Italy has to beat Northern Ireland then Wales or Bosnia to return to the World Cup

ZURICH (AP) — Italy was stopped by Sweden from getting to the 2018 World Cup. It was North Macedonia in 2022. Now it is Northern Ireland's turn.

Four-time World Cup winner Italy is back in the qualifying playoffs for a third straight time and the draw by FIFA on Thursday plots a tricky path toward ending a remarkable 12-year wait to play on soccer's biggest stage.

Italy first hosts Northern Ireland in a single elimination game on March 26 with the winner having to travel to face Wales or Bosnia-Herzegovina. At stake is a place at the first 48-team World Cup, co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The Northern Irish shape as a similar test to North Macedonia, which resisted waves of attacks in Palermo in March 2022 before stunning Italy with a single goal in stoppage time.

“There will be immense pressure on Italy, they have obviously missed the last two World Cups,” Northern Ireland coach Michael O'Neill told The Associated Press. "We have everything to gain in this situation.”

Italy coach Gennaro Gattuso, whose team was beaten 4-1 by group winner Norway in Milan on Sunday, declined to speak with the AP.

Among three other European playoff brackets, Ukraine will host Sweden with the winner then at home to Poland or Albania.

Ukraine played its qualifying group home games in three different Polish cities while the country is under military invasion by Russia, and could end up hosting Poland in Poland.

First, Ukraine must get by Sweden which finished last in its qualifying group won by Switzerland but earned a playoffs place by winning a Nations League group last year.

“We are playing a proud, strong football nation,” new Sweden coach Graham Potter said of Ukraine. "Everyone wants to play for their nation. Emotion will be a part of the game that we have to manage, and manage well.”

In 2022, Ukraine won a playoff semifinal in Scotland that was postponed for more than two months because of the war, then lost the decisive qualifying game at Wales.

Kosovo’s path to a first ever World Cup as Europe’s newest soccer nation is away to Slovakia followed by hosting Turkey or Romania.

Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, was accepted as a member of UEFA and FIFA eight years later at the same time as Gibraltar.

Ireland’s reward for remarkable back-to-back wins over Portugal and Hungary — with all five goals scored by Troy Parrott — is a playoff semifinal at the Czech Republic with the winner then hosting Denmark or North Macedonia.

Denmark dropped into the playoffs after losing 4-2 to Scotland's stunning stoppage-time rally on Tuesday that even topped Ireland's late drama in Budapest.

“I saw the reaction from Scotland after the win," Ireland coach Heimir Hallgrímsson told the AP. "This is what this beautiful game gives us. Long may that continue and we can keep the momentum.”

FIFA also made the draw for the six-nation intercontinental playoffs that do not involve Europe.

Iraq, which was seeded in the draw, will have to beat Bolivia or Suriname in a one-game playoff next March to qualify for the finals tournament.

Congo was seeded in the other intercontinental playoffs bracket and will play the winner of a single-game semifinal between New Caledonia and Jamaica.

The six intercontinental playoff games will be staged in Mexico from March 23-31 at stadiums in Guadalajara and Monterrey, which each will host four World Cup games next June.

A penalty scored by Iraq in the 17th minute of stoppage time against the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday sent coach Graham Arnold’s team through to the global playoffs. Iraq’s 2-1 win in Basra sealed a 3-2 victory in the two-leg Asian playoff.

“It was crazy scenes, and it was incredible results, and now we're here,” Arnold told the AP.

Iraq’s only World Cup appearance was in 1986, and Arnold coached his home nation Australia at the 2022 tournament in Qatar, reaching the round of 16.

New Caledonia is the lowest-ranked team in the playoffs, at No. 149 of the 211 FIFA member countries.

New Caledonia effectively advanced to the playoffs by beating Tahiti 3-0 in March, before losing the Oceania qualifying final against New Zealand. Coach Johann Sidaner’s team has played just one game since, beating Gibraltar in a friendly last month.

A total of six teams will advance from the two sets of playoffs in March to complete the first 48-nation lineup.

The other 42 teams were confirmed this week when qualifying groups and playoff games were completed on four continents.

The World Cup draw is on Dec. 5 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. There, the six unconfirmed playoffs teams will be drawn as placeholders and should come out of the pot of lowest-ranked teams in the seeded draw.

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

The FIFA World Cup Trophy is displayed during the FIFA World Cup 2026 playoff draw in Zurich, Switzerland, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (Claudio Thoma/Keystone via AP)

The UEFA Playoff tree is shown on a screen next to Manolo Zubiria, Chief Tournament Officer for the FIFA World Cup 2026, left, and host Melanie Winiger during the FIFA World Cup 2026 playoff draw in Zurich, Switzerland, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (Claudio Thoma/Keystone via AP)

FIFA President Gianni Infantino, left, poses with Christian Karembeu during the FIFA World Cup 2026 playoff draw in Zurich, Switzerland, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (Claudio Thoma/Keystone via AP)

Marco Materazzi draws Italy during the FIFA World Cup 2026 playoff draw in Zurich, Switzerland, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (Claudio Thoma/Keystone via AP)

Italy's head coach Gennaro Gattuso walks under the rain before the start of the 2026 World Cup Group I qualifier soccer match between Italy and Norway in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Nov. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has begun hearing arguments over the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to someone in the country illegally or temporarily.

The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed on Jan. 20, 2025, the first day of his second term, is part of his Republican administration’s broad immigration crackdown.

Trump is in attendance; he is the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the nation’s highest court.

Every lower court to have considered the issue has found the order illegal and prevented it from taking effect. A definitive ruling by the nation’s highest court is expected by early summer.

Here’s the latest:

More than an hour in, it’s the opponents’ turn

The ACLU’s Wang has begun her presentation in defense of birthright citizenship.

Sauer noted that the government is “not asking you overrule Wong Kim Ark,” which extended citizenship to children born in the U.S. to foreign parents.

But he added that it was “totally unambiguous” that the 1898 ruling “relates to domiciled aliens,” and not what he called “sojourners,” or temporary visitors.

Judge Alito is asking Sauer about the humanitarian issue of people who have been in the U.S. for a long time and are “subject to removal” but in “their minds” have made a permanent home in America.

Alito also says that immigration laws in the U.S. have been “ineffectively and in some cases unenthusiastically” enforced over the years.

He’s asking Sauer to address the “humanitarian problem” that arises with how to deal with those people when it comes to birthright citizenship.

Sauer is saying that when it comes to birthright citizenship the U.S. is an “outlier among modern nations” and is pointing to places in Europe who don’t allow birthright citizenship and suggesting there doesn’t seem to have been any humanitarian fallout there.

Kavanaugh says Congress might have used different language in laws enacted in 1940 and 1952 if it wanted to make clear that children of people here illegally or temporarily were not entitled to citizenship.

Much of the early discussions revolved around the concepts of “domicile,” or a person’s permanent residence, and to which government that person owes “allegiance.”

Solicitor General D. John Sauer began his arguments by noting that the citizenship clause “was adopted just after the Civil War to grant citizenship to the newly freed slaves and their children, whose allegiance to the United States had been established by generations of domicile here.”

It did not, he said, “grant citizenship to the children of temporary visitors or illegal aliens who have no such allegiance.”

Sauer insists that Trump’s order would apply “only prospectively.”

But Justice Sonia Sotomayor says the logic of the administration’s argument would allow a future president to try to strip citizenship from U.S.-born children years from now.

Sauer was asked by Chief Justice John Roberts about how significant is the issue of “birth tourism.”

Critics of birthright citizenship have long said that it attracts people from other countries who come to the U.S. in order to give birth so that their children can become American citizens. Then they go back to their home country.

Sauer was asked by Roberts about any data on how many people come to the U.S. for this reason. “No one knows for sure,” Sauer said, and cited “media estimates” for various numbers.

Thomas recounts that the aim of the 14th amendment was to make citizens of the freed slaves. “How much of the debates around the 14 Amendment had anything to do with immigration?”

Conservative and liberal justices are questioning Sauer’s history of the debates that led to the adoption of the 14th Amendment. Justice Neil Gorsuch says there’s precious little discussion about domicile, a key part of Sauer’s argument.

Justice Elena Kagan says part of Sauer’s case rests “on some pretty obscure sources.”

Many of the arguments in today’s case go back to the Supreme Court’s 1898 ruling in the case of Wong Kim Ark, which said a U.S.-born child of Chinese nationals was a citizen.

In that ruling, Justice Horace Gray wrote that Fourteenth Amendment “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory. That, he wrote, is “including all children here born of resident aliens.”

Roberts says it’s not clear how the recognized exceptions to citizenship, children of ambassadors and foreign invaders, can be applied to “a whole class of illegal aliens.”

Roberts says he’s not sure “how you get to that big group from such tiny and idiosyncratic examples.”

Sauer, Trump’s top Supreme Court lawyer, is at the lectern, defending the president’s birthright citizenship order. Trump is in the courtroom.

On American Samoa, an island cluster in the South Pacific roughly halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand, native-born children are considered “U.S. nationals” — a distinction that gives them certain rights and obligations while denying them others.

American Samoans are entitled to U.S. passports and can serve in the military. Men must register for the Selective Service. They can vote in local elections in American Samoa but cannot hold public office in the U.S. or participate in most U.S. elections.

