Правые СМИ и политики США обвиняют рождение на территории страны в угрозе национальному суверенитету

Right-wing media intensify conspiracy theories about birthright citizenship as a threat to American elections: “A huge national security risk” The Supreme Court’s affirmation of birthright citizenship renews right-wing media’s accusations of Chinese election interference Written by Zachary Pleat Research contributions from Kayla Gogarty, Hanne MacDonald & Jack Winstanley Published As the Supreme Court reaffirmed birthright citizenship in America is a constitutional right, right-wing media and politicians have portrayed birthright citizenship as a threat to both national security and U.S. elections, citing so-called “birth tourism” from Chinese nationals giving birth while in American territory. The origin of this narrative appears to stem from conservative author Peter Schweizer, a long-time associate of former Trump strategist Steve Bannon who has a history of reporting marked by errors and retractions, and his book The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon. Following the book's January publication, Schweizer promoted it in appearances on right-wing media and accused China of “massive exploitation of birthright citizenship” that will have “huge implications beginning in 2030 when these Chinese quote-unquote ‘U.S. citizens’ who've never actually lived here are actually going to be able to start to vote.” Multiple right-wing media figures and politicians have also amplified his claim that “at least 750,000 and possibly as many as 1.5 million Chinese, who are also American citizens by virtue of being born here, are now growing toward adulthood in China” — a figure which Schweizer says is based on unspecified “Chinese officials,” “Chinese research firms,” and a professor who is “very friendly with the Chinese.” Now, a wide chorus of right-wing media personalities, Republican politicians, Trump administration officials, and even Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito have all either directly cited Schweizer’s book or repeated arguments contained in the book to fearmonger about birthright citizenship, often echoing the conspiracy theory of China swaying U.S. elections and undermining national security through “birth tourism.” And all this comes amid efforts by right-wing media and election deniers to implicate China as a threat to our election system and force action by the Trump administration to seize power over voting ahead of the midterm elections. Jump to a section... - Right-wing media and politicians, often citing Schweizer, portray Chinese citizens giving birth in the U.S. as a looming threat to our elections and national security - The Trump administration and its allies are citing China to seemingly fabricate a national threat to America’s elections and seize control over them - Earlier this year, Schweizer peddled his new book, The Invisible Coup, and his conspiracy theory about China throughout right-wing media - Schweizer has a history of error-ridden books and discredited allegations - Right-wing media and politicians, often citing Schweizer, portray Chinese citizens giving birth in the U.S. as a looming threat to our elections and national securityAfter publication of his book, right-wing media regularly repeated Schweizer's claims, including around oral arguments for the Supreme Court case Trump v. Barbara in April. Additionally, the solicitor general cited the claims during his oral argument and Republican lawmakers and organizations cited his book in multiple amicus curiae briefs and letters, including to Cabinet secretaries, and invited him to testify to a Senate judiciary subcommittee. Schweizer also boasted after oral arguments that he briefed Trump about his claims and “the president immediately said make sure the solicitor general knows about this.” On June 30, when the Barbara decision was handed down, Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito cited birth tourism as a significant reason for his dissent in the case, writing: “The Fourteenth Amendment confers citizenship on only those children who, at birth, owe allegiance solely to this country.” Alito added, “The Court’s interpretation also has national-security implications.” Notable examples of right-wing media mentioning Schweizer's book and claims in reaction to the Supreme Court decision to affirm birthright citizenship include: - The day of the Supreme Court's decision in the birthright citizenship case, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon discussed his long-time associate Schweizer's book on his War Room show, saying the book “exposed … foreign governments exploiting our immigration laws and gaps that you could drive a truck through, where they drive tanks through.” His guest, Government Accountability Institute's Eric Eggers, said, “In my opinion, the Supreme Court got it wrong kind of at the top level. Now I'm not saying the Fourteenth Amendment doesn't say that people who are born here shouldn't be citizens, but the reality is is that loophole — the fact that the law says that — is being actively exploited just like vulnerabilities in our election system. It’s being actively exploited by people who want to undermine our sovereignty and undermine our democracy.” [Real America's Voice, War Room, 6/30/26] - Fox host Will Cain: “On the national security issue, let's just play that out … you have these Chinese birth tourism centers — a kid could be born here, taken back to China, raised under the Chinese Communist Party with that education system, and then have American citizenship to come back with those beliefs and run for the highest offices in the land, and have power here in America. Is that right?” [Fox News, The Will Cain Show, 6/30/26] - Fox guest and former Department of Homeland Security official Charles Marino: Chinese citizens having babies in America is “a threat to the national security of the country.