Free Republic

A U.S. judge on Friday struck down, opens new tab a Trump administration policy suspending the issuance of immigrant visas to ​applicants from 75 countries, saying that the policy exceeded Secretary of ‌State Marco Rubio's statutory authority. U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas in Manhattan said the policy that the State Department announced in January was "patently unlawful" and ran afoul of federal ​immigration law, which explicitly stripped the secretary of state of ​authority over consular officers' processing of immigrant visas. "The Policy, which categorically ⁠prohibits the issuance of immigrant visas based upon the nationality of ​the applicant, represents a direct...

Within days of taking office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that has been misconstrued by most of the talking heads out there as "ending birthright citizenship." This characterization uses an overly broad brush to paint over what is actually an extremely nuanced issue with regard to the interpretation of citizenship in the 14th Amendment.Section 1 of the amendment starts off with one of the most consequential lines of any of the Reconstruction Amendments passed in the wake of the Civil War: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens...