Free Republic

A federal judge on Friday struck down key portions of President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at tightening citizenship verification for voter registration and absentee ballot applications, ruling the White House overstepped its constitutional authority. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the Constitution gives states and Congress, not the president, the power to set rules for federal elections. Kollar-Kotelly blocked provisions in the executive order that would have required documentary proof of American citizenship on federal voter registration and absentee ballot forms. "The Constitution does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures," Kollar-Kotelly wrote, permanently...

Is America for its citizens, or is it for its “people”? That’s the biggest question on my mind right now. It may sound like a semantic argument, but it isn’t. It is a foundational question, and thanks to constitutional ambiguity, decades of legislative and judicial drift, and a long refusal to enforce immigration law, it is no longer theoretical. It is immediate, destabilizing, and unavoidable because it sits at the center of nearly every current conflict over immigration. As immigration laws are now being enforced after decades of active and passive neglect by both major political parties, the country is...

A terrorist from Jordan briefly worked as an Obamacare navigator in Illinois while authorities remained unaware of her conviction for involvement in a deadly grocery store bombing and two other attacks. Rasmieh Yousef Odeh was convicted in Israel for her role in several bombings, including the 1969 attack on an upscale Shufersol grocery store, which killed two Hebrew University students who had stopped in to buy groceries for a hiking trip in the Jerusalem hills. Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe were killed by a bomb hidden in a candy box tucked on a shelf, which also injured nine or 10...

...In a newly filed brief at the Supreme Court, the Trump admin. isn’t arguing politics or modern talking points, like so many experts thought they would... They’re arguing history. And once you see what they put on the record, it’ll be clear to you why this entire “birthright” debate has been shut down for so long.What Team Trump put in front of the Supreme Court of the United States was a very long paper trail showing how birthright citizenship has been understood for decades after the 14th Amendment was ratified... The 14th Amendment doesn’t say that anyone born on US...

A Michigan county clerk alleged that the jury pool for a circuit court has recently included non-citizens who are ineligible for jury duty. “Non-citizens are coming through at an alarming rate,” Macomb County Clerk Anthony G. Forlini said in a press release. “Our jury service summonses are based on random draws from the driver’s license bank. Frequently non-citizens slip through because citizenship was not flagged in the Secretary of State database.” Why It Matters Citizenship is a key requirement for jury service at the state and federal levels. Michigan law states that in order to qualify as a juror, an...

For the Founders, only the children of citizens are themselves “natural born citizens.”Who shall be considered natural-born citizens? The term “natural born citizen” first appears in Article II, Section 1, and Amendment XII of the Constitution. For the Framers to have used such a term without explanation means there must have been a commonly understood, contemporary definition—and, in fact, there was. This definition can be found in Book 1, Sections 212-217, of “Law of Nations,” by the Franco-Swiss political philosopher, Emerich de Vattel, and first published in 1758.§212. Citizens and natives. The citizens are the members of the civil society:...

Birthright citizenship — the idea that anyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen, with full right to receive all benefits and vote when they come of age — has been a fixture of the administration of the laws in this country for my entire lifetime. But does the text of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution make the birthright citizenship rule apply to all cases, even the most extreme? Under the 14th Amendment, properly interpreted, do children born of illegal aliens subject to a deportation order really qualify for birthright citizenship? How about children born of an...

It’s been 50 years since Godfrey Wade arrived to the United States from Jamaica at the age of 15 with his mother, moving to New York with a green card that granted him permanent residency. The Black man enlisted in the U.S. Army a few years later, spending eight years in the service, where he was primarily stationed in Germany before he received an honorable discharge. He then began a civilian life in Georgia while raising a family, working as a fashion designer, master tailor, tennis coach and chef over the years while staying out of trouble. That is, until...

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has finally released its hotly-anticipated “gold card” allowing deep-pocketed foreigners to purchase US visas. Trump told reporters at the White House that it would function “somewhat like a green card” letting foreigners become instantly eligible for permanent residency status to work in America. Individuals have to pay $1 million to US Treasury coffers, while companies will have to fork over $2 million to keep employees. The Department of Homeland Security will conduct a background check on all applicants to make sure they are qualified. After five years, any gold card-carrying permanent resident can apply for...

President Donald Trump has unveiled his long-awaited 'gold card' - offering legal status and a pathway to US citizenship for customers willing to pay the $1 million price tag. The visa is on offer for individuals who can stump up the full amount, while corporations will have to fork out up to twice the amount per foreign-born employee. A website accepting applications went live as Trump kicked off the program surrounded by business leaders in the White House on Wednesday... Trump's program will eventually include a separate 'platinum card,' also costing $5million, plus $15,000 in processing fees. The platinum edition...

