American Made

If you are born in America, you are an American

Republicans don’t just believe that they own patriotism. They believe that they own being an American to the point that they can decide who is and isn’t an American. Over the past few years, they have gone so far as to tell people born in this country that they are not Americans.

Donald Trump is so full of himself that he believed he could issue an executive order to take away citizenship from natural-born Americans. Let’s not even get into the time when he floated the idea of revoking Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship. You can’t decide that someone’s not a citizen because they insulted you or you don’t find them attractive enough. The same rule applies to deciding that someone is a lesbian because she rejected you.

There’s just one little problem for Republicans with deciding who is an American and whether or not they could revoke citizenship — the United States Constitution. The president of the United States can’t issue an executive order and revoke a constitutional amendment. As ridiculous as it sounds, this had to go to the Supreme Court to be upheld.

The legal battle over birthright citizenship began on the first day of Trump’s second term, when he announced an executive order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” Never mind that again, birthright citizenship is constitutionally guaranteed, which means a president can't change it through an executive order or any other means.

In the order, he declared that citizenship would no longer be automatically granted to babies born on US soil, specifically, children born to immigrants who entered the country illegally would no longer be citizens, nor would those born to parents here on a lawful but temporary basis, such as those on student, work, or tourist visas. Thankfully, it never went into effect because it faced so many legal challenges, which eventually brought it before the Supreme Court.

Most legal experts believed that Trump's executive order would be struck down, as birthright citizenship is explained very clearly in the Constitution. Some legal experts projected that the decision would be 9-0, but of course, there are always at least three assholes on the Supreme Court, so the decision was 6-3 with Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas voting to support Trump's racist executive order.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion and explained that Trump’s executive order violated the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

Robert wrote, “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community. The framers of the 14th Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’”

He added: “We keep that promise today.”

Speaker Mike Johnson called the ruling a “textualist, originalist view” and said that it would result in “serious challenges going forward.” Since this was a Supreme Court decision, I'm interested in how Johnson is going to challenge it going forward.

But just so there is no confusion, if you are born in the United States of America, you are an American citizen. It doesn't matter if both of your parents were born here or are citizens or not. It doesn't matter if your parents were visiting from Hungary on vacation when your mother gave birth to you in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It doesn't matter if you are a model from Slovenia who hooked up with an American billionaire to have a baby in New York City. It doesn't matter if your mother was a refugee from El Salvador who illegally snuck into the country by crawling under a fence to give birth to you in El Paso. It doesn't matter if your mom was a refugee from Haiti in the country on a Temporary Protected Status visa in Springfield, Ohio, when she gave birth to you. And it doesn't matter what your religion is, your race, or your skin color.

One thing that the proponents of birthism ignore (the belief that President Obama was not qualified for the presidency because he was born in Kenya) is that Obama's mom was born in Kansas, so it wouldn't have mattered where Obama was born or where his father was from. But since birthright citizenship is constitutionally guaranteed, it wouldn't matter if Obama's mom and dad were both from Kenya. Barack Obama is an American citizen who, by the way, was born in Honolulu. Suck on that, racists.

And if you were born here while both of your parents were in the country illegally, you are just as much of an American as an asshole billionaire president who was born in Queens.

If you are born in America, you are an American citizen. This decision is a wonderful gift for America's 250th birthday.

Fighting birthright citizenship is extremely un-American.

Paul Fell: The cartooning community is mourning the death of Paul Fell, a political cartoonist from Nebraska who worked for the Lincoln Journal.

Paul was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet. I don't believe I have ever heard of anyone having an issue with him. He was never too important to spend time with anyone and was always eager to meet new cartoonists, which is how I met him, which was at my first convention in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1991. Paul had a quick wit and always had something funny to add to any conversation. As you can see from the drawing he made for me, he had a subtle style to his humor, which I appreciate very much. I didn't do anything bad in Memphis, I swear.

I think Paul spent his entire career in Nebraska, which means no one in that state understood its politics, culture, and characters better than Paul Fell.

Paul and I were not close, and I didn't spend much time with him. Most of our interactions were in passing, but I did always enjoy talking to him. I believe most of the time we talked, it was in a group setting. I saw him last year at our convention in Bethesda, and we exchanged greetings, but I honestly can't remember what we talked about. That's probably on me.

I do remember talking to him years ago about when he was cut from the Lincoln Journal, and his editor had smuggled out his original cartoons to him because the paper wanted to keep them. That blew my mind. This was a few years before I was laid off in 2012, so I was worried about my newspaper doing the same thing. But when that time came, management didn't give me any problems when I was hauling out 15 years of my cartoons. I think our managing editor saw me and offered to help. The editors at the Lincoln Journal must've been huge dicks to Paul.

I offer my condolences to Paul’s friends and family. I know his readers are going to miss him. This probably means that there's nobody drawing cartoons about Nebraska's politics. Paul was 80 years old at the time of his death.

We are a dying breed, and every time a political cartoonist passes away, it's a loss for our nation.

Drawn in 30 seconds:

Support your local cartoonist: If you want to support the cartoonist, please donate through PayPal to clayjonz@gmail.com, Venmo to clay-jones-87, or snail mail it to Clay Jones, P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402.
I also take Zelle.
All support is appreciated.

Signed prints and books: I cannot take orders for signed prints or for my books at this time. So please do not send me money or place orders for them until further notice. Because of the stroke, it is an ordeal for me to get to the post office, so we’re gonna hold up until I’m fully capable of doing so. Thank you for your understanding.

Merch: Did you know there’s a Claytoonz store? My cartoons are printed on mugs, clothing, caps, and even a Peezy T-shirt. If you ever want a specific cartoon on some merch, let me know, and I’ll add it.