When the charges against Adams were revealed, he was accused of big stuff...like taking airline upgrades and helping the Turkish embassy navigate NYC's byzantine building code system; see BREAKING: We Now Know the Charges Against New York Mayor Eric Adams – RedState. The charges were framed to look big time, but they were eerily reminiscent of the hit jobs done on Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, where normal activities were mutated into federal felonies by lawyers out to get a scalp.

A sea change happened when Adams defended Trump at a press conference in the last days of the election: NYC Mayor Eric Adams Breaks With Dems Over Despicable Rhetoric: Trump Not a 'Fascist,' 'This Is America' – RedState. //

There was some speculation that Trump might pardon Adams; that didn't happen, but Trump did order DOJ to dismiss the charges against him; New: Trump Justice Dept. Directs Prosecutors to Dismiss Federal Corruption Charges Against Eric Adams – RedState. That's when the fun started. //

This shootout is nowhere near over. Bondi and Bove are still surrounded by disloyal and hostile staff. The judge in NYC is bound to do something other than accept the filing; otherwise, he'll be a social pariah. Ultimately, a judge can't force the government to prosecute a case it wants to dismiss.

It is good that this first battle came this early and over a fairly trivial issue. A lot of unreliable staff have been identified and are no longer employed. The attorneys who came to work for DOJ as a government service and not as a political commissar should now feel more comfortable knowing they have the support of the DOJ leadership team.

Pam Bondi wrote to DOJ on her first day in office, “Any attorney who because of their personal political views or judgments declines to sign a brief or appear in court, refuses to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination, consistent with applicable law.” There is no doubt she is serious. //

Skibum
a day ago edited
If you want to know if the prosecution of Mayor Adams was political, ask yourself whether the DOJ would have prosecuted Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago under the same circumstances?

The answer is "NO"! Johnson just got caught with a closet full of bribes with more to come and DOJ prosecutors are nowhere in sight.

Adams went off the Democrat reservation when it came to illegal immigration and Johnson did not. Adams was prosecuted.

The White House @WhiteHouse
·
Happy Valentine's Day ♥️

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Come here illegally
And we'll deport you!
4:44 PM · Feb 14, 2025

Alex Berenson @AlexBerenson
·
…and Trump’s approval rating goes up another five points
The White House @WhiteHouse
Happy Valentine's Day ♥️
6:12 PM · Feb 14, 2025. //

Cynical Optimist
7 hours ago edited
Roses are red
Violets are blue
We won all seven swing states
And the popular vote too

The country's a red one
The country's not blue
Trump can hire old Elon
And send aliens home too

They're cutting the spending
Cutting down on fraud too
If you were a recipient
There's nothing you can do

There'll be no more pronouns
Child sex changes too
No more trans in the military
DEI is all through

In comments to Fox News Digital, Homan said that he was asking the Justice Department for their interpretation of the law regarding impeding and obstruction, and that he is "well aware of the Constitution, but I am also aware that DOJ gives legal interpretations on issues like this to ensure ICE acts in accordance of the law.". //

He then suggested Ocasio-Cortez read Title 8 USC 1324 and 8 USC 1325,"statutes enacted by Congress, of which she is a part of."

"It’s not OK to be in the U.S. illegally. It’s a violation of federal law to enter this country illegally. It is not OK to assist those in the U.S. illegally in furtherance of their illegal entry and unlawful presence. I thought I educated her on this several years ago during congressional testimony.," he said, referencing a viral clash from the first Trump administration at a congressional hearing.

"She can call it ‘advising those who are illegally in the U.S. of their constitutional rights.' But we all know it’s really about evading ICE and how not to get arrested and how not to adhere to a federal judge’s order to leave after receiving due process at great taxpayer expense," he said. //

AUH2O
7 hours ago
You can lead a horse to school, but you can’t make her think.

getting back to his comments about Trump's deportation plans, it seems especially disturbing, if not ridiculous, that the Pope wags his finger at those while issuing actual Vatican decrees for those who might break through the walls surrounding his own city.

