Tag: Executive Order

Birthright Citizenship and Five Little Words

An activist federal judge has blocked a key executive order that was recently implemented by President Donald Trump.

The executive order that was signed by President Trump does away with birthright citizenship, i.e., the granting of full citizenship to the offspring of illegal aliens who are physically present in the United States.

The order is part and parcel of the president’s overall border reform package.

Several lawsuits have been initiated by states that are opposed to the order. In addition, the ACLU has taken it upon itself to be a representative for a number of left-wing groups in bringing legal action.

In my legal assessment, by issuing the executive order on birthright citizenship, President Trump is prompting the courts to clarify and rule on the language, meaning, and substance of what the law actually states.

For quite a long time government institutions have allowed policies to be implemented apart from the law, policies that deem all persons born in the U.S. to illegal alien parents are citizens.

However, the United States Constitution does not necessitate this policy. In fact, there is nothing in either the Constitution or in any federal statute that grants birthright citizenship to a child born in the U.S. to illegal alien parents.

What appears to be a complex issue actually isn’t. A look back at constitutional history provides quite a bit of insight and may help to clarify things.

The most repugnant decision in Supreme Court history took place in 1857, when the High Court issued its ruling on the Dred Scott v. Sandford case. The Court held that U.S.-born descendants of African slaves were not citizens.

In response to the Dred Scott decision, when the Civil War ended Congress did two things.

First, it passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

Second, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was drafted and passed, which took the protections of the Civil Rights Act and incorporated them into the text of the Constitution.

The goal was a singular one: To grant citizenship to formerly enslaved people.

The amendment does not say that all children born in the United States are citizens. The drafters of the amendment would have used different language if this were the intention. But they didn’t.

The Fourteenth Amendment, as approved and written, states the following: “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens.

It is important to note the conditional phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

The original meaning of the phrase has to do with the concept of political allegiance.

Senator Lyman Trumbull, who was one of the principal figures involved in the drafting of the Fourteenth Amendment, spelled it out. Individuals who owed allegiance to or were subject to a foreign power were not granted citizenship by the amendment.

Clearly, the language of the Fourteenth Amendment didn’t apply to everyone born here. Children of tribally-affiliated Native Americans as well as diplomats were not included in the extension of citizenship, even if they were born in the U.S.

The historical reasoning that excluded tribally affiliated Native Americans and diplomats from birthright citizenship applies equally to those who are illegally present in our country today.

Why? Because illegal aliens are not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” of the United States in that their first contact with the U.S. was an illegal act, and additionally they maintain citizenship with another country while illegally residing in the U.S.

In an apparent attempt to bolster their arguments, opponents of President Trump’s executive order bring up the 1898 Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Wong. This case involved a child born in the U.S. during a period when federal law barred Chinese immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens.

However, the High Court’s decision was predicated on the fact that the child’s Chinese parents were in the country lawfully and permanently. In other words, the case dealt with a child born to parents who were both legal immigrants.

Truth be known, the Supreme Court has never had to deal with a birthright citizenship case involving children born to parents living in the country illegally.

Looks like the High Court will have to now.

Hopefully, the Justices will be paying close attention to the 5 little words and will rule accordingly.

What You Need to Know about the Heads of Social Media and Big Tech

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In an unprecedented move by the head honchos of social media, President Donald Trump had several posts on his Twitter account slapped with “fact check” disclaimer labels.

When internet companies were in their infancy back in the 1990s, Congress, via legislation, provided them with immunity from certain civil lawsuits in order to encourage the development of “platforms,” i.e., digital places for users to share user-created content.

Similar to bookstores that are not in the business of creating, editing, or publishing the material contained on the shelves of their stores, companies such as Twitter were granted special protection from lawsuits so that digital platforms that merely host media content created by third parties (their users) would be able to operate unhindered by the threat of legal action.

Companies with very large social media platforms have been acting as if they merely provide space for third parties to share, when in actuality it is just that, acting. Based on the same premise, they additionally continue to maintain that they should not be held liable for what their users post.

Twitter’s decision to fact check in such a high profile and subjective manner stands as a watershed moment in the relationship between government and social media.

By fact checking the President of the United States on, of all things, an issue related to potential election fraud, Twitter tossed its identity of being a platform out into the ethersphere. But it also let the cat out of the bag as to its real present status, that of full-fledged publisher.

Twitter expressed a political opinion when it engaged in its fact checking. The issue was a mega-politically charged one involving mass mail-in voting and whether such a process is ripe for fraud.

President Trump’s tweet was evaluated by the overseers at Twitter, and users were prompted to “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.” Upon clicking a link, users were subsequently instructed that “experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud,” an unmistakable political statement that also happens to be false.

If one is willing to dig a little deeper, what is discovered is that Twitter has implemented a policy that currently seems to apply to a single user—President Trump.

When a social media company engages in the same activities as a publication, it must be treated as if it were one. Newspapers, magazines, etc., fall under the umbrella of conventional publishers that create and edit their own content and are not exempt from liability.

Twitter has not been considered a publisher, despite the fact that it has been acting like one. But to exacerbate the situation, it has increasingly become a publisher of the most highly partisan kind. And it just so happens that, as of this writing, we are less than six months away from a presidential election.

Some big tech companies have also demonstrated a political bias in giving liberals a pass while engaging in an all-out targeting of conservatives.

–PragerU’s Facebook page was marked with a virtual branding iron as containing “false news” and was demonetized as well.

–A study from NYU on the addition of zinc to a hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin treatment was removed by YouTube.

–A hydroxychloroquine video by Sharyl Attkisson was also removed, although it was subsequently reinstated.

–A contrarian Michael Moore-produced documentary, “Planet of the Humans,” was yanked from YouTube.

As reported by Vox, a number of top Silicon Valley figures appear to be working behind the scenes in a concerted effort to get presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden elected. Big tech names include LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, Apple founder Steve Job’s widow Laurene Powell Jobs, and ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Twitter’s own Yoel Roth, who presently holds the title “Head of Site Integrity,” has referred to President Trump and his team as “actual Nazis.” Roth has additionally mocked Trump supporters, insulted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and provided campaign donations to former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

President Trump recently signed an executive order that sets in motion a potentially costly change for Twitter with respect to the company’s civil liability exposure. The order directs all executive departments and agencies to ensure that their application of Section 230(c), the law that limits liability, falls within “the narrow purpose of the section.”

The executive order cites the legislative purpose of the law to maintain the internet as a “forum for a true diversity of political discourse.” The departments and agencies are instructed to “take all appropriate actions in this regard.”

The heads of departments and agencies must also review advertising and marketing expenses that are paid to Twitter and other online platforms. This includes the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the Department of Justice (DOJ), as well as other parts of the executive branch.

With regard to Twitter, Google, Facebook, YouTube, and others, it is possible that some of the personnel of these departments and agencies will be looking into the practice of the gathering of information about virtually everything users do and then selling the data for billions of dollars.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr has already indicated that the DOJ will begin drafting legislation to regulate social media companies.

President Trump’s executive order may have an immediate limiting effect on social media and big tech’s future editorial actions.

Apparently, tech CEOs, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, have already heard the footsteps of the federal government. Zuckerberg recently distanced himself from Twitter when he told Fox News that the social media platform had, in his opinion, made a mistake, and that no social media platform should be the “arbiter of truth.”

The bottom line is that social media and big tech companies can’t have it both ways. And hopefully, in the very near future, they won’t.