Political Pistachio
By Douglas V. Gibbs
I used to visit my grandfather’s grave at Riverside National Cemetery on Memorial Day. I no longer live down there, so I can’t visit him. But, my memories of him live on in my mind.
Memorial Day has always been important to me. Memorial Day is about our fallen. It is about honoring those heroes who died while in service to our country.
Memorial Day is about those citizen soldiers who comprised 3% of the colonists who were willing to stand against the greatest military power of the day to fight for the independence of a new union of states.
Memorial Day is about those fighting men of the American Revolution that often wore no shoes, and weren’t exactly sure what they had gotten themselves into. They fought a well-armed professional military with limited supplies, and basic weaponry. They pledged, despite the odds against them, their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor for an idea – a new grand experiment based on the principles of liberty, self-governance, and the laws of nature and of nature’s God.
Memorial Day is about a young Marine who, to protect our trade-routes and sea-going vessels, stormed the shores of Tripoli.
Memorial Day is about the second revolution where, during the War of 1812, the young military once again faced off with the most powerful military in the world, against all odds, and out-gunned. Yet, those brave soldiers were willing to give up their lives, if necessary, for an idea called liberty.
Memorial Day is about those brave soldiers who fought to support Americans during the westward expansion, against fierce opposing forces, and incredible numbers; and those Americans who died in the Mexican-American War, a war of liberation for territories under the iron fist of a bloody Mexican dictator.
Memorial Day is about the brothers who fought against their own brothers in a War Between the States that defined America’s resolve to truly reveal the meaning of the phrase: All Men Are Created Equal.
Memorial Day is about the rough riders who stormed San Juan Hill, and the brave Americans who did all that was necessary to protect America’s interests in the war with Spain merely thirty years after the severe weakening of America’s forces from the War Between The States.
Memorial Day is about the brave warriors in a world war that America did not have to enter, but did to protect Europe against the war machines of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire.
Memorial Day is about the greatest generation as they gave their lives in yet another defense of freedom in Europe, and this time also in the Pacific, as they fought against the tyranny of the Axis Powers.
Memorial Day is about the Americans who served to stop the spread of communism in Korea and Vietnam, bravely putting their lives on the line when the politicians were unwilling to fight to win.
Memorial Day is about those Americans who gave their lives during the Cold War – a war that was often not the war-without-conflict that was advertised – and a war that became victorious when the Berlin Wall came down because of our resolve to remain strong in the face of the enemy.
Memorial Day is about those Americans who served in the Persian Gulf at a time before we fully understood what we were up against, about those Americans who extended, or entered service, after September 11, 2001, for the purpose of defending our soil against an enemy we still understood very little at the time, and about the gunfire in Middle Eastern villages and explosions on the roadway. Memorial Day is about the heroes who, knowing the dangers and the risks, and believing deeply in the cause of liberty, gave their lives for the freedom of people they didn’t even know and have never met.
Memorial Day is about the lives lost during the Afghanistan withdrawal, and the lives lost in operations since (including Operation Epic Fury) – who stood tall in duty and no matter the cause were willing to put their lives on the line for an idea known as liberty.
Memorial Day is about our fallen. It is a day for prayers and reflection. It is about thanking those we can no longer thank in person. It is about visiting the cemeteries where they lie, dropping off flowers and American Flags at their graves. Kneeling in prayer, and dropping tears on their name plates as we remember their sacrifice.
My grandfather, World War II Veteran Thurman Douglas Clark, and my dear friends, Vietnam Army Veteran Paul Young, and Vietnam Navy Veteran Bill Prouty, rest at Riverside National Cemetery in Southern California, surrounded by heroes – surrounded by our blessed fallen who gave their lives so that we may live in liberty.
Memorial Day is about an idea called liberty … may her fire continue to burn bright as we remember those who gave their lives to protect that idea.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
A couple weeks ago Kayleigh McEnany commented that Democrats are abandoning Climate Change alarmism after years of dire warnings. They’ve adopted James Carville’s famous “It’s the economy, stupid” game-plan, working to convince everyone that a recession is on the horizon and it’s all Trump’s fault, the GOP’s fault, and the only way to save us is to go back to the policies of the Democrats who screw up the economy every time they are in office in the first place. After spending the lifetime of the younger generations trying to convince us that the world will come to an end if we don’t accept global communism and a redistribution of wealth scheme that would transfer wealth from Western developed nations to other nations that seem to be less developed, they’ve decided to scare everyone into believing that free market economics and corrective measures against global communism and Islamic influences will send the world spiraling into the next Great Depression.
