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Trump and the 14th Amendment
In the developing world the party in power does away with its opponents one of three ways: a bullet to the head, throwing them in jail or kicking them off the ballot. Good to see America, Leader of the Free World, is already at work on two of the three.
With it becoming ever-clearer that nothing in the courts is likely to stop Trump — polls show he can still win as a convicted felon from a jail cell — attention has turned to the third dirty solution, driving him off the ballot in as many states as possible to enable a Joe Biden walk-on win. The vehicle for this is supposedly the 14th Amendment, Section Three.
Section Three was ratified in 1868 following the Civil War as a way to keep former Confederate officials out of government. It reads in whole “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” (emphasis added)
The obvious ploy is to claim Trump engaged in some sort of insurrection on January 6 and with that making him ineligible to be president, his name should be automatically (self-enacting) removed from all ballots. Easier said than done; this use of the 14th Amendment is malarkey, will not succeed, and is simply another attempt at politically decapitating Donald Trump instead of beating him at the ballot box.
The problems with the 14th Amendment strategy begin with the question of whether the prohibition still exists. Written in 1868 to affect Confederate officials, the Article was overturned by Congress on behalf of several individuals. They could do the same for Trump. Then in 1872, the disabilities were removed, by a blanket act, from all persons
except Senators and Representatives of the Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh Congresses, officers in the judicial, military, and naval service of the United States, heads of departments, and foreign ministers of the United States.
Twenty-six years later, Congress enacted law that saidthe disability imposed by Section Three… incurred heretofore, is hereby removed.
Further standing in the way of actually using 14/3 against Trump is the 1969 Supreme Court decision in Powell v McCormack, which held a state cannot require of a congressional candidate declarations of loyalty, or affidavits averring lack of intent to seek forcible overthrow of the government. The decision went on to clarify that it was unconstitutional to require any requirements for office other than those already stated in Article I (age, residency, citizenship.) Loyalty to the United States or to its government is not listed as one of the standing qualifications for membership in Congress.
Is Trump subject to Section Three? President Trump was unique among all of his predecessors in that he did not hold any prior government position before he took the presidential oath of office in 2017. Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment could only disqualify Trump if the presidential oath he took on that date was as an “Officer of the United States.”
Also left undefined is the standard of proof for “insurrection.” As a crime, insurrection has its legal definition. Trump, however, is not charged with insurrection (or sedition or rebellion) in any of the cases he now faces.
The 14th Amendment in its Section One also provides for due process, of which the adherents of 14/3 prescribe none, claiming the section is self-enacting and needs no enabling legislation or procedure.
Section Three remained largely dormant for many decades. January 6 (as well as a Pennsylvania Law Review article claiming Trump doesn’t qualify to serve as president under 14/3) have prompted renewed interest in the provision and its on and off again history. Active 14/3 challenges to specific candidates have been brought in Indiana, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and New Mexico, with contested offices ranging from County Commissioner to Senator (but not yet Trump.) Issues have emerged, including whether Section Three has been repealed; whether Congress has sole power to disqualify its members; whether voters have standing to challenge under Section Three; and questions of subject matter jurisdiction and federalism. Absent action by Congress (in process though not expected to succeed) the arguments over Section Three demand either that the whole thing be forgotten to history where it belongs, or the Supreme Court step in to sort out the significant legal issues, not the least of which is state versus federal power.
If you are keeping track of steps into the abyss, take a look at the core of what some current legal thinkers believe is 14/3: “Partisan officials in state governments, without specific authorization or checks and balances, should apply broad and uncertain definitions to decide who can run for office in a republic, when responsible officials with clear statutory and constitutional authority have not done so.” Seems instead like something for voters to decide, not out-of-context legalese from a previous century. This isn’t public policy, or even sound jurisprudence. This is a politicized legal fight. Sound democratic to you? Or maybe more like Democratic?
