The Brief

A former stoneworker named Lopez sat confined to his East Bay home, breathing with the help of a whirring oxygen supply machine through clear tubes pronged to his nostrils. After years of making kitchen countertops from engineered stone, the 43-year-old was diagnosed with silicosis, an often deadly lung disease linked to inhaling toxic dust the material releases when powercut.

The once-active father of four now awaits a double lung transplant. He can no longer support his family or walk a few steps without pausing to catch his breath. Two stonecutter friends died after working with the man-made material, also known as artificial stone or quartz. Three others are on a waitlist for lung transplants, he said.

“I feel desperate just sitting here unable to do anything,” said Lopez, an undocumented immigrant who worked in California for more than two decades. KQED is withholding his full name, as he fears losing vital medical care if arrested by federal authorities.

“It’s agonizing waiting for the hospital to call me so I can finally get the transplant I’m waiting for and be able to go back to work,” he said.

As silicosis cases surge in California’s countertop fabrication industry, medical and occupational safety experts warn that current regulations won’t protect hundreds more relatively young workers like Lopez from contracting the incurable illness. The state must act urgently to phase out hazardous engineered stone from fabrication shops, as Australia did, they say, to stem a growing health crisis.

Australia banned the use, supply and manufacture of engineered stone benchtops in July 2024, forcing major manufacturers to switch to silica-free alternatives in that market, though they still sell their higher-silica products in the U.S. The companies maintain that their products are safe if fabrication shops follow protocols.

A photo of a pair lungs with silicosis used in a Cal/OSHA presentation slide about the disease, and rising number of cases in California, at a public meeting on Nov. 13, 2025.

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“Silicosis is preventable when proper safety and health measures are in place to protect workers against inhalation of silica dust in the workplace,” a spokesperson for Cosentino North America said in a statement. “The company continues its efforts in research and development for the ongoing improvement of its products.”

Between 1,000 to 1,500 stoneworkers in California could develop silicosis within the next decade, leading to roughly 285 deaths, according to California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA. The state is home to about 5,000 countertop fabrication workers, predominantly Latino immigrants.

Artificial stone in the U.S. market often contains more than 90% pulverized crystalline silica, far more than natural stones such as marble and granite. When workers powercut, polish and grind slabs of the material, tiny silica particles are released. If inhaled, they can lodge in the lungs and cause tissue scarring that progressively impedes breathing. Respirable silica can also lead to lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other illnesses.

To save lives, the Governor’s Office could issue an emergency declaration pausing the processing of artificial stone until a permanent ban is pursued through rulemaking, according to a Sept. 4 memorandum obtained by KQED. Drafted by a committee of doctors, occupational safety experts and worker advocates convened by Cal/OSHA, the letter was addressed to the state board responsible for adopting new workplace safety regulations, but was not sent.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office did not respond to requests for comment about his position on banning engineered stone in fabrication shops. A spokesperson with the Department of Industrial Relations, which oversees press requests for both Cal/OSHA and the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board, said the draft had not been vetted.

“The memo referenced … is an incomplete working draft by the Silica Technical Committee and not by Cal/OSHA. None of the recommendations are final,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Cal/OSHA continually works to protect the health and safety of California’s workers and enforces all regulations adopted by the Board.”

Several board members have publicly expressed dismay for months at the steep climb in silicosis cases, but the agenda for their next meeting on Thursday does not include decision-making on artificial stone.

Maegan Ortiz, director of the Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California, said that although the state approved stricter standards nearly two years ago, California has made little progress in protecting stoneworkers still inhaling engineered stone dust on the job.

Lopez adjusts the breathing tube connected to his oxygen tank in his home in Pittsburg on Nov. 15, 2025. (Martin do Nascimento/KQED)

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“We need to ban this. I think the concern is great, but it is kind of like thoughts and prayers in the face of other crises that don’t go far enough,” said Ortiz, whose organization has been surveying stoneworkers in Los Angeles County, the state’s silicosis epicenter. “We’ve seen the conditions ourselves on the ground in terms of the amount of dust that is there, even in these bigger shops that are following the regulations. Workers see the dust, they carry it on them.”