On Friday, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear challenges to President Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment automatically makes all babies born on American territory citizens. Trump’s effort to overturn the traditional reading of the constitutional text and history should not succeed. Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment provided a constitutional definition of citizenship for the first time. It declares that "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." In antebellum America, states...

For the first time, the Supreme Court will directly confront the legality of Donald Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship. The politics around the case are loud and predictable. But the constitutional question at the center of it is much quieter, and far more consequential: Can any president, Republican or Democrat, unilaterally reinterpret the Fourteenth Amendment? After reviewing the Court’s recent decisions and the skepticism justices have already shown toward this executive order, it’s clear that the conservative majority may not be willing to hand the White House a power this sweeping. In fact, the justices most hostile to broad...

The White House has paused all immigration applications from 19 countries and canceled citizenship ceremonies across the US, citing national security and public safety concerns. The freeze could affect more than 1.5 million people who had asylum applications pending and more than 50,000 who received asylum grants under the Biden administration, The New York Times reports. President Donald Trump is also considering expanding the travel ban to more than 30 countries, according to the New York Post. The new policy memorandum, released Tuesday night, cites last week’s 'terror attack' in D.C. where Afghan man Rahmanullah Lakanwal was arrested for allegedly...

The battle over who qualifies as an American at birth has officially reached the highest court in the land. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the historic challenge to President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order restricting birthright citizenship, setting the stage for what could be the most consequential interpretation of the 14th Amendment in more than a century. Trump’s order—one of the signature actions of his America First immigration agenda—asserts that children born to illegal aliens on U.S. soil do not automatically receive citizenship, countering decades of bureaucratic interpretation and closing what critics call one of...

The Trump administration has canceled several New York judicial citizenship ceremonies over unmet legal requirements and will no longer let county courts or state supreme court justices preside over them.U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is "dedicated to ensuring that all aspects of the naturalization process comply with federal law," agency spokesperson Matthew Tragesser told TV station WSYR on Wednesday.“After reviewing the jurisdiction of certain New York County courts under the Immigration and Nationality Act, we have determined that these courts do not meet the statutory requirements to conduct naturalization ceremonies," he said. \As a result, the agency will USCIS move...

Texas voters overwhelmingly approved an amendment on Tuesday that adds noncitizens to the list of individuals prohibited from voting in state elections, reinforcing that only US citizens are eligible to cast ballots. Proposition 16 passed with over 71 percent support as of Wednesday afternoon. The measure amends the Texas Constitution to explicitly include “persons who are not citizens of the United States” among those barred from voting. The list already includes convicted felons who have not met certain conditions for reinstatement and individuals deemed mentally incompetent by a court. By placing the citizenship requirement directly into the state constitution, the...

Election integrity was a key element in President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign. In March of 2025, shortly after resuming office, President Trump signed an executive order (EO) intended to increase election security and assure election integrity in American elections. A key component of that EO was the requirement for voters to provide proof of citizenship, establishing that they are eligible to cast their vote in federal elections, before being allowed to cast a ballot. That doesn't seem an unreasonable requirement, unless you're a Democrat. A U.S. District judge has now overturned that provision of the president's order. Donald Trump’s request...

A federal judge ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s request to add a documentary proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form cannot be enforced. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee, sided with left-wing and “civil rights” groups that had sued the Trump Administration over his executive order aimed at bolstering election integrity. The order, titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” directs federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Social Security Administration (SSA), and Department of State to provide states access to federal databases to verify voter eligibility and citizenship during...

Today, Judge Michael P. Maxwell of the Waukesha County Circuit Court issued a ruling in the case Cerny v. Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) that requires the WEC to verify the U.S. citizenship of ALL voter registration applicants and review existing voter rolls for non-citizens. The WEC and local officials must fulfill their duties and are barred from registering anyone without verification of US citizenship. The court also mandated collaboration between the parties to create a plan, utilizing Department of Transportation (DOT) records or other legal methods to identify ineligible registrants. This review must be substantially completed before the next statewide...

The Trump administration has filed a pair of petitions to the Supreme Court asking the justices to hear appeals on its birthright citizenship order, cases which could add to the growing list of questions related to President Donald Trump‘s actions that the high court will consider in its upcoming term.The two petitions appeared on the Supreme Court’s public docket Monday, after being filed late Friday, and they urged the justices to take appeals in both cases, which were brought by Democrat-led states and a group of people who could be affected by Trump’s order.The question presented to the high court...