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 6/30/26] - Fox host Jesse Watters: “Now the Chinese communists could take their pregnant wife to Guam, have a baby, fly the baby back to Beijing with a U.S. passport, and then that baby when he's older can get U.S. welfare, he can vote.” Watters continued: “Technically, when he's 35, he could become president of the United States. That's the stupidest thing anyone ever thought of.” [Fox News, The Five, 6/30/26] - On CNN, New York Post's Lydia Moynihan claimed, “We already know that foreign adversaries are exploiting this. There's been 1.5 million Chinese CCP babies who have been born on U.S. soil.” Moynihan added, “Do you want people whose parents are CCP citizens who grow up in China to come here and vote? Because that is what birthright tourism and citizenship allows.” [CNN, CNN NewsNight With Abby Phillip, 7/1/26] Right-wing media also repeatedly cited Schweizer's book and spread his claims before the case was decided: - The Charlie Kirk Show discussed Peter Schweizer's book, with host Andrew Kolvet claiming he is “exposing something that is truly insidious, and that is birth tourism — how our elites are using the birthright citizenship loophole, which needs to be abolished.” Kolvet added, “Why do we allow this to continue? It's because Democrats want to transform the electorate. They do. They hate America as it is currently constituted — as it’s historically been constituted. … They hate our European heritage.” [Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 1/19/26] - Newsmax’s The Right Squad promoted Schweizer’s book and discussed his claim of “potential threats to U.S. elections as more than 1 million Chinese with citizenship will be eligible to vote in our 2030 elections.” Host Chris Plante called this a “Democrat Party project,” adding, “We’re committing suicide, and so there’s got to be a bunch of Democrats behind it.” [Newsmax, The Right Squad, 1/21/26] - In The Washington Times, Emilio T. Gonzalez wrote of birthright citizenship that “the national security implications are catastrophic.” He argued, “The Supreme Court’s 1898 ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark affirmed citizenship for the children of legal permanent residents, individuals who had established their allegiance to the United States. It never sanctioned the wholesale creation of citizens by those with no connection, loyalty or antipathy to the United States.” [The Washington Times, 2/24/26] - On Fox’s Hannity, podcaster Katie Miller brought up a “shocking report” that there are “1.5 [million] Chinese anchor babies born in the United States,” calling it “a huge national security risk.” She continued: “China’s clearly playing the long game, just as Iran did, with putting students and professors at American universities.” She added: “It’s a huge national security risk to have so many foreign-born children in this country where allegiances are unknown. Do they pledge allegiance to China, or do they pledge allegiance to the United States?” [Fox News, Hannity, 3/19/26] - Fox News published an opinion piece citing “national security risks” from “future children born here to Chinese intelligence officers or agents of adversarial governments” as an implication of birthright citizenship. The article adds that “the same threat exists with the children of cartel leaders, whose organizations already operate inside the United States.” [FoxNews.com, 4/1/26] - Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo said: “It’s just extraordinary the levels that China has gone through to dominate and overtake the United States as the No. 1 superpower — I mean, even down to birthright citizenship.” Bartiromo claimed that “41% of birthright surrogacy numbers are Chinese communists.” Heritage Foundation’s Victoria Coates said: “What’s projected is that we could have more than a million Chinese citizens who could vote in our elections in the next 10-15 years because they’ve been systematically exploiting this loophole in our Constitution.” Coates concluded that citizenship “certainly does not mean being a pawn of the Chinese Communist Party having a baby that can vote in our elections.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 4/2/26] - Tim Pool argued that allowing members of the Chinese Communist Party to “have babies here who get citizenship” is an “attack on this country, its borders, and its people.” Pool said it was “weird” that Democrats were not supporting Trump’s executive order eliminating birthright citizenship. [Rumble, Timcast IRL, 4/2/26] - Fox contributor Marc Thiessen: “Peter Schweizer has documented as many as 1.5 million Chinese citizens have dual citizenship because of birth tourism. So that’s enough to swing an election.” Thiessen continued: “These are people who have never lived in the United States, might not even speak English, and have no loyalty to our country, but they can vote in our elections. Are we insane?” Guest host Ashley Webster replied: “Yes is the answer to that.” [Fox Business, Varney & Co., 4/3/26] - Without mentioning Schweizer, Glenn Beck argued there are “already a million Chinese children" who “have been born through the birth tourism loophole. A million.” He continued, "And they're being raised by their communist parents in China. But they're American citizens who will be sent here to vote. … And all of this exists because of our current interpretation of the 14th Amendment.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 4/6/26] - Writing in The American Conservative, author Peter Van Buren argued that birthright citizenship leaves open the question of a mass infiltration of the U.S. national security complex. Van Buren wrote that birthright citizenship leaves “a problem for America to deal with: Will a foreign power, say China, use the idea to groom an American citizen who also owes allegiance to China into a spy, perhaps taking advantage of his American citizenship and highly-desired Mandarin language skills, to infiltrate him from the earliest stages into the CIA, State Department, NSA or military?” [The American Conservative, 6/23/26] - - The Trump administration and its allies are citing China to seemingly fabricate a national threat to America’s elections and seize control over themShortly after the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship and overturned Trump’s executive order limiting it, the Trump administration began fearmongering over supposed national security implications of the decision. On Fox & Friends, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the