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. 14th Amendment, Section 1, Constitution of the United States of America
The Supreme Court just handed down what is almost certainly the most destructive and downright stupid ruling in its 250 year history.
Donald Trump wants to repeal birthright citizenship, which is clearly spelled out in the Constitution. This is not a fuzzy wuzzy part of the Constitution.
The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1, states: “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.”
This means that anyone born within the geographical boundaries of the United States, and not subject to a foreign power, is automatically a U.S. citizen. It would take a Constitutional Amendment to change that. Either that, or a totally renegade Supreme Court with absolutely zero interest in what the Constitution says.
The Roberts Court is close to a renegade court. Last year’s immunity ruling, which, ironically, they also handed down just before July 4, turned the president into an elected dictator. That is something anyone with even a passing understanding of history and our Constitution would know was in-your-face confabulation on the part of the Court.
The Constitution of the United States of America was intended to prevent presidents from being above the law, not turn them into absolute dictators. The Court’s immunity ruling was a dreadful departure from the intent of the Founders and the wording of the Constitution. It was a deliberate lie on the part of the justices who promulgated it.
It was also a wrecking ball applied to all our freedoms.
Now, this year and once again just before the 4th of July, the Court demurred from flat-out re-writing the Constitution and came up with a handy-dandy, willy-nilly idiotic ruling that basically abolishes meaningful citizenship rights altogether.
Instead of ruling as they should have that birthright citizenship is clearly spelled out in plain language in the Constitution, and presidents — even tyrant presidents — cannot just ignore it, the court tried to punt.
They had ruled against Trump a couple of times and he raged at them and the people who gave him their names to nominate.
He publicly attacked Leonard Leo, the head of the billionaire-owned Federalist Society which provides Republican presidents with the names of judges for them to nominate. When he lashed out like that, Trump was threatening the Federalist Society and the right wing toadies on the Supreme Court with the exact power that the Court gave him with the immunity decision they handed down for him last year.
Thanks to this bogus Nazi Court, if Trump says what he’s doing is policy, he can do it and no one can hold him accountable. He can order assassinations of American citizens and never be charged with a crime.
The only people on the planet who can stop him are the members of Congress. He can still be impeached. Whether or not he could be removed if he was impeached, is a whole other question.
Trump has already turned ICE into his private police, akin to the Nazi Gestapo. He is doing his best to do the same thing with our military.
But the whole question of impeachment is moot. Republicans are in the majority in Congress and they have repeatedly shown that there is nothing Trump can do that they won’t support.
He has nominated people to run his regime who are such terrible incompetents and all-around lying psychopaths that it’s reminiscent of the Roman Caesar Caligula, demanding that the equally servile Roman Senate declare that his horse was a god.
There is nothing — not the lives of the American people, not the survival of America itself — which would move the Republicans in Congress to do their jobs. They are Trump’s finger puppets.
So, when Trump’s claim that he could and would do away with birthrate citizenship and declare anyone in these United States was not a citizen and ship them off to an overseas gulag came before the Supreme Court, they were in a pickle. Did they dare go against the man they had given the power of an absolute dictator and risk his ire?
Trump, by threatening Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, had crossed a bright red Republican line. That threat told them in loud and easily understood language that he would ash can them all if they crossed him. The Supreme Court, the Federalist Society, the billionaires who own the Federalist Society … all of it. He would burn it all to the ground if they didn’t obey him.
They got the message. And so, cowards that they are — cowards that all Republicans in power evidently are — they decided to punt their way out of this.
Instead of blatantly re-writing the Constitution and risking the possibility that a future Congress with a spine might just impeach them, they made up another one of their willy-nilly, silly-billy destructive rulings.
Their immunity ruling trashed the rule of law by giving Trump dictatorial immunity from being held accountable for any crimes he might commit. Today’s ruling trashed the judiciary and made American citizenship into a worthless, conditional nothing-much.
They couldn’t go against Trump for fear he would turn the power of his office against the billionaires who own the Federalist Society. That would upset a lot of things, including the multi–million dollar “jobs” and other made up thingys that the right wing justices’ spouses are given.
I mean, what if the Nazi Six on the Supreme Court had to live on their $300,000++ salaries??? We wouldn’t want them starving in the street.
Soooo what they did was “rule” that when a district court makes a ruling about whether or not the 14th Amendment says what it says, that ruling only applies in that one jurisdiction. What that means is that you can be a United States citizen in, say, California.
But if you go on vacation to the Gulf States, you might very well not be a United States citizen while you are there. And that means Trump could send his ICE gestapo to grab you off the sidewalk, or out of a church or just drag you out of your bed one night. All because you took a vacation to the wrong state.
I have no idea how this might apply to passports, Real IDs and other paperwork. I do know that it sounds like the South may have just won the Civil War retroactively.
A state may not be able to secede from the Union. But thanks to the Trump-kissing Nazis on the Supreme Court, the various judicial districts sure can.
On another note for all you people out there who hate Hispanics so much you are willing to burn down this country if they will burn with it, you may have gotten your wish.
Think about it for a minute. You are a citizen because you were born in the USA. As a for-instance, my forebears came to this continent in the 1630s and some of my other forebears met the boat when they arrived.
My family is descended from people who fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea and then put on the uniform again in Viet Nam.
But I am an American citizen because I was born an American. I am in a very real way a birthright citizen, and so are you.
How long before Trump broadens his deportations to anyone he doesn’t like, no matter who they are? Trump has already said that he wants to deport American citizens. He broadens the types of people who intends to deport almost daily.
His Justice Department has also begun using their power to persecute his political enemies with phony prosecutions. ICE has arrested democratic elected officials for doing their jobs, including a United States Senator. His bogus “Justice” Department has gotten a grand jury to indict a United States Congresswoman for the “crime” of visiting an ICE facility in her district; something which it was her job as an elected official to do.
How long do you think it will take for him and his kangaroo court to get to you and yours?
The Supreme Court did a hatchet job on the power of the judiciary to interpret the laws of this land with this decision. They turned the system we have used and that has kept us free from 250 years into a crazy quilt of nonsensical nothing-much rulings. And they directly attacked the basic right to American citizenship that belongs to each and every one of us.
I look at the immunity ruling for a year ago, and this ruling today and I can only come to one conclusion. This Nazi Court wants American democracy to end. They are working to destroy the Constitution and America.