The Supreme Court’s ruling affirming automatic American citizenship for most babies born on U.S. soil has unleashed a new wave of right-wing panic.

But the ruling did not change the Constitution. It did not create or strike down any federal law. The Supreme Court merely affirmed what was established 125 years ago, which affirmed what the 14th Amendment said when it was ratified 150 years ago.

The president’s allies and top administration officials have cast the decision in apocalyptic terms, effectively comparing the ruling to treason. Despite the Supreme Court preserving a century-old status quo, Trump’s allies and right-wing influencers are reviving the violent nativism that fueled attacks against the 14th Amendment more than a century ago.

They’re now warning against an epidemic of “birth tourism,” turning pregnant women into the new boogeyman in a decades-long anti-immigration campaign.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said the ruling will lead to “national self-obliteration.” He called it “suicide” and “a deep knife wound in the heart of the American republic.” Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts called the decision a “tremendous betrayal.” MAGA lawyer Mike Davis called on the government to “get these pregnant women and women who could be pregnant the hell out of our country.” Self-described fascist influencer Matt Walsh said to “use whatever force is necessary” to repel “invaders.”

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin suggested pregnant immigrants are traveling to the country with “one week” left in their pregnancy and nodded along as Fox News personality Brian Kilmeade suggested pregnant women should be barred from coming into the country altogether.

Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles has already introduced a bill to do just that, while Sean Davis, the CEO of right-wing media outlet The Federalist, called on the U.S. to “require sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry” before suggesting that the country should be “dissolved.”

“A nation which can’t even restrict who gets to be a citizen isn’t a nation,” he said.

“Just physically being on U.S. soil does not make you a citizen or qualified to carry on or capable of executing the inheritance of this country,” Miller told Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime.

“We have people from all over the world, from third-world nations, nations that on their own would have never invented the wheel, let alone modern technology, let alone medicine, let alone air travel,” he said. “And they can just come into the country, have a baby at a hospital paid for by you and me, and then that baby is automatically a citizen? That baby can sit on a jury when he turns 18 and sit in judgment of you and sit in judgment of me and sit in judgment of our loved ones? Can decide who our mayors are? Our governors are? Our presidents are?”

American citizenship “means nothing if it is open to everyone,” he said.

The 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause plainly states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

In Tuesday’s decision, the Supreme Court held that the children of “unlawfully or temporarily present” parents are indeed “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. and are citizens at birth.

If allowed to take effect, Trump’s executive order that unilaterally redefines the citizenship clause would have torn apart immigrant families. Children would have entered a stateless limbo that forces them to navigate complex legal and humanitarian issues in an already-byzantine immigration system.

Trump’s allies are pushing to go even further by stripping automatic citizenship for virtually anyone without an entirely new bureaucracy to vet and approve parents and their newborns, which would upend how all families give birth in the U.S.

The idea that millions of very pregnant immigrants are entering the country on tourist visas solely to give birth to an American citizen isn’t new. The derogatory term “anchor babies” was popularized decades ago, and combatting “birth tourism” was central to the Trump administration’s oral arguments at the Supreme Court, where the government’s top attorney claimed that billions of people are “one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen.”

According to a 2020 analysis from anti-immigration think tank the Center for Immigration Studies, the number of “birth tourism” cases is 20,000 to 26,000 per year, or less than 1 percent of all American births.

The National Center for Health Statistics estimates 9,000 new mothers list their address in a foreign country, though that could also suggest those women want to take their child back home.

But the government already has tools to stop them. The first Trump administration gave the State Department wide discretion to deny visas to anyone who is believed to travel for the “primary purpose” of so-called “birth tourism.”

The Department of Justice responded to the Supreme Court’s decision with a threat to target “birth tourism schemes.”

“It’s a booming industry, and it will continue given the Supreme Court’s decision,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters Wednesday.

But the 14th Amendment “proved once again that it is stronger than the forces trying to hollow it out,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge.

“Birthright citizenship survived the Chinese Exclusion Act, Jim Crow … and executive order that would have essentially turned the maternity ward into a customs checkpoint,” Vignarajah said following the Supreme Court’s decision.

“Somewhere today, a baby will be born in an American hospital to immigrant parents. That baby is a citizen. Not conditionally, not provisionally, and certainly not at the discretion of any president,” she said. “That was true yesterday and the Supreme Court just made sure it stays true tomorrow.”

Shana Khader, deputy legal director at We Are CASA, an immigrant advocacy group that challenged the president’s executive order, said the ruling “reaffirmed what generations of children and families have known to be true: citizenship is a constitutional guarantee.”

“No president has the authority to unilaterally rewrite the Constitution or decide which babies count as citizens and which do not,” she said.