President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he may strip comedian Rosie O’Donnell of her U.S. citizenship. He has made the threat previously, despite having no authority to do so. In the United States, political critics cannot be stripped of their citizenship, and pursuing such a course would be a fundamental denial of constitutional protections not only under the 14th Amendment but also under the 1st Amendment.
This week, the President stated on Truth Social that “As previously mentioned, we are giving serious thought to taking away Rosie O’Donnell’s Citizenship. She is not a Great American and is, in my opinion, incapable of being so!”
When I previously objected that such a move would be grossly unconstitutioal, supporters insisted that Trump was simply trolling opponents. However, the threat of an unconstitutional act only reinforces the narratives of O’Donnell, who has engaged in false claims and conspiracy theories on social media.
O’Donnell has trolled Trump after fleeing the country in protest to live in Ireland. Most recently, she was widely criticized for claiming that the shooter at the Minnesota Catholic church was “a white guy, Republican, MAGA person. White supremacist.” She later apologized, but added, “I assumed, like most shooters, they followed a standard MO and had standard, you know, feelings of… you know, NRA-loving kind of gun people.”
Spreading disinformation is not grounds for losing your citizenship and would create a dangerous precedent. Indeed, President Trump rightfully objected to Democrats trying to strip him from ballots in the last election. To now claim the right to strip political opponents of their actual citizenship only surrenders the high ground to his critics.
However, Trump has also threatened to rescind the citizenship of former White House adviser Elon Musk and even New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Both Musk and Mamdani were born outside the country, but received U.S. citizenship through a legal process.
There are narrow circumstances under which a naturalized citizen can be stripped of citizenship, but those circumstances do not include their political views.
In 1967, the Supreme Court handed down Afroyim v. Rusk, declaring that U.S. citizens can only lose their citizenship by voluntarily relinquishing it, or where citizenship was gained by fraud.
Beys Afroyim was born in Poland and the U.S. government sought to strip him of citizenship after learning that he had cast a vote in an Israeli election. The Supreme Court ruled that his status remained protected under the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Likewise, in Trop v. Dulles in 1958, the Court ruled that the government could not strip Albert Trop of his citizenship after he escaped from an Army stockade in Casablanca, Morocco. While he turned himself in the next day, the government argued that (since the country was engaged in a war and Trop was dishonorably discharged), it could revoke his status despite being a natural-born citizen.
Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that such punishment ran afoul of the Eighth Amendment and constituted “a form of punishment more primitive than torture” since it amounts to the “total destruction of the individual’s status in organized society.”
Trump may wish to challenge Trop, but there is no indication that the Supreme Court would seriously consider such a departure from the long-standing precedent. That is even less likely where the effort is based on retaliation for political criticism of the President.
There are narrow circumstances under which a naturalized citizen can be stripped of citizenship, but those circumstances do not include their political views.
There are no circumstances under which a naturalized citizen can be stripped of citizenship. A naturalization obtained by fraud was never valid in the first place, so the person was never a US citizen. Discovering that is no different from discovering that someone who was thought to be a US citizen by birth in Maine was actually born a few miles away in Canada, or that their parents had diplomatic immunity at the time of their birth.
That last one is an actual case that happened. This woman was born in the USA and for her whole life thought she was a US citizen, as did everyone else. Her father had been a foreign diplomat, but his government fired him before this woman was born. Then the US discovered that the State Department had not got around to removing her father from the list of registered diplomats until after she was born. Therefore at the time of her birth he still had immunity, and thus she was not born a US citizen. Would you say she was “stripped” of citizenship?! No, of course not. There was no citizenship to strip. It had always been a mistake, and was now corrected.
How is Trump going to get Rosie to voluntarily leave if he doesn’t put any pressure on her?
Isn’t Turley friendly with Bill Barr? Ask Bill about these allegations next time you have lunch, k?
“@RogerJStoneJr
Bill Barr ran the cocaine trafficking operation for the CIA in and out of Mena
Arkansas and claims that he pressured prosecutors to go easy on me in sentencing were entirely disproved by the DOJ inspector General”
“@Project_Veritas
🚨BREAKING EP 4: Bill Barr’s Undisclosed CIA Role Linked to Visa Fraud Scheme and DOJ Plot to Frame Whistleblower
A leaked U.S. government document exposes Bill Barr’s ongoing CIA role, suggesting a motive behind
@TheJusticeDept cover-up to frame a whistleblower for reporting Barr and @Arightside to the FBI.
Jessica Aber, late U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia: “I know you don’t want to talk to me because I signed the papers to accuse you… but you are in danger… I didn’t know what they were doing to you… When I found out what happens in the EDVA I haven’t had any peace…”
He capitalizes on their already-psychopathic obsession with him by making them look even worse than their candidates and their policy positions already do.
