About Me

In writing the "About Me" portion of this blog I thought about the purpose of the blog - namely, preventing the growth of Socialism & stopping the Death Of Democracy in the American Republic & returning her to the "liberty to abundance" stage of our history. One word descriptions of people's philosophies or purposes are quite often inadequate. I feel that I am "liberal" meaning that I am broad minded, independent, generous, hospitable, & magnanimous. Under these terms "liberal" is a perfectly good word that has been corrupted over the years to mean the person is a left-winger or as Mark Levin more accurately wrote in his book "Liberty & Tyranny" a "statist" - someone looking for government or state control of society. I am certainly not that & have dedicated the blog to fighting this. I believe that I find what I am when I consider whether or not I am a "conservative" & specifically when I ask what is it that I am trying to conserve? It is the libertarian principles that America was founded upon & originally followed. That is the Return To Excellence that this blog is named for & is all about.

Sunday, June 1, 2025

Biden's Absurd Pretense Damages America

The release of the audio recordings from Special Counsel Robert Hur's interviews with Joe Biden in October, 2023 pertaining to Biden's mishandling of classified documents after he left the vice presidency, along with tell all books written by opportunistic journalists, confirmed what the least discerning among us knew since @ least the 2020 presidential campaign - namely, that Biden did not have the cognitive ability to be president of the United States (i.e., the mental skills & processes used for thinking, learning, reasoning, problem solving, & understanding the world around him that encompasses the functions of memory, attention, perception, & language which enables us to process information, adapt to new situations, & make decisions).
 
This post pertains to the Biden presidential scandal regarding the hiding from the public of Biden's true cognitive ability during his last two campaigns for the presidency & his four year term in office.  It does not pertain to any potential scandal regarding his being diagnosed with late stage prostate cancer only a few months after leaving office - which is a whole other matter.
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Early on in 2020 during Biden's campaign for the presidency many people thought the degree that he stayed in his Delaware basement was strange - despite the pretense of protecting himself from the Wuhan coronavirus that causes Covid-19.  But even in the basement there were teleprompter problems & the outrageous statement Biden made to Charlemange tha God in May 2020 about black voters choosing him over Trump.  The basement episodes are the starting point & the June 27, 2024 pitiful debate performance is the ending point of a time interval where Biden's cognitive ability decline was on an ever increasing full display.

During his time in office clues kept adding up that something was wrong with Biden.  

For instance four months after the aforementioned Hur interviews the White House released the transcripts but not the audios of the interviews in which Biden's confusion was much more pronounced than revealed in a simple reading of the transcripts.  Hur's assessment of the interviews was that Biden was a "sympathetic, well meaning elderly man with a poor memory" who exhibited "diminished faculties" & "significant limitations" & that because of Biden's poor condition "no criminal charges are warranted in this matter."  

Hur's assessment infuriated Biden who around 7 PM Thursday, February 8, 2024 called a press conference for 7:45 PM in which he intended to prove to the world "I know what the hell I'm doing."

Biden looked unusually feeble going to the podium in his usual old-man shuffling gait & after giving an angry speech took questions in which his answers 1) mistakenly referred to the President of Mexico when he meant Egypt regarding human aid in Gaza,  2) absentmindedly referred to his late son Beau - “Let me tell you something.  Some of you have commented.  I wear, since the day he died every single day, the rosary he got from our Lady of …” & then was not able to finish the sentence, 3) emphatically stated that “I said I’m gonna be a president for everybody, whether you live in a red state or a green state,” & 4) finally turned to the Democrat safe issue of abortion & promptly misnamed the “Roe v. Wade” case as "Roe v. Ward" as in Montgomery Ward & Co.

Not a performance that portrayed the desired image of a strong energetic man in control but rather one of a confused "elderly man with a poor memory” who exhibited “diminished faculties” & “significant limitations” - exactly how Hur's report he was trying to undo had described him. 

In the audio of the Hur interviews Biden could be heard speaking with a weak voice struggling to express himself & remembering dates including mixing up his time as VP with his time in the Senate & being off by several years recounting the year that his son Beau died. 


Tapper's book claims that Biden was not in charge of his presidency.  The statements Biden made several times about  "the Harris-Biden administration" & Harris referring to "a Harris administration together with Joe Biden" takes on a different perspective based on Tapper's book.  These statements were not just gaffes - they were confirmations that Biden was prepared to be a Kamala Harris progressive.

