The U.S. Supreme Court ruling on birthright citizenship is in — and Republicans are outraged. Following the court’s decision Tuesday morning to continue allowing the children of foreign nationals in the U.S. either illegally or temporarily (i.e. on business, tourism, or student visas) to obtain U.S. citizenship, President Donald Trump and a host of Republican legislators have pledged to fix what Justice Samuel Alito in his dissent called the court’s “mistake.”

“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,” Trump said in a Truth Social post shortly after the court published its decision. “No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary! Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship,” he urged. “They will have my Complete and Total Support.”

Vice President J.D. Vance likewise called the court’s Tuesday decision a “disappointing ruling” and a “major, major mistake.” He explained, “One of the things it might invite is people to come here, quite literally on a vacation, give birth, and then all of a sudden, the child and their family have the full benefits of American citizenship. It’s just a preposterous ruling.” He suggested that the immediate response must be significantly increased immigration law enforcement. “One of the things we’re going to have to do is just continue to enforce the border,” the vice president said. Like the president, Vance also noted that Congress has an opportunity to correct the court’s error. The court’s ruling, he said, “means that we have to keep fighting, because we actually have an opportunity to reverse this decision just as we’ve reversed so many bad decisions throughout the generations.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, long considered the chief architect of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy, similarly slammed the ruling as “[o]ne of the most destructive and outrageous decisions in the long history of the Supreme Court.” He continued, “American citizenship is not the birthright of the world. It belongs only and solely to Americans. No provision of the Constitution can be read to require our national self-obliteration.” In a subsequent interview, Miller characterized the ruling as “a deep knife wound in the heart of the American republic,” adding, “If your ruling requires you to suicide your civilization, your reading of the Constitution is wrong.”

While Trump and his deputies have garnered a reputation over the years as immigration hardliners, they were not alone in their frustration over the Supreme Court decision, which allows for the proliferation of “birth tourism,” whereby foreign nationals travel to the U.S. solely in order to give birth and obtain U.S. citizenship for their children, and “anchor babies,” the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, who then claim legal grounds for remaining in the U.S. due to the U.S. citizenship of their children. Numerous congressmen also blasted the decision, and many announced the early stages of plans to reverse the ruling and secure U.S. sovereignty and the value of U.S. citizenship.

“The Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship decision is wrong, dangerous, and disastrous for American sovereignty and the American people,” Senator Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) wrote in a social media post. “Citizenship is more than paperwork issued by the government. It is more than a bureaucratic label that grants access to government programs. Citizenship is the covenantal bond between a nation and its people. In a republic like ours, that bond carries enormous weight,” he continued. “In the United States, sovereignty does not belong to a king or a ruling class. It belongs to the American people themselves. Citizenship defines the legal recognition of who the American people are. … It defines who exercises the sovereign authority of this republic.”

“Left unaddressed, this Supreme Court decision will destroy the republic,” Schmitt warned. “A nation that cannot determine who belongs to its political community will lose control of its sovereignty and its unique character and traditions as new generations of unassimilated foreigners are automatically granted citizenship,” he continued. “We have seen exactly what this process looks like as foreign communists have essentially taken over New York City politics. We cannot allow this Supreme Court decision to consign the rest of our nation to the same fate.”

According to Schmitt, “ordinary legislation” revising the text of the 14th Amendment will not be sufficient to rectify the issue, given the constitutional nature of the Supreme Court’s ruling. Instead, Congress will have to author and pass a new constitutional amendment, which will then need to be ratified by the states. “Accordingly, I will be announcing a forthcoming constitutional amendment to restore the sacred bond between American citizens and their government,” the senator confirmed. “That amendment will restore the original American understanding of citizenship. It will restore the right of the American people to define their own political community. And it will ensure that citizenship once again reflects allegiance, permanence, and membership in the American nation.”

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) agreed with Schmitt’s assessment. In April, well ahead of the court’s ruling, Paul introduced a constitutional amendment to terminate birthright citizenship “in case the Supreme Court fails to address this issue correctly,” awarding U.S. citizenship only to the children of U.S. citizens or to the U.S.-born children of legal permanent residents. “Under current interpretations of American law, anyone born on American soil automatically becomes a U.S. citizen, regardless of whether the parent was here legally or not. This is wrong and not at all the intent of those who wrote the 14th Amendment,” the senator wrote. He asserted that America’s “borders have been too open and our generosity exploited too often. President Trump has moved to seal our border from illegal immigrants more than any other president. But we will have more to do.”

Others have suggested different forms of legislation. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) called on his fellow legislators to pass his Constitutional Citizenship Act, introduced last year, which would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to bar the children of illegal immigrants, foreign agents, or terrorists from being granted U.S. citizenship by birth. “There is no constitutional right for illegal aliens to cross the border to gain citizenship for their children. Granting birthright citizenship to illegal aliens has contributed to the highest levels of illegal immigration in history,” Cotton said in a press release announcing the legislation. “Fixing this will help reduce the damage from [former President] Joe Biden’s catastrophic border crisis.”

Addressing the use of surrogacy to obtain U.S. citizenship for children, Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in a social media post, “We need to make sure illegal aliens don’t come into our country and EXPLOIT our immigration system. That means closing EVERY. SINGLE. LOOPHOLE.” His legislation, the Stopping Adversarial Foreign Exploitation of Kids in Domestic Surrogacy (SAFE KIDS) Act, aims to bar foreign entities from using surrogacy in order to obtain U.S. citizenship for their children.

In a press release announcing the legislation late last year, Scott said that it is “terrifying” that surrogacy programs “might be at the hands of foreign adversaries with the sole intent of having a child that is a U.S. citizen. We’ve already seen troubling cases of human trafficking and abuse linked to international surrogacy schemes, as our foreign adversaries prove willing to exploit every loophole they can to destroy us.” He added, “We must take action. My SAFE KIDS Act puts a stop to Communist China and other foreign adversaries’ efforts to harm children, women, and our national security.”

Senator Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) suggested reintroducing legislation first brought to Congress in 1993 by the late Senator Harry Reid to amend the 14th Amendment. Under Reid’s legislation, the 14th Amendment’s crucial, controversial phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” would be clarified to bar the children of foreign nationals who are neither U.S. citizens themselves nor legal permanent residents from obtaining U.S. citizenship by virtue of their birth on U.S. soil. “I will reintroduce this exact bill,” Moreno teased. “Let’s see how today’s DC Democrats will vote when offered the ideas of the Democrat party that used to love this country and the American people!”

Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson (R-La.) was also “disappointed” in the court’s ruling, noting that birthright citizenship has been “grossly abused” by foreign nationals, but warned that a constitutional amendment will not be an easy process. “I’m sure the conclusion from this opinion is going to be that… you’ve got to amend the Constitution to fix that,” he said. “It’s only happened 27 times in our whole nation’s history, and the reason is because you’ve got to have two thirds of both chambers of Congress and three fourths of the states to ratify. It’s usually at least a many years-long process, and very complicated.”

“I will say I’m very disappointed in that outcome,” Johnson said of the court’s decision, adding, “I think it subjects the country to serious challenges going forward, and we’ll have to deal with it as a Congress.” He affirmed that birthright citizenship has “been abused. It’s one of those things that was intended to serve a noble, important purpose, and has been thwarted and overused and abused, and so I’m sure that we’ll continue to look at that.”

In the meantime, while Congress weighs legislative fixes, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced that it will prioritize targeting birth tourism schemes, which the Department said “exploit our immigration laws and often violate our criminal laws. The Department of Justice will prioritize the prosecutions of birth tourism schemes across the country. Actors seeking to exploit loopholes to obtain automatic citizenship for their children pose a national security threat and will be brought to justice.”

“Regrettably, the American system is exploited each year by thousands of foreigners who travel to the United States under false pretenses to give birth and secure citizenship for their child,” Deputy Attorney General Colin McDonald wrote in a DOJ memo. Noting that many birth tourism schemes already violate federal criminal law, McDonald urged federal prosecutors to look for as many statutory violations as possible, including visa fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering, unlawful use of means of identification, identity theft and aggravated identity theft, and health care fraud and conspiracy to commit health care fraud.

“The Department of Justice will investigate and hold accountable those who engage in this unlawful conduct, as well as those who solicit and sell these criminal services to others,” McDonald wrote. “The Department of Justice will zealously protect the sanctity of United States citizenship by investigating and prosecuting those who fraudulently exploit our immigration system. Together, we will bring illegal birth tourism to an end and those responsible to justice.”