Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Tuesday called the Supreme Court decision to uphold birthright citizenship a “travesty,” only for a journalist to remind the public that the Republican lawmaker previously defended it — “before he felt the need to pander” to his base.
Cruz’s 2011 Stance on Birthright Citizenship
Cruz argued adamantly Tuesday that the 14th Amendment, which plainly states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States,” wasn’t written “to create automatic citizenship.”
The Texas Republican is in lockstep with President Donald Trump, whose efforts to upend birthright citizenship brought the matter to the Supreme Court. However, Yale Review editor James Surowiecki noted Wednesday that Cruz once sang a very different tune.
He used the senator’s own words from an old interview to call him out and wrote on social media, “Ted Cruz in 2011, before he felt the need to pander to the xenophobic right.” The video was recorded when Cruz was still a Senate candidate.
“The 14th Amendment provides for birthright citizenship,” said Cruz in the video. “I’ve looked at the legal arguments against it, and I will tell you, as a Supreme Court litigator, those arguments are not very good. As much as someone may dislike the policy of birthright citizenship, it’s in the U.S. Constitution.”
Social Media Backlash and Historical Context
Cruz was widely derided on social media for this curious about-face, including by former MSNBC host and Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan, who wrote: “There are very few people in modern politics more hypocritical, opportunistic, or shameless than Rafael Edward Cruz.”
This isn’t the first time Cruz was called out for drastically changing his stance on birthright citizenship. Then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) noted the reversal during the 2016 presidential debates, and Trump himself noted the “conflicting stances” that year.
Sen. Ted Cruz said in 2011 it's “a mistake” for conservatives to focus on ending birthright citizenship.
Trump’s Executive Order and Supreme Court Ruling
The MAGA leader first floated ending birthright citizenship ahead of his first term, and tried after returning to office last year with an executive order seeking to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to undocumented workers or people on temporary visas. It was formally struck down Tuesday to the presumable delight of Cruz — at least in 2011.
He said at the time, “I don’t like it when federal judges set aside the Constitution because their policy preferences are different. And so, my view, I think it’s a mistake for conservatives to be focusing on trying to fight what the Constitution says on birthright citizenship.”
