Rov_Scam
2d ago
Title I funding incentivizes concentrating impoverished students in great enough numbers to qualify for the funding. There’s a cliff where the funds just go away. I’ve seen this play out when our district was redrawing school boundaries, it was the top priority.
In my experience, most conservative-leaning people want the poverty to be concentrated, though. I can think of several small districts in old mill towns near me that are having enough trouble staying solvent with Federal funding. If that dries up then it's game over for them and they will be forced to merge with the wealthier suburban districts that surround them, causing a much bigger uproar among Trumpy types than an obscure DOE incentive structure.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
They did pretty well through the point and shoot era, and their cameras were everywhere if you cared to look; in 2005 they led the market in camera sales. They just weren't involved in the pro market the way their competitors were, so when that market died they had nothing to fall back on.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
I think the best illustration of this principle lies in the downfall of Kodak. Their bankruptcy is often cited as a cautionary tale of what happens when you obstinately stick to old technology in the midst of a changing landscape. But that it were true! Yes, Kodak was synonymous with film in the early 2000s, but, while digital cameras existed, they were expensive and people were still buying a ton of film. So they weren't going to just stop producing it (and they still haven't). But the idea that they didn't see the writing on the wall and failed to embrace digital photography is a myth. They wholeheartedly threw most of their effort into what they perceived the transition to digital would look like. They manufactured inexpensive digital cameras and supplies for making prints at home, and they put kiosks in stores and malls for people without the equipment to make prints. What they failed to anticipate was a world where the market for cheap cameras would move to smartphones, and where social media would replace the need to get prints of everything.
And the reason they didn't anticipate it was because they couldn't anticipate it. No one could. Digital cameras started gaining market share before the rise of social media and phones with acceptable cameras. If you told someone in 2003 what the low end of the photographic world would look like 5 years later, they'd tell you you were nuts.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
That assumes that crime and vagrancy are the reason Americans don't embrace public transport. But these aren't problems everywhere. Pittsburgh transit doesn't have these problems, at least not to the degree that anyone has expressed concern about them. I used to rely on bus lines, including some that served bad neighborhoods, when I lived in the city, and the worst thing I had to deal with was poor people listening to shitty rap music with cheap headphones that didn't contain the sound well. While this may be one of the reasons that some people say it's relatively easy to live here car-free, most people still use their cars to get around, despite the fact that narrow streets and a dearth of easy parking doesn't make driving particularly easy, either.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
I always wanted to point that out about Griggs but Duke was so adamant about how that totally wasn't what they were doing that the court just accepted it at face value, so it's codified in the opinion. The problem isn't so much that it's a bad case as it is that if it went the other way plenty of companies in the South would have come up with bullshit tests to justify continued discrimination.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
I doubt it will make much difference. The part about Griggs that everyone forgets is that the reason they weren't allowed to use the test was because they couldn't show that it actually resulted in better hires. The government already uses aptitude testing much more than the private sector, not to mention domain specific testing. I had to take an aptitude testing for hitting when I got my job with the state, and I've never had to take one in the private sector, excepting an $8/hour inventory job I had in college.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
I honestly think a lower dose would be better, especially since you aren't morbidly obese or anything. You avoid the excess skin and hollowed out face that comes with rapid weight loss. I know most people looking to shed weight target a pound a week, and you aren't too far off of that.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
I'm not going to defend Kentucky's system of vehicle registration, because it's dumb. In PA and Ohio at least, liens are recorded in the county where the vehicle is registered, period. In PA it isn't even recorded at the courthouse, just with the DOT, which makes sense since the records aren't public anyway due to Federal law. The legislature had a chance to change it but they put a safe harbor provision in instead. That being said, the court can't just ignore the system that exists because they'd prefer a better system. The bank is the sophisticated party here, and they should know, understand, and follow the law as it exists, at peril of their lien not being recognized. I have no sympathy for them.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
Just to be clear, the creditor can't refile. Once the debtor files for bankruptcy, any collection actions for existing debts are automatically stayed, barring a court order to lift the stay. These orders are usually only granted if there is a secured debt, e.g. a mortgage or car loan. A judge is never going to lift the stay to allow an unsecured creditor to file a lien against the debtor. Doing this would completely subvert the intention of the bankruptcy code, since bankruptcy, with certain rare exceptions, can't remove any liens that exist at the time of filing. If they were allowed to do this then every unsecured creditor would sue the debtor and get a judgment against them, converting the unsecured debt to a secured debt, making discharge impossible. As I explained below, the debtor gains nothing from the banks error, and possibly even suffers a bit himself. The bank is supposed to be the sophisticated party here but they fucked up because they didn't comply with the relatively straightforward safe harbor provisions. I don't have much sympathy for them.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
About 5 years ago I was hiking in the Grand Canyon with friends and we met a 20-year-old Russian kid at the beach who asked if he could tag along with us for the hike back up to the rim. He spent a lot of the time telling us how great Russia was, which was fine, but one of the things he pointed to in evidence of its greatness was the fact that they could "beat faggots in the street" with no repercussions. I don't know if this kind of attitude is typical, but the fact that any random tourist would find it appropriate to tell Americans he just met that apropos of nothing in particular is at least an indication that the attitudes over there go beyond simply not celebrating it. Hell, even the rural Trump supporter in our group seemed pretty unnerved by it.
