AMY GOODMAN: We begin today with the landmark Supreme Court ruling rejecting President Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship. In a 6-to-3 ruling, the justices upheld birthright citizenship, reaffirming the principle that children born on U.S. soil are American citizens, a right enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The ruling strikes down President Trump’s executive order from his first day back in office last year that declared children born in the U.S. to undocumented people or immigrant parents without permanent residency would no longer be granted U.S. citizenship.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the decision, quote, “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to 'every free-born person in this land.' … We keep that promise today,” unquote.

Conservative Justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberal justices in opposing Trump, but Justice Kavanaugh wrote he would strike down the executive order based on federal law, not the Constitution.

In their dissents, conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito Jr. called the decision a “serious mistake” that would open the door to so-called birth tourists.

President Trump, who followed the case closely, even attended part of the oral arguments in person, said on social media, quote, “The Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process. Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship. They will have my Complete and Total Support!” the president wrote.

Well, for more on this momentous decision and long history of struggle over birthright citizenship, we go southern Maryland, where we’re joined by a birthright citizen, Mae Ngai, Lung family professor of Asian American studies and professor of history at Columbia University, author of several books, including the award-winning Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America.

Professor Ngai, welcome back to Democracy Now! Start off by talking about the significance of the Supreme Court ruling upholding birthright citizenship.

MAE NGAI: Thank you, Amy, for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

This is a very important ruling. It upholds a constitutional principle that was set after the Civil War, that all persons born in the U.S. are citizens of the U.S. It’s extremely important, because not only in upholding the Constitution, it puts a break on President Trump’s insane drive against immigrants, to drive people out of the country and to not deny them any rights while they’re here.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about exactly what this means for people — you, yourself, is that right, a birthright citizen?

MAE NGAI: Yes, my parents are immigrants.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about what this means at this point, and President Trump almost not skipping a beat in saying, “OK, we’ll just go to Congress then.”

MAE NGAI: Well, Justice Kavanaugh opened that door for him, unfortunately. What it means right now is that despite all of the decisions and rulings and support for the Supreme Court for his program of mass deportations, ending immigration, ending asylum, ending temporary protected status, all of these measures against immigrants, this would have been the culmination of that campaign to deny birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented and temporary migrants. So it puts a break on the agenda, and it also avoids, I think, what would be chaos in this country if that were to go into effect.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you mean with Justice Kavanaugh opening the door. And also talk about the House speaker saying that they would take this up, although, of course, he dismissed Congress once again early yesterday.

MAE NGAI: Well, I think it’s extremely unlikely that Congress could even pass such legislation. Maybe they could get some votes in the House, where they have not been able to in the past. I don’t think it could ever pass the Senate. And it would have to go through the Supreme Court again to see if it was constitutional. So I think it’s a pipe dream. But this is a path that Trump will take to keep the issue alive and to keep fighting and to keep up his rhetoric against immigrants, especially people of color.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Ngai, you wrote a piece earlier this year for The Economist headlined “America is a nation of immigrants with a history of exclusion.” As we go into this 250th anniversary of the birth of the United States, can you talk about that history, what form the exclusion has taken? Are there moments where xenophobia recedes and where it, like this moment today, to say the least, rears its ugly head?

MAE NGAI: You know, all the discussion we’re having right now about the 14th Amendment is really important for us to remember, because it is — the importance of it is that it broke the tie between citizenship and race, and it laid the possibility, indeed the principle, that America is a multiracial democracy, not just for white people, not just for whites and Blacks, but for all people. And that is the legacy of the Civil War and the 14th Amendment.

Now, what happened, though, after the ratification of the 14th Amendment is that there were moves in the South to retake the South for white supremacy, and this was, by and large, supported by the Supreme Court in many decisions that eviscerated the meaning of citizenship for the freed Black people. And this, as we know, culminated in 1896 with the Plessy decision, which created the legal fiction of “separate but equal” and enshrined segregation into the Constitution.

Now, Wong Kim Ark, the decision that upholds birthright citizenship, is just two years after — three years after Plessy, so we have to ask what happened in between those two times. And as the Supreme Court eviscerated the 14th Amendment for Black people, it also upheld Chinese exclusion laws, laws that refused naturalization to Chinese people, laws that said Chinese could be deported without any due process whatsoever. And so, we have simultaneously going on in the Supreme Court an evisceration of Black civil rights and a strong exclusionary agenda aimed at Chinese, but actually put into the foundations of our immigration policy. These exclusions are potentially used against all immigrants.

So, these are part of the long struggle to reinterpret the 14th Amendment so that it mainly serves corporations. You know, we have the emergence of the corporation as a legal person with rights under the 14th Amendment. So, people are dropped to the background, and we have the power of business and money now taking over the rights of the 14th Amendment.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to the grandson of Wong Kim Ark, Norman Wong, who celebrated the Supreme Court decision upholding birthright citizenship in San Francisco.

NORMAN WONG: Wong Kim Ark’s victory ensured that people like me and millions of others would be recognized as fully American, not as outsiders in the country of our birth. His case transformed the 14th Amendment from the words on paper into living promise. Today, that promise is still being tested. Birthright citizenship is not just a legal principle. It’s a statement about who we are as a nation. It affirms that America is not defined by bloodlines or exclusion, but shared values and equal rights. This is Wong Kim Ark’s legacy. This is my legacy. It is our legacy.

AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap up, Professor Ngai, the significance of who Norman Wong’s grandfather was? And as we move into July Fourth, as everyone is celebrating history, what that history is all about?

MAE NGAI: You know, Wong Kim Ark and that statement by his descendant is a wonderful statement about the principle of birthright citizenship. But let’s be reminded that — why did the Supreme Court uphold birthright citizenship in 1898 at a time when it was rolling back civil rights for Black people? I think one of the things in the ruling of Wong Kim Ark that is important is that they said, “If we deny birthright citizenship to Chinese Americans, we deny it to all the Europeans and their descendants in this country.” And they had their eye on the fact that immigration was on an uptick from Europe in the 1880s and 1890s, and they wanted to protect those people.

Today, we have a very different country, and it’s not just Europeans and their children who enjoy birthright citizenship, but the children of all immigrants. And that is a different country today, and that difference is what the president and his administration is trying to attack.

AMY GOODMAN: Mae Ngai, Lung family professor of Asian American studies, professor of history at Columbia University, author of a number of books, including Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America.

Coming up, the Supreme Court upholds state bans on trans athletes in women’s, girls’ — women’s and girls’ sports. We’ll speak with the ACLU’s Chase Strangio. We’ll also talk to Mother Jones reporter Ari Berman about the Supreme Court ruling on mail-in ballots and President Trump’s continuing to push for the SAVE America Act. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Small Things” by Kassi Valazza.