The people who covered for Biden should never hold a position of trust again.  The three people who quickly come to mind are Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pieire who regularly told people how sharp Biden was & that he ran circles around her; Kamala Harris, who after the aforementioned debate told the nation that Biden was as sharp as ever when she regularly meets with him to discuss national issues (Harris did not have time to prepare a story coming on air shortly after the conclusion of the disastrous debate); & Jill Biden who had to know all of the details from the basement to the debate but consistently led her husband everywhere they went.

And naturally there is the media cover up.  Who would want to get their news from a source that so blatantly misled you on Biden's deteriorating mental condition?

Of course you have control over this - just don't vote for any politician who so grossly misled you or get your news from any source that repeatedly says to believe them rather than your lying eyes.

Below is a list of videos I presented on RTE during the 2020 campaign that divulged the absurd pretense that Biden & all his accomplices worked under to hide his mental condition.  Best to avoid the media that did not present & address the obvious problems.  The dates appearing next to the video topics below indicate the date of the post.  If you never saw any of these videos you should ask yourself why.

Jill breaks Biden freese - March 23, 2020 
You know the thing - March 12, 2020
Biden runs for the Senate - October 25, 2020
Biden's two minute memory - October 25, 2020

But the Democrats painted themselves into the corner during the 2020 presidential campaign when it looked like Bernie Sanders could win the Democrat party nomination that year.  Biden was on the ropes after losing the first three nominating contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, & Nevada.  He needed a win in South Carolina & called on his long time friend South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn for help.  Clyburn endorsed Biden who went on to a major win in SC winning all 46 counties after being propelled by receiving 61% of the Black vote.  In return for Clyburn's support Biden promised to nominate a woman as his running mate & after several private meetings Biden nominated a Black woman - Clyburn's preference.  Biden won 10 of 15 contests on Super Tuesday following his win in SC & was well on his way to the Democrat nomination in 2020.

Thus the ticket of Joe Biden & Kamala Harris was formed - they were initially successful in Democrats' eyes because they defeated Trump in 2020 receiving 306 electoral votes & over 81 million popular votes - a record. 

In 2024 Biden once more called on his friend Clyburn who helped rig the 2024 primary in Biden's favor by having the Democrat National Committee (DNC) move South Carolina ahead of New Hampshire on the Democrat party primary schedule.  The excuse being that the DNC wanted to prioritize diversity & that the SC electorate was thought to be more diverse than NH's & therefore more representative of the Democrat voting base.  NH held its primary first anyway knowing full well that their convention delegates were disqualified because the state breached the party calendar.  Biden won the SC primary anew in 2024 thereby once again providing a path for this decrepit man to become president of the United States.  But Clyburn had done Democrats no favors by once again putting Democrats in the Biden-Harris box - this time it blew up in their faces after Biden's disastrous debate performance did not leave enough time for selection of a nominee other than Harris.

But the die had really been cast earlier on in the campaign of 2020 in that Biden was already @ least slightly senile in 2020 with further rapid mental deterioration to follow & when Biden could not continue with his campaign in July 2024 the Democrat party's future fell into the hands of Harris.  Trump found himself facing Harris - an abominable, feckless, vapid candidate thereby setting up Trump's comeback victory in 2024 to the horror of Democrats who acknowledge that the Biden presidency failed its intended mission to move the country past Trump & all the damage he had done & is doing to our constitutional republic once again, just like @ the end of his first term, betraying his oath of office by 1) abusing the limited authority Congress had legislatively delegated to the executive decades before to use discrete targeted tariffs in emergencies - a limited authority that Trump has used to claim unbounded, unchecked, unilateral authority to impose tariffs on virtually every country on Earth based on an arbitrary formula intended to penalize countries based on their trade imbalances with the United States that in reality will only raise American consumer prices thereby lowering economic growth & our standard of living, & 2) effectively suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus concerning alleged illegal alien detainees - the Great Writ is an essential part of America's Due Process legal system that separates the United States from the tyranny found in North Korea, Venezuela, El Salvador, & South Sudan. 

(Note regarding Biden - those people - party bosses & voters - who thought Biden was capable of governing as a moderate & presiding over an economically successful presidency like Bill Clinton's - thanks to Gingrich - took a terrible chance lying to themselves & the rest of us by ignoring or discounting Biden's four decade public service record & the videos presented hereinbefore.)