Rov_Scam
13d ago
I have a proposition for you: We hand all political power in the US over to the blacks. As a white guy, you'll probably be forced to live in a designated area an hour outside a major city, where you'll be forced to take a bus in every day to do manual labor for ten bucks an hour. You will be barred from most public accommodations, and will have to get official permission before traveling anywhere outside your home; even going to work will require you to present proof that you actually have a job. Your own political power is nonexistent, and the government doesn't even pretend that you have anything resembling civil rights. The tradeoff is that the United States sees unprecedented GDP growth. Do you take this bargain?
Rov_Scam
13d ago
I think you're misunderstanding the situation here, to the extent that you think that the creditor wants to take the truck and that the man somehow benefits by declaring the incorrect county. The second idea can be dismissed quickly; this isn't a repossession, but a bankruptcy case in which the trustee is challenging the lien. The trustee's job is to sell property for the benefit of creditors. The trustee winning the action means the truck is going to get sold and the proceeds distributed among all the creditors named in the bankruptcy; the man doesn't get to keep the truck.
The other point is a bit more complicated, in that the creditor winning this action actually increases the chances that the man gets to keep the truck. If the creditor has a security interest in the truck, and there isn't enough equity for it to be worth it for the trustee to sell it, then the creditor has four options:
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He can ask the debtor to reaffirm the debt. The bankruptcy won't extinguish the creditor's security interest, but it will extinguish the debtor's personal obligation to pay. It's fairly common for bankrupts to have auto loans well in excess of the vehicle's value. After a reaffirmation the loan survives the bankruptcy, and the debtor continues to be personally liable for it, meaning that if they don't make the payments it could continue to affect their credit score and the creditor can continue to take collection actions (phone calls, letters, etc.). They can still repossess the car, and continue to hold the debtor for accountable for any shortage. They can go after the debtor's other assets to the extent that state law allows. This is almost always what auto creditors want you to do. When I did bankruptcy, debtors would occasionally ask about this because they needed a car and were pessimistic on their ability to get an auto loan after discharge. I told them up front that if they insisted on this they'd need to find another attorney, because I wouldn't do it, and trustees, who have to act in the best interests of the debtor as well as the creditors, have to approve and they're increasingly reluctant to allow these agreements outside of the rare cases when they make sense.
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The creditor can repossess the truck. This happens fairly often, but not as often as you'd might think. Again, a lot of car loans are underwater, so getting the car is a consolation prize. Furthermore, the creditor has no idea what kind of condition the vehicle is in, mileage, etc. And repossession isn't free. They have to hire a tow truck to pick up the car. They then have to find somewhere to store it, assuming the bank manager's house isn't an option. It's probably going to be sold at a dealer auction, where it won't fetch anywhere near it's market value. The fact that the truck in this case is a commercial vehicle complicates things even further, as the incidental costs are larger, the market is smaller, and things like DOT safety standards make it third-party purchase riskier. Again, it's a consolation prize.
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The creditor can redeem the truck. This is only available in the event that the loan is underwater. Say he owes $50,000 and the truck is only worth $30,000. If he can come up with $30,000 cash he can have the truck for that amount. This is a better deal for the creditor than repossession, since it avoids all of the incidental expenses and risk of selling below market. The downside is that it requires the debtor to come up with a lot of cash at a time when they, almost by definition, aren't doing well financially. It makes the most sense when the vehicle is only worth, like, a few thousand dollars that the debtor can save up while the bankruptcy is pending. There are also companies that offer redemption loans, but these almost always have ridiculously high interest rates, though they may be worth it if the car is worth keeping.
