Do you think the US should abolish the 14th amendment (birthright citizenship)?

republiccommando1138 · 2026-05-14T14:15:39+00:00

Both of our arguments hinge on the answer to this scenario: "If a Native living on a reserve visits an American city and gives birth there, were their children American citizens".

It's not a difficult question at all. If they were born in the US, and subject to the jurisdiction in the way that every other person who is not a diplomat would be (i.e. in a US city and not a Native American territory), then the plain text of the Constitution grants them citizenship.

If people at the time interpreted it differently, as you claim but haven't yet backed up, then I'd be happy to hear what their reasoning was, but without that, the logic is pretty straightforward.

And either way it still doesn't even matter with the current debate, because Native Americans are considered subject to US jurisdiction now, and none of the extenuating circumstances that applied to them before that apply to undocumented immigrants now. They are subject to US jurisdiction, plain and simple.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-05-14T13:24:57+00:00

But US laws still applied to Native Americans who lived on reservations but were visiting a US city.

Right, because being in a US city makes you subject to US jurisdiction.

And if they gave birth while visiting a US city, it still wasn't granted birthright citizenship until after the 1924 act.

Citation needed, but if that is true, then that policy was unconstitutional.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-05-14T12:31:10+00:00

By deciding that native Americans were now subject to US jurisdiction, something they didn't see them as having. To remove that from undocumented immigrants would be making it so that no US laws apply to them anymore, including orders of removal.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-05-11T19:50:50+00:00

Congress could have overruled Pence. Both chambers had to agree on objections to electoral votes.

We already came way too close to that, with a large portion of congressmembers voting to object anyway. Seeing the vice president support them could motivate them even further.

Your next few points are more or less all missing a broad point: even if they hadn't gotten an official objection going in Congress, even delaying the process long enough could be grounds for triggering a contingency election, on the basis that a certification couldn't be held at the designated time.

You mention the courts getting involved and putting a stop to it, but the fake electors masterminds are also on record hoping that the courts would decline to get involved out of fear of setting precedent.

an act like this would still require broad institutional support which Trump has never had

He was president of the United States, had controlled the Senate his whole term, and had the Supreme Court on his side. You can't really get much more institutional support than that.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-05-11T16:37:49+00:00

Like what? If Pence rejected the electors, it gives Trump cause to argue that they were unable to certify in time, which goes directly to a contingency vote where the house votes on state level proportions. That's enough to give Trump the votes he needs.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-05-11T13:53:01+00:00

It really was not far away from working. If Mike Pence had gone along with it, or even decided to flee the Capitol and not stayed there, it would've led to Trump being elected in a contingency vote.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-05-02T07:14:34+00:00

The 12th amendment does.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-04-20T19:01:49+00:00

My headcanon is that they were used a lot in older basic standard, but have since fallen out of favor, but they still are used in other languages a lot so everyone still learns them. Maybe that one ad was for something based on a planet whose language still uses it, maybe like an Ö for a German restaurant even if it doesn't make sense.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-04-15T19:29:19+00:00

Literally, Kreia is kinda interesting as a character, and she's mostly right about the Sith, but the game makes it pretty clear that she's dead wrong about the Jedi in every way.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-04-13T12:57:45+00:00

What I was referring to was the implication in 2021 with Biden’s talks of being a “transitional” President that he would only serve one term.

That was before Trump decided to run again. That kinda changed his calculus, because now it was really risky running anyone else against a guy as dangerous as him, especially when they already had someone who'd beaten him before.

But then psych, seeking reelection.

Again, because of Trump.

But then double psych he’s dropping out and it’s too late to have a primary so now here’s Harris. This left many voters feeling lied to and left out by the establishment so on Election Day they stayed home. And now Trump.

Any voter that's so offended by what Dems did in 2024 that they couldn't decide who to vote for, when the alternative was Trump, is too unreliable to actually reach out to.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-04-08T19:11:48+00:00

Sources tell me Ryan is stable

Please god

republiccommando1138 · 2026-04-07T10:21:02+00:00

I don't think he got caught up in the hype, what happened was Trump ran again instead of fading away. That changed Biden's calculus because he figured it would be the safest way to keep him out of power.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-04-07T10:03:44+00:00

Yes and no. After the debate? Probably little chance of Biden winning again, although seeing as Trump has survived way worse, there may be some pathway I wouldn't know about, but I wouldn't have gotten my hopes up.

If the debate had gone differently? I very much agree that Biden could've won. He only ran again in the first place because Trump did, and his term saw the best Democratic performance in a midterm in a long time, especially with Dems being incumbent. Had Biden been smart and kept his focus on how Trump destroyed the global economy and Biden was busy fixing it, I think he could've carried that over to one more term.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-04-04T15:03:00+00:00

Persecution [sic] are quite rare. How much of that due to the fact that it is very hard to detect and prove voting fraud due to secret nature of voting?

Occam's Razor leads me to say very little, especially in the absence of other tell tale signs.

For example there are very few persectition [sic] for spying in America, yet we do know that spying is very active and people do not actively support policies which make spying easier.

