Bruce Springsteen‘s “Born in the U.S.A.” has been improperly hijacked for years by people who’ve mistaken its seemingly fist-pumping patriotic chorus as a jingoistic anthem akin to the “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” chants heard at political events. Now, the 1984 track that actually describes the thoughts of a disillusioned Vietnam veteran lamenting his meager options back home is purposely being reimagined to fight an effort to change a crucial part of the Constitution.
Just a week before the Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments in Trump v. Barbara, a birthright citizenship case stemming from a Jan. 2025 executive order from President Trump attempting to curtail the 14th Amendment’s grant of automatic citizenship to anyone born in the U.S.A., Springsteen has joined up to fight the effort.
As first reported by Rolling Stone, The American Civil Liberties Union — which played a crucial role in the legal response to Trump’s order — have teamed up with Springsteen on a 30-second video soundtracked by “Born in the U.S.A.” that shows a series of different types of American families that could be impacted by the ruling.
“We’re reminding President Trump what it means to be born in the U.S.A.,” reads the caption to the video. “We’re honored that the one and only Bruce Springsteen trusted us with use of his iconic anthem ahead of our landmark Supreme Court case Trump v. Barbara, where we’re challenging President Trump’s attempt to overturn birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment speaks for itself.”
On the ACLU’s website, the organization wrote: “The Constitution, not the president, decides who is a citizen. President Trump has targeted immigrants since his first day in office, and his efforts to eliminate birthright citizenship are at the center of his cruel agenda to redefine who gets to be an American. But the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to children born in the United States — and President Trump is not above the Constitution.”
It also includes several data points about the 158-year-old Amendment, the repeal of which it said would leave five million children without birthright citizenship over the next two decades and upend the lives of hundreds of thousands of families by denying citizenship to people in the “only country they’ve ever called home — people who would be left in a permanent subclass of U.S.-born children who are denied their rights as Americans.”
The ACLU sued Trump within two hours of the executive order attempting to revoke birthright citizenship in the case the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on beginning on April 1, after several other lower courts already ruled to block the order.
The ACLU’s executive director, Anthony D. Romero, told RS he got the idea to team up with Springsteen two days after Trump’s inauguration, during an interview with journalist Katie Couric when asked about Trump’s day-one pledge to sign an order ending birthright citizenship as part of his aggressive immigration enforcement plans.
“This was among his first acts as president, and what it represented was breathtaking,” said Romero. “Birthright citizenship is a sacred ground for those of us in the civil rights community. It’s how our nation addressed America’s original sin of chattel slavery, making citizens of the children of enslaved people. It’s also how a nation of immigrants ensured we would all be equal — out of many one.”
As the idea came to Romero he said he started singing the “Born in the U.S.A.” chorus to himself and began working on the idea right away. “We began brainstorming a campaign to remind ordinary folks what it truly means to be American. What people feel in their hearts when they wear their T-shirts with the American flag,” said Romero. “When they stand up for the national anthem at baseball and football games. When they gather with their communities on July 4, Memorial Day, Veterans Day. When, like me, they hang flags outside their homes.”
Unwilling to let their opponents define what it means to be a patriot or an American, Romero said he wanted to send a positive, patriotic message and reach people who don’t normally pay attention to the ACLU or who their message doesn’t typically reach. He said the Springsteen track calls for our nation to “live up to its ideals,” and, when you listen to it, makes you proud to be an American. “The brassy refrain of ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ makes you want to stand up straight and feel good about the country you live in, the communities you’re part of, and pay honor to the values that truly make America great,” he said.
Romero also praised Springsteen for his recent onstage remarks during his shows calling out Trump’s actions, such as when he said the Trump immigration crackdown was “disgusting, and a terrible tragedy” just five months into the second Trump term. Then, six months later, Springsteen did it again, calling his song “Land of Hopes and Dreams” a “prayer for America, our community and no kings,” during a performance of the track during a screening of the Springsteen biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere.
Springsteen has continued to call out the Trump administration’s actions over the course of the past year, and Romero said when he reached out to the rock icon’s team they were immediately on board to support the case that the ACLU’s executive director called “one of the most consequential cases before the Court in a hundred years.”
The idea for the moving video, he said, was to let viewers see themselves and their neighbors as part of the “fabric of this nation — one that would not be possible without birthright citizenship and the generations of Americans who have built this country up.”
Check out the ACLU video below.