Fourteenth Amendment (US Constitution)

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    In Memory of Our Decency: ‘That Was U.S.A.I.D.’

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    More from our inbox:The 14th Amendment and Birthright CitizenshipOpposing Trump’s Transgender PoliciesReady to March Again Ashraf Shazly/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Chaos and Confusion Reign as U.S. Cuts Off Aid to Millions Globally” (news article, Feb. 12):It can take an obituary to get to know someone — though often too late.Most Americans hadn’t known much about the United States Agency for International Development. Some may have seen its “helping hand” logo when a famine was in the news and U.S.A.I.D.-supplied bags of wheat, marked with the logo, appeared briefly on our screens. But that was it.It has taken the callous dismantling of U.S.A.I.D., the mindless amputation of America’s helping hand, for people to get to know the agency and the value of foreign aid. Many are learning for the first time about the good work done during its nearly 64 years.I was in Washington during the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. I thought then, and still think, that the only way to prevent another such catastrophic event and protect the long-term security and prosperity of our beloved homeland is for America to be an exemplary global citizen, for us to maintain mutually respectful relationships with as many countries as possible, and for us to win hearts and minds with our decency and generosity. That was U.S.A.I.D.Perhaps the public’s post-mortem appreciation of U.S.A.I.D. will lead to a resurrection of America’s helping hand. Let us hope and pray.Gary NewtonGeorgetown, MaineTo the Editor:Re “One Very Real Problem Lost in the Politics of Aid Cuts: Child Malnutrition,” by Nicholas Kristof (The Point, Opinion, nytimes.com, Feb. 10):As one of the world’s richest and most powerful nations, America has historically responded to the cries of hunger from abroad. We simply can’t turn our back now when children are starving in Sudan, Gaza, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti and many other impoverished areas.U.S.A.I.D. should be reopened and the Food for Peace program, which was started by President Dwight Eisenhower, must get a funding increase. Food for Peace supports lifesaving programs including nutrition for infants.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Might Have a Case on Birthright Citizenship

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      On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order that purports to end birthright citizenship for certain children. It does so despite Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which declares, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”The central question raised by Mr. Trump’s order is what it means to be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. The answer most legal observers give is that it includes virtually anyone born on American soil, including those whom the order is meant to exclude, namely children born to parents in the country illegally or temporarily. Indeed, on Monday, the American Bar Association described the order as an attack on a “constitutionally protected” right. Federal judges in four states have enjoined the order, with one claiming that it “conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment.”Not necessarily.The Supreme Court has held, in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, that children born here to permanent residents are citizens. But it has never squarely held that children born to those illegally present are citizens. When the court addresses that question — which it almost certainly must — it should consider the 14th Amendment’s original purpose and the common-law principle of “jus soli,” or birthright citizenship, which informed the original public meaning of the text. Both relate to the idea of social compact and contradict today’s general assumption that the common-law principle depends solely upon place of birth.The 14th Amendment’s RootsAt the time of its adoption, the publicly known purpose of the 14th Amendment was to extend the benefits of the social compact — including, specifically, the privileges and immunities of citizenship — to African Americans newly freed after the Civil War. (Due in large part to a series of egregious Supreme Court rulings gutting the original letter and spirit of the amendment, that promise of equal citizenship was largely denied for decades.)Abraham Lincoln’s administration, rejecting the reasoning of Dred Scott v. Sandford, had already acknowledged that free African Americans were citizens. As Edward Bates, Lincoln’s first attorney general, wrote in 1862, in an official opinion, “The Constitution uses the word ‘citizen’ only to express the political quality of the individual in his relations to the nation; to declare that he is a member of the body politic, and bound to it by the reciprocal obligation of allegiance on the one side and protection on the other.”The equal protection clause, also found in Section 1 of the amendment, provides that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This clause was based on the same allegiance-for-protection theory enunciated by Bates.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Federal Judges Block Newly Drawn Louisiana Congressional Map

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      A panel of federal judges blocked Louisiana on Tuesday from using a newly drawn congressional map that had been designed to form a second district with a majority of Black voters, creating uncertainty just months before an election that could play a critical role in determining the balance of power in the House of Representatives.The new districts had been outlined in January during a special session of the State Legislature. Lawmakers had been ordered to sketch out the new boundaries after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that the previous map had very likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Black residents.But in a 2-to-1 decision released on Tuesday, a separate panel of federal judges sided with challengers who argued that the new map was an “impermissible racial gerrymander” that violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution.The challenge had been brought by a group of residents scattered across the newly formed district who described themselves as “non-African American” voters. They argued that lawmakers had moved to “segregate voters based entirely on their races” and that to achieve that, they had stitched together “communities in far-flung regions of Louisiana.”Critics assailed the ruling on Tuesday, saying that it threatened vital protections for voters of color. “The court’s ruling today unnecessarily puts Louisianians’ right to vote in a very precarious position,” Eric H. Holder Jr., the former U.S. attorney general and current chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement.The court will hold a hearing on May 6 to discuss which boundaries will be used in the coming election.“We will of course be seeking Supreme Court review,” Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, wrote on social media. “I’ve said all along the Supreme Court needs to clear this up.” More

