Robin Richardson

Semi retired. Daughter of a WWll USMC fighter. Grandmother and GGrandmother. Love God, family and the USA!

[Flint Firestarter the 1st @flintf1]

@mattvanswol @Raven2761 "Brilliant arguments don't override stupid decisions."

It’s time we applied far higher standards to our Supreme Court.

🇺🇲👨‍⚖️👩‍⚖️🧑‍⚖️

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

I think what struck me most was the ending.

Justice Thomas closed his opinion on kind of a sad note where he says that the entire purpose of this part of the Constitution was to lift up a people who had been despised and degraded, and to hand them the full pride of dignity of being American citizens.

It was meant to be something that carried a lot of weight and was honorable.

Now, he believes, that same is being given away cheaply, handed to the children of birth tourists and people here illegally on the basis of NOTHING MORE than the spot where a baby happened to come into the world.

He says he doubts this ruling will hold up over time, and that it actually cheapens the very citizenship it claims to be protecting.

In his words: "I am not sure that today's opinion will stand the test of time. . . . Today's opinion devalues that citizenship. I respectfully dissent."

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

But the true legal fight comes down to this phrase: "subject to the jurisdiction."

The Constitution says a citizen is someone born here and "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States.

EVERYTHING turns on what those words mean.

The Court reads them loosely, to mean something like "anyone who has to obey our laws while they're standing on our soil," which would include almost everybody, tourists included.

Thomas reads them to mean something much stronger: someone who is FULLY under America's authority and FULLY loyal to America, with no competing loyalty to another country.

To show he's not just making this up, he points to three groups that everyone has always agreed were left out of citizenship: the children of foreign ambassadors, the children of enemy soldiers occupying American land, and Native Americans living under their own tribal governments.

Why were all three left out?

Because none of them were fully under U.S. control.

They each answered to some OTHER authority.

In his words: "Children born to diplomats, hostile alien occupiers, and Indians in tribes were not citizens because they were not subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States. For the same reason, the children of foreign temporary visitors, who were also not subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States, were also not citizens."

Thomas says a tourist's baby fits the same pattern because the baby and the parents are still tied to another country.

So the same logic that excludes those three groups, he argues, should exclude the visitor's child too.

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

The wording was chosen carefully, on purpose, to leave certain people out.

Before the rule went into the Constitution, there was an earlier version of it: a law passed in 1866.

And the people who wrote that law picked their words VERY DELIBERATELY to make sure the children of temporary visitors would NOT be included.

The senator who led the effort said it about as plainly as a person can: people who are only here for a short time are folks "we would have no right to make citizens," and that includes their kids.

He even worried that a looser wording might accidentally scoop those families in, so he tightened it on purpose to keep them out.

Thomas's point is that when the rule later went into the Constitution itself, it carried that EXACT SAME INTENTION.

The fancier constitutional language was meant to do the same job the 1866 law did.

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

Back then, being a "citizen" basically meant "this is your real, permanent home."

In the era when this rule was written, being a "citizen" of a place and having your permanent home there were treated as nearly the SAME IDEA.

You were a citizen of the place where you actually lived your life and intended to stay for good.

Now you might reasonably ask: "But weren't people made citizens simply by being born somewhere?"

And the answer is yes, usually, but here's WHY that worked.

In those days, almost every baby was born in the exact place its family lived.

Crossing an ocean while pregnant just to give birth somewhere else and leave wasn't a thing... air travel didn't exst.

So "born here" was a reliable hint that "this family lives here."

Being born in a place was a CLUE pointing to your real home, not the actual rule itself.

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

His main point is that there's a difference between someone belonging here and someone just passing through.

Freed slaves, Thomas says, belonged here in every way that mattered.

They had no other country to go back to.
They owed loyalty to no foreign king or government.

America was the ONLY home they had ever had, and they had worked, suffered, and fought for it like everyone else.

Now picture a completely different situation: a baby born to two tourists who are in the country for a two-week vacation.

That family still has a home somewhere else, still belongs to another nation, and will go back to it.

Thomas's point is that these two situations are NOTHING ALIKE, even though both babies were technically born on U.S. soil.

The citizenship rule, he argues, was built for the first kind of person, the one who truly belongs, not for the second.

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

I have just finished reading Justice Clarence Thomas's 91-page dissent in the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down Trump’s birthright citizenship order.

It's incredible.

Here's everything you need to know: 🧵

[Rose Smith @itsrosesm]

DO YOU SUPPORT SEC.
DUFFY KICKING 9,500
SEMITRUCK DRIVERS OFF F AMERICAN ROADS WH CAN'T SPEAK ENGLISH?

[Lara Logan @laralogan]

Good for you. This country is at war & people better start acting like it or they’ll lose before they’re able to put up a real fight.

[DVZ MΞMΞS @FreedomInc5]

@NYCMayor Soon, you will run out of other people's money.
Those wealthy people and businesses that you gaffed will be soon GONE from NYC and you will be proven the clueless, incompetent grifter we know you are.

[Nick shirley @nickshirleyy]

@NYCMayor @ZohranKMamdani This is a lie. You balanced the budget by borrowing billions from the NY state government which pushed back pension payments, so you literally took money from "the backs of hardworking people."

Don’t get it twisted.

[Sean Hannity 🇺🇸 @seanhannity]

Marcus Lemonis warns New York’s policies could drive down property values, revealing he’s selling his home and moving out of the city:

“Socialism isn’t great under any circumstances, but the ideas he’s proposing have to be funded by somebody. That wealth has to be created. Much like you, I’m a Florida resident, but I also have a home here. I’m waiting for my tax notice later this year, and my house is already up for sale. I don’t want to live in a city where I believe it’s becoming too difficult for my property value to appreciate the way it does in places like Florida. Over time, these policies are going to hurt both commercial and residential real estate values. Give it another two or three years, and I think what we’re seeing now is only a preview.”

[Jenna Ellis 🐊 @realJennaEllis]

Trump should respond by denying and revoking all tourist visas and shutting down all borders until Congress acts.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Are we great yet?

[Juanita Broaddrick @atensnut]

I’m just sick over this! President Trump works so hard for the American people and he is betrayed by those so desperate for power that they are willing to destroy America in the process!

[Joel Berry @JoelWBerry]

I think ending welfare for immigrants would solve most of our immigrant problem

[Kentucky Girl @Notwokenow]

I want ICE at the hospitals.

I want ICE at the grocery store.

I want ICE at the laundromat.

I want ICE at schools.

I definitely want ICE at polling places.

I want ICE at every communist political rally.

I want ICE at every soccer field.

I want ICE at the grocery store.

I want ICE at the public library.

I want ICE at every DMV in this country.

Everywhere.

[End Wokeness @EndWokeness]

Charlie Kirk left a tweet for everything