Pritzker bashes Trump order on birthright citizenship: 'We will not follow an unconstitutional order'

Trump's order, "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship," asserts that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution does not automatically confer American citizenship to individuals who are born within the United States. 

The amendment states: "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."

Trump advisers and some conservative legal scholars have previously argued that the idea of giving birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants is based on a misreading of the amendment.

The Democratic governor also took several swings at Trump as the 47th president unleashed a flurry of executive actions intended to make good on campaign promises to crack down on illegal immigration, end federal DEI programs and more. Pritzker, who is known to harbor presidential ambitions, said the rapid fire executive actions from Trump were not communicated to state governors ahead of time.

"They have not communicated with us. I'm reading the same thing you are," he said. "This is indicative of what you're going to see of the Trump administration for the next four years. It's chaos."

"He's got the oligarchs sitting on the front row of his inauguration. It shows who he cares about. It's the wealthiest people in America who are cow-towing to him and not ordinary Americans. He does not care about ordinary Americans," said Pritzker, who himself is a billionaire member of the wealthy Pritzker family, which owns the Hyatt hotel chain.

Pritzker claimed his biggest problem with the new administration is "the intent to attack people's rights. That is something we will have to put up with or deal with every single day of this administration."