Since 2019, more than 430 workers have been confirmed with silicosis in California, including 25 who died and 48 who underwent a lung transplant, according to state public health officials tracking reported cases. Half of those sick are located in Los Angeles County. Nearly all are Latino men, some in their 20s, who said they didn’t know how dangerous artificial stone dust could be. About 40% of silicosis cases were identified this year.

Lopez said he worked in licensed shops using safety gear and methods his supervisors said would protect him. He wore filter masks and cut and polished engineered stone with machines that covered slabs with water to suppress dust. But mounting evidence shows silica particles in artificial stone dust are so small and toxic that it doesn’t take much to hurt workers. Silica can penetrate filter masks and remain on workers’ clothes and tools when water dries.

Australia tried banning drycutting of engineered stone, similar to Cal/OSHA rules in place since December 2023 and a bill Newsom signed last month, SB 20. Australia also tried additional safeguards, including full-face powered air-purifying respirators, ventilation systems and monitoring, like California’s strict regulations that go beyond federal requirements. But in both places, experts say, the sophisticated and costly measures are not realistic for an industry made up of mostly small shops with only a few workers.

“I think it’s completely unfeasible,” said Dr. Ryan Hoy, a respiratory physician and researcher at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. “I often use the analogy that you can work with asbestos safely, you can work with uranium safely, but you need to have in place very sophisticated control measures.”

In California, most fabrication shops are not complying with drycutting bans, respiratory protection, monitoring or other requirements. About 94% of 107 worksites investigated by Cal/OSHA had violations of the silica regulations as of Oct. 16.

Lopez’s wife said she wished her husband had more accurate information from manufacturers, vendors and employers before working with artificial stone so he could have chosen whether to take on the risk. Considering the impact of his disease on her family, the 41-year-old choked back tears.

“It’s painful because I’ve always seen him working. He’s always looked out for us. He’s the pillar of our family,” she said in Spanish, adding that her youngest son is 3. “It hurts us deeply.”

Lopez’s state disability benefits have run out, he said, and the family relies on financial support from their oldest daughter, a 20-year-old medical assistant. He became one of hundreds of workers in the U.S. and other countries who have sued top manufacturers of engineered stone — including Minnesota-based Cambria, Israel-based Caesarstone and Cosentino, headquartered in Spain — claiming silica-related injuries.

Caesarstone, which generated nearly half of its $303 million in revenue so far this year in the U.S. market, reported claims by more than 500 individuals in its latest financial results. The company recorded a $46 million provision for probable losses, with $24.3 million covered by insurance. But costs could grow, as most of the 320 U.S. claims are awaiting trial.

Caesarstone won one case in the U.S., which remains under appeal, and settled another this year, according to Nahum Trust, Caesarstone’s chief financial officer, during an earnings call this month. Last year, a jury awarded a 34-year-old stoneworker $52 million after finding Caesarstone and other companies liable, a decision the company has appealed.

The company developed crystalline silica-free countertop surfaces in preparation for restrictions in Australia and recently unveiled what it advertises as safer alternatives for fabrication workers in the U.S. Caesarstone’s sales were down this quarter in the U.S. and Canada, due to softness in the market and competitive pressures, according to Trust, but sales are up in Australia.

A stone fabricator places his hand on a table that he cut at his home in San Francisco on Oct. 17, 2023.

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“Our first year of real growth in this market since the silica ban implementation,” Trust said. “This reflects early recovery and the successful launch of our zero silica collection.”

Cosentino said it has also moved to offer newer products due to safety concerns, including a new mineral-surface product with zero crystalline silica that will be available next year globally.

Cosentino, Caesarstone and associations representing manufacturers declined to comment on why they continue selling their high-silica engineered stone products in the U.S. if they have alternatives for the Australian market.

Global demand for artificial stone, a multibillion-dollar industry in the U.S., is expected to significantly grow. In California, sales are expected to increase even more due to efforts to rebuild the more than 16,000 homes and buildings destroyed by January wildfires in Los Angeles.

Consumers prefer the stain-resistant material because it’s often cheaper than natural stone and offers diverse colors and designs. But many homeowners don’t know of the potential health impacts to the workers who make their countertops.

