Interesting.

Democratic states this week made clear that Donald Trump faces a bitter legal fight if he pushes ahead with plans to end birthright citizenship, but an exclusive poll for DailyMail.com shows that the president has America’s backing.

 

After his inauguration on Monday, Trump ordered officials not to recognize the citizenship of children born in the U.S. if neither their mother or father is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident.

 

J.L. Partners polled 1,009 registered voters ahead of Trump’s inauguration asked them: ‘Currently, when someone is born in the United States they immediately become a citizen, regardless of their country of origin or their parents’ citizenship status. This is called ‘birthright citizenship’.

 

‘Do you support or oppose the removal of birthright citizenship?’

 

Some 48 percent of respondents said they supported removal and 26 percent said they supported it strongly.

 

In contrast, 32 percent said they opposed it, 23 percent strongly.

There are two questions here. What is the law? Is it good policy? Let’s start with the first.

This is the relevant part of the Constitution:

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.

For my entire lifetime, at least, this has been interpreted to mean that if you are born on the soil of the U.S. or born of citizen parents, then you are also a citizen. That is how I have always assumed it was correctly interpreted. The phrase in dispute in the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” part. What does that mean?

To be subject to a government’s jurisdiction, it logically means that you are part of the community and subject to the normal laws as everyone else. If you are born in this nation to illegal aliens, are you really under our jurisdiction? You aren’t filing taxes, getting insurance, adhering to labor laws, etc. You are living in the shadows.

Remember that this sentence was written after the Civil War to naturalize former slaves and ensure that they have full citizenship. In that case, the former slaves were born in the nation and they were undeniably subject to its jurisdiction – by force. In the case of people born of illegal aliens, they are neither forced nor allowed to live under the same jurisdiction as citizens.

I expect that despite the logical argument, this is a reach for the law because of the century of accepted interpretation of this clause. I don’t think it’s been fully litigated, but that’s because the interpretation of birthright citizenship was so accepted that nobody thought to challenge it. Trump is challenging it.

Is this good policy? Here’s an enlightening visual:

It is, by no means, a God-given right nor universally accepted good policy to grant citizenship by virtue of where you are born. While not universal, the trend is that younger countries have the Rule of Land and older countries have the Rule of Blood. Why? Partially because during the age of exploration, new countries needed to attract people to settle there. Partially because that’s what was in vogue at the time the laws were made.

As a populous and settled country that readily attracts immigrants, the U.S. does not need the Rule of Land to grow our population. We should maintain a healthy flow of immigrants, but we can do so with thoughtfulness of our nation’s needs and compassionate about refugees. We do not need to grant citizenship to a person just because their mom found her way onto American soil to give birth. This is especially true when we see so many people exploiting this rule.

So, yes, it would be good policy to move the U.S. to the Rule of Blood, but I expect that we will find that it will take a Constitutional Amendment to get there.

You can never convince me that this many people are necessary for these agencies and some of these agencies should not exist.

The US Office of Personnel Management showed eight cabinet-level agencies, which are at the center of the executive branch and have heads that report directly to the president, had more than 100,000 civilian employees as of March.

 

Almost half a million people were employed in the Department of Veterans Affairs, while the Department of Education had just over 4,000. The Treasury Department had more than 100,000 employees as of March. The overwhelming majority of those — about 94,000 — were employed in the Internal Revenue Service.

 

Most departments had six-figure average salaries, with the Department of Education and the Department of Energy having the highest averages.

 

[…]

 

“The point is not to be cruel or to have people not be able to pay their mortgage or anything,” Musk said during his October remarks, adding, “We just have too many people in the government sector, and they could be more productive elsewhere.”

Welcome to At Will employment.

A former top Justice Department immigration official who was removed from her position by new DOJ leadership this week told ABC News that she did not receive any explanation for her removal.

 

Lauren Alder Reid was one of four top officials from the agency that operates the U.S. immigration courts who was removed from her post. She had been with the agency for more than 14 years.

 

“They did not give me any reason, other than not citing the 16 years of outstanding performance evaluation for lack of any discipline, administrative leave or reassignment in my entire career,” Reid told ABC News.

Yes. Not only are these programs destructive and a distraction from the agencies’ core missions, it is another expense that we can’t afford. Even if you support these DEI initiatives, they are clearly a “nice to have” that we can’t indulge when we’re broke.

CNN — 

Employees in any federal diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility offices will be placed on paid administrative leave “effective immediately,” according to a post from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Slashing jobs in federal DEI positions is one move in a series of actions taken by the new administration, after Donald Trump promised to wage a war against such programs and take on the practice on Day 1. Trump has already cut high-profile military personnel and ended the use of DEI in hiring and federal contracting. Some major companies have taken similar measures as they face pressure from conservative critics and customers.

A memo issued by the US Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday instructed agencies to notify DEI staffers “no later than 5:00pm EST on Wednesday” that they were being placed on administrative leave effective immediately as “the agency takes steps to close/end all DEIA initiatives, offices and programs.”

The memo also directs agencies to remove the offices’ websites and social media accounts and to cancel any DEI-related trainings.

Excellent. We are a generous nations who has been a refuge for refugees for generations, but our resources are not unlimited and our kindness has been exploited. We must stop the inflow and put sanity back into the programs.

“All previously scheduled travel of refugees to the United States is being cancelled, and no new travel bookings will be made. RSCs should not request travel for any additional refugee cases at this time,” the memo states, citing the president’s executive order.

TBH, I’m surprised that this has never happened before.

For the first time in U.S. history, a president-elect will welcome foreign leaders for one of the most American political traditions — the peaceful transfer of power.

 

President-elect Donald Trump invited Chinese President Xi Jinping and conservative world leaders such as Argentine President Javier Milei and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni to the inauguration. Xi sent his vice president as his representative.

 

No heads of state have previously made an official visit to the U.S. for the inauguration. Some of them, such as Milei and Paraguay’s President Santiago Peña, were special guests Saturday night at the Hispanic Inaugural Ball, where several of Trump’s nominees for key Cabinet positions made appearances. That included U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, chosen to lead the State Department, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., tapped to head the Health and Human Services Department.