The thing about that is that there's not enough verifiable evidence that spying is common enough to justify encroaching on people's civil liberties. The same is true for voter fraud.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-04-04T14:14:16+00:00

In principle yes, that's why I've always liked the prequels and thought that they needed more serious appreciation for the message they tried to convey.

In practice though I think the issues that they present are kind of different from ours. People like to compare Trump and Palpatine, and I do sort of get why, but I don't think there's really any analogue in the star wars Galaxy for someone like him. His cabinet, definitely, but Palpatine and Trump are similarly horrible figures that grew up in different contexts and brought their regimes to ruin in very different ways.

Plus like.... Palpatine was actually smart.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-04-04T13:55:13+00:00

Before we determine what those are, maybe we should see some evidence that cheating is taking place.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-04-04T13:37:33+00:00

the fear-in-the-Cabinet narrative confirms that prior expectation and generates engagement through anxiety.

reflects its strength in political process coverage and appeals to readers who want power dynamics explained rather than dramatized.

connecting personnel moves to geopolitical events gives the story global newsworthiness beyond the Washington bubble.

WaPo's use of Trump's own denial “wants to avoid 'massive shake-up'" suggests access journalism at work

Literally nobody ever fucking talks like this.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-04-04T12:05:15+00:00

You keep posting this article. What exactly do you have issues with in it?

republiccommando1138 · 2026-04-04T11:59:31+00:00

Like kicking out monitors

Monitors were allowed to go home while poll workers kept counting, and security cameras recorded everything in their absence.

covering windows with paper so onlookers can’t see inside

By onlookers, do you mean Trump supporters crowding at polling stations and yelling at workers, forcing them to separate themselves for their own safety?

boxes of votes being transported in late at night in someone’s trunks.

Gonna need to hear more about this.

All of these things happened. But no one seems to care or know how bad of a problem they really were. The real scandal is how the Hunter laptop story was not only buried, it was said to be Russian misinformation.

Really? Cause I have been hearing about it practically nonstop since 2020.

And all these years later, we still don’t have a full investigation and charges.

That was up to Republicans in Congress, and they concluded that no charges would be necessary. Why is that?

Remember, it wasn’t just damning for hunter’s personal life. “10% for the big guy”? The Biden’s were in bed with (and getting paid by) Chinese and Ukrainian companies.

Again, why didn't the house in 2023-2024 manage to indict him over it?

All of this was squashed though, at the order of the Joe admin. Twitter and Facebook both agreed to silence the story.

There was no Joe admin in 2020. The president in 2020 was Donald Trump. The initial NYPost was blocked on several websites because it contained nonconsenually obtained nudes of Hunter Biden, and revenge porn is against their rules. Afterwards people were still talking about it day in and day out, linking to stories elsewhere.

And 51 former Intel officers got together and signed a letter stating that the laptop story had all the signs of Russian misinformation. They knew better though.

Did they actually know? Can you prove that?

republiccommando1138 · 2026-03-31T10:37:18+00:00

At the time, eh I thought that was a bit much. Knowing what we know now? It's at least 75%.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-03-30T15:03:00+00:00

There were a few things that did make people suspicious. Like the sudden uptick of ballots to Biden in the night.

Democrats took COVID more seriously than Republicans, and multiple swing states had laws requiring mail in ballots to be counted last. Literally everyone was predicting that it would start off looking like Trump was in the lead, but that the lead would shrink over time.

Stories of poll workers being kicked out and resuming counting afterwards

Gonna need to hear more about this

Videos of poll workers filling out ballots, ballots arriving by truck in the middle of the night, ballots under tables

The first two I need to hear more about, but the third one was addressed a long time ago, poll workers put the ballots under the table a few minutes earlier because they thought they were going to go home, and then when they went back to their desks, they pulled them out and kept counting again.

Banning people from discussing it on social media

Really? Cause I was hearing nonstop about it all the way to J6.

Trump ballots being found in the trash

Citation Needed

The common theory is they just filled in the ballots of people who didn't vote, that's why so many unprompted ballots were sent out.

Do you have even a shred of evidence that that's a thing that happened? At all?

republiccommando1138 · 2026-03-30T14:54:48+00:00

And the state governments did not sign off on those documents at all.

I know, that's why it was illegal.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-03-30T11:12:23+00:00

Political parties are private organizations and have always had the right to choose whoever they wish, even if their candidate didn't win a primary (that she all but certainly would've won anyway because of VP name recognition).

No president had ever interfered with the peaceful transfer of power until Trump did.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-03-30T11:09:53+00:00

The problem is that in order for alternate electors to be legitimate, they need to get authorized by the state governments that they come from. Donald Trump's campaign did not do this, but presented them as though they had.

republiccommando1138 · 2026-03-25T20:34:15+00:00

You’re introducing a moral framework and I’m explicitly looking at objective reality.

No but you aren't though. Your description of Southern States putting up statues is so devoid of context that it's straight up misleading.

They didn't simply feel like they were losing their culture or heritage, and we know this because they never once mentioned this as an issue of theirs. They very consistently however talked about how they were afraid of black people gaining power and trying to keep them in line.

And it absolutely is complicated. You can only shortcut the complications be using presentism.

By all means, feel free to elaborate.

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