Since the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump has been trying to end birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants born in the United States, in a direct challenge to the plain language of the Constitution. Now, he’s openly musing about attempting to take away the citizenship of comedian Rosie O’Donnell, who was born here, because he doesn’t like her.
“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
To some extent, the irrepressibly catty president of the United States is just barfing his feelings onto the internet. It is highly unlikely O’Donnell will face the loss of her citizenship and basic rights, even during this exceedingly lawless administration. And yet Trump’s threat to a comedian he’s long despised is not happening in a vacuum, in the same way that his threat to criminally investigate Bruce Springsteen, because the rock star said something Trump didn’t like, comes as Trump’s government is, in fact, criminally investigating Trump’s enemies only because they made the president mad. These are all different words in the same sentence in the exact same authoritarian tome.
Trump’s Justice Department has explicitly stated how serious the administration is about prioritizing a large denaturalization push as part of Trump’s broader immigration crackdowns. Privately, Trump has repeatedly told lawyers and others in his second administration that when it comes to certain people he’d want to see lose their citizenship and then be shipped overseas for supposedly “national security” or “crime”-related reasons, he does not see a meaningful distinction between naturalized citizens and those who were born in the U.S.
“He just wants it done,” says a source who’s been in the room when the president has discussed this topic this year.
And now, the president is openly telling a celebrity and political enemy that he is “serious” about taking away her American citizenship, merely because she has exercised her free speech rights.
In a saner time, that alone — even if no executive order or blatantly lawless action followed — would be a presidential scandal, revealing a commander in chief with nothing but contempt for the First Amendment, baseline constitutional values, and his own people.
Of course, Trump has hated O’Donnell for many years — and the feeling is mutual. O’Donnell moved to Ireland earlier this year after her Los Angeles home was destroyed by wildfires. She has said she would consider returning to the U.S. once “it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America.”
This is only Trump’s latest threat to wield citizenship as a weapon against his enemies. Trump recently suggested he could attempt to denaturalize Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist New York assemblyman and New York City’s Democratic mayoral nominee. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda, came to the U.S. as a child and has been a naturalized citizen in 2018.
“A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally,” Trump claimed. “We’re going to look at everything.”
It’s worth noting that Trump’s wife, Melania, is a naturalized citizen. She gained her U.S. citizenship after they were married.
While Trump is leading a sweeping effort to arrest, jail, and deport immigrants, the president does not believe that citizenship, in and of itself, should automatically protect Americans from being given the same brutal treatment he prescribes for noncitizens. For instance, Trump has publicly said he wants to ship certain Americans overseas and jail them abroad, and upper levels of his administration, as Rolling Stone reported in April, have actively gamed out how they may do this.
And Trump believes he can decide, with a stroke of a pen, who qualifies for citizenship. Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order, issued on Inauguration Day, attempts to put an end to America’s promise to extend citizenship to all people born in this country, including the children of immigrants.
On its face, the order is putatively unconstitutional. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution states clearly: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Trump’s order was quickly blocked by several judges, and has already gone to the Supreme Court. The court’s conservative justices ignored the merits of the case, however, giving Trump a procedural win blocking lower federal courts from issuing nationwide injunctions.
The fight continues. A federal judge in New Hampshire blocked Trump from enforcing the birthright citizenship order on Thursday, while allowing a class-action challenge to the order to proceed.
