When the Trump administration asks the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to deny birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants and visa holders, its legal theory will rest on a reinterpretation of a critical phrase of the Constitution. But when you plug their preferred meaning back into the historical context in which the Constitution’s Citizenship Clause was enacted, the results are nonsensical. In other words, the crux of the government’s argument simply makes no sense.
The first sentence of the 14th Amendment, passed by Congress a year after the Civil War, is the Citizenship Clause: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” When President Donald Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his administration that would deny birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants and visa holders, he premised it on the idea that undocumented immigrants and visa holders are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. This is the phrase the government is asking the courts to reinterpret into a fictional absurdity.
Honesty has never mattered to conservatives,
Why would anyone expect anything different now?
Don’t forget conservatives started the Civil War to protect their access to unpaid labour in the form of people treated no better than animals. They may have swapped political parties between 1865 and 2025, but they REALLY want that free labour again!
It really wasn’t originally about ending slavery. It was about the North’s right to not return the South’s “property” (humans).
And then it became about disposession of all slaves from their owners without compensation, because everyone realized that reforming slavery does nothing but give power to slavers who would just wait 60 years to build the political capital to reverse the reforms and have their medieval torture back.
Sound familiar? It’s what we did with robber barons and now we’re watching the second half in real time. Revolution is the only solution. In slavery and today, there is no reforming this system to “protect” anyone except the owners. Godspeed to the abolitionist.
Funny how every state that succeeded listed defending the institution of slavery as a reason for leaving the union and subsequently joining the confederacy.
I think the most accurate statement is the Confederate states left the Union to preserve the institution of slavery. The Union originally only sought to bring back the Confederate states and end the open rebellion. Lincoln was much more interested in restoring the Union than ending slavery, and in the early part of the war would have absolutely allowed slavery to continue if it meant ending the rebellion. Thus, restoring all states to the United States. However, as the war progressed it became clear there would be no easy resolution. Through the Emancipation Proclamation he was able to break the power behind southern production, the slaves, and push forward abolition. A cause he personally was always favorable towards, but unwilling to sacrifice the Union for.