Remarks: Donald Trump Signs Two Executive Orders on Birthright Citizenship - August 6, 2026

OK. Thank you very much. We have a few subjects that we're going to discuss, all important, but one in particular, important having to do with birthright citizenship. And, Will, if you would, maybe you could -- we'll start it off with what Howard's going to be discussing.

So, uh, a short while ago, sir, you signed an order relating to the polysilicon industry. Um, this is a series of trade and tariff actions under section 232, intended to ensure that domestic polysilicon manufacturing, uh, is properly supported and protected from overseas dumping and offshore threats. Howard can speak more to the details, but polysilicon is incredibly important in the chip making industry and a number of other industries as well.

And like many of your, uh, previous trade actions, sir, this is intended to ensure that we're onshoring manufacturing capacity, that we're onshoring our own supply of -- of critical products, and that we're protecting American industry from malign foreign actors in that space.

Thank you.

So polysilicon is sort of the foundational product that makes silicon wafers that become the AI chips and the chips that are in our phones and everything. So the president's policies have brought 50 percent of production into America, but we need the foundational products made here otherwise, you know, we're making the products here, but we need the supply chain here.

So this will bring the supply chain here. We're setting prices so that the Chinese can't dump anymore and we're setting tariffs to say, build it here. We've got the industry here. It's too small, and it's going to explode under your leadership.

And we're having massive numbers of, uh, I guess you'd call them factories or plants built having to do with the manufacturing of chips, more than we've ever had before. Uh, Intel, we're very proud of. They've done incredible. They've really been an incredible company, but we're doing some unbelievable business.

Chips, we'll have a big percentage of the chip business by the time I leave office, which could be a long time, who knows, but it could also be fairly quick. They say two and a half years; we're going to find out. But I just want to say that it's an honor to have worked with a very smart group of people, and we're bringing the chip business back into the United States in a very big way.

Jamieson, do you have anything to say about that.

Sir, I think you need to put this in the context of everything else that's happening. Manufacturing productivity is the highest it's been in years. We haven't seen any growth like this for forever. Under President Biden, the last part of his presidency, he lost 220,000 manufacturing jobs. The president has stabilized this, now the manufacturing jobs are going up. So all of these indicators on manufacturing are happening, and it's because of tariffs, it's because of trade actions, it's because of the investment credits you've given people, the tax credits, everything you're doing, the energy policy.

All of it is bringing manufacturing back here, protecting American workers and American jobs.

Well, tariffs are bringing us hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of dollars. I mean, just money, the money that we've never seen anything like it, with no inflation, by the way. Everyone said, oh, there'll be inflation. We have very low inflation. We brought inflation way down. I inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country.

They say 48 years, but I say the history of our country and -- from the Biden administration, and we're bringing it way down. So, uh, the numbers that of -- of -- I mean, beyond the money being brought in, the number of factories being built in our country is more now than we have ever seen before. There's never been anything like it, and you're going to see the results.

And you're seeing the results already in construction jobs because they're being built all over the country. But in another year, as they start to open, there's never been -- we call it the golden age of America, and that's what it is. Now, we could talk -- Steve, maybe you could discuss what we're dealing with on birthright citizenship.

We had a very unfortunate decision in the Supreme Court concerning birthright. It was close, but a very, very unfortunate decision. Uh, so we're, uh, making adjustments because it's very unfair. This was done for a different reason. This was done right after the Civil War. This was for the babies of slaves, and, uh, what's happening now, people are building businesses around it from -- wealthy people are building businesses around birthright citizenship.

That's not the way it was supposed to work. It's a disgrace. They're buying their way in and we're not going to let it happen. So, Steve, if you will, please.

Yeah, so today, the president signed these two executive orders here relating to birthright citizenship and birth tourism. As the president mentioned, the 14th amendment was passed exclusively in the aftermath of the Civil War so to ensure that the children of slaves would be citizens. It had no other meaning and purpose outside of that, and that's been clear, obviously, since the day that it was passed.

You can go back and you can read the Congressional debates. This is not something that's even seriously contested by anybody. The president is using his authority as commander in chief to sign, first, an executive order using the new ruling the Supreme Court issued to expand the definitions of people who are ineligible for birthright citizenship.

That includes, for example, alien enemies of the United States, members of foreign terrorist organizations, and large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments. And so with taking this action, it ensures that large numbers of people who wrongly would be getting birthright citizenship will no longer be eligible for those benefits.

The second action that he's taking, which is especially historic, is for the first time ever in American history, to ban birth tourism. So I want you to really let that sink in. This has been something that people have talked about not only for years, but for decades. The idea that people come here pretending to be a tourist, pretending to be a visitor, saying they want to go to Disneyland, or they want to go visit a monument or go to a national park.

But the real reason they're here is to have a child, to make that child an automatic citizen, leave our country, and then have a US citizen child. It gives them access under this broken system to welfare benefits, ultimately to the voting booth and all the other rights and privileges that belong solely to Americans.