The problem with Climate Change was that the scare tactics were so loaded with predictions of instability and destruction, and the level they placed the “threat” was so high that when the deadlines arrived, and when the predictions didn’t come to fruition, the world realized they were full of that stuff grandma calls manure. As Greta Thunberg warned, “People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. How dare you!” Except, it wasn’t and we weren’t.
The dire predictions never materialized, but the younger generation had already been traumatized with the rhetoric. The beaches that would be under water are still sandy, and the ice caps are still frozen. All of the polar bear populations are increasing or are stable, and the environmental catastrophe that would trigger an extinction event never happened. Hurricanes did not increase, and it turns out the wildfires are being started not by global warming, but by morons with matches.
The scam has been exposed. The progressive commie left has been using climate policy to direct government spending to collectivist schemes and politically connected interests, and as the whole scam bubbles to the surface, voters are realizing the truth, remembering they tried this before with their coming ice age warnings in the seventies, and as a result have become less responsive to the climate change political messaging.
Democrats have been moving away from climate issues in their messaging because they’ve realized the economy is more important to voters than windmills and solar panels. Even Greta Thunberg has moved along, screaming about “Free Palestine,” rather than crying about the melting ice shelves that are actually increasing in size.
In short, as interest wanes, there’s no money in climate change anymore, and the Democrats always chase where they think the money is, and where they believe the next path to power is. They can’t defeat their arch nemesis, Donald Trump, with climate change, so it is being tossed aside like an old sweater.
Even the United Nations has gotten the memo. They’ve decided the climate change countdown clock is not ticking anymore. The United Nations’ climate change committee has quietly discarded their warnings that emerged after two reports predicted horrific consequences if “manmade” greenhouse emissions weren’t curbed. After decades of screaming about the coming climate catastrophe, and warnings that the world was coming to an end if we didn’t chase after the Green New Deal and live like the Flintstones, the climate crusaders are now instructing us, “Nothing to see here. Move along.”
While they kind of hang on to the great deception with a recent IPCC report crediting renewable, global climate policy and recent emission trends for making the most dire forecasts “implausible,” they are basically admitting that all of their hype was fiction. Actual data was looked at, and now researchers are refuting projections of calamity without being blacklisted faster than Dean Cain from a Hollywood studio.
Energy costs are going through the roof thanks to windmills, solar farms, and the closure of reliable natural-gas plants.
President Trump took notice, and criticized Democrats for still pushing “Climate Change” fears now that the United Nations has admitted its projections were off the mark. In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote, “GOOD RIDDANCE!” He added with glee that the “United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!”
While pulling the United States out of the Paris Accord, and working to pull the United States from climate issues, President Trump has ignored the attacks and seems to be taking a victory lap regarding the UN’s decision to abandon their scare tactics. He wrote, “For far too long Climate Activism has been used by Dumocrats to scare Americans, push horrible Energy Polices, and fund BILLIONS into their bogus research programs. Unlike the Dumocrats, who use Climate Alarmism nonsense to push their GREEN NEW SCAM, my Administration will always be based on TRUTH, SCIENCE, and FACT! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
Earlier this year, the Treasury Department announced the United States had withdrawn from the U.N.-backed Green Climate Fund and relinquished its seat on the board. Republicans in the U.S. Senate have introduced legislation to prohibit Democrat-run states from hurting American energy producers with “climate lawfare.”
As the climate change hysteria finally collapses under the weight of its own failed predictions, we may be witnessing among the greatest political pivots of our time. The Democratic Party, after milking the green gravy train for all it’s worth, is now scrambling for a new narrative to maintain their grip on power. The advent of the rise of Donald Trump, and the absence of the rise of sea levels, has led the American people to not be so easily fooled anymore. They’ve seen the beaches remain dry, the ice caps persist, and their energy bills skyrocket while political elites jet around the world preaching austerity. The climate change scam was never about environmental policy. It was a Trojan horse for global socialism, wealth redistribution, and government control over every aspect of our lives. With President Trump standing as the lone voice of reason against this manufactured crisis, the truth has finally emerged: the climate was never changing as dramatically as they claimed, but the political climate certainly has. The green climate change political money machine may be sputtering out, but the fight for American energy independence and economic freedom rages on, with the American people finally awakening to among the greatest deceptions of our generation.