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The final option is called a "ride through". This was technically eliminated by the 2005 bankruptcy reforms, but it's made a comeback in the form of the "back door ride through" and the realities of the situation. It used to be that the bankruptcy code prohibited a creditor from seizing collateral after discharge, so long as the loan was current. What this meant was that, if the loan was current at the time of filing, you could just continue making payments and keep the car. Since there was no formal affirmation, if you couldn't afford the payments or just wanted a new car, you could stop paying at any time without detriment to your own financial position. While the bankruptcy code no longer affords debtors this protection, a number of state laws still prohibit creditors from seizing collateral when payments are current. Furthermore, remember that repossession isn't free. The banks pushed for this reform because they thought it would lead to more affirmations. It actually led to more repossessions.
Unfortunately for them, this push was based on what they thought they wanted, but after several years it became clear that the economics didn't make sense. It costs the banks about $500 per reaffirmation in legal costs and filing fees. So 100 affirmations costs them $50,000. If the default rate is 10%, then it's costing them $50,000 to pursue ten delinquencies. And what do they actually get for that? Well, they already had the right of repossession, so all they're really getting is the right to sue people who filed bankruptcy in the past few years. Tack on more legal fees, and add into it the fact that most of these people aren't going to have many recoverable assets, and it doesn't look too good. Even in the best case scenario, where they can collect every judgment in full and there are no additional legal fees, it's unlikely that the total value of the suits is going to add up to what they paid—they could be paying $50,000 for the right to collect $30,000. And since reaffirmation is such a bad deal for the debtor, they're now forced to repossess on a lot of loans where they might have otherwise been paid in full.
So in addition to your attorney warning against it and the trustee skeptical at best, we now have the situation where reaffirmation might not even be an option. I know that Ford Motor Credit still follows the letter of the law and insists on reaffirmation, and local credit unions often do because of complicated cross-collateralization agreements and the fact that they seem to take things personally. But otherwise, most debtors who aren't behind on payments end up keeping the car.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
I would also clarify that the upshot here isn't that the debtor gets to keep the truck. For the sake of argument, let's assume that sale of the truck will recover $50,000 after fees, which amount is exactly the same as the lien Creditor A claims against it. This is the only property of the estate available for distribution. Let's also assume that the debtor has $100,000 in total debt, and that the other $50,000 is from an unsecured loan from Creditor B. This is a straight Chapter 7 liquidation. If Creditor A's lien is valid, then Creditor a gets the full $50,000 proceeds and Creditor B gets nothing. Since the court ruled the lien was invalid, there's now $50,000 to be split between two unsecured creditors, and each would get $25,000.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
Under Kentucky, law, they aren't; that's the purpose of the safe harbor provision. The problem is that they didn't comply with the safe harbor provision by only getting an attestation rather than a sworn declaration. To be clear, all an attestation is is a verification by the notary that the person whose signature is on the document is the person who signed it. The change would have been trivial to make at the time of signing, and the bank shouldn't be exempt from the consequences of not following the law.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
A lot of the pro-Trump/pro-deal faction on here like to describe themselves as realists and pat themselves on the back for understanding Realpolitik and not being squishy idealists. It seems to me, though, that the Realpolitik goes in the other direction. Russia is our biggest foreign military threat, and is the biggest threat to our allies as well. While I'd prefer a world in which they didn't invade Ukraine, they've proven both that they are too incompetent to score a quick victory and too bullheaded to call off their dogs. For their part, the Ukrainians don't seem to have any interest in capitulating.
What we have here, boys and girls, is a proxy war. Whether or not Ukraine has a shot at "winning" or regaining significant territory is irrelevant. Every day that the war continues is another day that the Russian military continues to deteriorate without any loss of American life? But what about the Ukrainians? As long as they're want to keep fighting, we should support them. They're morally in the right here, so I don't see what forcing a settlement on them accomplishes. If the war becomes unpopular enough that the situation changes, then I'm all for changing along with it, but other than a few anecdotal accounts of people fleeing conscription, I'm not seeing it. If there were mass anti-Zelensky protests in the street, we'd know about it. And the idea that Ukraine can't sustain these kinds of losses for much longer is hogwash. In World War I, Germany, with about the same population, lost close to 2 million war dead. Ukraine's population was similar at the beginning of World War II and they lost 1.6 million war dead, in addition to over 5 million civilians. In 3 years of fighting, Ukraine has lost about 100,000 soldiers and a few thousand more civilians. This war can continue for a very long time.
