Latest news with #DredScott
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Trashes the U.S. as a ‘STUPID Country' of ‘SUCKERS' in Birthright Citizenship Rant
President Donald Trump ranted against the U.S. and its centuries-long tradition of birthright citizenship, saying the U.S. is a 'STUPID Country' of 'SUCKERS,' as the Supreme Court prepared to take up the issue Thursday. In January, Trump signed an executive order declaring that children of immigrants are not entitled to U.S. citizenship despite the 14th Amendment to the Constitution's guarantee that 'all persons born' in the U.S. are citizens. Three federal judges had stopped the order from taking effect, and on Thursday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case. 'Birthright Citizenship was not meant for people taking vacations to become permanent Citizens of the United States of America, and bringing their families with them, all the time laughing at the 'SUCKERS' that we are!' Trump wrote that morning in a Truth Social post. 'The drug cartels love it! We are, for the sake of being politically correct, a STUPID Country,' he added. The issue hasn't got anything to do with political correctness, though, and everything to do with the Constitution. The 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause states: 'All persons born… in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.' Adopted in July 1868, the amendment overturned the infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, the Supreme Court's 1857 ruling that held that even free African Americans were not U.S. citizens. Thirty years later, in 1898, the court held in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark that children of immigrants were entitled to citizenship based on the 14th Amendment even if their parents didn't qualify. Nevertheless, Trump offered what he called 'conclusive proof' that 'Birthright Citizenship is about the babies of slaves.' 'The Civil War ended in 1865, the Bill went to Congress less than a year later, in 1866, and was passed shortly after that,' he wrote. 'It had nothing to do with Illegal Immigration for people wanting to SCAM our Country, from all parts of the World, which they have done for many years.' 'It had to do with Civil War results, and the babies of slaves who our politicians felt, correctly, needed protection,' he continued. 'Please explain this to the Supreme Court of the United States.' But according to Boston College professor and historian Heather Cox Richardson, while the 14th Amendment did in fact overturn the Dred Scott decision, it wasn't intended to grant citizenship only to Black Americans. In the 1860s, the U.S. was also home to tens of thousands of American Indians, Chinese immigrants and people of other races. The civil rights bill that Congress originally passed in 1866 said, 'all 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; and such citizens of every race and color… shall have the same right[s] in every State and Territory in the United States,' Cox Richardson wrote on her Substack Letters from an American in late April. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill, saying that if the Constitution already made all 'native-born' people citizens, Congress didn't need to pass a bill saying so. And if they weren't already citizens under the Constitution, Congress shouldn't make them citizens, Johnson argued. According to Cox Richardson, Congress took those words to heart when drafting the 14th Amendment. Instead of conferring citizens on specific groups, it explicitly acknowledged that the Constitution had already established citizenship for 'all people' born in the U.S. and under its jurisdiction (which at the time excluded Indigenous Americans). Just a few decades later, the Supreme Court had to decide whether the 14th Amendment also applied to children of immigrants. In 1882, the U.S. passed the Chinese Exclusion Act declaring that Chinese immigrants could not become citizens. But Wong Kim Ark, a cook who was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents, sued to have his citizenship recognized. The court's majority found that under the English common law system—which the U.S. system is based on—children born to alien parents were natural-born subjects 'within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, and the jurisdiction of the English sovereign.' The only exceptions were diplomats serving foreign states and members of invading armies. The same rule was in force in the English colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence and 'continued to prevail under the Constitution,' the court wrote. The Chinese Exclusion Act therefore did not apply to Wong Kim Ark, the court decided in 1898—at a time that few people would describe as 'politically correct.' Trump, however, seems to suggest the U.S. at the time was literally Black and white. 'Again, remember, the Civil War ended in 1865, and the Bill goes to Congress in 1866—We didn't have people pouring into our Country from all over South America, and the rest of the World,' he wrote on Truth Social. 'It wasn't even a subject. What we had were the BABIES OF SLAVES.'
Washington Post
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Live updates: Supreme Court to focus on nationwide orders in birthright citizenship case
Attorneys for the Trump administration have called nationwide injunctions against the president's agenda an 'epidemic.' Legal scholars say nationwide injunctions were sparse before the 1960s, but recent presidential administrations have seen more and more. The 14th Amendment was adopted after the Civil War to establish citizenship for freed Black Americans, as well as 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.' The citizenship clause reversed the Supreme Court's infamous decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which had denied citizenship to Black Americans. Twenty-two Democratic-led states and immigrant advocacy groups suing over the ban on birthright citizenship warn of chaos, confusion and disparate state-by-state policies if the Supreme Court allows the Trump administration order to take effect in the rest of the country. The Supreme Court will hold a special session Thursday morning to review a case involving President Donald Trump's effort to ban automatic U.S. citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants and foreign visitors. The Trump administration has asked the justices to lift or narrow orders imposed by three lower-court judges that have blocked his policy from taking effect while its legality is tested in court. Here's what to know about the case.
