Ben Shapiro: birthright citizenship is "not mandated by the Constitution." Verdict: mostly-false, truth score 0.15, confidence 0.90.

The Supreme Court answered that exact question 38 days before he said it — and the 1866 Senate had already answered it before that.

On August 7, 2026, on The Ben Shapiro Show, Ep. 2481 ("FINALLY: Trump ENDS Birth Tourism!"), Shapiro argued that the Fourteenth Amendment does not require birthright citizenship because the framers never contemplated large-scale immigration.

The steelman is real. In Trump v. Barbara (June 30, 2026), the vote was 6-3 to strike down Executive Order 14160 but only 5-4 on the constitutional question. Justice Kavanaugh supplied the sixth vote on statutory grounds while declining to say the Constitution compels the result, and wrote that a congressional statute creating exce ...