By Douglas V. Gibbs
In what can only be described as a masterclass in self-deception, the Democratic National Committee has finally released its long-delayed post-mortem report on the 2024 election, and the results are as predictable as they are pathetic. After nearly two years of internal squabbling and what can only be described as an institutional paralysis, the nearly 200-page document manages to achieve the impossible: it analyzes a historic electoral defeat without mentioning the man who led the party into that abyss.
Let’s be clear about what happened in November 2024. This wasn’t a “barely lost” election, as the DNC would have us believe. This was an overwhelming repudiation of Democratic policies, leadership, and vision. President Donald Trump won decisively, not because of some fluke or because Democrats weren’t “loud and proud enough,” but because Americans rejected the WOKE, DEI, socialist-progressive agenda that has become the party’s signature offering. The party went from JFK to Carter to Bill Clinton to Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders and AOC. It’s a decline that can be easily seen, but they are blind to it.
The irony is thicker than mud, and as clear as crystal. Here we have a party that claims to be “saving our democracy” while simultaneously subverting what they have argued are its most fundamental processes. They bypassed their own primary system, shoved a sitting president aside without voter approval, and replaced him with a vice president whose incoherence and lack of qualifications were apparent to anyone not invested in the delusion. If this is what “saving democracy” looks like? How can a party that can’t even explain what a constitutional republic is even see through their own bull-pucky?
The report’s glaring omission of Joe Biden’s role in this electoral catastrophe tells you everything you need to know about the Democratic Party’s capacity for honest self-assessment. It’s like analyzing the sinking of the Titanic without mentioning the iceberg. Biden’s approval ratings were underwater for years, his cognitive decline was apparent to all but the most willfully blind, and his policies created an economic malaise that affected working families across this country. Yet somehow, the DNC’s analysis manages to sidestep these inconvenient truths.
As The Hill reported, the backlash against DNC Chair Ken Martin is growing, with Democrats like Rep. Marc Veasey correctly noting, “There doesn’t seem to be a plan to turn things around and the clock is ticking.” Rep. Ritchie Torres went even further, suggesting the DNC is in a state of “almost terminal decline.” These are Democrats themselves sounding the alarm bells, yet the party leadership remains deaf to the warnings.
The tragedy here isn’t just that Democrats lost an election. And understand, despite their claim to the contrary, they lost it big. The tragedy, though, is that they’ve learned nothing from the loss. They’ve convinced themselves that their ideas aren’t the problem, there’s nothing wrong and they have the mid-terms right where they want them, and the only issue that is killing them is how they are framing their messaging. They believe if they could just shout their progressive nonsense a little louder, Americans would suddenly embrace open borders, inflationary spending, gender ideology for kindergarteners, and the rest of their radical agenda.
I could have saved them the two years and 200 pages. The reasons for their defeat are simple: WOKE, DEI, and socialism. Add to that their complete inability or unwillingness to debate coherently on substantive issues, and you have the recipe for electoral disaster that played out in 2024. Americans don’t want their daughters competing against biological males in sports. They don’t want their children being taught that they’re oppressors or victims based on their skin color. They don’t want their hard-earned money going to fund the endless parade of progressive social experiments.
What’s particularly revealing is how Democrats are responding to this flawed report. Their complaint isn’t that it fails to provide honest answers about why they lost, but that whoever should have provided that information was “asleep at the switch.” They’re not angry about the content; they’re angry about the timing and optics. It’s like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and then failing to mention the iceberg in the final analysis. All of it is a pointless jog around the truth while wearing a blindfold. It’s an activity that avoids addressing the real problem.
The path forward for Democrats should be obvious: abandon the radical progressive agenda that has alienated half the country and return to something resembling mainstream American values. But they won’t. They’ll double down on what beat them, convinced that their ideas are too sophisticated for ordinary Americans to appreciate. They’ll continue to treat Trump not as a political opponent to be debated, but as an existential evil whose defeat justifies any means, including the subversion of their own democratic processes.
As we head toward the 2026 midterms, Democrats face a fundamental choice: they can continue their journey into political irrelevance, or they can have a genuine reckoning with why Americans rejected their vision for this country. If their post-mortem report is any indication, they’ve chosen the former. And that’s not just bad news for Democrats – it’s bad news for a country that needs at least two functional political parties competing in the arena of ideas. After all, liberty requires debate, and freedom requires many voices. Coherent voices. Not word-salads.