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      Illinois Hearing Officer, a Former Republican Judge, Says Trump Engaged in Insurrection

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      But the hearing officer said the State Board of Elections should let the courts decide whether Mr. Trump’s conduct disqualified him from the ballot.A former Republican judge appointed to hear arguments on whether to disqualify former President Donald J. Trump from the Illinois primary ballot said on Sunday that he believed Mr. Trump engaged in insurrection by attempting to remain in office after the 2020 election.But the former judge, Clark Erickson, whose nonbinding opinion will be considered by the State Board of Elections on Tuesday, added that he believed the board did not have the authority to disqualify Mr. Trump on those grounds and that the question should instead be left to the courts.The mixed decision was at least a symbolic setback for the former president, who has faced official challenges to his candidacy in 35 states and has been found ineligible for the primaries in Colorado and Maine. Mr. Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, is still likely to appear on the primary ballots in both of those states as the U.S. Supreme Court considers an appeal of the Colorado ruling.In Illinois, at least five of the eight members of the Board of Elections would have to vote on Tuesday to remove Mr. Trump for him to be struck from the ballot. The appointed board is made up of four Democrats and four Republicans. Their decision can be appealed to the courts before the March 19 primary.The Illinois challenge, like those in other states, is based on a clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that disqualifies government officials who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.At a hearing on Friday in downtown Chicago, lawyers for residents objecting to Mr. Trump’s candidacy accused the former president of insurrection and played footage from the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Lawyers for Mr. Trump denied the allegation and argued that, in any case, the constitutional clause in question did not apply to the presidency. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Only Voters Can Truly Disqualify Trump

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      Intense debate has accompanied the decision by the Supreme Court to review the decision by Colorado’s highest court to bar Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballots based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — about the precise meaning of the word “insurrection,” the extent of Mr. Trump’s culpability for the events of Jan. 6 and other legal issues.I’m not going to predict how the Supreme Court will rule, or whether its ruling will be persuasive to those with a different view of the law. But there’s a critical philosophical question that lies beneath the legal questions in this case. In a representative democracy, the people are sovereign, and they express their sovereignty through representatives of their choice. If the courts presume to pre-emptively reject the people’s choice, then who is truly sovereign?The question of sovereignty was central to the purpose of the 14th Amendment in the first place. The Civil War — unquestionably an armed insurrection — was fought because of slavery. That was the reason for the war.But its justification was a dispute over sovereignty, whether it resided primarily with the people of the individual states or with the people of the United States, who had established the Constitution.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Trump Urges Supreme Court to Reverse Colorado Ballot Disqualification

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      The forceful brief was the former president’s main submission in his appeal of a ruling barring him from the Colorado primary ballot on the ground that he had engaged in insurrection.Former President Donald J. Trump urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to reverse a ruling barring him from the primary ballot in Colorado and to declare him eligible to seek and hold the office of the presidency.Mr. Trump’s brief, his main submission in an extraordinary case with the potential to alter the course of the presidential election, was a forceful recitation of more than half a dozen arguments about why the Colorado Supreme Court had gone astray in ruling him an insurrectionist barred from office by the Constitution.“The court should put a swift and decisive end to these ballot-disqualification efforts, which threaten to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans and which promise to unleash chaos and bedlam if other state courts and state officials follow Colorado’s lead and exclude the likely Republican presidential nominee from their ballots,” the brief said.The case will be argued on Feb. 8, and the court will probably decide it quickly, perhaps by March 5, when many states, including Colorado, hold primaries.The case turns on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Adopted after the Civil War, it bars those who had taken an oath “to support the Constitution of the United States” from holding office if they then “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”Congress can remove the prohibition, the provision says, but only by a two-thirds vote in each chamber.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      History Argues for Disqualifying Trump

