Film director Ken Burns has gained fame with his acclaimed examinations of the U.S., beginning with his dramatic documentary on the Civil War.

Now Burns is coming to Detroit to promote his latest look at a conflict that shaped the nation, the American Revolution.

He says it stands as a portrait of a people who came to defy a king.

But Burns says it also created unanticipated ripples that set both the nation and public broadcasting on the course they follow today.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Ken Burns: We’ve been working on this for almost 10 years. When I started, Barack Obama had 13 months to go in his presidency. After the Civil War series came out in 1990, I said we’re not gonna do any more wars. But I got lured into doing World War II because I heard that something like 40% of graduating high school seniors thought we fought with the Germans against the Russians in the Second World War and I just kind of banged my head against the wall and said, “Come on, we’ve got to do it.” And before the ink was dry on that I said we’re doing Vietnam. And before the ink was dry on Vietnam, somewhere around December of 2015, I just said, “We’ve got to do the American Revolution.” Because in these complicated and I think difficult times, it’s important to know our origin story. I also think that we have smothered the revolution in sort of a gallant, bloodless myth. It’s encrusted with the barnacles of sentimentality, perhaps to protect the big ideas happening in Philadelphia.

We don’t want to deal with how violent it was. And it was its own civil war, in a way our Civil War isn’t. There’s large amounts of civilian death in a small set of colonies that has around 3 million people at the time that the revolution begins.

Going beyond statues and monuments

KB: What I found is that by digging deep into the story it doesn’t diminish the big ideas, it makes them even more inspiring. I think the American Revolution is the most important event in world history since the birth of Christ. For the first time, people aren’t subjects, they’re citizens. That’s worked pretty damn well and has spread across the world.

And now, as we begin to fear for that system, it might be good for all of us, regardless of where you come from, to go back and find purchase, to find some place, somebody to identify with in the story of the American Revolution. And it doesn’t have to just be the top-down folks. They’re all there, all the bold-faced names, now more dimensionally real. George Washington’s a real person. John Adams is a real person. His wife, Abigail, is a real person. So is Jefferson. You get to know them in different ways then just people in history textbooks. But you also get to meet literally dozens of other people. A 10-year-old gal from Yorktown, a 14-year-old who joins the Patriot army right after Lexington and Concord. A 15-year-old who signs up the next year in the summer of 1776 and fights throughout the war. Free and enslaved African Americans, Native people, German officers, soldiers and their wives. The King of England, his ministers. The French. We like to think of it as our little struggle to throw off tyranny. But it is, in fact, this global struggle that is the third or the fourth world war fought over the prize of North America. It’s just as good a story as I’ve ever come across.

Democracy was not the plan

Quinn Klinefelter, WDET News: In some of the episodes the narrators call it the most consequential revolution in history. They also say the founders were not doing it to create a democracy, that democracy came as an unintended consequence. That sounds a bit different from what many believe was a fight to free ourselves from a king.

KB: So think about it. The guys that sort of foment the revolution are men of property, sometimes of wealth. They’re certainly free of debt. And they assume they’re going to create a republic of an aristocracy, what today we’d call elites, though it didn’t have any of its pejorative connotations then. It meant the best of the best. But in order to win that war, in order to beat the British, it’s not going to be the sturdy militiamen who are going to disappear to plant crops or disappear to go back because they miss their family. It’s going to be teenagers. It’s going to be ne’er do wells. It’s going to be felons. It’s going to be second and third sons without the chance of an inheritance. Those people are going to do the fighting and be there at the ultimate victory. You’re going to have to throw them something.

So, beginning in Pennsylvania with their state constitution, they’re beginning to extend it not just to propertied men, white men, but to all men. The quarrel over the rights of British citizens becomes blown out into universal rights. Remember, this is the Enlightenment. They are taking these big new ideas and they’re saying, “Hey, we could actually start a government with these big new ideas.” Everybody’s been a subject. Now we’re citizens. That takes great responsibility. Pursuit of Happiness is not just a hedonistic pursuit of things in a marketplace of objects, but lifelong learning in a marketplace of ideas. That’s a big deal and you have to extend it. You’re gonna realize that 15-year-old kid from Connecticut who’s gonna fight throughout the war, you gotta give him something. So democracy is not the object of the revolution, it’s a consequence of it.

