By David French, New York Times, Jan. 26, 2025- I have never been more concerned about the rule of law in the United States.David French
I was born in 1969 — five years after the Civil Rights Act was passed — and I have no memory of the legal system operated in the Jim Crow South, when there was one code of justice for white Americans and a different set of laws for Black Americans. The very idea of justice in the old Confederacy was a sad joke. The white establishment took care of its own.
There was a distinct moment on Monday night when I stopped taking various legal notes on President Trump’s executive orders and realized that we may well be facing a different game entirely — one far more reminiscent of the Old South than any system of American justice I’ve experienced in my lifetime.
We’re still far from those dark days, but we’re walking in that direction. Trump’s mass pardons and commutations of Jan. 6 insurrectionists and his revocation of John Bolton’s security detail have changed the calculus.
... He pardoned the seditious shock troops of an attempted coup. ... Oppose Trump — as Bolton did — and he’ll leave you exposed. The domestic enemy has to pay the price, even if it means the foreign enemy may have greater access to an American target.
.... Trump’s birthright citizenship order. It’s extraordinarily broad. It doesn’t just block citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, it also blocks citizenship for children whose parents are legally present in the United States if they don’t have permanent status when their child is born.
This contradicts the language of the 14th Amendment, a controlling federal statute and Supreme Court precedent. The 14th Amendment says, “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.” (read it all)
David French is an opinion columnist for the New York Times. He was previously a staff writer for National Review. He writes about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator who has litigated numerous cases involving religious liberty. He is a visiting professor at David Lipscomb University and is a resident of Franklin, Tennessee.
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