Does he make himself look even better to the independents/undecided who decide so many elections by claiming he will try to strip an American citizen of their citizenship because they say nasty things about him?
Will those independents go “Nah, he’s just transactional and trolling”? Or will a percentage of them go “President Trump is a loonie!”? That would NEVER be the reaction, right?</b
Given the slim majority in the House and Senate… why would you work on giving undecided voters a reason not to vote for you? Rather than just sticking to the issues everybody is on board with.
Please don't tell us that some of Trump's legal advisors have told him he has the Executive power to strip Americans of their citizenship if they speak nasty about him.
Prof. Turley raises and interesting – and larger issue than just Rossie O’Donnell’s citizenship.
Prof. Turely is wrong about the law regarding citizenship, but only in that he skips the possibilty that you can lose citizenship by swearing allegiance to a foreign country. I do not think that O’Donnell has taken Irish citizenship
The OTHER issues that Turley raises is what are the limits of a President “trolling” back those who troll him.
For a very long time the convention was that presidents should be extremely careful in their public pronouncements,
but that convention was severely weakend BEFORE Trump. Though Trump has driven a stake through its heart.
Like it or not we are PAST the point where it is improper illegal or unethical for a president to speak their mind publicly on anything.
The Question today is When do the public pronouncements of a president become directives to the executive.
Courts starting BEFORE Trump have waded into when the public statements – particularly on social media constitute the official acts and directions of those making them. This is an entirely new area of law, And I beleive in the case of Trump and many others the courts have gotten it wrong.
If the executive – presidents, mayors, school board members have “official communications channels” – social media accounts etc. What is published on those channels shoudl be considered “official Actions” and should be treated constitutionally accordingly.
If our elected officials has personal channels they should have the same free speech rights on those as anyone else.
Their statements on those should NOT be considered official.
While care should be taken by those individuals to separate the official from the personal and political.
Even more care should be taken by the courts.
The courts should cease expanding the channels of what is considered official communications.
But within those channels it should hold those who issue – intentionally or otherwise directives that exceed their constitutional authority.
Creating bright lines particularly constitutional bright lines is the responsibility courts and I think they have unintentionally muddled it.
Trump says LOTS of things that are “trolling”. That are things a president should not and can not do.
For MOST of these nothing ever happens.
I can say it is WRONG for Trump to threaten O’Donnells citizenship.
But it is only illegal and unconstitutional if he ACTS using the power of the presidency to do so.
Presidents do LOTS of things I think are wrong, that are not illegal or unconstitutional.
That is a reason for your choice in the voting both.
I do not want to see O’Donnells citizenship unconstitutionally voided.
But thus far I do not see anything beyond a war of words between her and Trump.
Separately by words and deeds O’Donnell and others have made it clear they do not wish to be part of a country that could elect Trump. So I do not have alot of sympathy for O’Donnell. But I would prefer that if she loses her citizenship that she does so as a conscious choice to renounce US citizenship – not just fleeing to Ireland and even publicly disavowing this country.
@John Say
Johnny for adventure, it looks like you are spamming on this blog with you’re haughty and vindictive posts. Moderator Darren should delete John Say’s comments as spam.
I agree. You hate me and I hate you.
By the way John, you indicated renouncing your US citizenship and are going to Venezuela.
There’s a lot of money to made with the Tren de Aragua gang. But Trump will kill you.
Prof. Turely is wrong about the law regarding citizenship, but only in that he skips the possibilty that you can lose citizenship by swearing allegiance to a foreign country.
No, John Say, you cannot. US citizenship, once validly obtained, can NEVER be lost involuntarily. Not by accepting foreign citizenship, not by fighting in a foreign army, not even by fighting against the USA. Treason is a crime, but it can’t result in loss of citizenship. Only voluntary renunciation can do that. Any law purporting to say otherwise is invalid.
Hello all you Powerball gamblers
I didn’t win the $1.3 Billion dollar jackpot, but did win some bottom feeder cash.
I won money back from the previous wager & bet a little but not all of it for the $1.7 Billion dollar jackpot. So it’s not my money.
I had some strange dreams coming from dead people talking to me in a grave yard. “Give me the money, I’ll hide it.”
@Darren
I love free speech, but really: this one individual hijacks the thread quite literally every single day through multiple aliases. Surely, something can be done. Differences of opinion are fine; this is going back to kindergarten, and it is, every day. I would happily be asked to register formally to post here, outside of WordPress, with a TOS and moderation, or something similar.