So that practice of birth tourism is, as of the signing of this order, hereby banned. And what that means is that no one in the world is anymore allowed to obtain a visa for this fraudulent purpose. It is probably -- and President Trump has done many historic things on immigration, too many to list now, seal the southern border shut, record deportations, record integrity, stopping foreign terrorist entry, record reduction in drug seizures, dismantling criminal cartels, dismantling the gangs but everything he's done that has been so unprecedented, I would put this in the top three in terms of importance, because it ends what has been one of the greatest and most egregious abuses of the American system, and it keeps American citizenship sacred.

Thank you. OK. Big stuff. That's a big deal. Please.

Thank you. On the tourism executive order, what are the plans for enforcement in terms of cracking down on tourism hotels that's common in parts of California?

[Inaudible] very big, very big, big crackdowns. And this will give us the right to do it in a much more forceful manner. But they've taken birthright citizenship and they've made a joke out of it, and we're actually the only country of size -- I think just about the only country, period that does birthright citizenship.

I thought we were going to win it at the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, we had a bad decision, very unfair decision. Our country suffers because of it and we're ending it a different way.

Mr. President, at the Supreme Court, John Sauer, the Solicitor General, did not have an answer as to how many individuals take advantage of birth tourism. Is there a number that you can cite --

I'll tell you right now, hundreds of thousands, OK? Hundreds of thousands. You have one man, came in with a family, had -- said he had 56 children. Another one came in, they said they had 98 children. This was not what it was for. This was meant for the babies of slaves. It was -- it was right after one week or two weeks after the Civil War ended.

This wasn't for wealthy multi-millionaires, billionaires coming in and bringing 15, 20, 30 children along with them. It's become a big business and we're ending that business. Please.

What makes you confident, Mr. President, that this will pass constitutional muster?

I think it will. I think, in fact, I -- -- asked a very talented person named Will Scharf, who's standing right behind me. Do you want to discuss that, Will? You felt pretty surely -- pretty strongly about it.

Yeah. The law is absolutely clear. What we're talking about is, as Stephen said, with respect to birth tourism, something that used to happen incidentally, where somebody who happened to be on vacation here went into labor early and had a baby. This was sort of a, you know, a relatively small problem. What we've seen in recent years, though, is organized rings at times, criminal rings, setting up a system whereby tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people can come to this country in an organized fashion and give birth here purely for the sake of obtaining birthright citizenship.

This order takes a number of different actions intended to combat those sorts of organized practices we look very heavily at denying visas to people that we have reason to believe are coming here for that purpose, visas both for putative parents, but also for the people organizing these rings. There's also obviously a law enforcement component.

We'll have a full fact sheet released on this soon, but what we're doing is taking a legally validated means that are clearly within our disposal and targeting them square on to this birth tourism industry. There's absolutely nothing in here that runs afoul of any of the Supreme Court's opinions on the subject.

This is, frankly, it's action that's overdue and I'm thankful that President Trump is finally taking decisive action to combat this issue of birth tourism, now that it's been queued up in the way that it has as a result of the Supreme Court's opinion.

This should have been done a long time ago. This should have happened years ago, but we're taking care of it now. Please.

Thank you. Can you help us understand how you distinguish between a tourist and a birth tourist?

Well, I'll let you discuss it, please.

Happy to. And so -- by the way, that was an excellent presentation.

Thank you, Stephen. Appreciate that.

The -- yes. For those of you who want to do your, uh, your research on this, section 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act gives the President this authority. 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, very rarely used, probably one of the strongest laws in the entire federal code gives him this power.

That's not the only but it's the main statutory authority that's being used in this order. So birth tourism is by definition a fraud on the American system, on the American taxpayer, on the American visa. If you're coming here and, again, your stated purpose is that you're a tourist, then by definition, you are here to come for a few weeks, look at what we have, engage in commerce and leave.

So if you're telling a consular officer you're here as a tourist, but your true purpose and intent is to go to a baby mill, give birth, and try to mint an American citizen while you're here, then you're committing a fraud against the American government. And by definition, that visa can and should and will be now denied.

Mr. President, there is a report that you told donors that they need to get JD Vance elected in 2028. Is that your official endorsement?

No, no. It's, uh, I heard about it a little while ago. I think he's great, but we're way too early to even be thinking about that. OK?

And Mr. President, Republicans are arguing a lot right now about affordability. What is your message on affordability going into the midterms?

Well, that's a good question, but it's sort of simple to answer. I inherited the highest prices ever. I inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country and we have, uh, done an amazing job. And oil prices now are coming down very rapidly, if you look at what's going on. It's down to $75. Uh, when I started the very important excursion into the Islamic Republic of Iran, it was a very important excursion because they can't have a nuclear weapon, otherwise the whole world would get blown up. We're not going to let that happen.

Not only us, not only the Middle East, the whole world would have been -- it would have been catastrophic. We had no choice. We had oil down to less than two -- in many places like Iowa, oil was down to -- gasoline was down at numbers that people hadn't seen in years, $1.85, $1.95. [Inaudible] I was in Iowa, uh, at a stop, and we had $1.95, another one $1.85 a gallon.

