Attorney General Charity Clark speaks about small donation campaign finance reform during a press conference at the Statehouse in Montpelier on June 18, 2024. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerVermont Attorney General Charity Clark is joining top prosecutors in 19 other states and cities across the country in a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order that aims to end birthright citizenship, Clark said on Tuesday. The lawsuit, which was filed in Massachusetts, argues that Trump’s order violates children’s rights under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — which stipulates that anyone “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is automatically a citizen — as well as under federal immigration law.Trump’s order, signed on Monday and slated to take effect in a month, would reinterpret the amendment to begin excluding children born in the U.S. whose parents are “unlawfully” in the country or who have “lawful but temporary” status. “I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America, and this executive order is plainly unconstitutional,” Clark said in a statement. “Babies born here in Vermont have a constitutional right to be embraced as Vermonters and Americans.”The lawsuit requests a preliminary injunction to prevent the order from taking effect. Clark noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the concept of birthright citizenship regardless of the immigration status of a child’s parents twice in the past. In addition to 17 states, Washington D.C and the city of San Francisco have also joined the suit with Vermont. Trump’s effort is also already facing separate legal challenges from the American Civil Liberties Union and from a group of western states. It’s among the first in what is expected to be a wave of legal challenges to the dozens of executive actions that Trump put in place just hours into his second term.In addition to moving to end birthright citizenship, Trump called for military personnel and resources to be deployed at the southern border, suspended refugee settlement in the U.S. and shut down a government app migrants have used to make appointments for admission into the country. White House officials told reporters earlier in the day that they were planning, also, to end access to the country’s asylum system entirely. Trump also on Monday ordered the country’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, an international pact aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, and from the World Health Organization. And he pardoned more than 1,500 people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, including some who committed violent crimes.He also proclaimed that the federal government would recognize only two sexes — male and female — and that he would end federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs, among many other measures. Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont, other states sue to block Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship.