Pulitzer-winning journalist likens Trump to Lex Luthor, says Superman “wouldn’t exist without birthright citizenship.”

Editorial Claims Trump Reflects Supervillain as Immigration Debate Intensifies

An editorial in The Hollywood Reporter co-authored by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas has ignited fresh controversy by drawing striking parallels between President Donald Trump and the iconic DC Comics supervillain Lex Luthor. The piece contends that Superman, a universally recognized symbol of American heroism, is fundamentally an immigrant—and that his very existence relies on the principle of birthright citizenship.

Written by Vargas and Andrew Slack, the editorial responds to recent comments by filmmaker James Gunn, director of the upcoming ‘Superman’ film, who described Superman’s story as a political immigrant narrative. “You can’t politicize the truth,” the authors assert. “Superman has been an ‘illegal alien’ for 87 years—a fact we helped America remember when we launched our 2013 campaign, Superman Is an Immigrant.”

The editorial chronicles Superman’s origins, beginning with his creation in 1938 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, themselves the children of Jewish immigrants. It highlights that Superman—Kal-El—arrives on Earth as a refugee, adopted by a Kansas family and ultimately becoming a symbol of American ideals. Gunn, in an interview with The Sunday Times, noted, “Superman is the story of America, an immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me, it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”

Slack and Vargas argue that Superman’s immigrant identity is central to the character, pointing out that the hero has confronted bigotry, fascism, and xenophobia in past comic storylines and media. The column also claims Superman’s existence is inseparable from birthright citizenship—a policy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment since 1868 but now targeted by the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul the U.S. immigration system.

“Today, that outsider would be deported. In fact, without birthright citizenship, Superman would never have existed at all. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, born in Cleveland to Jewish immigrant parents, would have been stripped of citizenship and deported to Nazi-controlled Europe—to face certain death in countries they’d never known,” the editorial argues. “No Jerry and Joe means no Superman. No Superman means no superhero genre.”

The piece further contends that DC Comics used Trump as inspiration for Lex Luthor’s 1986 reboot, describing Luthor’s comic book presidency as “complete with an anti-alien agenda.” The authors suggest that reality has mirrored fiction: “No one imagined the real President Trump would follow the same playbook.”

The Supreme Court recently restricted lower courts’ ability to block Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, though a federal injunction remains in place. The debate over this constitutional guarantee continues to spark heated discourse nationwide, as critics argue that changes could upend American values and affect millions of people born on U.S. soil.

Slack and Vargas conclude that Superman remains America’s conscience in a cape—a symbol of hope, inclusion, and resistance to fear. They warn that the real danger comes not from imagined threats, but from efforts to erode the very values that the character has come to represent over generations.