According to the document, if you do, you will be fined between 10 and 25 thousand euros and may get tossed into jail for up to four years. Now, that's some brotherly love right there. Sure it's hypocrisy codified, but you know, Laws for thee....etc etc. Clearly a case of it here. What I find really crazy though, is the outright defiance of something the Jesuits taught me called The Double Standard. We all know what this is, but in college, they referenced it in every one of the 27 credit hours that I spent in philosophy classes at Rockhurst. Basically, if you're going to apply a double standard in your moral convictions, you have no convictions at all, as your principles are merely situational. Malleable. Prone to manipulation by events and others. You're a "squish."

American Deplorable ™
9 hours ago
"Who's gonna pick our cotton?"

Dems 1860.

"Who's gonna pick our vegetables?"

Dems 2025

"We need more gardeners and maids"

Also. Dems 2025

"Hey where did everybody go?"

Jesse Kelly @JesseKellyDC
·
We’re about to find out what Pam Bondi is made of.

Any FBI agent involved in leaking that ICE raid better go to prison.

Not resignations. Not reprimands. Not security clearances revoked.

Prison. For a long time.
3:42 PM · Feb 11, 2025 //

Bill Melugin @BillMelugin_
·
NEW: Tom Homan says on Hannity tonight that DOJ has opened up a criminal investigation into the leaking of an upcoming ICE operation in LA. Says initial leads are pointing to FBI as source of leak, and added that whoever it is will lose their job, pension, and will go to jail.
3:19 AM · Feb 11, 2025

Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal
🇺🇸🇸🇻 TRUMP AND RUBIO’S PRISON DEAL WITH EL SALVADOR IS A LEGAL AND STRATEGIC MASTERSTROKE

Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have secured a historic agreement with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele that will allow the U.S. to deport violent criminals—regardless of nationality—to serve their sentences in El Salvador’s high-security mega-prison. This bold initiative will cut prison costs, reduce overcrowding, and enhance public safety by removing dangerous criminals from U.S. soil.
...

America is an outlier among developed nations in offering unrestricted birthright citizenship. Not a single European country does. //

the global trend is consonant with President Donald Trump’s recent executive order ending unrestricted birthright citizenship. The United Kingdom, which had birthright citizenship dating back to the “ancient common law,” did away with it in the 1980s. Ireland got rid of it in 2005. New Zealand a year later. Germany, which tried to grab the mantle of “leader of the free world” during President Trump’s first term, doesn’t grant citizenship to a child of foreign parents unless one parent possesses a permanent right of residence and has legally resided in the country for at least eight years.

But somehow President Trump is “cruel” for calling for the end of unrestricted birthright citizenship in our own nation? Why would a nation affirmatively choose to create an incentive for illegal immigration and prioritize illegal immigrants’ children over law-abiding immigrants who apply for citizenship and follow the legal process? //

Why go to such lengths to ensure naturalized citizens adhere to our laws and respect our constitutional ideals, if we then freely dole out citizenship to the children of those who have thumbed their noses at our immigration laws and at the ideals of democratic self-governance that brought them about? What message does that send to those who completed the heavy lift of securing legal citizenship by naturalization? //

In 2018, the Pew Research Center reported that in the last decade or so, somewhere between 6 and 9 percent of babies born in this country were to illegal immigrant parents — meaning at times the figure was close to one out of every ten births. Even at the low end, the number of those births — around 250,000 in 2016 — was larger than the total number of births in any state other than California or Texas.

So I have a question for these protesters. If they or the people they're protesting for want to be here, if they came here because they thought they had reason to be here rather than in Mexico, then why are they waving the Mexican flag? Why aren't they praising the U.S. and waving American flags? Why is at least one of these groups burning an American flag?

You don't make that case for why illegal aliens should be here when people are waving foreign flags, blocking cars, and causing disruption in the streets. That tends to tick off everyone on both sides of the aisle, and it adds to the desire for the American people to want to enforce the law.

You don't make that case when you burn an American flag. They act like illegal aliens have a right to be here and that the U.S. is in the wrong for actually enforcing its laws; they act as though we have no right to enforce our rules. They're actually helping Trump's point when they do things like this. There was already a mandate, and they're just making it bigger with such actions.

