The Trump administration has, for the first time ever, built a searchable national citizenship data system.
The tool, which is being rolled out in phases, is designed to be used by state and local election officials to give them an easier way to ensure only citizens are voting. But it was developed rapidly without a public process, and some of those officials are already worrying about what else it could be used for.
NPR is the first news organization to report the details of the new system.
For decades, voting officials have noted that there was no national citizenship list to compare their state lists to, so to verify citizenship for their voters, they either needed to ask people to provide a birth certificate or a passport — something that could disenfranchise millions — or use a complex patchwork of disparate data sources.
Not saying it’s unreasonable to err on the side of caution in opposing anything Trump does, but the move to end birthright citizenship is aimed at the automatic citizenship granted to anyone born on US soil, and anyone born anywhere with at least one American parent. The goal is to suppress non-white voting by invalidating citizenships for people MAGA considers “foreigners”. Most Americans were born in America to American-born parents, and have nothing to worry about unless MAGA tries to redefine citizenship at the Constitution level.
No, the goal is to stop illegal immigrants crossing the border into america, giving birth, and then never leaving because their kid is a US citizen.