Trump says he's going to end constitutional right to birthright citizenship with an executive order

…unless one is a USSC Justice.

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Gotcha, that makes sense. You paint an extremely scary picture… some real 3rd Reich stuff.

Reminds me of the situation in Guantanamo… basically these assholes want a situation where there’s two classes of residents, one for whom constitutional protections do not apply.

Even if this is just being floated to rile up the base for the election, it’s very depressing how blatant the march toward fascism has become.

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Apart from else, what makes you say the blue wave is “increasingly unlikely”? What I’ve seen suggests that the Democrats still have a very high chance of taking the House, a low but genuine chance of taking the Senate (which is amazing with this year’s map), and a bit better chance of deadlocking it 50-50.

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That would be scheduled about ten weeks before the next presidential election, wouldn’t it?

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The clause just says that you can disenfranchise rebels without it affecting the number of representatives your state gets. It doesn’t say rebels have to be disenfranchised.

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Partly just native pessimism.

But also:

  • Gerrymander; it would take a twelve point national margin to take the House.

  • Intensifying and increasingly blatant voter suppression and disenfranchisement, and

  • The lack of enthusiasm for the Dems, brought about by their complete failure to reform or otherwise learn from the past two years.

The close races I’ve been watching have been gradually fading towards GOP wins (e.g. Beto/Cruz). The Dems have no momentum.

To be clear: I expect the GOP to hold both House and Senate, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the Dems scrape a narrow majority in the House alone.

Which wouldn’t solve anything, as (a) the Senate will block them, and (b) corrupt centrist Dems (who would hold the balance of power in this scenario) will happily do deals with the GOP while continuing to punch left.

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Oh sure. It achieved it’s actual aims but it hardly came anywhere near to “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” or even the first version of the executive order.

I wonder how the representatives are getting on with figuring out ‘what is going on’. I presume they are still all beavering away diligently at it. /s

Yes. I have to say I’m much happier with the Supreme Court judges who are at least obdurate enough to simply say 'This is not an issue for us to decide. End of opinion. Thank you for coming, goodbye."

I think in many cases that come to the US Supreme Court the justices who take that view are probably right. The US does use the Supreme Court to resolve issues which the constitution really leaves up to individual states or the federation as a whole.

There are good reasons why that is the case but it’s pretty clearly not what the Founders had in mind.

It does say states that disenfranchise minorities should get proportionally less representation in the House.

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Oh, I see what you mean. I completely misunderstood you.

That is rather a good point.

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Unfortunately when his distraction effort involves undermining the civil/human rights of a huge chunk of the populace, we can’t afford to look away. This is doubly true when he has the support of major figures in the majority congressional party. If he does something like this he can have federal executive agencies change their actions based purely on his word. Sure we’ll win the court case, eventually. No one hurt by the policies gets a do over for the time they couldn’t access services and were left effectively stateless.

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I think you are far too willing to assume that the conservative majority on the court is terribly interested in actually upholding the rule of law. Everything I’ve seen from the court post 9/11 tells me that there is a very real chance of them extending some Korematsu-like executive deference if they wave the national security flag hard enough. The deployment of large numbers of troops to the southern border sets up the path for arguing that the current group of people migrating north represent an invasion, words already being used. Providing a “wartime” rationale could be all the figleaf someone like Roberts needs to put a big dent in our system.

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Not if I have anything to say about it.

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No lie, there. What the world most definitely does not need now, is for its most heavily armed nation to be led by a dimwitted goon who sees him self as a comic action hero.

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I just remembered (perhaps incorrectly) that the entire concept of corporate personhood rests on the 14th Amendment, and that most of the times the 14th has been invoked, it was to successfully defend corporate personhood in court.

Is that what the framers of the 14th had in mind? If not, then presumably corporate personhood can just as easily be scratched out with a stroke of the exec. order pen, as it ostensibly would be for birthright citizenship.

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you can not change the Constitution without Congress voting on it and that takes a long time (usually). It doesn’t even have anything to do with the Supreme Court.

Of course, this is one of the many reason why it’s so important to vote - ESPECIALLY in midterms. This is how We The People keep Checks and Balances in government

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@anon50609448 isn’t talking about the Supreme Court changing the Constitution, they are saying that the SCOTUS could come up with an insane interpretation of it.

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it can’t even come up to the Court unless the Congress comes up with a change is my only point.

let’s not jump the gun.

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If they opt into the right wing interpretation of “under the jurisdiction of” they could certainly change the effect of the 14th, without having to change the wording.

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Oh that would be easy enough. For example, let’s posit a Trump executive order to all federal departments that ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ is in future to be interpreted to mean ‘has formally submitted to the jurisdiction by swearing an oath in front of a US official’.

No one whose parents have not demonstrated that they did that is to receive citizenship merely by being born in the US.

You now have an issue that can go to the Supreme Court.

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Yup.

This for example makes a surprisingly cogent argument:

http://www.federalistblog.us/2007/09/revisiting_subject_to_the_jurisdiction/

As always, the comments are shall we say… less cogent.

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