Supreme Court was “dead wrong on this situation,” saying that Chinese citizens “and their tourist visas … come into the United States or our territories just simply to give birth.” Mullin added: “This is truly a national security risk that we’re having.” Trump himself wrote on Truth Social: “I would like to congratulate President Xi, and the Great Country of China, on their massive Birthright Citizenship WIN!” This ongoing conspiracy theory about Chinese birth tourism and a foreign plot to sway future elections is yet another attempt by right-wing media figures to orchestrate a narrative about interference by China in American elections, which is used to justify efforts by the Trump administration to subvert the midterms. For months, pro-Trump election deniers and prominent right-wing media figures such as Steve Bannon have been urging Trump to declare a national emergency ahead of the midterm elections to “justify dictating new rules to state and local governments” related to voting and elections. Some election deniers have also reportedly been circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting. The Trump administration has reportedly hired serial right-wing misinformer John Solomon as a government employee as part of a task force to declassify documents related to the 2020 election that Trump lost in order to bolster any declaration of a national emergency. Solomon has claimed, “We do know the FBI had grave suspicions that China was trying to rig the election, probably with help from people on the ground, to help Joe Biden specifically,” cited government documents that had been declassified at his request, and suggested China manipulated the 2020 election using states' voter registration databases. Bannon stated plainly on June 29 that Solomon’s “task force” would be central to creating a “predicate” for Trump to declare a “national emergency executive order.” Days earlier, on June 24, Trump posted on Truth Social that achieving the anti-voting rights goals of the SAVE America Act to combat supposed election fraud is a “national emergency.” - Earlier this year, Schweizer peddled his new book, The Invisible Coup, and his conspiracy theory about China throughout right-wing mediaThe conspiracy theory about birthright citizenship that right-wing media are pushing appears to originate with Schweizer's book The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon, published in January. Right-wing media readily helped Schweizer promote his book: - On January 29, the New York Post published an excerpt from Schweizer's book in which he claimed that birthright citizenship is being used by China to create a “group of influential, indoctrinated, legal citizens” who are “being raised to act in China’s interests, not America’s.” The Post ran the excerpt under the headline “How China supercharged ‘birth tourism’ and scammed American citizenship for up to 1.5 million babies.” [New York Post, 1/29/26] - Schweizer promoted his book on Fox News’ Life, Liberty & Levin, where he said: “This is a huge national security threat. And birthright citizenship, it’s not random, it's organized, and the Chinese have an industrial model for carrying it out.” [Fox News, Life, Liberty & Levin, 1/18/26] - Benny Johnson welcomed “total legend” Schweizer on his show to promote his book. During the interview, Schweizer said: “Migration has been weaponized. … This is an attempt to establish political control and political sovereignty inside the United States through mass migration and by activating those migrants that are already here.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 1/20/26] - During an interview about his book with Steve Bannon, Schweizer claimed that immigration is “a weapon deployed against us.” He also argued that Mexico has worked with “Democratic Party activists” and is undermining U.S. sovereignty. [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 1/22/26] - On Newsmax, Schweizer promoted his book by warning that Chinese citizens having children in the U.S. is a “massive, massive security vulnerability when you consider that the 2016 election was settled by 72,000 votes.” [Newsmax, America Right Now, 1/31/26] - On Fox’s Jesse Watters Primetime, Schweizer promoted his book and said: “The belief is that there’s between a million and a million and a half Chinese nationals that are quote-unquote 'U.S. citizens' being raised in China right now.” He continued, “That means they’re going to be able to vote when they turn 18 years old.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 4/1/26] - Schweizer appeared on The Daily Wire’s Klavan to promote the book and claimed that children born to Chinese nationals in the U.S. are “going to be able to apply for government jobs. He added, “So this is a massive exploitation of birthright citizenship that I think is going to have huge implications beginning in 2030 when these Chinese quote-unquote 'U.S. citizens' who've never actually lived here are actually going to be able to start to vote.” [The Daily Wire, Klavan, 4/29/26] - Schweizer has a history of error-ridden books and discredited allegationsSchweizer, who founded the Government Accountability Institute with Steve Bannon, has a history of reporting marked by errors and retractions, with numerous reporters excoriating him for facts that “do not check out,” sources that “do not exist,” and a basic failure to practice “Journalism 101.” His influence among the MAGA movement dates back to the 2016 election cycle, when then-presidential candidate Trump cited Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash during a campaign speech. A Media Matters review of that book found that it contained over 20 errors, fabrications, and distortions. News organizations and journalists described the book as “discredited” and stated that Schweizer made “leaps of logic” and “conclusions that go beyond the available evidence.” A two-year probe of a central, bogus allegation from the book during Trump’s first administration resolved in 2020 without any charges. Schweizer and Bannon’s work at GAI has been reported to be one part of Bannon’s long-time strategy of pushing right-wing conspiracy theories to wider audiences and subsequent mainstream impact.