Anyone Born in US Is a Citizen
This week, a 6-3 majority of the US Supreme Court struck down President Trump's executive order attempting to restrict citizenship to persons legally residing in the country and a 5-4 majority ruled that the Constitution's 14th Amendment decrees that any person born here is a citizen.
Chief Justice John Roberts asserted that "we are a nation of immigrants. No humans originated on any land in the western hemisphere. All humans arrived here from somewhere else on the planet. Historically, the US government encouraged immigration in order to populate a largely empty landscape. Anyone who could make the journey into the US was admitted and any children they had were automatically citizens. The 14th Amendment turned this customary practice into a constitutional right."
Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed, writing that "the 14th Amendment was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks, but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support. The freed blacks all were born in the United States and many had fought for their freedom during the Civil War. Awarding birth right citizenship to the children of persons who illegally entered the United States or who were born to temporary visitors from other countries creates a right not guaranteed by the Constitution."
Justice Samuel Alito argued that "the majority's interpretation grants a powerful incentive to enter or remain in this country illegally. Immigrants naturally prefer affluent countries where economic opportunities are available. Other than Canada, the United States will be the only affluent nation where birth alone is enough to establish citizenship. The 14th Amendment does not include the rule the Court now imposes on the country. In my judgment, the Court has made a mistake that will seriously affect the country's future."
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson concurred with the majority and added "considering that a person born male can declare himself a woman and obtain all of the rights and privileges available to a person born female, the much less drastic transition of foreigner to citizen is implicitly permitted. Not only should the children born to immigrants become automatic citizens, but so too should the parents."
In related news, birth right citizen Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill) is the child of illegal immigrants. At a recent meeting in Mexico City she told the audience "I'm a proud Guatemalan before I'm an American." More recently, she used a suicide by hanging to denounce "America's legacy of racial terror and racial violence" and "Israel's genocide against Palestinians, paid by American taxpayers' money."
No Time Limits on Ballot Counting
In another ruling, US Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for a 5-4 majority, declared that "the writers of the Constitution purposely left the election rules flexible, knowing that there might be future instances in which additional votes would need to be found and counted to reverse an undesired outcome from the election day counts. Therefore there is no specified legal time limit on counting the ballots. Caches of ballots that were somehow overlooked within the five business day limit the Court has created, but subsequently found years later can still be counted. As a hypothetical, say a sufficient number of such ballots from the 2024 presidential election were discovered next week. If a count of these ballots were to show that then Vice-President Kamala Harris won the election, she and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz would need to be immediately inaugurated in place of Trump and Vance."
Justice Samuel Alito called Justice Barrett's reasoning "clearly inconsistent with the plain text of the laws and of historical practice and precedents. It is feasible to ensure an honest election if all the ballots are cast and counted on the same day. Once the time frame for casting and counting ballots is expanded with early voting, unsupervised 'drop boxes,' and late mailed ballots the opportunities for fraud are also expanded. This decision risks further undermining Americans' confidence in election integrity."
SSA to Ease Enrollment in Trump Accounts
The Social Security Administration (SSA) is setting up an automated process for parents to obtain Trump Accounts for their children. These Accounts can be established for newborns and children who have a valid Social Security number up until they reach the age of 18. A one-time $1,000 pilot program contribution from the Department of Treasury is available to children born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, who are US citizens with a valid Social Security number. So far, six million children have been enrolled in Trump Accounts.
SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano explained "Social Security numbers are the backbone of Trump Accounts, and we will empower parents to enroll their newborns through the Enumeration at Birth program to take full advantage of this program from the day a child is born. This effort aligns with SSA's mission to provide financial security and support to the American people."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (S-Vt) complained "this isn't a program to provide welfare for those in need. It is a sinister plan to create an entire new generation of capitalists. Instead of devoting more public funds to the expansion of our welfare safety net, we'll be sowing the seeds of greed. Youngsters with savings and investments will become protective of their assets. They'll question public policies like increased taxes and regulations that threaten the ability of these assets to grow rather than riot in the streets for more collectivism like the generation before them has been doing. This is an existential threat to democratic socialism. Undoing these accounts must be one of our highest priorities once we take back control of Congress."
In related news, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif) has made a career of denouncing millionaires. Khanna currently lives in a $6 million mansion, which is now for sale, as he prepares to move to an even larger, more expensive estate a few miles away in Virginia. Khanna's two minor children have large ownership shares in three private golf clubs, a significant stake in a $65 billion wealth management firm, and investments in hedge funds that prey upon distressed debt. Khanna says he is "liberating these financial proceeds from the clutches of the ultra rich who would otherwise hoard this wealth and engage in capitalistic expropriation of labor."
Judges Strike Down Student Loan Reform
Massachusetts US District Judge Myong Joun struck down the Trump Administration's attempt to disallow public service workers from receiving debt relief for working with employers that are deemed to have a "substantial illegal purpose."