Biden's taste of the presidential power he had wanted all of his life made it all but impossible to drag him & his wife out of the White House until the June debate showed the world on live TV how unfit he was to serve.  Harris was painted into the same corner as Biden because she could not credibly claim she would have implemented different policies after spending three & one half years never once disagreeing with anything Biden did.

So what started in 2020 as a plan to ensure Trump was not reelected turned into a dilemma in 2024 where the Democrat nominee for president was first a man who was forced to drop out after an unintelligible debate performance & then a woman who had dropped out of the 2020 Democrat primaries before the Iowa caucuses without ever receiving one single vote.  Harris's first decision as the Democrat nominee in 2024 was to pick Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate - a man Mike Huckabee described as "Elmer Fudd without the shotgun."

The Democrat brass can only blame themselves for the decline in their party where only 35% of Democrats are optimistic about their future because of the uncovering of the charade that Biden was physically & mentally fit to be president - a deception built on a foundation of quicksand that by definition meant it was destined to not work out well @ some point for the perpetrators & their accomplices.

We'll find out how much of the Biden-Harris stigma sticks to Democrats in the November 2026 midterms.   Meanwhile Trump's approval rating dropped to 42% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted during the week of May 19 (it's underwater by over 10 points regarding the economy in the Real Clear Politics average on May 28 @ 42.3% approve & 52.8% disapprove) but he retains strong support from the people who voted for him, including those in this readership.

Sunday, May 11, 2025

The Individual Burden Of The National Debt & Its Relationship To Tariffs

On the day in 2011 when the gross national debt crossed $14 trillion Bill O'Reilly emphatically proclaimed on the O'Reilly Factor on FNC that we had reached our borrowing limit.  The USA could go no deeper into debt in this pundit's opinion without serious widespread bad effects to our country.  Well the national debt was over $36 trillion @ the end of 2024.

Since the debt has almost tripled since Bill's cataclysmic statement people have given up making statements like Bill did in 2011 but are satisfied to just say that the debt is unsustainable or that our children & grandchildren will pay this debt off.  Most older Americans are happy to leave it @ that because the equation does not include them - just their children & grandchildren who they reason can fend for themselves when the time comes.

But the most interesting way pundits have been thinking about this large debt number lately is to find different examples that show its enormity to impress the general population who live in oblivion & couldn't care less.

The simplest of these examples is to recommend that people write out the entire debt number showing all 12 zeros - $36,000,000,000,000.

Or, you could ask how long it would take to spend a trillion dollars if you spent a million dollars per day.  Please let me know - I'd be interested to see what you get.  

Still, another way to illustrate the huge debt is to ask how high a stack of one trillion dollar bills would reach (using the standard that a stack of 100 bills = 1.09 cm high).  Relating the answer to the distance to the moon makes the point.  And that's just for 1,000,000,000,000 bills not 36,000,000,000,000.

The problem with all of these examples, as entertaining as they are, is that they don't help us understand that the gross national debt predicament is not just a large dollar number - which should be obvious after all the years of deficit spending with no apparent ill effects to the country.  

The January 21, 2021 post entitled The Significance Of The National Debt explains that the debt crisis will come when the Treasury can't find a buyer for our debt - & this was well on its way to happening on April 9 only hours after Trump's reciprocal tariffs on nearly 100 countries had taken effect.  The DJIA had dropped over 4,500 points from April 3 to April 8 after Trump announced his reciprocal tariffs on April 2.  This precipitous drop over 4 days totaled over 11% for the DJIA, over 12% for the S&P 500, & over 13% for the Nasdaq Composite.

In the past such times of stock market stress caused investors to rush in a herd-like movement to the United States Treasury bond market.  But not this time - Treasuries fell just as precipitously as stocks with the 10-year Treasury note yield rising from 4.01% on April 4 to 4.48% on April 11 meaning investors demanded higher yields to buy our debt.  A bad sign.

The reciprocal tariffs caused the damage & Trump blinked, pausing them for ninety days, except for tariffs on China, after he realized that foreign buying of our debt was drying up thereby beginning the end of America's deficit spending party.

Now by all means do the above calculations & write out all the zeros when expressing the national debt to see if it helps you get a feel for its enormity.  But also to help get a handle on the individual burden of the debt, divide $36,000,000,000,000 by 335,000,000 United States citizens to see the equal share of every man, woman, & child in the citizenry.  This is the measure to be concerned with if Trump reinstates the reciprocal tariffs after the ninety day pause ends. 