Wall Street Journal
08-04-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Abe Lincoln's Reservations About Judicial Rule
Regarding 'Trump's Dangerous Disregard for the Courts' (Politics & Ideas, March 26): William A. Galston is right when he says that 'checks and balances and the rule of law are the surest institutional protections for liberty.' He quotes Abraham Lincoln on his opposition to the decision in Dred Scott (1857), which he vowed at the time to reverse through legal means. But Lincoln was referring to a decision from the Supreme Court (established by the Constitution), not a lower court (created by Congress). Nor does Mr. Galston mention Lincoln's concern about government policy on 'vital questions affecting the whole people' being 'irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court . . . the instant they are made.' In such cases 'the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, . . . having practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.' In April 1864, he wrote: 'I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution.' More than 10 million aliens were allowed into this country during the Biden years. The president has an Article II duty to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.' Is he supposed to do nothing while a lower court decides whether he must give a hearing to thousands of violent aliens? That, as Lincoln would surely agree, is preposterous. Robert DiNino Glastonbury, Conn.
Yahoo
22-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Law and You: What does 'birthright citizenship' mean?
It is extremely difficult to change the U.S. Constitution. It is not simply waving a pen or a magic wand. The Constitution itself, in Article V, defines the process. For a proposal to become an official Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, two steps are required. First, the proposed Amendment must be passed by a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Second, it must be ratified (approved) by vote in three-fourths of the state legislatures, that is 38 of the 50 states. This strict multi-layered procedure must be followed to change anything that is in the Constitution. These steps were designed to help ensure that we are a stable 'government of laws, not of men,' according to John Adams in 1776. There are only 27 Amendments. The first ten are our Bill of Rights, and were adopted in 1791. To undo an Amendment that has been passed by two-thirds of the members in both Houses of Congress and the legislatures of at least three-fourths of the states is just as difficult, requiring the passage of another Constitutional Amendment. Only one Amendment has ever been repealed; that was Prohibition, which was adopted in 1919 by the 18th Amendment, then repealed by the 21st in 1933. The challenges to passing an Amendment are illustrated by two proposals regarding the rights of women. After decades of effort, beginning in the 1840's, women achieved the right to vote through the 19th Amendment in 1920. Trying to accomplish an Equal Rights Amendment, so that the Constitution guarantees women the same rights as men, has not yet been successful. Since 1868, what is called 'birthright citizenship' has been part of the U.S. Constitution. It is clearly stated in the 14th Amendment that '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.' There are at least 33 countries that have unrestricted birthright citizenship. These include Canada and all but one country in North and South America. Even before this Amendment, it was generally recognized that everyone born in the U.S. or its territories automatically became a citizen. A person born elsewhere could be a 'naturalized citizen' after living here for the required number of years and then formally renouncing allegiance to their birth country and swearing allegiance to the United States. This part of the 14th Amendment was adopted (1) to ensure that citizenship by birthright could not easily be taken away, and (2) to overturn the 1857 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case, which held that free African-American people born in this country could never be citizens. The Congressional debates on the language of the 14th Amendment document that the phrase 'and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,' was understood to exclude only the children of foreign ministers and invading armies, and 'Indians not taxed.' They knew that the clause would extend citizenship to everyone else born on U.S. soil, even, as they said, 'Chinese and Gypsies.' The son of Chinese immigrants went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and established his birthright citizenship in United States v Wong Kim Ark (1898). Congress anticipated the possibility of a future government that opposed birthright citizenship. Consequently, they not only asserted it in a statute, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, but also in the Constitution. In the words of Sen. Benjamin Wade, their purpose was to 'fortify and make [the citizenship guarantee] very strong and clear.' The President does not have a role in the amendment process; it is entirely a legislative matter. However, apparently seeking to negate birthright citizenship all by himself, the President issued an Executive Order on January 20, 2025 declaring that a child born in the U.S. is not a citizen unless both parents are either U.S. citizens or 'lawful permanent residents' at the time of the child's birth. Lawsuits were immediately brought challenging the Constitutionality of that Executive Order. The courts hearing the cases promptly issued injunctions stopping the order from going into effect while the litigation continues. Eventually, the Supreme Court will likely decide. — Penny Clute has been an attorney since 1973. She was Clinton County district attorney from 1989 through 2001, then Plattsburgh City Court judge until her retirement in January 2012. ______________ RESOURCES Explanation of Birthright Citizenship and the issues: Text of Executive Order: Explanation of 'government of laws, not of men' quote: United States v Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Will the Supreme Court kill birthright citizenship? It's a question of history vs. loyalty