Pulmonologists predict silicosis cases will keep rising, even if exposure to silica dust stopped immediately. By the time workers feel symptoms, the disease has often advanced, Hoy said.

“Unfortunately, that is definitely the tip of the iceberg of workers that are currently affected,” said Hoy, who screened stoneworkers in Australia for silicosis and treats diagnosed patients.

As manufacturers switched to silica-free products in Australia, costs increased, but consumers still purchased countertops for renovations and new buildings. The industry carried on without the old material.

Dr. Hayley Barnes, a pulmonologist who studied silicosis in Australia, said that initially, talking about banning the material in that country felt like a huge ordeal, with predictions that the building industry would collapse and jobs would disappear. But that didn’t happen, she said.

“The companies just made a low-silica or no-silica product, which is currently available in Australia and many other countries,” Barnes said.

Now medical director of UCSF’s Interstitial Lung Disease Program, she worries many cases in California have not yet been diagnosed, and stoneworkers are suffering.

“We could do better. It’s been done elsewhere,” Barnes said. “People would still get their houses and apartments built and workers would be better protected.”

Dr. Sheiphali Gandhi, an assistant professor of medicine at UCSF and a colleague of Barnes who treats dozens of silicosis patients, said she wants California to begin phasing out artificial stone countertops. The move would ensure consumers purchase materials that also protect workers, she said.

“We’ve tried all these regulations, but we still are seeing that the cases are going up,” Gandhi said. “We need to move towards the more effective strategies of elimination or substitution, where we really go for safer alternatives.”

For now, Gandhi must wade through a stack of about 40 additional cases of very sick workers she has been referred.

“It’s just like every month, my mailbox is full of more referrals of silicosis cases,” she said. “The number of cases is exploding. It’s insane.”

Before taking his last steps on the moon, NASA astronaut Gene Cernan made sure to scratch his young daughter's initials into the lunar dust.

He had some parting thoughts for the rest of humanity, too.

"We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind," the Apollo 17 commander said before departing for Earth.

That was December 1972. Now, more than half a century later, NASA may be about to fulfill Cernan's wishes.

Watch the launch live stream, set to start at 12:50 p.m. Eastern time, here.

As early as Wednesday at 6:24 p.m., an Orion capsule seated atop a 322-foot rocket will blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. If all goes according to plan, the capsule will carry four astronauts around the moon and back — sending humans the farthest they've ever been from our home planet.

The mission will be the first launch in the Artemis moon program to include a crew. It follows the uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022, which sent an empty Orion capsule on a three-week ride around the moon before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

This time, the Artemis II astronauts will first orbit Earth to check out key systems on the spacecraft, and then trace a figure-eight path around our lunar neighbor and back. The entire journey is expected to take just under 10 days.

This mission is a crucial step toward NASA's goal of once again setting foot on lunar soil, and eventually establishing a permanent lunar presence — including a moon base — with the help of international partners.

At a press briefing on Tuesday, Mark Burger, launch weather officer with the Space Force's 45th Weather Squadron, said there was an 80% chance of favorable conditions for launch day, though they were keeping a close eye on the weather.

Jeff Spaulding, senior NASA test director, is a veteran of many launches. He said that for his part, the reality that humans would soon be flying to the moon would probably set in during the final minute before ignition.

"That's when it really starts to hit home that, you know, we really got a shot at making it today," Spaulding said at the briefing. "And I know a lot of people are thinking the same thing, because you can hear a pin drop in that firing room as you count from 10 down to T-zero."

"After that, though," he said with a smile, "it may get a little bit noisier."

Copyright 2026 NPR

President Trump is set to address the nation on the Iran war at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday night, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying he would be providing "an important update," without providing further details.

On Tuesday, Trump said he expected the conflict to be over in two to three weeks, adding, "we'll be leaving very soon," and promising gas prices would then "come tumbling down."

Trump shrugged off what would happen to the blockaded Strait of Hormuz – which has cut off one fifth of the world's oil supply – saying, "we're not going to have anything to do with it." He said that it wouldn't affect the U.S. and would be something for other countries to deal with.

"They'll be able to fend for themselves," he said, having previously told European allies who have refused to enter the war to "go get your own oil!"

The assertion to wrap up the war quickly comes just days after Trump threatened to up the ante if there was no deal and Tehran didn't reopen the strait. He said he could seize Iran's oil and blow up all of their Electric Generating Plants and desalinization plants. He also said he was considering an invasion of Iran's key oil export terminal, Kharg Island.

But on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed his boss's latest comments on the war being over in a matter of weeks, saying the main goal of preventing Iran from being able to build a nuclear weapon had been achieved.

Rubio has expressed frustration in recent days over news reports accusing the administration of lacking clear objectives in Iran.

He said the objectives were: the destruction of Iran's air force, the destruction of its navy, the "severe diminishing" of its capability to launch missiles, and the destruction of its factories.

Regime change, previously touted by the administration as a goal, was not mentioned. Earlier this week Trump said he considered regime change had been achieved, despite the fact that it remains a hardline theocracy led by the son of the previous ayatollah.

Here are more updates on day 33 of the Iran war:

Fighting overnight | World leaders | Iran | American journalist kidnapped| Hegseth visits troops | Aid hold up | Peace plan

Regional Fighting overnight

The Israel Defense Forces said they hit 230 targets in Tehran while also widening an invasion into Lebanon. Meanwhile, Iran is striking back at Gulf neighbors, especially military bases used by the U.S. this week. One of those attacks injured as many as 20 U.S. service members in Saudi Arabia.

Since the war began over a month ago, 13 U.S. service members have been killed. Iran says more than 1,700 people have been killed in Iran.

People take cover in a bomb shelter as air raid sirens warn of incoming Iranian missile strikes in Bnei Brak, Israel, Wednesday, April 1, 2026.

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Also overnight Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed missile attacks on Israel, which the Israeli military intercepted. The Houthis have vowed an "escalation" in attacks.

Israel's emergency services reported Iranian missiles fired at central Israel had injured 14 people, including children.

At Kuwait's international airport, Iranian drones hit fuel depots, causing a huge fire, a day after a Kuwaiti oil tanker off Dubai was hit.

In Qatar on Wednesday, a missile launched by Iran hit an oil tanker leased to QatarEnergies, which said no one was injured and reported no environmental impact.

UK, Australia leaders speak

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer addressed the nation on Wednesday about how the rising cost of living caused by the conflict will affect British citizens and what his government is doing to try to mitigate that.

He repeated a previous vow that the U.K. will only take "defensive" action against Iranian attacks in the Middle East and would not get drawn into the war. He also announced his foreign secretary would organize an international summit on the Strait of Hormuz aimed at restoring freedom of navigation.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also gave a national address on the war on Wednesday.

Earlier this week Albanese announced his government would halve the fuel tax for three months to give Australians some respite from the rising costs.

He urged Australians to use public transport and not to hoard fuel. He also warned that "the reality is, the economic shocks caused by this war will be with us for months."

'Hospitality' is over, says Iran

Ebrahim Azizi, the head of Iranian Parliament's National Security Committee, said on X in a message to Trump that the Strait of Hormuz would reopen "but not for you."

People sift through rubble in the aftermath of a drone attack on a residential building in which one civilian was killed on March 31, 2026 in eastern Tehran, Iran.

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Referring to the period since Iran's 1979 revolution, he added: "47 years of hospitality are over forever."

Iran this week approved a bill to charge vessels for crossing the vital economic waterway.

"Trump has finally achieved his dream of 'regime change' — but in the region's maritime regime!" Azizi said.

It's not just vessels that are now trapped near the Strait of Hormuz.

An estimated twenty thousand seafarers are onboard — in an active warzone — and the U.N. is trying to extricate them.

Most seafarers are from the Philippines, Bangladesh and India and some vessels are reportedly running low on food and water.

The U.N.'s International Maritime Organization is negotiating with all sides to try to evacuate them.

American journalist kidnapped in Iraq

American freelance reporter Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped in Baghdad Tuesday, according to Al-Monitor, a Middle Eastern news site for which she has written.

Iraqi security forces said they intercepted a vehicle that crashed and arrested one of the suspected kidnappers, but are still searching for the kidnapped journalist and other suspects.

U.S. officials say they're working to get her released.

