. Also in 2019, the Smithsonian collaborated with the New York Times on its 1619 Project, which falsely claims that the United States started, not with the Declaration of Independence or Revolutionary War, but when the first slave ship arrived. As curator Mary Elliot remarked at the time: 'This is a shared history, everyone inherited the legacies of slavery.' But America's history is more than just about slavery, and not everyone inherited this legacy — after all, America is also a nation of immigrants who came after the Civil War. In the Smithsonian 2020 annual report, more obsession with slavery comes into view. The Smithsonian is on a mission to have a completely searchable digital museum called 'The Searchable Museum Initiative.' One may think it would begin with digitization of some our greatest moments in history, such as the landing on the moon, the passing of the US Constitution, or even its great Natural History collections. You would be wrong; the digitization began 'with the museum's Slavery and Freedom exhibition.' The annual report claims that 'The Searchable Museum will provide rich, interactive, digital experiences that match the immersive experience of a visit to the physical museum' — unfortunately, likely as biased as a visit to the museum themselves. The problem with modern museums is not just about the obsession with slavery; it's also about dishonestly painting all of American history as evil and full of horrors — with little or no redeeming qualities. For instance, in the Smithsonian's American Indian Museum in NYC, George Washington hardly gets a mention, but his silhouette is used in a description of him as a 'town destroyer' — supposedly a nickname that Native Americans still use to describe our first President. And yet there's no mention in either of the American Indian Museums — in NYC or DC — about slavery practiced by Native Americans, both before Europeans' arrival and afterward. For example, the Cherokee owned slaves. In 1835, 15,000 Cherokee owned 1,592 African slaves; by the Civil War onset, 17,000 Cherokee owned 4,000 African slaves. While museums should provide an honest account of history, they should not be afraid to showcase and celebrate American achievement, which includes ending slavery. At present, however, museums seem more interested in pushing a woke, revisionist history of the United States. With two new Smithsonian museums in development, the National Museum of the American Latino and the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum, we can expect more of the same — unless we take action against woke propaganda now. Elizabeth Weiss is a professor emeritus of anthropology at San José State University and author of 'On the Warpath: My Battles with Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors.'
New York Post
17 minutes ago
- New York Post
Trump's DC takeover is just Step 1 — dysfunctional capital needs a bigger fix
Last week President Donald Trump declared war on crime in Washington, DC, when he sent in the National Guard and federalized the district's police force for the 30-day period allowable under the DC Home Rule Act. Trump's motives were good: He's right that it's shameful our national capital has become one of our most dangerous cities. He's also right that DC's crime epidemic hurts America's competitiveness and prestige. But the president's month-long law enforcement takeover won't fix that problem — because the problem is not, at its core, bad law enforcement. It's the fact that DC's government has for decades now shown itself incapable of even the most basic level of public administration. Blame it, too, on Congress, which transferred control over the district to the city's own elected government in the Home Rule Act of 1973 — but has refused to admit its mistake and reverse course. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives remain aloof from the problems they created, even as federal staffers, visitors and on occasion their own members are routinely harassed and attacked by criminals on the streets and in their homes. But the US Constitution stipulates that DC is a national public resource, not a self-governing city like any other. Under the Constitution, it is Congress's responsibility to competently administrate it — and Congress has abdicated that responsibility. When the 30-day takeover period is up (assuming Congress does not renew his privileges), Trump will turn the keys back over to a capital city government that can't staff a police force, can't keep young violent offenders off the streets and can't run a functioning crime lab. District officials can't claim to have reduced crime without cooking the books, and can't protect visiting diplomats from being shot And they're not just failing at law enforcement: DC can't keep its public schools out of the basement of national performance rankings, and can't prevent huge homeless encampments from forming while thousands of district-owned public housing units go unoccupied. The only possible solution to such a crisis of mismanagement is to overturn the law that gave home rule to DC and start over from scratch. And if President Trump is serious about tackling the district's dysfunction, he should do just that. First, the president should build up some goodwill by ending his police federalization and troop occupation, preferably earlier than planned. No need to make excuses; he can simply explain that he's come to realize DC's dysfunction runs far deeper than anything a few extra officers on the streets can solve. Then he and Republican leadership should begin meeting with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to generate support for Home Rule repeal. While Trump seems to think the entire district is dead set against him, this is incorrect: Many residents, while no fans of the president, are fed up with not being able to safely walk their dogs at night. Longtime Democratic members of Congress have personally experienced the city's dangers for many years, and they all know the ordeal of their colleague Angie Craig (D-Minn.), who was assaulted in her apartment building's elevator just two years ago. If Trump were to approach this issue firmly but collaboratively, he would find the water warmer than he thinks. Legally, the argument is not a hard sell. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution says that Congress shall have 'exclusive legislation in all Cases whatsoever' over the federal district. Congress has given a 50-year trial to the notion of delegating its power to the people of DC, and that trial has unequivocally failed to produce a district that serves the interests of the federal government, the American people, or the residents themselves. Therefore, we should return to rule by Congress, as the Constitution mandates. Doing so would require a simple act of Congress, passed by both parties, that overturns the 1973 law and dismisses DC's elected representatives. A third section of the new law should establish a congressional committee to appoint exemplary city managers from cities around United States to reconstitute a competent DC government. In many American cities, like Madison, Wis., Phoenix, Ariz., and Wichita, Kan., elected officials appoint professional administrators to oversee day-to-day municipal operations. Washington, DC, should do the same — with Congress taking ultimate responsibility. Some on the left will bemoan the reversal of Home Rule as yet another federal assault on our democracy. But the District of Columbia was never intended by the Founders to be a self-governing state. It was intended to serve the interests of the country as a whole, by providing a safe and orderly place for public administration. Returning DC's governing prerogative to the people of America, not the district itself, will take us one step closer to being the republic the Founders envisioned. John Masko is a journalist specializing in business and international politics.