The White House @WhiteHouse
·
Kayla Hamilton, Jocelyn Nungaray, and Rachel Morin were murdered by illegal aliens.

Their courageous mothers had something to say to @SelenaGomez and those who oppose securing our borders. Watch ⬇️

6:14 PM · Jan 31, 2025

During 2024, but particularly during the election, we were assailed by warnings of the boogeyman of "Christian nationalism." No one was ever quite sure what it was other than using Christianity as a guardrail for public policy and guaranteeing Christianity had a place in the public square. Both of these ideas were insufficiently inclusive to satisfy the secular left.

JD Vance appeared on Sean Hannity's show on Wednesday, and, in my view, he gave a masterclass on how a Christian worldview provides answers to difficult problems. The intertwined issues were immigration and foreign aid.

Jack Poso 🇺🇸
·
Jan 29, 2025
@JackPosobiec
·
Follow
JD VANCE: There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world

A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. //

Immediately following this, he was hit by leftists shouting, "No way, that's not Christian." //

This is the type of stuff that is not only wrong, but it is such a grotesque misrepresentation of Christian thought that it drives many people away.

I had to look him up, but Rory Stewart is someone who is supposed to be important when up and has his trousers on.

Rory Stewart @RoryStewartUK
·
A bizarre take on John 15:12-13 - less Christian and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love… //

JD Vance @JDVance
·
Just google “ordo amoris.” Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone? //

What is ordo amoris? It is the Christian idea of "properly ordered love." All love is not equal. We are told to love God above all else, something the left ignores. In the same way, they use the English word "love" interchangeably for the eight Koine Greek words for love, those rendering love for God the same as homosexual sex because, you know, "love is love."

Ordo amoris was defined by Saint Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century, but best exposition on this heirarchy is in Saint Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica.

1. There is an order in charity, and God is the principle of that order. God is to be loved out of charity, before all others. The other beings that are to be loved out of charity are, so to speak, lined up in their proper places, subordinate to God.

2. God is to be loved for himself and as the cause ofhappiness. Hence, God is to be loved more than our neighbor, who isloved, not for himself, but for God.
   .... //

In fact, Aquinas, being Aquinas, even offered objections to his thesis and defended against the objections.

Then Vance returned to Mr. Stewart.

JD Vance @JDVance
·
Replying to @JDVance
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: the problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.
4:11 PM · Jan 30, 2025

Just as the Constitution is not a suicide pact, neither is Christian Theology. Just as we use the Constitution to order our public lives, we should use well-formed Christian thought to order our personal lives and, through those lives, order the nation. //

anon-todh
2 days ago
Christian hospitality is to welcome the stranger as demonstrated by Jewish law. Welcoming is to offer them food and shelter as they pass through, not to permanently support them. Jesus fed the 5,000 but did not open a housing agency and focus his work there. //

streiff anon-todh
2 days ago
food, drink, clothing, shelter, medical care...and then back home.

Laocoön of Troy anon-todh
2 days ago edited
In fact after Jesus fed the 5K, parts of the crowd followed him to another part of the lake looking to be fed again.

"They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”

John 6

Jesus was there to teach them about himself and God. Most of the rest were there to get another free meal. //

Indylawyer
2 days ago
This is true, but I suggest there is a more relevant distinction to be made: charity is an obligation of individual Christians, often exercised in churches and other organizations. It isn't something that can be done through involuntary taxation. Christians can and should be aiding strangers whom they find in their communities, just as the Good Samaritan aided the Jewish stranger who fell into his path. But it's not compassion for the government to tax people to do it, nor is it compassion for the government to forsake its duties to protect its own citizens by allowing mass migration - particularly when it is largely facilitated by criminal gangs.

She's crying over illegal immigrants being deported. I'm angry over American people, including children, suffering and dying.

My people.

Her people.

Yet the left seems to give no mind to them. It's as if they're too privileged, too American. I have a very simple question for people who give no thought to these victims.