The American people deserve better than a choice between one party that’s trying to solve problems and another that’s trying to convince us those problems don’t exist. Until Democrats figure that out, they’ll keep wondering why they keep losing elections that, in their minds, they should have won. And to be frank, much of what the Democrats are suffering from were also present in the Federalist Party right before it faded away into obscurity – never to win another election.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
Tulsi Gabbard, one of the most fearless members of President Trump’s national security team, has been a key figure in exposing the Deep State’s inner workings. Gabbard has announced she will resign as Director of National Intelligence effective June 30, 2026. Her departure raises an immediate and serious question: who will replace her in a Senate still largely controlled by the opposition? My concern is that the confirmation process may be weaponized to block a worthy successor. Fortunately, if necessary, that process does not have to begin until after the mid-term elections.
Gabbard released her resignation letter on X, and the reason she gave is heartbreaking. Her husband, Abraham, is battling what she described as “an extremely rare form of bone cancer.”
She did not specify the exact diagnosis, but based on her description, my mind immediately went to multiple myeloma. A close friend of mine has been fighting that same disease. Multiple myeloma begins in the plasma cells of the bone marrow and is notorious for creating lytic lesions (literal holes in the bones) that weaken the skeletal structure and can lead to sudden fractures, including vertebral compression fractures. It’s sometimes called “myeloma bone disease” because of how aggressively it destroys bone tissue by throwing the body’s bone-building and bone-destroying cells into chaos.
Other rare bone cancers, such as Ewing sarcoma, could also fit the description. Whatever the exact diagnosis, these cancers are brutal, debilitating, and life‑altering. My friend’s cancer advanced rapidly at first, but is now in remission. I pray Gabbard’s husband experiences the same mercy.
In her letter, Gabbard wrote that Abraham “faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months,” and that she must step away from public service to support him fully. “Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026,” she wrote.
She also expressed gratitude to President Trump for the trust he placed in her and for the opportunity to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the past year and a half.
Gabbard, once a Democrat before witnessing firsthand the rot within the Swamp, said she believes she made “significant progress at the ODNI,” including advancing transparency and restoring integrity to an intelligence community long plagued by politicization.
And she’s right. Her tenure has been one of the most consequential in modern intelligence history. She initiated a restructuring of the ODNI that streamlined operations and rooted out entrenched political actors who had weaponized intelligence for years. She dismissed, reassigned, or revoked the clearances of individuals she believed were responsible for manipulating intelligence for political ends.
She also pushed aggressively for transparency, releasing long‑buried information that exposed corruption and criminality within the intelligence apparatus, including details about the intelligence community’s role in manufacturing the Russian‑collusion narrative during the 2016 election.
Gabbard acknowledged that “there is still important work to be done,” and pledged to ensure a smooth transition. I suspect these final weeks will be intense. With the clock ticking, she may accelerate the release of information she’s been preparing. Whether that leads to handcuffs and orange jumpsuits remains to be seen.
Her resignation comes at a critical moment. The mid‑term elections are approaching, and the Senate may attempt to stall or block confirmation of her replacement. Fortunately, the law allows an acting director to serve for up to 210 days after the vacancy occurs, and longer if a nomination is pending. That means President Trump still has room to maneuver. If no nomination is submitted, an acting director could serve until roughly January 26, 2027.
Gabbard will continue to oversee intelligence operations for the next five weeks, including matters related to U.S. actions against Iran and any potential moves involving Cuba.
President Trump has already announced that Aaron Lukas, currently the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, will serve as Acting Director beginning June 30. Lukas has more than 20 years of intelligence experience and previously served under Trump during his first term. The President has called him “highly respected,” and there are indications he views Lukas as a trustworthy potential permanent replacement.
The transition is expected to begin within days.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
The Founding Fathers were remarkably prescient in their warnings about what Samuel Adams called the “Schemes of Leveling” – what we today call socialism, progressivism, and wealth redistribution. They recognized these utopian experiments as fundamentally incompatible with human nature and liberty. Thomas Jefferson understood that when government attempts to engineer equal outcomes rather than secure our natural rights, it inevitably destroys both freedom and prosperity in the process.
This collectivist impulse didn’t originate with Karl Marx – he merely repackaged ancient errors in revolutionary language. The fundamental premise has remained consistent throughout history: that individual rights should be subordinated to collective interests, and that the state should possess the authority to redistribute wealth according to some abstract conception of fairness. What was once openly called “proletarian revolution” has been cleverly repackaged as “social justice,” “equity,” and “progressive taxation” – but the underlying premise remains unchanged.
One of the most revealing truths about communist systems is their fundamentally parasitic nature. They cannot generate wealth internally because they eliminate the very incentives necessary for production and innovation. This explains China’s economic relationship with the United States – they don’t primarily produce for their own people but export like crazy because their wealth depends entirely on our ability to purchase their products.
