The Line Keeps Moving: Who Gets to Be American Anymore?

On the erosion of identity, and the meaning of belonging.

In March 2025, the Trump administration took its war on birthright citizenship to the Supreme Court. The case challenges the core principle of the 14th Amendment: that anyone born on U.S. soil is automatically a U.S. citizen. This foundational clause, established in 1868, has been a bedrock of American identity. The administration’s argument is clear — and chilling: that birthright citizenship, once guaranteed, is now optional, depending on how the federal government chooses to interpret it.

This didn’t emerge in a vacuum. The Trump administration has long floated attempts to roll back or reinterpret the 14th Amendment, often targeting children born to undocumented immigrants, or those born in U.S. territories. But this year’s challenge goes further. It seeks to legally separate “citizenship” from “birthright.”

In my interpretation, the consequences of such a change are not theoretical; these will manifest in courtrooms, classrooms, and polling places — places where “belonging” is measured by law.

In January 2025, the White House issued an executive order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship”. This executive order framed citizenship not as a legal right, but a conditional status; something that can be regulated, narrowed, or revoked. While it initially targeted immigration policy, its language swept more broadly, with it nodding toward those born in U.S. territories and even raising questions about long-settled birthright norms.

Today, millions of people live under the jurisdiction of the United States without full citizenship protections. American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Puerto Rico are all under U.S. control — but none have full representation in Congress or equal constitutional rights. The District of Columbia, meanwhile, offers a separate but related case: its residents pay federal taxes, serve in the military, and follow federal law, yet they have no voting representation in the Senate and only three electoral votes in presidential elections.

In places like American Samoa, people are born as “U.S. nationals” — able to carry a U.S. passport and serve in the military, but barred from voting, holding federal office, or even becoming police officers in certain states unless they naturalize. In the other territories, those born are U.S. citizens, but citizenship alone doesn’t unlock representation. They have no senators. Their House delegates can’t vote on final legislation. And unless they move to a state, they cannot cast a ballot for president.

It’s taxation without representation — in the 21st century.

Puerto Rico held a nonbinding referendum in 2017 where 97% of voters favored statehood, though turnout was just 23%. D.C. has pushed for statehood for decades, often under the proposed name New Columbia. But progress has stalled in Congress, often blocked by partisan considerations.

At the same time, U.S. courts continue to rely on the deeply racist legacy of the Insular Cases — a series of early 20th-century Supreme Court decisions that created the legal framework to deny full constitutional rights to people in U.S. territories. The Court defined them as “foreign in a domestic sense,” allowing the federal government to govern them without extending full representation or protection. These cases remain on the books today, and are cited in federal rulings and congressional hearings alike.

And now, in 2025, the administration is using that same precedent to redefine who is American in the first place.

If the Court accepts this challenge to birthright citizenship, it opens the door to a system in which citizenship is no longer a guarantee, but a selective privilege. One that can be shaped by geography, ancestry, or executive discretion.

The implications are enormous.

This ultimately reanimates the question: What is America if not a nation of laws? What are we, as a nation, if the rule of law gives way to the rule of men?

What does it mean to be part of a democracy when the government can decide — post-fact — who qualifies as belonging to that democracy?

The administration claims this is about protecting the “value” of citizenship. But I argue that value is not lost by including people, rather, it is lost when equality becomes negotiable. Citizenship only means something when it means the same thing for everyone.

So, whether you live in D.C. or Guam, in San Juan, or Manhattan, or right here in Indianapolis, this debate affects you. Not just because it’s about the Constitution, but because it’s about the soul of American democracy — who gets to belong, and who gets to decide.

If we don’t fight to answer the question ourselves, it will be answered for us — quietly, and permanently; history will not wait for us to catch up. Rather, it will speak for us, if we refuse to speak for ourselves.