Were these people worth sacrificing for the act of giving a home to foreign nationals illegally, even if it means we invite unmitigated crime and violence? Are you willing to look the families of the murdered, raped, or kidnapped in the eye and say, "your unimaginable pain is necessary for the dice roll that the person who came here illegally might be upright and good?"

As it stands, the actions from people like Gomez are a wordless affirmation that, yes, your life, and even the life and safety of your child, are worth losing in the name of a simple virtue signal.

This isn't virtue, this is sickness. This is willing to sacrifice innocents on the altar of your projection of being a good person. This isn't compassion, this is spite disguised as pride in one's heritage and care for the needy.

Whose side is the left on. Not yours, but I'd venture to guess it's not even on the side of the people they profess to care about.

Their side is their own feelings about themselves and how they're seen to the wider world. So long as they feel like they're compassionate and virtuous, the world can burn to ashes, blood can flow, and their own nation can erode to death from within, but at least they can say to themselves "I did it in the name of doing right by the underprivileged."

There's no arguing with these different numbers that a majority of Americans support this because they're all the same across the different pollsters, Enten said. 

Enten, the data nerd, also explained how the numbers have changed over time, from Trump's first term to now, that it's now 20 points higher than it was just before Trump came into office the last time. Enten concluded that gave Trump a "lot more leverage to go with the American people" to address the issue, "I think the American people are going to give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt to do what he wants to do.”

Enten also noted the number of people — 55 percent — who want legal and illegal immigration reduced. That's a 14-point rise from 2023. 

Bill Melugin @BillMelugin_
·
NEW: Per sources, Border Patrol recorded just 582 illegal crossings at the southern border yesterday, with not a single one of the nine sectors hitting 200.
I’ve never seen anything this low in all of my border coverage. The numbers were already flat/low in Biden’s final week,… The numbers were already flat/low in Biden’s final week, bouncing between 1,200-1,400 illegal crossings daily, but the numbers have been falling off a cliff since Trump took office.
6:03 PM · Jan 27, 2025

Bill Melugin @BillMelugin_
·
Replying to @oldmandierkop
Got to a point where we wouldn't even get the camera out for a group of 500 it was so routine.
11:53 PM · Jan 27, 2025

The wailing and gnashing of teeth happening from the left, even that from people like the weeping Selena Gomez, is all performative. None of these people said a word when women and girls were sold into sex slavery by the criminal element flooding across the border. None of them spoke a word while the fentanyl coming across the border with drug smugglers killed a quarter of a million Americans. They were all silent as women were raped and murdered like Laken Riley, or little girls like Jocelyn Nungary.

But only now that these repatriations have started do they feel the emotional weight of the moment? When their loved ones are sick, do they smile at the infection and curse and scream at the doctor when he administers a treatment to stop it? Our people are literally suffering and dying, and now that we're making the odds of comfort and survivability greater, they're angry?

Who is the cruel one in the room again?

Badgering Americans with the false claim that America was ‘founded’ by immigrants creates the idea that she is prohibited from protecting her sovereignty out of fear of being ‘un-American.’ //

On Sunday, CBS News’ Margaret Brennan tried to get one over on Vice President J.D. Vance, badgering him about immigration and claiming “this is a country founded by immigrants.” But this narrative isn’t just inaccurate, it’s a calculated lie intentionally pushed to justify radical open border policies that threaten to dismantle the very country our Founders built.

Vance held his own, refuting the baseless claim by noting the country was founded “by some immigrants and some settlers” and that such a founding is not a “get-out-of-jail” free card for having the “dumbest immigration policy in the world.”

And Vance is right.

Britain began establishing the 13 original colonies in the early 1600’s. Over the next century or so, hundreds of thousands of Brits moved to the British colonies that were established by settlers — not immigrants. There was no “nation” being immigrated to by the first settlers. //

“But what about the Native Americans? They were nations!” some may contend. But they were not. They were tribal clans. Clans are peoples, but not nations (and to boot, Native Americans are believed to have come from Asia before crossing the Bering land bridge and making their way to the present-day United States).