They claim to resolve the problem of class warfare. The Soviet Union claimed they were eliminating poverty by eliminating poor people, but what they did was make everyone equally poor (except for the ruling class, of course). Venezuela followed the same pattern. The only reason China has lasted as long as they have is because they injected a limited form of capitalism into their system – but in the end, it remains authoritarian communism that simply allows a few the chance to do a little bit more than everyone else. This parasitic dependency on capitalist systems reveals the fundamental bankruptcy of collectivist economics.
Today’s wealth redistribution operates through multiple sophisticated mechanisms:
- Progressive Taxation: This communist concept (which is listed in the Communist Manifesto) at its core pretends to reduce economic inequality by taxing the rich and giving it to the poor through various programs (a twisted Robin Hood scheme), but in reality locks people into their corner of the economic plantation and kills the incentive to crawl out while also suppressing incentive, innovation and entrepreneurial growth. As a businessman once told me, “I don’t pay taxes. When my corporate taxes go up, my prices go up. Every tax-the-rich or tax-the-corporations scheme ultimately removes the tax money from the pockets of the consumer.”
- Climate Change Policies: This represents perhaps the most audacious redistribution scheme ever devised. It essentially declares that to save the planet, western wealthier countries must bear the financial burden while transferring wealth to less developed nations. Recently, even the United Nations has admitted their climate models were wrong – something conservatives have argued all along. Climate change is a natural phenomenon where human influence is negligible, but it serves as a perfect justification for global wealth redistribution.
- Tariff Imbalances: For decades, tariffs functioned as a redistribution scheme against the United States, with America paying high tariffs while other countries paid low tariffs. This wasn’t free trade but managed trade designed to transfer American wealth abroad.
What made President Trump’s approach revolutionary was his recognition that these seemingly separate policies were all interconnected components of a globalist redistribution project. His policies represented a return to Jeffersonian principles in multiple dimensions:
- Economic Freedom: Trump’s signature Tax Cuts and Jobs Act moved away from progressive taxation by lowering corporate rates from 35% to 21% and reducing individual income tax brackets. This wasn’t about enriching the wealthy but about recognizing that reducing taxes on corporations and higher income brackets ultimately benefits lower classes when those monies are reinvested into businesses, spent on services or products produced by “lower classes,” and puts more capital into the system.
- Trade Realignment: Trump’s tariffs weren’t protectionist in the traditional sense but corrective measures against a system designed to transfer American wealth abroad. He was busting up the redistribution scheme and leveling the trade playing field, forcing recognition that China’s “economic miracle” depended on unfair advantages extracted from open societies.
- National Sovereignty: By withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and challenging other international frameworks, Trump was dismantling the infrastructure of global wealth redistribution and reaffirming national sovereignty against global governance structures.
The parallels between Trump and Jefferson extend beyond policy to their very style of governance and relationship with the bureaucracy. Both men were hated by their opposition and endured diabolical attacks. Jefferson’s struggle against the Hamiltonian Federalist Party bureaucracy mirrors Trump’s confrontation with the modern administrative state, with both men challenging the notion that unelected officials should control national policy.
Both men faced relentless opposition from what Jefferson called “artificial aristocracies” – those who derive influence from government rather than productive enterprise. They understood that economic independence is inseparable from political independence. Jefferson’s embargo policies and Trump’s trade renegotiations both aimed to establish that America cannot be dependent on hostile powers for essential goods or services.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, he meant “as created” and “as their natural rights were distributed.” No matter who we are, we all possess all of the natural rights. Our ability to exercise those rights may be influenced by government, but those rights belong to us. God gave them to us, and He existed before government.
This natural rights framework stands in direct opposition to the collectivist premise that rights are grants from the state that can be revoked or redistributed according to collective needs. The Founding Fathers understood that the less interference by central planning the better – individualism and laissez faire always seemed to be at the core of everything they designed. To control through a redistribution of wealth is a rights killer.
The sustainability schemes and ideas of command-controlled economies are retreating slightly under Trump’s policies, and we must hope this continues after he’s gone. We must continue to reject and move away from these catastrophic schemes rooted in collectivism and communist ideas.
There will be winners, and there will be losers. That is simply a reality of life. Equality or equity should not be based on outcome, but opportunity. The American experiment has been successful precisely because it rejected the collectivist premise in favor of individual rights and economic freedom. This created unprecedented prosperity while also allowing for voluntary charity and social mobility – a stark contrast to state-mandated redistribution.