A film with no pictures

QK: You’ve developed a kind of signature approach in these documentaries, having actors read from old letters or journals and kind of slowly zooming in on photos and things. But there were no photos in the American Revolution, just paintings. In terms of pure filmmaking, how difficult was it to tackle something from almost 250 years ago?

KB: It’s tough to rely so extensively on it for a war. You put three or four paintings together and they start to look like cartoons. So maps take on greater importance, the actual documents and diaries, signatures, the stuff of where people lived. But it also required me to get over a kind of reluctance about using reenactments. Not to restage a battle but to follow soldiers for years and years. Having people who are fanatical about getting exactly the right uniform, whether it’s a French a German hessian uniform, a British soldier, an American militiaman, an American continental, the Native Americans, the Black Americans who fought on both sides, whatever it might be. To follow them around and do it in an impressionistic way that you could treat the live cinematography like paintings, then treat the paintings and the drawings and other things as if they’ve got dimension. And it works. I think people will really appreciate us getting out of our comfort zone and trying to figure out how to bite off more than we can chew. And then learn how to chew it.

QK: Do you enjoy getting out of your comfort zone and biting off more than you can chew?

KB: I’ve always done that. I have on my desk something from Tyrone Guthrie, the late founder of The Globe Theater in Minneapolis. And he said, “We’re looking for ideas large enough to be afraid of again.” And that meant taking risks.

A nation that was always divided

QK: This documentary about the origin of the nation comes as our current country is pretty bitterly divided. Do you see lessons from dissecting the American Revolution that you think could help bridge some of those divisions that exist today?

KB: The past is always a great teacher, so the simple answer is yes. But we’ve always been divided. Certainly our revolution is a civil war, in a way our Civil War isn’t. The American Revolution had, unfortunately, large civilian deaths. In our Civil War there’s relatively few outside of Missouri and eastern Kansas. It’s a sectional war, one part of the country against the other. It’s armies fighting. Only one or two civilians die at the Battle of Gettysburg, which is the biggest battle ever fought in North America.

What’s happening in the American Revolution is that civilians are killing each other and being killed. Loyalists are killing patriots. Patriots are killing loyalists. Both are killing the disaffected, those who sort of want to keep their heads down and not be engaged. There’s some battles in which there might be a British officer leading the loyalists, but everybody else who is killed or wounded is an American. This is a big deal. And I think it will be a surprise to people. First, to just sort of exhale and go “Okay, we’ve always been divided. Now, where can I find purchase in this story?” And I think what we will find is there will be strange allies among those who dedicate themselves to watching all six parts and 12 hours of the documentary.

They will begin to see the whole purpose of the revolution was to do something different in the world. This idea of citizenship and being responsible, that there are no kings, that this is anti-monarchical, the first time that it ever happened, is a huge, huge thing.

The assumptions, the superficial, conventional knowledge many Americans have of the revolution, I hope, will be blown out of the water. And then replaced with something much more complex. And that’s the problem. When we talk about divisions, we think about our political life, in which everything is binary. But there’s nothing binary in the world.

We introduce you to a person that we’ve all heard of, who is deeply flawed, who’s rash on the battlefield, who actually makes a couple of major tactical mistakes in the course of the war that lose two major battles. But without him we do not have a country, full stop, period. His name is, of course, George Washington. But to get to know him away from the dollar bill, away from the mythology of cherry trees and not telling a lie, is to meet somebody who is the only person you can say that if he had been killed, we would be speaking British English, or we would be speaking French or Spanish. He’s that consequential a person. You don’t want him as a one dimensional figure.