"The State Department previously fulfilled our duty to warn this individual of threats against them and we will continue to coordinate with the FBI to ensure their release as quickly as possible," Dylan Johnson, the assistant secretary of state for global public affairs, said on social media.

He said Americans, including media workers, have been advised not to travel to Iraq and should leave the country. The statement did not condemn the kidnapping or express concern.

Johnson said Iraqi authorities apprehended a suspect associated with Iran-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah, believed to be involved in the kidnapping.

Press freedom organizations expressed deep concern. The Committee to Protect Journalists called on "Iraqi authorities to do everything in their power to locate Shelley Kittleson, ensure her immediate and safe release, and hold those responsible to account."

Based in Rome, Kittleson has reported on Iraq, as well as Syria and Afghanistan, for years, according to Al-Monitor.

Reporters Without Borders said she is "very familiar with Iraq, where she stays for extended periods."

"RSF stands alongside her loved ones and colleagues during this painful wait," the organization said.

Al-Monitor said in a statement it is "deeply alarmed" by her kidnapping. "We stand by her vital reporting from the region and call for her swift return to continue her important work," it said.

U.S. defense secretary visits troops

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made an undisclosed trip to the Middle East to visit troops on military bases over the weekend. He did not divulge the location for the troops' safety.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks to members of the media during a press briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, Tuesday, March 31, 2026.

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"I spoke to Air Force and Navy pilots on the flight line who every day both deliver bombs deep into Iran, but also shoot down drones defending their base. Many had just returned from the skies of Iran and Tehran," he told reporters in a briefing Tuesday.

He said he "witnessed an urgency to finish the job" and tried to draw a comparison with America's earlier drawn-out wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said the U.S. is improving bunkers and layered air defenses as a priority to protect troops and aircraft.

This comes after more than a dozen U.S. service members were injured, several severely, and U.S. aircraft were damaged in Iranian strikes on a base in Saudi Arabia last Friday. The Pentagon says 13 U.S. service members have been killed and 300 wounded in what it calls Operation Epic Fury.

He repeated the administration's assertion that the U.S. is negotiating with Iran, despite Iranian officials' denial that talks are happening.

Aid hold up

The World Food Program says tens of thousands of tons of food aid are stuck in ports as a consequence of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

The WFP says there is a whole disruption in the global supply chain with carriers not able to use the Strait of Hormuz and choosing not to use the Suez Canal through Egypt out of concerns of attacks there, too.

The agency says this is adding a month to shipping time and costing more because of spikes in fuel prices from the war. It noted that as people around the world pay more for fuel, more families will struggle to put food on the table.

Some 45 million additional people will fall into acute hunger around the world if current conditions continue through June- reaching 363 million globally, the WFP said.

Pakistan, China release statement

Pakistan's and China's foreign ministers issued a joint statement on Tuesday calling for talks to the war on Iran as part of a broader peace plan. The statement called for a halt to fire, an end to attacks on civilian infrastructure, and reopening of the State of Hormuz.

For days Pakistani officials had said they hope to help mediate talks to end a war that has seized up the global economy, pushed up the price of fossil fuels, and key commodities like fertilizer — and that has killed thousands of people, mostly Iranians and Lebanese.

The joint statement with China came after high-ranking Pakistani officials led a flurry of meetings with regional powers. China is Iran's biggest customer for oil — and it's seen as sympathetic to the country.

Jane Arraf in Amman, Jordan, Diaa Hadid in Mumbai, Quil Lawrence in New York, Giles Snyder, Michele Kelemen in Washington, Emily Feng in Van, Turkey, Aya Batrawy in Dubai, and Kate Bartlett in Johannesburg contributed to reporting.
Copyright 2026 NPR

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The Supreme Court chamber will be packed on Wednesday, as the justices hear arguments in a case that almost certainly will result in a historic ruling. At issue is President Trump's challenge to a constitutional provision that has long been interpreted to guarantee American citizenship to every child born in the United States.

Listen to arguments and live NPR special coverage beginning at 10 a.m. ET:

Trump has long maintained that the Constitution does not guarantee birthright citizenship. So, on Day 1 of his second term, he issued an executive order barring automatic citizenship for any baby born in the U.S. whose parents entered the country illegally or who were here legally, but on a temporary, or even a long-term visa.

