On July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment was ratified after the Civil war.
To all racists and white Christian Nationalists in the MAGA cult, this was a dark day, indeed.
Following its ratification by the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states, the 14th Amendment, granting citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—including formerly enslaved people—is officially adopted into the U.S. Constitution. Secretary of State William Seward issues a proclamation certifying the amendment.
Two years after the Civil War, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military districts, where new state governments, based on universal manhood suffrage, were to be established. Thus began the period known as Radical Reconstruction, which saw the 14th Amendment, which had been passed by Congress in 1866, ratified in July 1868. The amendment resolved pre-Civil War questions of African American citizenship by stating that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.” The amendment then reaffirmed the privileges and rights of all citizens, and granted all these citizens the “equal protection of the laws.”
Trump, in his narcissistic glory tried to use an Executive Order to superseded the US Constitution.
The Citizenship Clause is part of the US constitution, the nation’s founding document. Generally, legal scholars strongly suggest that neither executive action nor legislation should be able to supersede the constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship for those born on US soil.
According to the Harvard Law professor Gerald Neuman: “The president has no authority to change the citizenship rule at all. Congress can change the rule, but only to the extent of making it broader. Neither Congress nor the president can reduce it below the constitutional minimum.”
Open thread…