Sunday, April 20, 2025

The 14th Amendment Denies Birthright Citizenship To Children Of Illegal Aliens

The most fundamental question a country must answer pertains to defining its citizenship requirements - this is more of a bedrock matter than the issues we discuss every day - tax policy, healthcare, climate change, the national debt, the budget deficit, & even adequate national defense.


This post will explain the history of American citizenship as it pertains to the 14th Amendment & in particular show how the claim to birthright citizenship by illegal aliens for their children born on American soil is one of the worst abuses & exploitations ever inflicted on the United States.

Every day foreigners illegally enter the United States, like hiding in the trunk of a car @ midnight, to claim citizenship for babies born on American soil.  The Pew Research Center estimates that approximately 295,000 such babies (known as anchor babies) were born to parents who were not authorized to be in the United States in 2013 representing 8% of the 3.9 million U.S. births that year.  If the foreigners are pursued by the authorities before the baby is born & the foreigners leave the country the baby is not claimed to be an American citizen.  Who can think this game of hide & go seek is what the writers of the Constitution intended?

The anchor baby scam has existed mostly around our southwest border for decades but more recently Chinese couples have participated in "birthright tourism" schemes where pregnant Chinese women are coached on how to trick U.S. customs inspectors including how to hide their pregnancy & then stay in a "maternity hotel" until giving birth to what they think is a U.S. citizen.

The ultimate benefit of having an anchor baby is that the child becomes the source of what's known as "chain migration" where the entire family moves to America for a better life including a better education & healthcare.  These people selfishly butt in line ahead of people who have applied for citizenship following the rules to come to America & assimilate.  The assimilation of immigrants into American culture has been an important feature of U.S. history.  Immigrants breaking into America on their own terms with no interest in assimilating only divides the nation.

The claim to birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens is based on Section1 (the Citizenship Clause) of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution that reads "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, & subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States & of the State wherein they reside." 

This text seems straightforward enough except for the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."  Accordingly,  we need to find out if the history surrounding the writing & ratification of the amendment reveals the clear meaning of the text as well as confirmation that the people of the day had this understanding of the finding.

The 14th Amendment, along with the 13th & 15th Amendments, are collectively known as the Reconstruction Amendments.  They were ratified in the aftermath of the Civil War to address issues of slavery & racial equality.  Specifically, the 14th Amendment's purpose was to settle the question of citizenship of the newly freed slaves (by the 13th Amendment ratified on December 5, 1865) by overturning the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision which held that no black of African descent could be a citizen of the United States.  The 14th Amendment was not written specifically to address illegal aliens having anchor babies born in America that automatically become American citizens if for no other reason than there was no such thing as an illegal alien when the amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868.  The Amendment's authors' references to foreigners in this post covers illegal aliens. 

The Civil Rights Act of 1866, introduced on January 5, 1866, was the immediate predecessor of the 14th Amendment - the Act's first clause reads "All persons born in the United States & not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United states."

The principal author of the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment was Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan who eliminated the phrase "Indians not taxed" from the text of the 14th Amendment.  Howard did not intend to make Indians citizens of the United States with his new language & explained that "Indians born within the limits of the United States, & who maintain their tribal relations, are not, in the sense of this amendment, born subject to the jurisdiction of the United States."

Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed this understanding saying "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" meant "not owing allegiance to anybody else . . . subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States."  The "anybody else" means any foreign nation or tribe whatsoever & "complete jurisdiction of the United States" is to owe no allegiance to any other country or tribe, i.e., exclusive allegiance to the United States.  Indians, he went on, were not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States because they owed allegiance, even if only partial, to their tribes.  Accordingly, the 14th Amendment was consistent with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to establish two requirements of United States citizenship: 1) born or naturalized in the United States & 2) subject to its jurisdiction.

So right here the claim of birthright citizenship of the children of illegal aliens is seen to be false.

Going further - "jurisdiction" did not mean simply subject to the laws of the United States or subject to its courts; it meant much more, specifically, "jurisdiction" meant exclusive "allegiance" to the United States which of course illegal aliens & their children did not have.

Senator Howard explained that the requirement of "jurisdiction" understood in the sense of "allegiance," "will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United  States."  See image below.









click on image to enlarge.