Yet the left will repeat the claim that America was “founded” by immigrants to serve one purpose: to erase the country’s unique identity and justify endless immigration. If we are truly a nation “founded” by immigrants, then logic would follow it would be wholly un-American to want to control mass immigration (both legal and illegal) since our inception was a result of such immigration.

But America was never just a multicultural experiment that began with and requires an endless influx of immigrants (both legal and illegal) to sustain itself. The settlers were not a hodge-podge of random cultures and religions and languages and customs. America was founded by Anglo Protestants who pulled ideas of liberty and independence from Anglo-liberalism, which grounded itself in the idea of equality, freedom, and government controlled by the people (it was most commonly associated with thinkers like John Locke). These settlers forged a new nation, instituted customs, traditions, and a national identity.

And our Founders understood the importance of a national identity, with Thomas Jefferson writing in 1776 that while he is “for extending the right of suffrage (or in other words the right of a citizen) to all who had a permanent intention of living in the country … Whoever intends to live in a country must wish that country well, and has a natural right of assisting in the preservation of it.”

In simpler terms, assimilation was a requirement of anyone coming to America. //

But if America is really just a “nation of immigrants,” then what does it mean to be “American?”

Well, nothing. If simply being born here or moving here qualifies someone as “American,” then “American” ceases to be a unique identity. It’s diluted to the point of meaninglessness.

Alexander Hamilton warned us in 1802 that “the safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common National sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exception of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice …”

In other words, without a common identity, we’re toast. And the annual importation of millions of foreigners threatens that national identity, especially when we no longer demand complete and total assimilation.

So the short of it is: No, America was not “founded” by immigrants. But badgering Americans with the false claim that America was “founded” by immigrants (and is therefore responsible for endlessly welcoming immigrants) creates the idea that the country is prohibited from protecting its sovereignty out of fear of being “un-American.” The goal is simple: browbeat Americans into believing that America is merely an economic opportunity zone that is open to anyone from anywhere irrespective of the cost to our country.

In a Sunday night missive, the White House Office of Communications shared big news: the South American country of Colombia has succumbed to America’s demands and will not be subject to crippling sanctions unless it “fails to honor this agreement.”

Sometimes, you have to cry uncle, and it appears that Colombian President Gustavo Petro did just that after acting defiant earlier Sunday by saying his country would refuse to take back its citizens who were in America illegally.

The current president of the United States, however, is not named Joe Biden.

After realizing who he was dealing with, Petro apparently even retweeted the White House’s statement:

Yashar Ali 🐘 @yashar
·
The president of Colombia has retweeted White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s post.
Yashar Ali 🐘 @yashar
NEW

Statement from the White House on the situation in Colombia.

I do not believe we have heard from the Colombian side yet on this announcement.
10:37 PM · Jan 26, 2025

Leavitt said tariffs and financial sanctions will be paused, but visa sanctions against Colombian officials and stricter customs inspections of Colombian nationals and cargo ships ordered by Trump earlier Sunday will remain in effect “until the first planeload of Colombian deportees is successfully returned.” //

Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius
·
To fully understand just how remarkable today’s exchange with Colombia was, you need to understand how Washington DC has traditionally worked through these sorts of issues, and the different way it works now under Trump.

I’ll illustrate.

Traditional Approach:

1. Colombia announces it will not take our repatriation flights.
2. On Monday, the State Department convenes an interagency task force with DoD, NSC, DEA, INS, ICE, Commerce, Treasury and Homeland Security.
3. The task force meets for four days and develops a position paper.
4. The position paper is rejected by the Secretary of State, who is unhappy that insufficient equity considerations are built into the process.
5. The task force reconvenes a week later to redevelop three new, equity-centric courses of action and create a new position paper.
6. The process is delayed a week because Washington DC gets three inches of snow.
7. SecState approves the new position paper for interagency circulation, and considerable input is received from the heads of other departments so the task force must reconvene.
8. The original three proposed responsive courses of action are scrapped in favor of a new, fourth course of action that achieves the worst aspects of the three prior courses of action but satisfies the interagency.
9. Someone in State who disagrees leaks to the Washington Post, who writes a story about how ineffective the Presidential administration is.
10. The White House Chief of Staff sets up a session three days later to brief the President, who approves the new fourth course of action.
11. Over a month after the issue is first raised, the State Department Public Affairs Officer holds a press conference announcing that Colombia has agreed to try to send fewer criminals into the US and everyone declares victory.