We can’t give them therapy or medication; we can use methods to stop the never ending verbal diarrhea. I didn’t used to agree, but now, I think we have reached the point in the day when this person is clearly drunk, or high, both, or whatever.
Ahhh yes.
James is back with his “I love free speech, BUT………..” rant
Of course James, like his fellow MAGA cultists, only loves the kind of “free speech” that comports with his delusional thinking.
I agree.
James is clearly not playing with a full deck.
He has a very unusual interpretation of the First Amendment.
That’s right.
James is definitely a few fries short of a Happy Meal.
James does not speak for every other non-left wing nut on this blog.
In this case the post he is complaining about is clear SPAM.
I am not aware of anyone defining a first amendment right to spam on blog.
Turley also makes use of WordPresses language filters.
Most of us are adept at getting arround those. And no one appears to be getting censored for writing “F#$K”.
The above constitutes 99% of the censorship on this blog – and I think that is a reasonably ballenced choice for a blog where free speach is a major theme.
I would prefer Turely put more time and resources into WRITING the blog than censoring it.
One of the things Musk proved with Twitter was that censorship is quite expensive. Musk firing the censors – 70%+ of staff did NOT result in the instant decline of twitter into a worse cesspool than it already was.
Subsequently to some extent the rest of social media has followed – Censorship costs a great deal of money iand is a poor value add.
It is both preferable from the free speech perspective AND from a purely cost and resources perspective to censor as LIGHTLY as possible.
But the choices is up to Turley – not me, not you not james.
Further – to the extent there is any concensus on censoring this blog it would only be those of the left demanding censorship of everything they do not like.
Those of us not on the far left do NOT have a concensus on the appropirate censhorship of this blog.
While I acknowldge Turley’s right to censor his blog as he pleases. I prefer that he would err even more on the side of free speech than he does.
James fells different. I disagree, but that disagreement does not translate into all other issues.
It is odd that an ideology so fixated on non-binary does not graps that political opinion is not even close to binary.
While Sex is.
@Anonymous
Uh, excuse me, but it’s called moderation, and it’s as old as internet forums. You don’t respect the rules, you don’t get to post. As ever, you are an idiot, and would have already been banned for life circa 1996.
Yeah, I remember when Annie “The Sock Puppet” and Max-1 the homosexual spammed JT’s blog about 14 years ago. So you should be banished for life also.
Hmmm!!!!!
So you have been for 14 years.
Clearly you have absolutely no life.
Are you locked in a basement somewhere for your own protection or to protect the rest of us who have actual lives.
Stop porking butt holes. It is an abomination.
Are you cuddling up with uncle Joe in his basement? Jill will not like it….. Unless you have the winning Power Ball ticket for Saturday’s drawing. It is the Sabbath. A day of rest.
Stop harassing James !!!!
He is perfectly correct.
We all know that the First Amendment does not apply to leftist libtards.
Where do these commie leftists get the idea that they have the same free speech rights as right thinking people like us.
It is outrageous.
I agree.
Darren needs to do something about it.
Deleting the comments from these lefties is NOT censorship.
They do not have the same free speech rights as us.
You are absolutely correct.
When I drafted the First Amendment, I had a long discussion with the other Founding Fathers.
We all agreed that the First Amendment should not apply to leftist commie libtards.
James – the post above should be deleted as spam – it is way way way off topic.
But I do NOT want to see Turley wasting his time beyond the spam and vulgarity censorship that he gets from WordPress essentially for free.
I agree the original post had little to do with Turley’s article but, hey, one can dream and I bought a ticket to the big $1.7 powerball lotto .. . on the probability that if you’re not in, you can’t win.
My luck, even if I did win, Trump would probably put a 125% tariff on it.
I have no problem with the way Turley runs his ‘blog’.
One of my old favorite ‘blogs’ (G.Greenwald, where I first heard Turley interviewed years ago when he was still a ‘democrat’!) only policed his site for what he called ‘flaming’ – which I took to mean excessive posting or hogging the limelight.
I would, of course, have a problem with multiple users posting under the same name – like ‘anonymous’ – if such is the case here*. I like to know who I’m talking to for future reference .. . whether it’s John Say or someone named ‘anonymous’.
* if so, at the least, all the individuals who wish to post under the ‘anonymous’ name should be labeled .. . e.g. Anonymous#1, Anonymouse#2, etc., etc. .. and avoid all this pretentious funny business.
@John Say
I finally found something more disgusting than your comments.
@James
Jimmy you want to run this blog like a bar room bouncer. Jim how much did you lose on that Powerball bet? You’re a drunk and a sore loser. Now get rid of that crack pipe.