Forgive me for asking a personal question. Have you ever peered deep into your refrigerator and discovered moldering leftovers festooned with bacterial spores?
That’s what the criminal defendant/convicted sex abuser did yesterday. But instead of throwing the stuff out, he served it on a platter to his suckers. Because he knows they’ll swallow anything.
In a video he decreed: “On day one of my new term in office, I will sign an executive order making it clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law, going forward, the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship.”
What better way to lock down his MAGA base, and fend off the ruler of DeSantistan, than to recycle one of his old pie-in-the-sky promises? There’s a zero chance that any president can magically end birthright citizenship by executive order, because all children born on U.S. soil are automatically deemed to be U.S. citizens – as guaranteed by a congressional statute and, most importantly, by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
But the dumb and dumber racists in the MAGA base aren’t cognizant of those little details. Even if they knew, they wouldn’t care. Trump shares their hatred of immigrants, and that’s good enough for them.
If they (or Trump) were to actually read the constitutional amendment, here’s what they’d find: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
All persons born. With no explicit or implicit exceptions.
Congressional Republicans – the “party of Lincoln” Republicans – championed that principle in 1866. And for more than a century since, Republicans touted themselves as “strict constructionists” who respected the literal language in America’s guiding document. Indeed, the birthright citizenship principle was buttressed by Supreme Court rulings in 1898 and again in 1982 (the ’82 majority opinion stated that “the 14th Amendment extends to everyone, citizen or stranger”). Plus, Congress reaffirmed the principle in a 1952 statute: “The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” borrowing literal language from the 14th amendment.
So why does Trump think (I use that word advisedly) that he can target immigrant babies by waving a magic wand? He said this in 2015, and he said it again in 2018: “It was always told to me that you needed a (new) constitutional amendment” to cancel birthright citizenship. “But guess what? You don’t…Now they’re saying I can do it just with an executive order.” It’s possible that “they” briefed him via the fillings in his teeth; the more charitable explanation is that Trump heard it from someone like John Eastman, a conservative legal scholar who opposes birthright citizenship (the same John Eastman who’s up to his neck in legal woes, thanks to his central role in Trump’s attempts to overturn the ’20 election).
The bottom line: Any executive order seeking to overturn birthright citizenship would be speedily challenged in the courts, so Trump’s new pledge is just racist theatrics as usual. All he can offer is fear of The Other, even babies of the non-Caucasian persuasion. Plus, we’re on the cusp of early summer, when the air heats up and some people get stupider with each blast of humidity.
It’s tragic that this troll continues to stress our enduring principles; the danger, as always, is that his primal impulses will sink us. As Samuel Johnson, the great British essayist, warned back in the 18th century, even civilized societies can fall prey to demagoguery, to the point where “reason by degrees submits to absurdity.”