The Enemy Of The Enemies Of The Guy I Had A Good Relationship With ... Plus

That would be Donald Trump. He’s the enemy of the enemies of the guy that Trump had a good relationship with: Vladimir Putin. Got that? And so Putin today, having digested the results of the US election, decided that one good turn deserves another. I’m quoting PBS—and the fact that PBS provides Putin’s words does say something about the Overton window:

In an interview, Putin echoes Trump’s claim that conflict in Ukraine could have been avoided had he been in office

World Jan 24, 2025 11:50 AM EST

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday echoed U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim the conflict in Ukraine could have been prevented had he been in the White House in 2022. He also said Moscow is ready for talks with the U.S. on a broad range of issues.

In an interview with Russian state television, Putin praised Trump as a “clever and pragmatic man” who is focused on U.S. interests.

“We always had a business-like, pragmatic but also trusting relationship with the current U.S. president,” Putin said. “I couldn’t disagree with him that if he had been president, if they hadn’t stolen victory from him in 2020, the crisis that emerged in Ukraine in 2022 could have been avoided.”

Putin’s statement was his bluntest endorsement yet of Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat in the 2020 election.

You can see a video of Putin saying this, with voiceover, here:

Putin Hints 2020 US Election Was Rigged, Links Trump's Loss To Ukraine Crisis: 'If He Had Been President...'

Speaking of peace with Russia, or the cessation of war on Russia, it occurs to me that Trump’s move to declassify the JFK assassination files in their entirety may turn out to be an important factor in Trump’s diplomacy. As I’ve argued regularly, Trump needs to extricate the US from its forever wars if his MAGA agenda is to reach its full realization. There are powerful forces in the Anglo-Zionist world resisting Trump’s diplomacy but, if the perception that the Deep State’s war on Russia over the decades included the assassination of a US president, I believe that would be a powerful—even decisive—factor in overcoming all resistance.

On Judge Nap’s Intel Roundtable today Ray McGovern touted a book about the JFK assassination, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters (2010). If that’s not enough, it comes highly recommended by my wife, who considers it “outstanding.”

And, speaking of the CIA, I want to recommend Larry Johnson’s article from yesterday:

CIA Busy Polishing Its Ukraine Legacy

Lastly, before the weekend begins, The Federalist had a very clear article about a widely misunderstood issue:

Trump Is Right About Birthright Citizenship

Trump isn’t rewriting the 14th Amendment; he’s applying the law as it is, based on its plain language and the Supreme Court’s existing precedent.

Here’s a major portion, the meat of the article:

The 14th Amendment — ratified after the Civil War and ensuring that former slaves were U.S. citizens — provides that “[a]ll 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.” The plaintiffs focus on the first part, but barely glance at the second, arguing that, with few exceptions (such as the children of foreign diplomats in the United States), anyone born in the United States is “subject to its jurisdiction,” simply by virtue of being within its borders.

They do this by relying almost entirely on United States v. Wong Kim Ark, an 1898 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that the plaintiffs get hopelessly wrong. In Wong, the court held that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants was a U.S. citizen under the 14th Amendment. Omitting some key facts, the plaintiffs argue this means that all children born in the United States of all immigrant parents, with the aforementioned very rare exceptions, automatically are U.S. citizens. Even a cursory read of the opinion, however, shows that the Supreme Court ruled nothing of the sort.

Wong was born in California and lived his entire life in the United States, until he took two trips to China to visit family as an adult. The first time he returned to the United States, he was admitted through customs as a U.S. citizen. A few years later, after visiting China a second time, he was denied reentry after a customs official concluded that he was not a citizen, because his parents were not U.S. citizens when he was born here.

SCOTUS sided with Wong, but for a very important reason the plaintiffs fail to mention: Wong’s parents were legal immigrants to the United States. The entire foundation of the plaintiffs’ argument — that SCOTUS has already upheld birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants by this decision — is therefore completely and obviously wrong.

In rendering its opinion, SCOTUS dove deep into the meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” What they found, tracing back hundreds of years through English common law, is that the phrase is rooted in a mutual relationship of “allegiance and protection” between the individual and the sovereign (historically a king, but the nation here). Children “born in the allegiance,” and therefore citizens entitled to “protection” at birth, included children born to subjects of the king, as well as children born to “aliens in amity” — that is, aliens lawfully “domiciled” there with the king’s consent. Notably, the court found that this did not extend to the children of aliens in “hostile occupation of part of our territory.”

Consent is the operative word. In ruling for Wong, the Supreme Court made clear that the United States has a say in who is subject to its jurisdiction, noting that noncitizens like Wong’s parents are “entitled to the protection of, and owe allegiance to, the United States so long as they are permitted by the United States to reside here” (emphasis added). In Wong’s case, this meant that the 14th Amendment granted him citizenship because he was: (1) born in the United States; and (2) subject to its jurisdiction, due to the fact that his parents were lawful immigrants permitted by the United States to reside here at the time he was born.

In clear and distinguishable contrast, children born to illegal immigrants are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and therefore are not entitled to birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment, for the simple reason that the United States has not permitted them to be here. In other words, the relationship is not mutual.

A harder question is whether the 14th Amendment grants birthright citizenship to children born to aliens here lawfully but on a temporary basis, such as tourists or individuals on a work visa. Wong Kim Ark doesn’t explicitly address this, but it does note that Wong’s parents were “domiciled” in the United States, and it concludes that “[e]very citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States” (emphasis added). This repeated reference to “domicile,” meaning a state of permanent, legal residence, suggests that birthright citizenship at a minimum requires an intent to live lawfully and permanently in the United States, even if that intent later changes.