Choosing stories not sides

KB: Unfortunately, our political discourse is always an on-off switch. It’s a red state or a blue state, I’m right, you’re wrong, my way or the highway, whatever it is. When life, as we all know, is much more complicated than that. And I think this is where a good story can come in.

The novelist Richard Powers said, “The best arguments in the world won’t change a single person’s point of view. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” I’m not looking to change a specific point of view, I’m trying to be like an umpire calling balls and strikes. Sure, the highlight reels show Babe Ruth hitting a home run. But he only comes up once every nine times at bat, and a lot of times he strikes out. So let’s look at the whole picture. Who are the other eight players, right? This is what good storytelling is. And we’re drawn to good storytelling because of the degree of complication that exists within and between people.

We talk today, in this binary computer and media world, as if heroism is perfect. The Greeks, who we’ve inherited the idea of heroism from, knew that it was a negotiation, sometimes a war, within an individual, between their strengths and weaknesses. Achilles has his heel and his hubris to go along with his great strengths So all of a sudden it’s no longer white hat, dark hat. It’s succession. Everybody’s got motives, everybody’s got complications. Nobody’s perfect. Everybody is interesting. And that’s what we tried to do with all the histories we’ve told. But none seem more urgent than delving into a more accurate and complicated story of our founding

QK: Why none more important than that to you?

KB: Quinn, I won’t work on a more important film than this, whether it’s the Civil War or the Holocaust or Vietnam, even the national parks or the Roosevelts. Because I think it’s really important to come to terms with where we were born, what the hallmarks are of that birth, what the sacrifices were of people. And it’s not just me, I’ve heard this from people who’ve had the chance to see it over the last six months that it’s been essentially done.

The film raises the question of which side would I have been on? There’s no shame in being a loyalist. A loyalist is a conservative. The British monarchy is the best system of government on earth at that moment, so far. To say all my prosperity, all my health, all of this good fortune comes from that is to be loyal. The Patriots are offering something that has seems to have zero chance on April 19, 1775, zero chance of success. So instead of making the loyalist villains, they become important part.

We’re drawn to good storytelling because of the degree of complication that exists within and between people.

KB: We meet a guy, a loyalist, who has left his Vermont territory, moved to Canada, set up a legion, a regiment, of loyalists, and come back to fight. And during a battle he is about to lose he hears somebody say, “You damn Tory!” This person sticks him in the breast with a bayonet, it’s deflected off the bone, and he is obliged, as he said, to destroy him. The person is he’s destroying is his best friend growing up. That’s the American Revolution too. And that’s something in which we can begin to understand that it isn’t just these simple, binary structures. Certainly, because there are no photographs, there’s no newsreels, we’re back to the age of paintings. Some have cartoonish qualities, some are more accurate. But it’s hard to find a foothold. And what we’ve spent the last nearly decade trying to do is to give ourselves and therefore our audience, a foothold in which they can understand our origin story.

Government funding cuts are a call to action

QK: You speak of “complications.” Your documentary is also coming at a time when a presidential administration has cut funding for public broadcasting and clawed back money that was already given for the next couple of years’ budgets. How is the cut and the claw back affecting your work?

KB: It’s pretty devastating. We’ve directly lost over $4 million in money that was already committed to upcoming projects. Fortunately, not this one. The money had already been paid out. It’s so incredibly short-sighted. This will hurt Homeland Security, emergency alerts. These are all things that have now just been sacrificed. It’s really tough.

QK: Congress had designed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to be separate and hopefully not influenced by political considerations. Yet now the funding has been cut on grounds that a president says he doesn’t like the political tone of stories. What’s your reaction to that kind of move?

KB: I think it’s throwing the baby out with the bath water. PBS was the only place William F Buckley, who was the most conservative voice in America, had a TV show. And “Firing Line” ran for an awfully long time. It becomes terrible that in a country that’s born first and foremost in the First Amendment of freedom of speech and freedom of press and assembly and religion, someone would find that hearing an opposing point of view was bad. Because that’s not the way we roll in the United States.