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Liz Cheney and Her 14th Amendment Comedy Show
The Democrats’ newest champion (Michael Avenatti did not return calls) Rep. Liz Cheney just about said the quiet part out loud: her January 6 Committee has the singular goal of pre-defeating Trump ahead of any voting in 2024. As it becomes clearer the Committee is failing in its propaganda campaign to get Republican Party powerbrokers to dump Trump, and as it is near crystalline the Committee will not find evidence leading to formal prosecution of Trump for sedition, treason, or insurrection, they are getting desperate. The latest? Purposefully misinterpreting an obscure phrase from a post-Civil War Constitutional amendment.
Cheney said “I think one of the really important things that our committee has to do is lay these facts out for the American people, so that they inform us in terms of our legislative activity going forward.” Cheney is talking about one phrase from the 14th Amendment, no doubt presented to her by an intern applying a Control + F search for “insurrection” to an online text of the Constitution. This is a familiar strategy for the Democrats, having purposefully taken phrases out of context from the 25th Amendment and the Emoluments Clause trying to force Trump from office for four years.
While the 14th Amendment was written primarily to grant citizenship and rights to freed slaves, it also created the “equal protection clause” which cornerstoned landmark cases including Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, and Bush v. Gore. But tucked away in Section 3 was a bit of post-civil war housekeeping, the phrase “No person shall hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.” The 14th also provides for Congress to enforce the provisions via legislation, and Cheney thinks that’s the key to Democratic success. Seriously.
The intent in 1868 was to prevent Confederate leaders from returning to power. But the January 6 Committee is in 2022 so lacking in substantive content that they are considering some sort of legislation labeling Trump an insurrectionist, and thus prohibiting him from taking office again, even if he were to win the election. Cheney is not alone; Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin has also called the use of the 14th a “live proposition.”
Section 3 does not have a particularly glorious history. Reconstruction Era prosecutors brought civil actions in court to oust officials linked to the confederacy, and Congress in some cases took action to refuse to seat Members. Section 3 was last used in 1919 against a socialist congressman accused of having given aid and comfort to Germany during WWI. The congressman was eventually seated after the Supreme Court threw out his espionage conviction. Currently the only criminal punishment left on the books dates to 1870 and makes it a misdemeanor to run for office when ineligible to do so under Section 3. So while the Constitution does specifically refer to legislative action by Congress as a way to enforce Section 3, precedent clearly shows due process and litigation would step in. Imagine Cheney or anyone trying to label someone who controls the loyalty of roughly 50 percent of Americans an insurrectionist through a show of hands.
Such legislation would also have to pass both houses and be signed by the president, something beyond a non-starter. The question of whether Section 3 is actually an unconstitutional Bill of Attainder is also not fully resolved. A Bill of Attainder in simple terms is a piece of law designed solely to punish one person, an argument the Democrats of 1868 themselves used to try and prevent Section 3 from even becoming part of the Constitution. The question was left largely unsettled as old Confederates died off and the use of Section 3 effectively ended in 1919 except in the fevered brains of people like Cheney.
There is also the open question of whether use of Section 3 against Trump would represent an unconstitutional ex post facto law. The drafters of Section 3 were clear their intent was precautionary, looking not to punish Confederates for the past but to prevent them from taking power again in the future. It was not a measure of punishment, but a measure of self-defense, and the bar was set very high: participating in actual warfare against the United States that took the lives of millions in pursuit of breaking up the Union. In Trump’s case, given that his offense would be being voted an insurrectionist over a year after making a speech to keep him from the White House, it would be very hard not to see it as punishment.
More problems? Section 3 prohibits someone from taking office, not from running for election. Imagine Trump conducting a three year campaign, winning the race, and then being prohibited from taking office over a clever interpretation of some words from 1868 clearly meant for a wholly different purpose.