And of course the authors of the 14th Amendment affirmed that all persons in the United States are subject to United States  law, i.e., both obligated to protect it & entitled to its protection - but not everyone on United States soil had complete allegiance to the United States.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Senator Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania clarifies:

"If a traveler comes here from Ethiopia, from Australia, or from Great Britain, he is entitled, to a certain extent, to the protection of the laws. You cannot murder him with impunity. It is murder to kill him, the same as it is to kill another man. You cannot commit assault & battery on him, I apprehend. He has a right to the protection of the laws; but he is not a citizen in the ordinary acceptation of the word."

Senator Cowan provided examples above of the partial jurisdiction that any sovereign state claims over aliens on its soil.  I provide the example of an Englishman here on vacation - he clearly has to abide by our laws while here like driving on the right side of the road - not the left.  He is subject to our partial or territorial jurisdiction but not our complete jurisdiction - he cannot be drafted into our Army, vote in American elections, or be tried for treason because his complete allegiance is to England.  When a foreign tourist leaves America the ephemeral jurisdiction he was subject to while here disappears (ceases to exist).  By comparison, when a United States citizen (or green-card holder) travels outside the United States they maintain their citizenship status including being subject to the income tax laws & military draft if in effect - this is true even if the move is permanent.

Chief Justice John Marshall addressed this ephemeral jurisdiction by saying in Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon (1812) that foreigners here on "business or caprice" owe a "temporary & local allegiance" to the United States & are therefore "amenable to the jurisdiction of the country" while they are here.  The ephemeral jurisdiction Chief Justice Marshall described was clearly different from the complete jurisdiction required by the Citizenship Clause.

Senator Howard further clarified the meaning of the jurisdiction clause, endorsing the above interpretation of Senator Trumbull:

"I concur entirely with the honorable Senator from Illinois, in holding that the word “jurisdiction,” as here employed, ought to be construed so as to imply a full and complete jurisdiction on the part of the United States, coextensive in all respects with the constitutional power of the United States, whether exercised by Congress, by the executive, or by the judicial department; that is to say, the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now."

By definition - 1) the “constitutional power of the United States” is not “coextensive” with foreign nations, i.e., they do not reach the same boundaries or cover the same area, & 2) the “same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now” cannot apply to foreigners. To claim otherwise is to claim that U.S. law applies to foreigners even when they are residing in their own countries!  It is to claim, in effect, that U.S. law rules the world.  Which it does not.

Maryland Senator Reverdy Johnson added yet another supportive, clarifying comment:

"Now, all this amendment provides is that all persons born in the United States & not subject to some foreign Power—for that, no doubt, is the meaning of the committee who have brought the matter before us—shall be considered as citizens of the United States.  That would seem to be not only a wise but a necessary provision. If there are to be citizens of the United States entitled everywhere to the character of citizens of the United States there should be some certain definition of what citizenship is, what has created the character of citizen as between himself & the United States, & the amendment says that citizenship may depend upon birth, & I know of no better way to give rise to citizenship than the fact of birth within the territory of the United States, born of parents who at the time were subject to the authority of the United States."

Senator Johnson's remarks address the anchor baby problem plaguing America today.  He expresses the common sense that if the parents are in the country illegally that the child is also & should not be awarded citizenship.  In addition, wouldn't the country where the parents are citizens expect the child to be a citizen of that country?  This would be true for illegal aliens or a pregnant French tourist who has a child early while on vacation in America - wouldn't France say the child is a French citizen?

In an earlier debate, explaining to the House the purpose & meaning of the citizenship clause of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, Ohio Congressman John Bingham said:

"I find no fault with the introductory clause, which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen."

The source of the foregoing quotes are from a piece entitled Birthright Citizenship: A Response To My Critics by Michael Anton, lecturer & research fellow @ Hillsdale College & senior fellow @ the Claremont Institute.  The actual quotes come from the Congressional Globe, an ancestor to the Congressional Record, which records congressional debates.  All of the senators' quotes are from the Senate debate on the 14th Amendment, May 30, 1866.