President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to prop up a January executive order ending birthright citizenship in the United States. The order, which would stop the practice of granting citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants and other noncitizens born in the U.S., was all but laughed out of court by a federal judge that month. U.S. District Judge John Coughenour called the novel interpretation of the law 'blatantly unconstitutional' while issuing a temporary restraining order on the Trump administration. Coughenour was one of three federal judges to put a pause on the policy. The emergency application from the Trump administration asks the high court to 'restrict the scope' of nationwide stays on the order's implementation, citing Justice Clarence Thomas's 2018 claim that universal injunctions were 'legally and historically dubious.' 'Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current Administration,' attorneys for the Trump administration wrote, hoping the conservative-controlled Supreme Court would 'declare that enough is enough' and check the judiciary's own power to rein in the executive branch. The court has proven to be unpredictable in Trump cases, throwing several wrenches into the administration's more blatant schemes. And the concept of birthright citizenship for all people born on American soil has much deeper roots than the Project 2025 platform. Birthright citizenship has been formally codified in the Constitution for over 150 years, but the concept dates back to long before the nation's founding. University of Virginia Professor Amanda Frost traced the pre-14th Amendment foundations of birthright citizenship in an article for the Yale Journal of Law and Humanities last year. 'Common law doctrine [of citizenship by birth] was the law of the land until it was erroneously rejected by the Supreme Court in its 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which declared that no person of African descent, slave or free, could be a U.S. citizen,' Frost wrote. The 'antebellum doctrine' of rights at birth was present in the laws of at least six northern states, laying the groundwork for a post-Civil War amendment. Incompatible statutes on the question of citizenship were finally resolved after the abolition of slavery and the ratification of the 14th Amendment. The most sweeping of the Reconstruction Amendments, the 14th Amendment overturned the Dred Scott decision, which held that Black Americans weren't entitled to citizenship at birth. The amendment explicitly states that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States,' and has been held to grant unconditional citizenship to those born on US soil since 1898. That year, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that an American-born son of two Chinese nationals was entitled to American citizenship despite laws barring Chinese individuals from the country. For the majority, Justice Horace Gray ruled that the 14th Amendment 'affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory… including all children here born of resident aliens,' clarifying that Wong was a citizen. The Supreme Court's finding has been the law of the land since, with Congress occasionally broadening the scope of citizenship based on the court's ruling. Lawmakers granted citizenship to all Native Americans in 1924, after the court had ruled decades before that people born on reservations were not entitled to citizenship. Experts agree that the text of the 14th Amendment is clear, and that Trump's interpretation doesn't pass muster. Harvard Law School professor Gerald Neuman defended citizenship for all people born in the United States in a January interview with Harvard Law Today. 'The argument is either a crazy theory or dishonest interpretation of the Constitution,' Neuman said, adding that an executive order was also insufficient to augment constitutional law. 'The president has no authority to change the citizenship rule at all… the merits are clear. There's only one reasonable answer to this.' Beyond questions of constitutionality, state officials fear the change would create devastating logistical crises. Officials from at least 24 states signed on to an amicus brief in support of New Jersey's challenge to the executive order last month, saying the change would "cause administrative immeasurable harm to individuals." Julia Gelatt of the Migration Policy Institute told Salon last year that excluding certain American-born children from citizenship would create a 'multigenerational class of people who are excluded from full rights.' "Denying people that legal status, even if they're born in the United States, would put people in a much more legally vulnerable, economically vulnerable position," Gelatt said. It is unclear whether the Supreme Court will give in to the president's fringe interpretation, though the court recently narrowly ruled against the Trump administration's illegal impoundment of $2 billion in Congressionally approved foreign aid. At least one expert thinks justices wouldn't go so far. UCLA Professor Hiroshi Motomura told Salon last year that birthright citizenship was even more sacred than other rights this court has placed on the chopping block. 'Even though people say that the court has become more conservative, this would be even further in the direction of trying to overturn the past than we've seen,' he told Salon. 'This goes way beyond overruling Roe v. Wade. I think that was a radical move, but this is no comparison. This is quite a bit more of a rethinking of what the country is even about.'