The use of the 14th Amendment to end Trump is the kind of thing non-experts with too much Google time can convince themselves is true. Given that there is no realistic possibility of preventing Trump from taking office in 2024 under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, what is this all about? Most superficially it is a chance for a trog like Liz Cheney to get on TV spouting some quasi-legalistic garbage. It will be diluted through CNN as “Trump’s election is barred by the Constitution” and “Trump is in violation of democracy” and repurposed into Lincoln Project Facebook memes.
But more substantively, silliness like Cheney’s is a sign of increasing desperation by the Democrats, three full years before the election. Increasingly sure they will lose at the ballot box, the Dems strategy is to prevent Trump from ever reaching the ballot box. Failing to be able to prosecute him, they have only left to persecute him, across tax courts in New York, the January 6 Committee, endless manhunts for Capitol trespassers, and the like. For a party that cries continuously that democracy is in danger, the Democrats act increasingly like thugs in a banana republic trying to bring down their opponents extra-electorally.
Political prosecutions are not new in America. Political pogroms are. It is sad to watch the Democratic Party embrace such third-world practices as policy.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Explainer: ‘Anchor Babies’ and the Law
Thanks to brave presidential candidates Trump and Bush, et al, the term “anchor baby” is now the subject of interest and ignorance by a media preoccupied with whatever shiny object is held in front of it.
Trump wants to tear up part of the Constitution he unilaterally proclaims is unconstitutional; no one is sure what the other Republicans plan to “do” about this issue, but they sure don’t support it somehow.
Anchor BabiesSo what are “anchor babies” and which parts of American law affect them?
An “anchor baby” (many find the term offensive, referring as it does to a child as an object) is a child born in the United States to a foreign citizen, legally or illegally present in the U.S., who, by virtue of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, automatically and forever acquires American citizenship. The child need only prove s/he was born in the U.S.
The term anchor comes into play because at the age of 21 the child can begin filing green card paperwork for his/her extended family. The single American citizen in a family becomes the “anchor” through which all can eventually become legal permanent residents of the U.S. and soon after, citizens.
Many conservatives feel conveying citizenship so freely cheapens the meaning of being an “American,” and especially object to the idea that a mother illegally in the United States can birth an American citizen. Others are troubled by a growing industry that sends foreign mothers to the U.S. specifically so that they can create such citizens, so-called “birth tourism.”
The Law
The concept that anyone born in the U.S. (one exception: those born not subject to U.S. law, which has been held to apply primarily to Native Americans and to children of certain accredited foreign diplomats exempt [immune] from U.S. laws, though there are loopholes even there) is automatically an American citizen is part of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, the so-called Citizenship Clause.
The 14th was adopted in 1868, in the aftermath of the Civil War as part of reconciling the status of millions of slaves forcibly brought to the United States. The Citizenship Clause specifically overruled the 1857 Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford), which had held that Americans descended from African slaves could not be citizens of the United States. The Amendment cleared up any ambiguities, stating “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
The most significant test of the 14th Amendment came in 1898, via United States v. Wong Kim Ark. The Supreme Court upheld that a child born in the United States automatically became a U.S. citizen. At issue were laws passed after the Wong child’s birth that excluded Chinese citizens from entering the U.S. The decision in Wong has been understood to mean that the legal status of the mother, as well as any secondary immigration laws below the Constitution, have no bearing on the granting of citizenship.
It can get complicated, and there have been unsuccessful efforts to overturn or reinterpret Wong in light of contemporary concerns over immigration.
For those who like their law in Latin, the idea that anyone born in a certain country automatically acquires citizenship there is called jus soli (right of soil.) The opposite, that citizenship is derived only via one’s parents, is called jus sanguinis (right of blood.) No European nation offers unrestricted jus soli, and very few other countries outside the Western Hemisphere do either.
Foreigners, Visas and BabiesWhile some foreigners who give birth in the U.S. enter illegally by walking across a land border, a significant number of moms enter the U.S. on visas or the rough equivalent, the visa waiver program, which provides less fettered access to citizens from certain countries, mostly Europeans. Some give birth in the U.S.; is this legal?
