Call me petty, call me unhinged, but I thought Melania Trump and Usha Vance both looked like crap yesterday. I can really tell that Usha, in particular, is not familiar with political-spouse dressing and she clearly doesn’t have the right kind of people advising her. Melania, on the other hand, just looked drugged, stiff, orange and old. Her Adam Lippes ensemble at the inauguration was tragic. But not as tragic as her inaugural ball dress – a custom piece by Hervé Pierre, Melania’s longtime style advisor. These people are so tacky.
Obviously, the fashion is not the point of the first 24 hours of the Trump administration. In between Nazi salutes, Lauren Sanchez’s fake t-ts and Melania’s horrible skin damage, some work was done. Surprising absolutely no one, Trump issued dozens of executive orders and he pardoned 1600 insurrectionists. He ordered all federal employees to work from the office, not from home. He once again removed America from any and all climate accords. And of course he’s ending birthright citizenship with a stroke of a pen.
President Trump on Monday declared that his government would no longer treat the U.S.-born children of undocumented people as citizens, signaling his intent to essentially ignore the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship in a move that is all but certain to invite a legal challenge.
His order directed federal agencies not to issue citizenship documents to such children, starting in 30 days.
It flew in the face of the guarantee, rooted in common law and enshrined in the Constitution for more than 150 years, that anyone born in the United States is automatically an American citizen.
In the executive order, Mr. Trump said he would interpret the 14th Amendment differently than had been done in the past, arguing that it “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”
The order would mean that citizenship would not be extended to a child whose mother and father are not authorized to be in the United States at the time of birth.
The 14th amendment gives citizenship to every child born on American soil, regardless of the immigration status/nationality of their parents. I was trying to figure out if I would be affected – my mother is American, but my father was an immigrant on a work visa when I was born (he became a citizen a few years later). I suppose it doesn’t matter – it will take some time for this issue to worm its way through the lower courts before eventually making it to the Supreme Court. And then the Supreme Court will suddenly find new and special ways to interpret the 14th amendment, I guarantee.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