"We are the only country in the world that does this with birthright," Trump said as he signed the executive order. "And it's absolutely ridiculous."

That actually is not true. There are nearly 33 countries, mainly in North and South America, that have birthright citizenship — including, among others, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.

Can't see the video above? Watch it here.

D-Day for Trump's attack on birthright citizenship

But Trump has long been determined to rid this country of its longstanding protection for birthright citizenship. Wednesday is D-Day in that effort, and to understand the issues, it's worth taking a stroll through American history.

While citizenship was not defined at the nation's founding, the colonists were largely pro-immigrant, according to University of Virginia law professor Amanda Frost, author of American Birthright: How the Citizenship Clause made America American, due out in September.

The founders "wanted to populate this mostly empty continent," she observes, adding that, in fact, one of the complaints against the British king in the Declaration of Independence was that the British "were discouraging immigration."

Indeed, she notes, after the Revolutionary War, even those who had been loyal to the king but wanted to stay in America were granted U.S. citizenship.

Trump's view of the 14th Amendment

Birthright citizenship didn't make it into the Constitution, though, until after the Civil War, when the nation enacted the 14th Amendment to reverse the Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision — a ruling that in 1857 declared that Black people, enslaved or free, could not be citizens of the United States.

To undo that decision, the post-Civil War Congress passed a constitutional amendment that defines citizenship in broad terms. It says, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."

President Trump, however, maintains that the constitutional amendment was intended to be more limited than it has been in practice. "This was meant for the slaves … for the children of slaves," Trump said last January. "I'm in favor of that. But it wasn't meant for the entire world to occupy the United States." 

But as the University of Virginia's Frost notes, the framers of the 14th Amendment had more than one explicit purpose. They wanted a clear, bright line definition of citizenship; they wanted the former slaves and their children to be citizens, and they wanted to include immigrants, many of whom were the targets of great hostility.

"I like to remind my students that between 1845 and 1855, approximately 2 million people from Ireland fled to the United States," Frost observes. They were fleeing from famine and harsh British rule. And while "there certainly was some prejudice and discrimination and xenophobia," she says, "their children soon would automatically become American citizens" when born on U.S. soil after enactment of the 14th Amendment.

Trump's interpretation of the 14th Amendment is avowedly far more restricted. What's more, it has not been embraced by the courts or the legal norms of the country for 160 years.

The counterargument

"The president's executive order is attempting a radical rewriting of that 14th Amendment guarantee to all of us," says Cecillia Wang, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Indeed, even as both Republican and Democratic administrations have sought in modern times to deport large numbers of individuals who have entered the country illegally, the notion of birthright citizenship has remained so entrenched that during World War II when Japanese citizens were held as enemy aliens in U.S. detention camps, their newborn children were automatically granted American citizenship because they were born on U.S. soil. And Congress later codified that understanding in the 1940s, '50s and '60s.

At the Supreme Court on Wednesday, the justices are likely to focus on some of the key court decisions that have protected birthright citizenship during the past century and a half. Perhaps most important among these is the case of Wong Kim Ark, born in San Francisco in 1873 to Chinese immigrants who ran a small business in the city. Back then, immigrants like Wong's parents were largely free to enter the U.S. without any documentation, but his parents eventually returned to China. And after their son visited them in 1895, officers at the port in San Francisco refused to allow him back into the United States, contending that he was not a qualified citizen.

Wong challenged the denial and, in 1898, the Supreme Court ruled in his favor. By a 6-2 vote, the justices interpreted the words "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" to mean that all children born in the U.S. were automatically granted citizenship. The court noted that only three exceptions were specified in the amendment: The children of diplomats were not deemed to be U.S. citizens because their allegiance was to another country; the children of occupying armies were similarly excepted, as were the children of Native American tribes. Of these three exceptions, the only one that still applies is to the children of diplomats, as there are no invading armies, and Native Americans were granted automatic citizenship in 1924.

The Trump administration, however, argues that Wong Kim Ark's situation was very different from many of the children who become automatic American citizens today, because Wong's parents, though undocumented, were here legally, by virtue of having a permanent residence in the U.S. And the Trump administration points to language in the 1898 Supreme Court opinion that assumes the parents had legal status in the country because they had a permanent residence in San Francisco.