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      One of the most difficult things to ask a judge to do is issue a ruling that he or she believes is actually dangerous. Even if you can make a strong case that the letter of the law is on your side, judges are tempted to narrow the reach of disfavored laws or sometimes virtually rewrite them in order to avoid outcomes that are deemed too radical or disruptive.Thus, it’s incumbent on good lawyers to argue not merely in favor of the letter of the law but also for the underlying merit of the law itself. My newsletter two weeks ago focused mainly on the legal argument for disqualifying Donald Trump from the presidency on the basis of the text and history of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. I made the case that the plain language of the amendment should disqualify Trump regardless of the consequences, which many observers — including some strongly opposed to Trump — believe would be dire and violent.Today, by contrast, I will make the case that even the consequences argue for Trump’s disqualification. Or, put more directly, that the consequences of not disqualifying the former president are likely to be worse than those of disqualifying him. This is the lesson of history both recent — the Trump era and Jan. 6, 2021 — and more distant. The profound mistakes of the Reconstruction-era Congress, just years after the Civil War and the ratification of the 14th Amendment, teach us about the high cost of welcoming insurrectionists back into high office.I addressed these points briefly in a short post for our new Opinion blog, but they deserve more attention. Critics of applying Section 3 to Trump have correctly and eloquently argued that removing him from the race could trigger a convulsive and potentially violent backlash in the American body politic. Millions of Americans would feel as if their choice was taken from them and that scheming elites were destroying American democracy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Judge Denies Effort to Remove Trump From the Ballot in Washington State

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      A judge in Washington State said on Thursday that former President Donald J. Trump’s name could remain on the state’s primary ballot. The ruling was the latest in a series of battles nationwide over whether Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat make him ineligible to hold the presidency again.A group of voters had filed a legal challenge asking state officials in Washington to leave Mr. Trump off the Republican primary ballot. But Judge Mary Sue Wilson said that Washington’s secretary of state had acted “consistent with his duties” by including Mr. Trump.Formal challenges to Mr. Trump’s candidacy have been filed in at least 35 states, according to a New York Times review of court records and other documents. So far, he has been disqualified in only two states: Colorado, by an appeals court ruling, and Maine, by the secretary of state.The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in Mr. Trump’s appeal of the Colorado decision on Feb. 8. The case could determine his eligibility for the ballot nationally.Tracking Efforts to Remove Trump From the 2024 BallotSee which states have challenges seeking to bar Donald J. Trump from the presidential primary ballot.As in other states, the voters in Washington argued that Mr. Trump’s actions related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol made him ineligible for office under the 14th Amendment. Steve Hobbs, the secretary of state and Washington’s top election official, has said he does not believe that he has the power to remove Mr. Trump from the primary ballot on his own.But Mr. Hobbs has said that court rulings could change his decision. A lawyer representing his office asked Judge Wilson on Thursday for a prompt ruling on the challenge to Mr. Trump’s eligibility, because ballots would be going out later this month to voters in the military and overseas.A lawyer representing the state Republican Party argued that the case brought by voters was flawed for technical reasons, and also because federal courts had not convicted Mr. Trump of any criminal conduct that would disqualify him.The issue could return after the primary, depending on Mr. Trump’s legal fortunes. Washington State law allows a voter to seek the removal of a candidate from the general election ballot if that candidate has been convicted of a felony, and Mr. Trump faces 91 felony charges as part of various criminal cases against him.In her ruling, Judge Wilson declined, for now, to rule on Mr. Trump’s eligibility for the general election in November.Lazaro Gamio More

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      Maine Judge Suspends Decision to Exclude Trump From Primary Ballot

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      The judge sent the matter back to Maine’s secretary of state, ordering her to modify, withdraw or confirm her ruling after the Supreme Court rules on a similar case out of Colorado.A Maine judge ordered the state’s top election official on Wednesday to wait for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling before putting into effect her decision to exclude former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s Republican primary ballot. Justice Michaela Murphy of Maine Superior Court said in the ruling that the official, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, had been forced under Maine law to issue her decision quickly, without the benefit of the high court’s input.The Supreme Court has agreed to review, at Mr. Trump’s request, an earlier decision by a Colorado court to exclude him from the ballot, and is expected to hear arguments in the case on Feb. 8. Ms. Bellows had cited the Colorado court’s reasoning in her decision.“The secretary confronted an uncertain legal landscape when she issued her ruling,” Justice Murphy wrote in a 17-page decision, and “should be afforded the opportunity to assess the effect and application” to her ruling of whatever the high court decides.Read the Maine Judge’s Ruling on Trump’s Ballot EligibilityThe judge ordered the state’s top election official to wait until the Supreme Court weighs in on the eligibility issue in a Colorado case, and then to confirm, modify or reverse her Dec. 28 decision to exclude former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s primary ballot.Read DocumentWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More