Based on the above documentation it is clear that the authors of the 14th Amendment did not intend for the children of illegal aliens to become citizens of the United States based on the child's birth in America.  The 14th Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868 when the 28th state legislature out of thirty-seven approved the Amendment.  In ratifying the 14th Amendment the state legislatures confirmed the authors' intent being understood by the contemporary public as evidenced by the following five examples that occurred in the years after ratification.  Please note that all three branches of government acknowledged in these examples (two judiciary, two executive, & one legislative) that birthright citizenship was not automatically conferred to children of foreigners or anybody who did not have complete & full allegiance to the United States   

This understanding was confirmed in the 1873 Slaughterhouse cases contested before the Supreme Court.  The syllabus of the decision included a statement that the phrase "subject to its jurisdiction thereof" in the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to exclude children of foreign ministers, consuls, and foreign citizens/subjects born within the United States.  

Specifically on pages 83 U.S. 72 & 73 of the decision made on April 14, 1873: '"The first section of the fourteenth article to which our attention is more specially invited opens with a definition of citizenship . . . The phrase, "subject to its jurisdiction" was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States."'

The SCOTUS writeup in the Slaughterhouse cases certainly confirms the understanding that birthright citizenship is not automatically conveyed to children born in the United States of illegal aliens, although this finding was not the primary purpose of the case, which dealt with the question of whether the 14th Amendment extended the privileges or Immunities of the State Action Clause (aka the Privileges or Immunities clause) to the States.

In 1879, acting Secretary of State Frederick Seward reviewed the case of the late James W. Smith, an expatriate who had served in the Mexican army & had two minor sons aged seven & ten @ the time of his death.  Secretary Seward concluded that the boys would not be American citizens if the father's change of allegiance from the United States to Mexico had occurred before the boys were born in America, if Mexico attached Mexican nationalism to them while still minors, or if they remained in Mexico & became Mexican citizens.  The boys were awarded American citizenship because the father's change of allegiance occurred after the birth of the youngest child. 

In the Elk v. Wilkins case (1884) the Supreme Court decided that a native Indian who had renounced allegiance to his tribe did not become "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States simply by his renunciation.  "The alien & dependent condition of the members of the Indian Tribes could not be put off @ their own will, without the action or assent of the United States" signified either by treaty or legislation.  Neither the "Indian Tribes" nor "individual members of those Tribes," no more than "other foreigners" can "become citizens of their own will."  Source - Edward Erler, The Heritage Guide To The Constitution, page 385.

In 1885 the State Department rejected the citizenship claim of Ludwig Hausding - a man born in Michigan to parents who had not been naturalized.  In so doing the Secretary of State relied on the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment saying "the fact of birth, under circumstances implying alien subjection, establishes of itself no right of citizenship."

Congress confirmed that the understanding of the writers & ratifiers of the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment pertains to the issuance of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.  This act was necessary because Indians were not considered citizens of the United States.  Why? Because, although born on American soil, they owed their political allegiance to their tribal government, not the government of the United States.

The above five examples verify the original understanding of the people when, & for years thereafter, the 14th Amendment was ratified; namely that children born in the United States of illegal aliens were not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States & therefore they were not citizens of the United States.   But over time, especially during FDR's administration, the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 14th Amendment shifted from its original meaning to a more expansive view particularly when FDR & subsequent presidents began to bestow more rights on individuals including dual citizenship that became officially recognized in 1967 when the Supreme Court struck down most laws that had banned dual citizenship (Afroyim v. Rusk).

In 1898 the Supreme Court heard the case United States v. Wong Kim Ark - a case involving a plaintiff born in the United States to parents who had full legal-resident status & owned a business (they were not temporary visitors to the United States & they were not illegal aliens) - they were subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States.  The SCOTUS found that Wong Kim Ark was a citizen of the United States relying on both English common law regarding jus soli & the natural born citizen requirement of Article II, Section 1, Clause 5.  This is the case that Progressives rely on when they claim anybody born in the United States is a citizen.  The reality is that the Supreme Court has never done an analysis like the one I present hereinbefore nor made a ruling or determination that the children of illegal aliens are citizens of the United States merely because of the child's birth in the United States.

It is insulting to the intelligence of every American citizen for Progressives to claim that the authors of the 14th Amendment intended that children born during their mother's illegal presence in the United States automatically receive citizenship thereby becoming the direct beneficiary of their parents breaking our laws.  Their continued presence in the United States depends on evading the law rather than submitting to it or showing allegiance to America.  Who in their right mind thinks our Constitution confers a benefit based on an illegal act?

We should put an end to this malicious exploitation in the next five minutes.

Reference - Trump's Executive Order dated January 20, 2025 denying birthright citizenship to children of illegal & non-resident aliens