And we'll see those days pretty soon again, based on everything I see, as soon as the war ends. And, uh, I think it's going to end pretty soon. I don't think they can go much longer. Yeah, please.

Has it been reached to reopen the Strait of Hormuz?

Well, I don't want to say it has been. It's sort of opened right now. You know, we have a thing called the blockade headed up by the US Navy and we control it. And now, we control it but they can always shoot something, they always have something or drop a mine. And if you have one mine sitting out there, you sort of mess things up because people don't want to take their billion dollar boats and accidentally get hit by a mine.

But, uh, I think we're doing very well. I just, you know, I'm involved in the negotiation. I think we're doing fine. It could be -- it could be soon. Yeah.

Mr. President, have you lobbied any of the undecided Republicans who will vote tomorrow on Todd Blanche's nomination?

Uh, I will lobby if I need to. I will lobby very, very diligently because he's outstanding. He should be good. I mean, I can't imagine -- he's as good as there is in the country. People have such unbelievable respect for Todd Blanche, so hopefully that won't be necessary. I would -- I spoke to some people, I did, uh, but, uh, hopefully it'll all work out very well for the country, because you're not going to find better than Todd Blanche.

Will you reach out to Senator Murkowski, Senator Cassidy, for instance?

Let's see if we need anybody. I'll reach out to whoever I have to, but, uh, anybody voting against him would be doing a great disservice to the country. Please.

Mr. President, the deadline for Representative Max Miller to withdraw from his race is coming up next week.

Yeah.

Do you believe he should withdraw at this point?

Well, I'm not going to get involved in that. It's a very sad situation, and I know Max very well, but it's very, very sad that a situation like that takes place. Yeah.

Do you think the DOJ should prosecute Dr. Fauci?

Well, you know they prosecuted Peter Navarro and they prosecuted Steve Bannon, two very decent people, over something that essentially was never prosecuted before. And there are sort of telltale signs of similarity and they went to jail for a number of months over something that they, I saw one of the analysts said they used to laugh at it in the Justice Department when something like that was referred.

But Merrick Garland prosecuted two very decent people and sent them to jail. I wasn't president. I would have given them a pardon in two seconds, but I wasn't -- this was after I left. They waited until after I left and then they prosecuted these two people and they ought to be ashamed of themselves. So when you see that happen, you sort of say, maybe he should.

What he did is far more serious than a lot of crimes, frankly. But they prosecuted two people when nothing like that has ever taken place before.

Mr. President, on munitions, you posted overnight that the US has a massive amount.

That's right.

And you denied that there were any shortages. There is a supplemental request for $21 billion to restock. So, um, why is that request still there if there's --

Well, because we need more all the time. I mean, we need more. Look, we gave tremendous amount to Ukraine, the Biden people did. And they were given free of charge, no -- no charge, no charge, billions, hundreds of billions of dollars. And fortunately, I built up so much during my term, I rebuilt the military and I also loaded it up with a lot of stuff.

And we have certain types of munitions that are very powerful that we have unlimited -- virtually unlimited supply. We have others where it's a little bit tighter and we're getting them in on a daily basis. As you know, our defense companies are building more plants right now than at any point in history.

They're building plants for the Patriots, for the Tomahawks, for everything. But we have certain types of munitions which are very -- they may not be as accurate. They may not be -- you know, they're not as elite. We have elite too, but we're -- we're watching that very closely. But we have certain types which are very powerful and very good, and we have an unlimited supply, and so we're in great shape.

But with that being said, we always want more. We have to have more. We have other things maybe come up, maybe come up and maybe don't come up. Hopefully nothing else does come up, but we're in very good shape. We have literally massive amounts of ammunition. Yeah.

Mr. President, on Ukraine, President Zelenskyy says his country desperately needs long range missiles or those Patriot missile batteries. Is that something that --

Well, I mean, we want missiles too. You know, we -- when Biden gave him so much, Biden gave $300 billion worth of ammunition. You know, when I left, this -- it was full and he gave a lot of it away. Now we're rebuilding it, and we're using munitions that are very powerful, very good but we wouldn't have been using them.

We could have used something else. But these are a little bit older type, equally as effective, and it's things that we have so much of. Plus, we have supplies of munitions all over the world, that if we ever needed them, we'd take that. We're supplied all over the world. But, uh, we have -- we're in very, very good shape.

Russia seems to have increased their attacks on civilian areas.

I know this. Yes. I know this.

That must be of concern to you.

Well, it's -- look, we're not involved from the standpoint that it's, uh, we're separated by an ocean. But I hate to see 25,000 young people a month get killed and that's what's happening. Between Russia and Ukraine, they're losing, on average, 25,000, mostly soldiers a month. And, you know, we're working on it and I think we're making progress.

But it's a violent, very violent war. There's a lot of hatred in that war, and a lot of hatred between the two leaders. I settled eight wars. I thought this would be maybe one of the easier ones and it turned out to be the most difficult, but progress is being made. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.

Thank you very much.