Long-standing American principle of birthright citizenship under attack from Trump allies

  As President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to implement sweeping policy changes affecting American immigration and immigrants, one of the issues under scrutiny by his allies appears to be birthright citizenship – the declaration in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that anyone born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen, regardless of their parents’ nationalities or immigration status.

  Some prospective members of Trump’s team, including anti-immigration advisers Stephen Miller and Thomas Homan, have said they intend to stop issuing federal identification documents such as Social Security cards and passports to infants born in the U.S. to undocumented migrant parents, according to The New York Times.

Trump, Pompeo, and Bolton: The path to war

  President Donald Trump is putting the United States on a dangerous path to devastating wars by shuffling his national security team to assemble a war Cabinet. To fill the position of America’s top diplomat, President Trump has chosen the hawkish current CIA Director Mike Pompeo—a man who notoriously prefers regime change to diplomacy. And newly appointed National Security Adviser John R. Bolton was one of the principal architects and defenders of the Iraq War; wants to abrogate the Iran deal; and appears eager to launch preventive military strikes against North Korea. Both Pompeo and Bolton replace less hawkish advisers and will enable the worst instincts of the already erratic and reckless President Trump. By nominating Pompeo and appointing Bolton, Trump has chosen a path that could lead to war.

Executive power and the role of Congress in the Paris climate and Iran nuclear agreements

  In recent months, multilateral efforts have produced two historic agreements aimed at improving global security: the Iran nuclear agreement and the Paris climate agreement.

  The Iran nuclear agreement, which blocks Iran’s nuclear capacity in exchange for a gradual lifting of economic sanctions, was finalized in July and is expected to be implemented imminently. Before negotiations concluded, Congress passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, which gave Congress a 60-day period in which it could seek to pass a joint resolution of disapproval. On September 10, all but four Democrats in the U.S. Senate voted to filibuster such a resolution. The agreement, which is nonbinding under international law, therefore proceeded without the need for a presidential veto.