The Judge said that "the Biden Administration classified student debtors working with organizations like USAID as eligible for debt forgiveness. Later evidence indicating that some of these employers were engaged in efforts to promote illegal immigration and terrorists cells cannot undo the promised debt relief. Trying to single out these activities for punitive action can be seen as an impermissible suppression of their right to freedom of speech. While the Trump Administration is understandably opposed to both terrorism and illegal immigration others are not. Consequently, the advocacy of both these activities can be considered a matter of policy differences rather than simply crimes worthy of prosecution."
District of Columbia Judge Amir Ali asserted that "teachers employed by public schools that assist students to identify as transgender should not lose the debt-relief to which they are entitled merely because members of the Trump Administration think that students shouldn't undergo irreversible medical interventions without their parents' knowledge or consent. There is no federal law against this and there are numerous states where the law favors this."
Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent called the Judge's ruling "contrary to common sense. The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program is intended to support Americans who serve the public good, not to subsidize organizations that engage in terrorism, facilitate illegal immigration, or support the mutilation of children."
Kooks' Plans to Kill Opponents
In Wisconsin, Teha Delaruelle, a transgender male and staffer for Wisconsin Democrat Congressional candidate Katrina DeVille, called for a "trans jihad where we kill our oppressors: the Republicans, bigots, and animals that make up MAGA. For decades, we've had to be the ones that walk down the streets with anxiety and fear, but no more. We're gonna do the reverse. We're gonna make it so that they walk down the streets with fear, anxiety, and worry, and we're not gonna make this, like, oh they gotta do this for like a week or something where they get really scared. No, we will make this their new permanent reality."
In Maine, Andy O'Brien, the communications director for the Maine AFL-CIO, suggested that "Democrats who refuse to support our Party's nominee for US Senator--Graham Platner--should face execution after we take over the government."
O'Brien contrasted his "reasonable approach" with those of Delaruelle, saying "I don't disagree with his or her sentiments, but we've got to be practical about it. Just going on a jihad against our enemies is too dangerous. They may be armed. The police might regard our actions as criminal and shoot or arrest us. If we wait until we are in power, like Hitler did, we can make killing our enemies legal. First, we can confiscate privately owned weapons. Second, we will control the police. We can order them to arrest our enemies. We will control the courts that sentence them to death and legally kill them."
In Iran, an 88-member Assembly of Experts issued a 10-point plan for killing their most reviled enemies in which they said "there are an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 of our people who have succeeded in covertly entering the US others are members of Hezbolla. Killing the wicked prime minister of the Zionist regime and the criminal American president are religious duties that one or more of them must carry out in anyway possible."
Moderate Democrats Reject Socialism
Concerned that their Party's shift toward socialism might not appeal to normal Americans, ten members of the US House of Representatives and three candidates aspiring to win seats in the House have signed a "Promise to America Pledge." The Pledge includes a call for "an economy that rewards hard work, lowers costs, and expands opportunity, secure borders, orderly immigration, safe communities, competent government, free speech, and pride in America."
Democratic socialist firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) scoffed at the pledge, calling it "a surrender to the MAGA Republican agenda. Real Democrats want an economy that guarantees a living income for all--including those unable or unwilling to work, the increased taxes needed to fund a compulsory sharing of the nation's wealth, open borders, and reparations to the victims of America's oppressive society."
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) said "it's time for Democrats to stop trying to offer watered-down capitalism as the alternative we offer in our search for votes. Let's honestly admit that capitalism is an evil system. As Marx wrote many years ago, capitalism has usefully expanded the wealth available to us. Now is the time for us to improve the distribution of that wealth by having the government seize it and divide it more equitably."
Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), co-author of the Pledge, called for "moderation. History has amply demonstrated that socialism leads to poverty and tyranny wherever it has been implemented. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics tried to have the government direct everything, but it couldn't keep up with the wealth-creation achieved by capitalism because it stifled individual initiative. Rather than allowing its citizens the liberty to pursue happiness it regimented them and sent dissenters to concentration camps."
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani thanked "Suozzi for outing himself and his fellow traitors to the Democratic Party. We will primary them whenever and wherever we can. If we are unsuccessful in preventing their election we will expel them from Congress and fill those seats with genuine democratic socialists. America has tried individualism for 250 years. It's time to give collectivism a chance to create the paradise that Marx predicted it would achieve if were granted the unlimited power of the dictatorship of the proletariat."
In related news, a Center Square Voters' Voice Poll found that 86% of registered US voters support America's founding principles, among which the poll listed "individual rights such as life, liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, equal treatment under the law, and government by the consent of the people." The poll found significant support for these principles with 89% of Republicans, 85% of Democrats, and 79% of Independents agreeing with them. However, only 31% of voters believe the founding values are being practiced well today.