As we move forward, we must recognize that the battle isn’t merely over tax rates or trade policies but over fundamental principles of human liberty. The choice is between a society of free individuals who voluntarily cooperate for mutual benefit and a society where the state directs economic activity according to some abstract collective vision. The Founders chose the former, and President Trump began restoring that vision against decades of encroaching collectivism.
The question remains whether we will continue this restoration or revert to the failed schemes of leveling that have impoverished nations wherever they’ve been implemented. The answer will determine not just our economic future but whether we preserve the liberty that has made America exceptional among nations.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
The Natural Born Citizen for Congress Proposal
By Douglas V. Gibbs
With the emergence of foreign‑born members of Congress advocating policies viewed by many native‑born Americans as fundamentally anti‑American, Representative Nancy Mace (R‑SC) has introduced a proposed joint resolution (H.J.Res.188) to amend the Constitution. Her amendment would require all members of Congress, federal judges, and Senate‑confirmed executive officers to be natural‑born citizens of the United States. At present, the Constitution reserves that requirement only for the president and vice president. Members of the House and Senate need only have been citizens for seven and nine years, respectively. Under today’s interpretation of citizenship, particularly the modern doctrine of “Birthright Citizenship,” which grants citizenship to anyone born on American soil regardless of parental allegiance, even anchor babies may serve in Congress.
While the proposal is designed to disqualify foreign‑born individuals from election or appointment to Congress or service in the federal government, it would not apply retroactively to those already serving. And realistically, the joint resolution faces steep odds: securing two‑thirds support in both chambers is improbable, and ratification by three‑fourths of the states even more so. But, my interest here is not in handicapping its chances, nor in the predictable accusations from the Democratic Party that such an amendment is racist, unfair, or a slide toward isolationism or nationalist extremism. My concern lies elsewhere.
Article II of the Constitution requires only the president and vice president to be natural‑born citizens. Representative Mace’s proposal seeks to extend that requirement to Congress, but it does so on a flawed assumption: that native‑born citizen and natural‑born citizen are interchangeable terms. They are not.
If the Framers had intended “native‑born” to carry the same meaning as “natural‑born,” they would have used the former term in Article II. They did not. And for good reason. During the Founding Era, there was deep suspicion toward certain native‑born inhabitants, specifically the Tories. Though born in the colonies, Tories maintained allegiance to Britain and considered themselves subjects of the Crown. Some were openly hostile to American independence; others acted as spies or sought to infiltrate the new government. The Framers understood that mere birth on American soil did not guarantee American loyalty.
Instead, the Framers relied on the established term natural‑born citizen, consistent with Emer de Vattel’s Law of Nations, a work present in the Constitutional Convention (two English copies and one French). While the Constitution does not define the term, Vattel did: “The natives, or natural‑born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens” (Book I, Chapter 19, §212). In the original French, Vattel used the term les naturels, rendered in the 1760 English edition, the edition available to the Founders, as “natives, or natural‑born citizens.”
As an interesting additional note, while the Framers relied on this well‑established term, there is no evidence that the phrase “native‑born citizen” existed in American legal vocabulary during the Founding Era. It appears nowhere in Vattel, nowhere in Blackstone, nowhere in the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, or 1802, and nowhere in the records of the Constitutional Convention. The term native‑born emerges only later, in the nineteenth century, as American jurists confronted new questions surrounding birthright citizenship, territorial expansion, and the status of freed slaves and Native Americans. By the time of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, legal commentators had begun informally referring to persons “born… in the United States” as native‑born citizens. By the early twentieth century, particularly during debates surrounding the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, the term had become normalized in federal discourse. In short, native‑born is a modern classification reflecting the evolution of statutory birthright citizenship, not the Founders’ understanding of natural‑born citizen as a term of art rooted in the law of nations.
Taken together, the historical record makes the distinction unmistakable: natural‑born citizen and native‑born citizen are not the same. To the Framers, a natural‑born citizen was someone born in the country to citizen parents. A native‑born citizen, as the term later evolved, simply meant someone born on American soil, regardless of parental allegiance or citizenship.
Which brings me back to Congresswoman Mace’s proposal. If her amendment were somehow to pass Congress and be ratified by the states, the Constitution would then require that all members of Congress be born of citizen parents – because that is what the term natural‑born citizen meant to those who wrote it in 1787. While I do not believe the amendment has any realistic chance of advancing, it is troubling that members of Congress who have sworn an oath to the Constitution appear unable to grasp the meaning of its own language.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary