Investigate and block the executive branch's attempt to strip Rep. Ilhan Omar of her citizenship. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the administration is actively building a denaturalization case against her. This is not a routine legal matter. This is the executive branch attempting to remove a sitting member of Congress from the political community entirely.
The constitutional stakes could not be more basic. In a republic, the people choose who governs them. The executive does not get to determine who belongs to the legislature, or who is entitled to participate in the constitutional order at all. When Trump was asked directly whether Omar should lose her citizenship, he said "absolutely," citing not just legal allegations but the fact that she was a "troublemaker." That answer tells you everything. This is political expulsion dressed in legal process.
Hannah Arendt warned that techniques of totalitarian domination can emerge within a constitutional democracy, eroding its foundations without overthrowing its institutions outright. Denationalization was her measure of that infection. Whatever one thinks of Rep. Omar's politics, citizenship cannot be a privilege the executive grants or revokes at will. Oppose this action loudly and on the record.
First sent on October 15 by Jeffrey Barlow
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