Trump Approach:

1. Colombia announces it will not take our repatriation flights.
2. After a par-5 third hole where he goes one under par, Trump uses his iPhone to post on social media as to how the USA will destroy Colombia’s economy if they do not do what the USA demands.
3. By the time Trump gets to the par-4 sixth hole, Colombia’s President has agreed to repatriate all the illegal Colombians in his own plane, which he will pay for.
4. Trump finishes three under par and goes to the clubhouse for a Diet Coke where he posts a gangsta AI image of himself and the new FAFO Doctrine.
5. Winning.

See the difference? It’s called LEADERSHIP.
6:09 PM · Jan 26, 2025

anon-d9in
19 hours ago
The President of Columbia did not think through his resistance. Trump wrote The Art Of The Deal. He already planned in advance what he would if countries deny entry of their own criminals. The Columbian President's knee jerk reaction only proved he is no match for Trump and he is not a true leader. Doing his chest-pounding on X proved to be oh so embarassing. //

Laocoön of Troy Steprock
3 hours ago
We've done this before...

From March 16, 1916, to February 14, 1917, an expeditionary force of more than fourteen thousand regular army troops under the command of Brig. Gen. John J. "Black Jack" Pershing operated in northern Mexico "in pursuit of Villa with the single objective of capturing him and putting a stop to his forays. Another 140,000 regular army and National Guard troops patrolled the vast border between Mexico and the United States to discourage further raids. //

anon-pkys Laocoön of Troy
36 minutes ago
Back in the 1840s the U.S. declared war on Mexico. We had two small armies that attacked, one from the north across the border, and one by sea from Vera Cruz. Our troops, although greatly out numbered kicked A$$ and took names in several battles with the Mexican Army. We conquered and held Mexico City in a battle in which we were outnumbered. Texas Rangers served as Scouts for the Army and as shock troops. They were hated and feared by the Mexicans. To this day the Mexican people have no love for the Texas Rangers. During the 1870s-80s the Texas Rangers guarded much of the border with Mexico. They were not afraid to go into Mexico after Mexican rustlers.

Error #1: The citizenship clause merely adopted the pre-Dred Scott common law rule that everyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen.

In 1856, the Supreme Court held in the infamous case of Dred Scott v. Sandford that the U.S.-born descendants of African slaves were not and could never become citizens, even though under the traditional common law rule, a person automatically became a citizen of the nation on whose soil he or she was born. The plaintiffs contend that the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause was intended to restore this earlier common law rule of universal birthright citizenship.

They support this claim with a single, highly edited quotation from Sen. Jacob Howard, a Republican from Michigan, who was instrumental in drafting the citizenship clause: “This amendment … is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is … a citizen of the United States.” //

Instead, Howard was referring to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was valid federal law. That act was Congress’s first attempt to override Dred Scott, and statutorily defined birthright citizenship for the first time in American history: “[A]ll persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.”

Far from being an adoption of common law universal birthright citizenship, the Civil Rights Act intended to bestow birthright citizenship only on the children of those who, like the newly freed slaves, owed complete allegiance to the United States and were subject to the fullest extent of its political jurisdiction. //

Indeed, the most damning indictment of the plaintiff’s contention comes from the very quotation they use to support it—at least when that quotation isn’t disingenuously edited. The very next line of the quote, which the plaintiffs in this lawsuit conveniently cut, reads: “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of embassadors [sic] or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”

This clearly demonstrates that Howard believed they weren’t constitutionalizing the common law rule, but rather a rule that—consistent with the Civil Rights Act’s focus on allegiance to foreign powers—was much more selective in its bestowal of birthright citizenship. //

Error #2: This is an unprecedented action—the executive branch has long recognized that it can’t deny citizenship to children based on the immigration or citizenship status of their parents.