It is. There is no law whatsoever that prohibits someone from coming to the United States specifically to give birth here and create an “anchor baby.”
Many uninformed commentators point to two visa laws that they feel may prohibit such an act, the “public charge” provision and the fraud provision.
Public charge is codified in Section 212(a)(4) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act. It says an individual who is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible to the United States/can’t receive a visa. Some conservatives believe that moms coming to the U.S. to give birth, a country with the highest health care costs on the planet, should not be allowed in. They say many can’t, or won’t, pay, and are likely to have their maternity costs covered by American taxpayers.
The problems in applying this law to so-called anchor baby moms are two-fold.
First, the law is forward-looking; there needs to be information suggesting a mother plans to deliver at public cost. Proving the future is tricky business, even in regards to visas. In addition, the law states receiving public benefits does not automatically make an individual a public charge. In fact, many benefits are excluded from consideration, including Medicaid and other health insurance and health services, and specifically prenatal care. In short, a mom cannot be denied a visa or entry into the U.S. based upon public benefits she is legally eligible for. Immigration status — legal or illegal — generally is not considered when benefits are sought.
The second visa law that comes up in conservative discourse is 212(a)(6)(C), fraud. The idea is that a women seeking a visa or to enter the U.S. may try and hide her pregnancy, or her intent to give birth in the U.S. She might say she intends only a short romp through Disneyland before returning home. So that’s lying, fraud, right?
Well, it may be a lie, but it is not fraud as visas go. The fraud law requires a lie to be “material,” meaning if the truth were to be told, the visa would be denied. So, if someone says she is going to Disney but actually intends to rob a bank, that is a planned illegal act and the lie would be material. But since it is legal to give birth in the U.S., fibbing about it is not material.
Birth TourismThe current issue of Rolling Stone contains a long article on “birth tourism.” Such “tourism” is a huge business in Asia, particularly in China where rising incomes coincide with existing interest in emigration. Companies arrange for everything; a mom need only provide money. The companies legally assist the mother in obtaining a visa, arrange for her to stay in the U.S. in an apartment complex (dubbed “maternity hotels”), usually in California for convenience for flights from Asia, full of other Chinese moms, and then give birth in a local hospital staffed with Chinese-speaking doctors.
Such businesses have been around since at least the 1980s, and exist in most Asian countries. They are especially popular in China and Korea.
Some birth tourism companies also offer VIP packages that include sightseeing and limousine service, and special accommodations for dads who want to fly in for the actual birth. The businesses operate openly, and advertise freely in Chinese-language media both here and abroad. It is big business: In 2012, according to Chinese state media, there were some 10,000 tourist births from China; more recent estimates have put the number as high as 60,000 a year.
And since it is standard practice for the United States to grant a six month tourist stay for most visitors, the mother need not risk her or her baby’s health by traveling at the last minute. She can arrive around the end of the first trimester and stay on without incident. Once the baby is born, the birth tourism company helps mother obtain baby’s U.S. passport.
There is absolutely nothing illegal about birth tourism under U.S. law.
It is the active presence of such birth tourism out of China that lead candidate Bush to clarify that he was not speaking against Latinos, who are a huge voting block in America, but Asian anchor babies. “What I was talking about was the specific case of fraud being committed in organized efforts — and frankly, it’s more related to Asian people — coming into our country, having children in that organized effort, taking advantage of a noble concept, which is birthright citizenship.”
Bottom LineLeaving aside the generally jingoistic and often racist arguments conservatives put forward against anchor babies and birth tourism, there is nothing illegal going on.
Any desire to make such things illegal will require significant changes to the law, perhaps extending right up to re-amending the Constitution to reverse concepts that have been a part of America since the late 1800s. Despite all the rhetoric, in the end there is nothing really to see here.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
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