re: Amy Coney Barrett = Trump’s biggest mistake

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Why is Article 2 relevant when we're discussing an amendment?

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Because the 14th Amendment leaves Article II fully intact. Yet Ark, and your interpretation of it, creates an implausible, irrational tension between birthright rationale in Article II vs the 14th A.

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another amendment can fix this issue you propose.

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Due to Ark-related stupidity, we now have a situation where a foreign nation can literally swing a national US election. E.g., less than 100K well-placed votes can swing most POTUS elections. China potentially has many times that number of loyal Chinese nationals ready to establish voting eligibility in US swing states. Eventually the number of such Chinese loyals could drift into the millions.

As I pointed out earlier, there is no requirement for such voters to be rooted to one location for subsequent elections. Meaning, that as folks here yammer "meh just do an Amendment," even if the proposed birthright clarification Amendment passed both Houses of Congress by 2/3rds majorities, as states individually took the measure up over time, the international Chinese bloc of ""US Citizens"" could shift their claimed state/county residencies to swing the vote in select legislatures.

It is an absurdity which clearly could neither have been the intent of 14th Amendment authors or remotely considered in the awful Fuller SCOTUS finding.

"Due to Ark-related stupidity, we now have a situation where a foreign nation can literally swing a national US election. E.g., less than 100K well-placed votes can swing most POTUS elections. China potentially has many times that number of loyal Chinese nationals ready to establish voting eligibility in US swing states. Eventually the number of such Chinese loyals could drift into the millions"

The fundamental problem I see with this line of thinking is that it rests upon the Court doing what it feels is "right" or "best for the country" because of events that weren't envisioned at the time of the 14th Am as opposed to the Court properly interpreting the text of the 14th Am. I agree with you that birthright tourism is ridiculous and makes no sense, but I am leery of the judicial aciivism that would be required for the ruling to go the way you (and at least to a degree, I) would prefer as a matter of policy.

I am over it.

I know that SCOTUS is going to rule in favor of birthright citizenship, and that SCOTUS will not change the current paradigm.

I accept that SCOTUS is not going to save us.

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I mean neither one is exactly a hottie you know?

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Trump disagrees!

"“This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”

The above quote is not the language of the 14th Am. Unlike some, I have no problem with looking cautiously to evidence of "original intent" to help derive the proper meaning of a text, but the problem is that different people said different things even at the time, which is one of the main reasons the text must reign supreme. For example, here is one statement from a quick google search that is contrary to what you quoted:

Senator John Conness (CA): Explicitly stated that the amendment applied to children of foreign parentage born in the U.S., specifically citing the "children begotten of Chinese parents in California," confirming that they should be regarded as citizens.

The 14th Am just isn't as clear as the passage you cited. If it were, we likely would not have had WKA. Now, we still have a 150 year old Am and a 125 year old Supreme Court precedent, neither of which clearly addresses the children of "illegal aliens" and certainly not birthright tourism but which was construed in such a way as to provide citizenship to anyone born here and "subject to the jurisdiction of" the US. ("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."). I just can't see this going the government's way.

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which is one of the main reasons the text must reign supreme

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That would be fine ... is it were the case. It isn't. Again, the effect of Ark and it's subsequent interpretations, is to cede control of US election to a foreign country, which is a breach of every Constitutional premise. The Fuller SCOTUS was simply too incompetent to anticipate that potential.

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He leaves up very important context...

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That is the lynch pin of this argument... the parents were here legally...

if you are here illegally the birthright should not apply.

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The fundamental problem I see with this line of thinking is that it rests upon the Court doing what it feels is "right" or "best for the country" because of events that weren't envisioned at the time of the 14th Am as opposed to the Court properly interpreting the text of the 14th Am.

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Correct.

Textualism v. Living Document analysis.

Looking to fix societal issues created by Constitutional provisions via the USSC is "legislating from the bench" and should be rejected. The method to solve that problem is the amendment process.

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Ark was the judicial activism.

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The Trump admin isn't trying to overturn Ark

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Intent was CLEARLY declared

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You quoted one person. Now find the intent behind every other person who had a hand in approving the 14A

This is the problem of legislative intent.

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The late Justice Antonin Scalia left his mark on the law in many ways, but perhaps his greatest legacy is that he changed the way we think about statutes. Before Scalia’s tenure on the Supreme Court, most judges and lawyers casually assumed that when a court interprets a statute, its job is to implement “legislative intent.” Courts often paid more attention to statutory purpose and legislative history than to statutory text.

Scalia rebelled against these interpretive methods. He believed that when a court interprets a statute, the court’s job is to read the statutory text and do what it says. Even if what it says is stupid. Even if what it says is not what anybody intended. The text of a statute, Scalia believed, is the law.

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He said that committee reports had become “increasingly unreliable evidence of what the voting Members of Congress actually had in mind,” thereby implicitly accepting that a court should care what members of Congress had in mind.

Scalia’s opinions evolved over the next decade and took on a sharper tone. In 1993, in Conroy v. Aniskoff, he said, “The greatest defect of legislative history is its illegitimacy. We are governed by laws, not by the intentions of legislators.” Scalia crystalized his thoughts into a set of lectures delivered at Princeton in 1995, which later appeared in book form. He complained particularly about reliance on legislative history, but that was merely one detail in the bigger picture. The bigger picture was that “[t]he text is the law, and it is the text that must be observed.”

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LINK

Some Scalia quotes:

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"We are governed by laws, not by the intentions of legislators".

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"The greatest defect of legislative history is its illegitimacy".

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"The stark reality is that the only thing that one can say for sure was agreed to by both houses and the President (on signing the bill) is the text of the statute. The rest is legal fiction".

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"The goal of statutory interpretation is to implement the meaning of statutory text, not the intent behind the text".

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"The genuine intent of the legislators—apart from the text—is not only impossible to determine but is also illegitimate as a basis for a court’s decision".

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That is the lynch pin of this argument... the parents were here legally...

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By what law are you determining their status as legal/illegal?

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if you are here illegally

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In 2026 if they acted exactly the asme, they'd be here illegally