QK: No one has a crystal ball, but where do you see public broadcasting in general going in the future, after all this?

KB: I think we’ll get through this. A huge majority of the people who avail themselves of NPR and PBS, a huge majority of your listeners, are not members of your station. But if we can up that number, we can offset some of the losses. And I then think our job is to begin to tell stories of restoration and repair, of reconciliation.

It also is incumbent upon us, with the gift of citizenship, that we be active. With our vote, first and foremost, but also with our education. That’s what pursuit of happiness means. You’ve got lifelong learning. And that’s what the sadness is, because that’s what PBS and NPR are committed to. So, I think we just have to give our effort towards supporting and sustaining this idea. The great gift of the foundation of the United States is that people were no longer subjects, but citizens.

Earlier this year, a University of Michigan student from China voted in November’s presidential election. He was part of a group of likely 16 noncitizens in Michigan who voted in that election.

That number accounts for a tiny fraction of the vote, less than .0003 percent. And those votes didn’t impact the 2024 November election results. 

But a number of people were upset by noncitizens voting. Last month, Republicans gathered to launch a ballot initiative to strengthen existing laws that ensure non-American citizens can’t vote in Michigan elections. To do that, their initiative would require voters to show photo identification to cast a ballot.

Many liberals, including Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, are against this measure. The voting official says, if passed, the initiative could suppress the vote. 

So what’s in this new measure? And, what case is Americans for Citizen Voting making to Michiganders to gather the hundreds of thousands of signatures needed to get on the 2026 ballot?

Producer Sam Corey spoke with Paul Jacob, Michigan chair of Americans for Citizen Voting.

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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A federal judge in New Hampshire issued a ruling Thursday prohibiting President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship from taking effect anywhere in the U.S.

Judge Joseph LaPlante issued a preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s order and certified a class action lawsuit including all children who will be affected. The order, which followed an hour-long hearing, included a seven-day stay to allow for appeal.

The judge’s decision puts the birthright citizenship issue on a fast track to return to the Supreme Court. The justices could be asked to rule whether the order complies with their decision last month that limited judges’ authority to issue nationwide injunctions.

The class is slightly narrower than that sought by the plaintiffs, who wanted to include parents, but attorneys said that wouldn’t make a material difference.

“This is going to protect every single child around the country from this lawless, unconstitutional and cruel executive order,” said Cody Wofsy, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a pregnant woman, two parents and their infants. It’s among numerous cases challenging Trump’s January order denying citizenship to those born to parents living in the U.S. illegally or temporarily. The plaintiffs are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and others.

At issue is the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The Trump administration says the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means the U.S. can deny citizenship to babies born to women in the country illegally, ending what has been seen as an intrinsic part of U.S. law for more than a century.

“Prior misimpressions of the citizenship clause have created a perverse incentive for illegal immigration that has negatively impacted this country’s sovereignty, national security, and economic stability,” government lawyers wrote in the New Hampshire case.

LaPlante, who had issued a narrow injunction in a similar case, said while he didn’t consider the government’s arguments frivolous, he found them unpersuasive. He said his decision to issue an injunction was “not a close call” and that deprivation of U.S. citizenship clearly amounted to irreparable harm.

In a Washington state case before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the judges have asked the parties to write briefs explaining the effect of the Supreme Court’s ruling. Washington and the other states in that lawsuit have asked the appeals court to return the case to the lower court judge.

As in New Hampshire, a plaintiff in Maryland seeks to organize a class-action lawsuit that includes every person who would be affected by the order. The judge set a Wednesday deadline for written legal arguments as she considers the request for another nationwide injunction from CASA, a nonprofit immigrant rights organization.

Ama Frimpong, legal director at CASA, said the group has been stressing to its members and clients that it is not time to panic.

“No one has to move states right this instant,” she said. “There’s different avenues through which we are all fighting, again, to make sure that this executive order never actually sees the light of day.”

The New Hampshire plaintiffs, referred to only by pseudonyms, include a woman from Honduras who has a pending asylum application and is due to give birth to her fourth child in October. She told the court the family came to the U.S. after being targeted by gangs.

“I do not want my child to live in fear and hiding. I do not want my child to be a target for immigration enforcement,” she wrote. “I fear our family could be at risk of separation.”

Another plaintiff, a man from Brazil, has lived with his wife in Florida for five years. Their first child was born in March, and they are in the process of applying for lawful permanent status based on family ties — his wife’s father is a U.S. citizen.

“My baby has the right to citizenship and a future in the United States,” he wrote.

Reporting by Holly Ramer and Mike Catalini, Associated Press.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided Supreme Court on Friday ruled that individual judges lack the authority to grant nationwide injunctions, but the decision left unclear the fate of President Donald Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship.

The outcome was a victory for the Republican president, who has complained about individual judges throwing up obstacles to his agenda.

But a conservative majority left open the possibility that the birthright citizenship changes could remain blocked nationwide. Trump’s order would deny citizenship to U.S.-born children of people who are in the country illegally.

The cases now return to lower courts, where judges will have to decide how to tailor their orders to comply with the high court ruling, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion. Enforcement of the policy can’t take place for another 30 days, Barrett wrote.

The justices agreed with the Trump administration, as well as President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration before it, that judges are overreaching by issuing orders that apply to everyone instead of just the parties before the court.

The president, making a rare appearance to hold a news conference in the White House briefing room, said that the decision was “amazing” and a “monumental victory for the Constitution,” the separation of powers and the rule of law.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “The court’s decision is nothing less than an open invitation for the government to bypass the Constitution.” This is so, Sotomayor said, because the administration may be able to enforce a policy even when it has been challenged and found to be unconstitutional by a lower court.

Rights groups that sued over the policy filed new court documents following the high court ruling, taking up a suggestion from Justice Brett Kavanaugh that judges still may be able to reach anyone potentially affected by the birthright citizenship order by declaring them part of “putative nationwide class.” Kavanaugh was part of the court majority on Friday but wrote a separate concurring opinion.

States that also challenged the policy in court said they would try to show that the only way to effectively protect their interests was through a nationwide hold.

“We have every expectation we absolutely will be successful in keeping the 14th Amendment as the law of the land and of course birthright citizenship as well,” said Attorney General Andrea Campbell of Massachusetts.

Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers in the country illegally. The right was enshrined soon after the Civil War in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

In a notable Supreme Court decision from 1898, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the court held that the only children who did not automatically receive U.S. citizenship upon being born on U.S. soil were the children of diplomats, who have allegiance to another government; enemies present in the U.S. during hostile occupation; those born on foreign ships; and those born to members of sovereign Native American tribes.

The U.S. is among about 30 countries where birthright citizenship — the principle of jus soli or “right of the soil” — is applied. Most are in the Americas, and Canada and Mexico are among them.

Trump and his supporters have argued that there should be tougher standards for becoming an American citizen, which he called “a priceless and profound gift” in the executive order he signed on his first day in office.

The Trump administration has asserted that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, a phrase used in the amendment, and therefore are not entitled to citizenship.

But states, immigrants and rights groups that have sued to block the executive order have accused the administration of trying to unsettle the broader understanding of birthright citizenship that has been accepted since the amendment’s adoption.

Judges have uniformly ruled against the administration.

The Justice Department had argued that individual judges lack the power to give nationwide effect to their rulings.

The Trump administration instead wanted the justices to allow Trump’s plan to go into effect for everyone except the handful of people and groups that sued. Failing that, the administration argued that the plan could remain blocked for now in the 22 states that sued. New Hampshire is covered by a separate order that is not at issue in this case.

The justice also agreed that the administration may make public announcements about how it plans to carry out the policy if it eventually is allowed to take effect.

–Reporting by Mark Sherman, Associated Press