Those who wish to become citizens can do so, but the process costs hundreds of dollars and can be cumbersome. In 2022, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal seeking to extend birthright citizenship to American Samoa.

An Alaska appeals court is weighing whether to dismiss criminal charges against an Alaska resident born in American Samoa after she was elected to a local school board.

Crowds watched from the sidewalks as Trump’s motorcade drove along Constitution and Independence Avenues, passing the Washington Monument and the National Mall on the way to the court building.

Justice Felix Frankfurter, a native of Austria, was the last of six justices who were born abroad. The current court is American from birth.

Still, the citizenship issue hits close to home for some justices.

Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson are descended from enslaved people who eventually had their citizenship established by the 14th Amendment.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s parents were born in Puerto Rico, where residents became citizens under a 1917 law enacted by Congress. The justice most closely tied to an immigrant is Alito, whose father was born in Italy.

Way back in 1841, former President John Quincy Adams represented a shipload of African men and women who had been sold into slavery in the famous Amistad case.

Former President William Howard Taft became chief justice nearly eight years after leaving the White House in 1913. Charles Evans Hughes left the Supreme Court for a presidential run in 1912, which he nearly won, then returned to the court in 1930 as chief justice.

In 1966, Richard Nixon argued his only Supreme Court case, which he lost.

Twenty-four Democratic state attorneys general put out a statement Wednesday morning saying they’re “proud to lead the fight against this unlawful order.”

While Democratic attorneys general have sued the Trump administration scores of times, the plaintiffs in this case are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups.

The Democratic attorneys filed court papers supporting their position. Twenty-five of their Republican counterparts filed a friend-of-the-court brief backing the Trump administration.

The only state sitting this one out is New Hampshire.

More than 250,000 babies born in the U.S. each year would not be citizens, according to research from the Migration Policy Institute and Pennsylvania State University’s Population Research Institute.

The order would only apply going forward, the administration has said. But opponents have said a court ruling in Trump’s favor could pave the way for a later effort to take away citizenship from people who were born to parents who were not themselves U.S. citizens.

The president and first lady Melania Trump showed up for the court ritual marking the arrival of a new justice following the confirmations of Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Justice Brett Kavanaugh a year later.

The ceremony for Trump’s third appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, was delayed a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and Trump, who was no longer in office, did not attend.

Traditionally the president has avoided attending arguments to maintain distance between the government branches — since the executive officer’s presence is seen by many as a way to pressure the independent court to rule in their favor.

Given the unusual nature of it all — Trump’s presence in the courtroom spotlights how high the stakes are for him, as the court’s decision will have massive consequences on his longstanding promise to crack down on immigration.

Last year, Trump said that he badly wanted to attend a hearing on whether he overstepped federal law with his sweeping tariffs, but he decided against it, saying it would have been a distraction.

Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA, told the The Associated Press that Trump’s attending SCOTUS oral arguments signals how important the president views this case.

However, Trump’s presence “is unlikely to sway the justices,” Winkler said, adding that the SCOTUS justices “pride themselves in their independence, even if some agree with much of Trump’s agenda.”

The fanfare of Trump being in the courtroom will make for a different experience for the justices themselves, however, as “Trump’s presence will make the atmosphere a little bit more circus-like,” Winkler said.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer is making his ninth Supreme Court argument and second in as many weeks. Sauer’s biggest win to date was the presidential immunity decision that spared Trump from being tried for his effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Sauer was a Supreme Court law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia early in his legal career.

ACLU legal director Cecillia Wang, the child of Chinese immigrants, is presenting her second argument to the Supreme Court. In the first Trump administration, a 5-4 conservative majority ruled against Wang’s clients in another immigration case.

It’s not an April Fool’s joke. Alito was born this day in 1950. Only Thomas, who turns 78 in June, is older than Alito among the nine justices.

In the post-pandemic era, the other justices allow the 77-year-old Thomas, the longest-serving member of the court, to pose a question or two before the free-for-all begins.

In a second round of questioning, the justices ask questions in order of seniority. Chief Justice John Roberts, whose center chair makes him the most senior, gets the first crack.

The justices have routinely gone beyond the allotted time since returning to the courtroom following the Covid-19 pandemic.

A buzzer and the court marshal’s cry, “All rise,” signal the justices’ entrance from behind red curtains. The livestream won’t kick in for several minutes, until after the ceremonial swearing-in of lawyers to the Supreme Court bar.

FILE - The U.S. Supreme Court is seen in Washington on Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

People arrive to walk inside the U.S. Supreme Court, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. The Supreme Court justices will hear oral arguments today on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)