The language of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution could not be plainer when it comes to birthright citizenship. It says that if you were born or naturalized here, you’re a citizen. Period. End of story.
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There is no debate.
And yet, there was.
This is settled law. To pretend otherwise is to play into the hands of this tyrannical administration and complicit Supreme Court. The idea that the breakdown of the vote upholding birthright citizenship was just 6-3 – and really 5-4, considering that Justice Brett Kavanaugh voted with the majority to strike down Trump’s executive order but disagreed on Constitutional grounds – should chill us to the bone.
It should have been 9-0.
It’s madness that the highest court in the land is making believe this is a real debate, and the fact we skated through this time with this foundational right protected should give us more than pause. It serves as a warning that nothing is sacred, and it could well be different next time. Because trust me, there will be a next time – possibly sooner than we think.
I’ll take the win. But my god, what in living hell is wrong with Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito (who strikes me as the unhappiest man on earth) and Neil Gorsuch? Why are they so determined to carry Trump’s water and do his bidding? Why do they so hate Black and brown people, and why do they see it as their mission to overturn the Constitution to serve their racist agendas and fulfill the president’s white supremacist aspirations?
Thomas’ dissent was 91 pages, nearly four times the length of Chief Justice John Roberts’ 26-page majority opinion. Roberts said, “Under the Constitution, they are citizens at birth.” Exactly. It didn’t require 26 pages. It didn’t even merit 26 words. Eight was enough.
Thomas wrote in his dissent, “The Court adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks (following the Civil War) but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support.”
What a complete load of crap.
Of course, Trump wasn’t going to just blithely accept it, either. The man utterly lacks the ability to take a loss graciously, as we are only too aware. Shortly after the decision was announced, he took to Truth Social to basically promise to push for Congressional legislation and render moot this whole “long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment.”
That’s right, the Constitution is so 1898. It’s now 2026. What are we doing following a document that’s generations out of date? Certainly, Trump has no use for it. Heck, he doesn’t have any use for the judiciary, either.
It isn’t as if Trump is following any principles in his willy-nilly smash-and-grab on immigration. Imprisoning people by the thousands in barbaric detention centers hardly shows any respect for the rule of law, much less morality and decency.
I doubt Trump views Tuesday’s ruling on birthright citizenship as anything more than a minor inconvenience to be skirted, much as he sees Monday’s ruling on states being able to count late-arriving election ballots as much more than a suggestion.
In fact, let’s take a deeper dive into how the idea of stopping the counting of late-arriving mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day wound up at the Supreme Court in the first place. The Republican National Committee challenged it, as if the very idea of continuing to count ballots inferred fraud.
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Everyone knows the elections in the United States are fair, with almost zero non-citizens voting. No election to date has been compromised by unfair practices. The only one attempting to cheat/rig/scam/game the system is Trump. That’s what the SAVE Act is all about.
You already understand all of this, of course – and that’s really the point. There is no doubt that, for instance, the 2020 Election was anything but a straight-up vote. But Republicans play a game of Let’s Pretend because their master demands it. And the Supreme Court lends credence to it by the simple act of taking up a ridiculous non-issue like late-arriving ballots.
Trump has never bothered to explain how cheating occurs with mail-in ballots, much less late-arriving ones, mostly because there is no explanation. There are no extra ballots floating around. They are only sent to registered voters. If ballots are not properly executed or they appear to have been tampered with, they’re summarily tossed out. Evidence would require a legitimate question where none exists.
But of course, there is never anything to back up Trump’s blather. Why does the high court bother granting it validity? My guess is it knows this lawless administration could at any moment ignore its power and rulings and go fully rogue – which, if we’re being honest, looks as if it may happen anyway.
I’m guessing Trump will figure out a way to pack the Postal Regulatory Commission to do his bidding on mail-in ballots, SAVE Act or no SAVE Act. In the face of resistance, he just does whatever he wants, and what he wants in this case is to force everyone who votes to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship and ban mail-in voting, particularly in blue states.
How can Trump skirt the law to do it? Watch him. He figures out a way. My hope is, of course, that no matter what kind of bull he tries to pull off, it won’t work. Republicans vote by mail, too – as does he – and hanging their midterm hopes on suppressing the vote is just as likely to backfire this time.
A larger question may be what Trump will do once he loses in November. It could be another January 6-style insurrection, but bigger. This time, he’s got his Proud Boys/Oath Keepers/Three Percenters militia to call upon to counter the results of a free and fair election in an even more organized way.
I can see it now: Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch donning their robes, defiantly raising their gavels and leading the charge of the ICE brigade. They fear not, as they know the anarchic king they created will pardon them.
(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)
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