Today we woke up to the news that Trump thinks he can ignore the 14th Amendment and end birthright citizenship by executive order. He also plans to appoint his favorite golf cart to the Senate.

Okay, I made up the part about the golf cart. But I wouldn’t put it past him.

Greg Sargent writes,

To oversimplify, the idea that this can be undone by executive order turns on a rather creative interpretation of an 1890s Supreme Court decision. That decision interpreted the 14th Amendment — which holds that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens” — to apply to, well, all persons born in the U.S. The restrictionists claim this does not apply to the children of undocumented immigrants, because they aren’t “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

The argument is absurd — undocumented immigrants are indeed subject to U.S. jurisdiction, and denying their children citizenship privileges would be unconstitutional. But Trump could theoretically direct federal agencies via executive order to stop treating the children of non-citizens as citizens. This would be challenged, and the Supreme Court would then “clarify” whether birthright citizenship applies to the children of the undocumented. (With this court, you never know.)

I understand the “jurisdiction” part to refer to the children of diplomats. Diplomats are not subject to U.S. laws and therefore are not under U.S. jurisdiction, so a child born to the diplomatic of a foreign country in the U.S. is not automatically granted citizenship. Unless Trump proposes extending diplomatic immunity to undocumented immigrants, I don’t see how his argument holds water. This is something I’ve written about before; see The Constitutional Anchor Baby Crisis and The Constitutional Anchor Baby Crisis, Revisited.

And then there’s Mike Pence.

Vice President Mike Pence was roundly criticized on Monday for appearing at a campaign rally in Michigan at which a “Messianic rabbi” invoked Jesus in mourning the deaths of 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Messianic Judaism, which believes that Jesus is the messiah and considers the New Testament to be authentic, is not recognized as Jewish by any mainstream Jewish movement in the United States, or by the Chief Rabbinate, the supreme spiritual authority for Judaism in Israel.

Also,

Two days after the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, Vice President Pence bowed his head at a rally on Monday in Michigan as a religious leader who casts himself as a “rabbi” offered a prayer for the victims in Pittsburgh.

But the man who shared a stage with Pence, Loren Jacobs, preaches Messianic Judaism, a tradition central to Jews for Jesus, a group condemned by Jewish leaders as faux Judaism that seeks to promote Christian evangelism. The major Jewish denominations join the state of Israel in viewing followers of Messianic Judaism as Christian, not Jewish.

His appearance drew outrage on social media. Jason A. Miller, a Detroit-area rabbi, wrote on Facebook that more than 60 rabbis appeared in a directory of the Michigan Board of Rabbis — “and yet the only rabbi they could find to offer a prayer for the 11 Jewish victims in Pittsburgh at the Mike Pence Rally was a local Jew for Jesus rabbi?”

I take it Republicans weren’t counting on the Jewish vote in the midterms.

Meanwhile, the list of people who will not meet with Trump in Pittsburgh today seems to be growing. The list includes the family of at least one of the victims and Tree of Life Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, according to Politico.