The Trump administration makes an even broader argument. "An individual who is naturally born in the United States is only considered a citizen if their parents have allegiance to the nation," says Daniel Epstein, vice president of America First Legal, the organization founded by the architect of Trump's immigration policies, Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff. "It is a misdemeanor to come into the United States without authorization. That is a crime," he says. "That is strong evidence that you don't kind of meet the traditional notion of allegiance."

"We do not punish children for the sins of their parents"

Countering that argument, the ACLU's Wang will tell the Supreme Court that the men who wrote the 14th Amendment deliberately chose to confer automatic citizenship on the child, not the parent.

"And the idea — that actually goes back to the founding — is that in America we do not punish children for the sins of their fathers, but instead we wipe the slate clean. When you're born in this country, we're all Americans, all the same," Wang says.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is supporting the president's position, along with 11 other GOP senators, and 16 House members, who signed on to the America First brief.

"As a policy matter, birthright citizenship is stupid," Cruz says, "because it incentivizes illegal immigration. It makes absolutely no sense that someone breaks the law and they get rewarded with a very, very, precious gift, which is American citizenship."

Can an executive order trump a constitutional amendment?

The ACLU's Wang counters that Trump is trying, by executive order, to change the meaning of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, a measure that was approved overwhelmingly by the Congress in 1866 and, after a great public debate, ratified by more than three-quarters of the states. She argues that the consequences of such a dramatic change by executive fiat would have untold consequences.

"What will immediately happen is that every month, tens of thousands of U.S.-born babies will be stripped of their citizenship. They may be stateless because their parents' country of nationality may not consider them to be citizens. And so you'll see a permanent underclass of people who have no nationality, who are living in the United States, who can't pass on their nationality to their children born in the U.S.

In a separate brief, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops stresses the problems that would be created by generation after generation of children who are stateless, with no country to call home, and no citizenship to pass on to their children.

"The children … would be the ones to bear the brunt of this," says Bishop Daniel Flores, vice president of the bishops conference. "I have people asking this now in my diocese. 'Bishop, am I going to get into trouble if I give food to somebody that I'm not sure of their documentation? … Can we help these people? Because we think we need to, because they're people and they were born here."

The Trump administration counters that birthright citizenship raises two other problems: a generic potential threat to national security and the problem of so-called "birth tourism."

In fact, even birthright defenders concede that a cottage industry has long existed in which women pay money to come to the U.S. and have their children here. But the numbers are consistently very small. Even the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors limited immigration, estimates only 20,000 to 26,000 birth tourism children are born in the U.S. each year, compared to the overall birth count of 3.6 million babies born each year.

Daniel Epstein of America First Legal contends that numbers are not important. "I view just one illegal act as illegal, and birth tourism is illegal and it's against the law, and the law matters."

Population experts say that if automatic birthright citizenship were to be voided, the consequences would be profound — and counterintuitive. The Population Research Institute at Penn State, for instance, estimates that a repeal of birthright citizenship would result in 2.7 million more people living here illegally by 2045, people who previously would have been entitled to birthright citizenship, but now have no such citizenship for themselves or to pass on to their children or the generations thereafter.

Also likely to come up at today's Supreme Court argument are practical questions, like those raised by Justice Brett Kavanaugh last year in a related case. How would a hospital know that the parents of a child are illegally in the country? What would hospitals do with a newborn? What would states do? The answer from Trump's solicitor general, D. John Sauer, was "Federal officials will have to figure that out."

Copyright 2026 NPR

With the exception of a stray morning shower here and there, Southern California is in for a dry and sunny afternoon.

The afternoon sun will warm up the area a few degrees today. For the coasts, we're looking at highs around 67 degrees and up to the low 70s for the inland coast.

The valleys will see similar temperatures with highs from 68 to 74 degrees. The Inland Empire, meanwhile, will be cooler with highs around 63 degrees.

In Coachella Valley, temps will reach 81 to 86 degrees.

A wind advisory still is in effect for the San Bernardino, Riverside County mountains, including Coachella Valley, until 11 p.m. Thursday. The Antelope Valley will see some gusty winds later this afternoon as well.