This assertion is only true if history begins in the first half of the 20th century. Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, it doesn’t. In the decades following the ratification of the 14th Amendment, the federal government regularly articulated a view of the citizenship clause that’s remarkably similar to that espoused in Trump’s order, and the executive branch issued citizenship documents accordingly. //

Error #3: The Supreme Court confirmed in Wong Kim Ark that the citizenship clause automatically bestows citizenship on the U.S.-born children of noncitizen parents.

Contrary to popular assertions, this is not what the Supreme Court held in the 1898 case of Wong Kim Ark v. United States. The question decided by the court in that case was far narrower: whether a child born in the U.S. to lawfully present and permanently domiciled immigrant parents was a U.S. citizen. And the court concluded that, indeed, the U.S.-born child of this narrow and specific subset of noncitizen parents is a citizen. //

In fact, the court repeatedly emphasized the lawful and permanent domicile of Wong Kim Ark’s parents, factors that are utterly irrelevant under the common law. A true common law opinion would have said, “He was born on U.S. soil, his parents aren’t diplomats or part of some invading army, so therefore he is a citizen.”

This is also why, for decades after Wong Kim Ark, leading constitutional law scholars continued to articulate a distinction between American birthright citizenship—“where the alien must be permanently domiciled”—and birthright citizenship under English common law, which applied even to temporary sojourners. //

Error #4: The president’s order will leave many children deportable and stateless.

It would rarely, if ever, be true that a U.S.-born child of illegal or nonpermanent resident aliens would be left stateless simply because he or she isn’t automatically granted U.S. citizenship. Virtually every nation (including the United States) recognizes some manner of citizenship “by blood,” under which a child is automatically eligible for citizenship when one or both parents are citizens, even if that child is born abroad. //

The plaintiffs, meanwhile, don’t bother articulating a single set of circumstances under which a U.S.-born child of foreign nationals would ever be completely ineligible for—or disqualified from—citizenship or nationality in every other country the world due to a confluence of legal technicalities and the fact of his or her birth on U.S. soil.

Think of it this way. Someone from Great Britain visiting the United States is subject to our laws while here, which is to say subject to our partial or territorial jurisdiction. He must drive on the right-hand side of the road rather than the left, for example. But he does not thereby owe allegiance to the United States; he is not subject to being drafted into our army; and he cannot be prosecuted for treason (as opposed to ordinary violations of law) if he takes up arms against the United States, for he has breached no oath of allegiance.

So which understanding of “subject to the jurisdiction” did the drafters of the 14th Amendment have in mind?

Happily, we don’t need to speculate, as they were asked that very question. They unambiguously stated that it meant “complete” jurisdiction, such as existed under the law at the time, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which excluded from citizenship those born on U.S. soil who were “subject to a foreign power.”

Happily, we don’t need to speculate, as they were asked that very question. They unambiguously stated that it meant “complete” jurisdiction, such as existed under the law at the time, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which excluded from citizenship those born on U.S. soil who were “subject to a foreign power.”

The Supreme Court confirmed that understanding (albeit in dicta) in the first case addressing the 14th Amendment, noting in The Slaughterhouse Cases in 1872 that “[t]he phrase, ‘subject to its jurisdiction’ was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.” It then confirmed that understanding in the 1884 case of Elk v. Wilkins, holding that the “subject to the jurisdiction” phrase required that one be “not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance.” John Elk, the Native American claimant in the case, did not meet that requirement because, as a mem­ber of an Indian tribe at his birth, he “owed imme­diate allegiance to” his tribe and not to the United States.

Thomas Cooley, the leading treatise writer of the era, also confirmed that “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States “meant full and complete jurisdic­tion to which citizens are generally subject, and not any qualified and partial jurisdiction, such as may consist with allegiance to some other government.” More fundamentally, this understanding of the Citizenship Clause is the only one compatible with the consent of the governed principle articulated in the Declaration of Independence.