The thing that pisses me off the most about this, though, is that Trump makes it sound like a deal is ready to go and all that's missing is Zelensky's signature, but I haven't seen any evidence of that. All we have is Trump's word that Putin is willing to deal, but for all we know that could mean anything. There seems to be some suggestion that the front lines will be frozen, but I just don't see that happening. I don't see Putin letting the forces in Kursk who he's been unable to dislodge in 6 months being allowed to stay indefinitely. It wouldn't surprise me if, in addition to this, Putin were to start demanding additional concessions, like Ukrainian withdrawal from the entirety of the regions he wants to annex.
And at this point there's no reason for Puitin not to make such demands. If he gets them he gets them, and if he doesn't, then he's in the same position he was a few months ago. And what does Trump do in that situation? He certainly hasn't indicated that if Putin is the one that isn't willing to deal, that he'd send US troops or drastically increase aid or anything like that. In other words, I really just don't see how making this deal furthers American interests in the region. I can see how it furthers Donald Trump's personal interest, in that he wants credit for ending the war regardless of how bad a deal it is or whether the peace lasts longer than the end of his administration. I honestly don't see the point in all this.
And one final point: A bunch of people have said that it's better for Ukrainians that the killing stops and that they still have a country, period. First, if you're going to make that argument, at least acknowledge that Putin is more to blame for all of this than Zelensky. He could end this war right now if he cared to, but he's more concerned about pursuing his revanchist vision of Mother Russia. Second, if you want to do this, don't talk about realism, and don't talk about how you personally don't give a fuck about whether Ukraine survives because you only care about America. These views simply aren't compatible.
Rov_Scam
18d ago
I don't see what's so bad about it, and it's certainly less annoying than your making accusations and using them to paint half of the entire population with a broad brush. I'm not a huge fan of people announcing their exit, but this is certainly preferable to past users who have decided to end their time here with a long whinge about why they're leaving, complete with accusations about the mods not acting fairly since most of them were skirting perma-bans anyway.
Rov_Scam
20d ago
As someone pointed out below, rare earths aren't valuable. Furthermore, the largest mining company in the US that does them operates a single mine in California; a concession in a war zone probably doesn't appeal to them too much. But even if all of the above didn't matter, so what? I don't see how a mining concession is different than any other business interest or how the presence of a mining operation is supposed to be some kind of deterrent. If Russia wants to attack Ukraine, the miners aren't going to start shooting at them. The US isn't going to start a war against Russia over potential disruption of an unprofitable mining operation that's probably mostly Ukrainian workers anyway. If this is what counts as 3D chess, consider me unimpressed.
Rov_Scam
20d ago
No, it means the entire deal was worthless. The deal wasn't that the US would continue to support Ukraine militarily in exchange for mineral interests; that's what Zelensky was gunning for. The actual deal on the table was that Ukraine would grant the US rights to 50% of the revenue in Ukrainian rare earths, the idea being that it would give the US skin in the game to keep Russia from advancing further into the country. Of course, if defending these interests is more expensive than the interests are worth, you aren't going to defend them. The whole thing was essentially a modest giveaway. This is why Zelensky kept insisting an a real security guarantee.
Rov_Scam
21d ago
Whatever the legislative debates say doesn't matter at this point, because the exceptions have already been enshrined in law by the Wong Kim Ark decision. I did read the branch you refer to, but I didn't address it because what you guys were arguing was edge cases that, as far as I can tell, don't apply to any known persons. I'm unaware of any extraterritorial raids by natives, let alone whether any of these had children while they were here. Interestingly enough, you actually would need common law reasoning in this case, because the court specifically recognized the exception based on common law, and that's where you'd therefore go to test the bounds of it. That's assuming, of course, that there are no intervening court opinions that have already addressed the issue.
Rov_Scam
21d ago
Well, no, it's no "if"; the opinion explicitly states that amendment covers aliens. "Implied license" is only mentioned as the historical context for why the exception exists, not as a test for creating new exceptions. The reason the opinion doesn't discuss the amendment as it would apply to anyone in the situation of a modern-day illegal immigrant is because such a situation didn't exist at the time the amendment was adopted. These older opinions aren't structured as well as the newer ones, which is why I said that they require a close reading to tease out exactly what the court is doing, but it's pretty straightforward: It cites a rule (those born in US territory are citizens) and the exceptions (diplomats, invading armies, Indians, people born on ships). If Wong Kim Ark is still good law, that's as far as the analysis goes, since the court clearly defined what the exceptions are. What your suggesting is that congress can create a new class of persons that didn't exist at the time of the amendment's adoption, apply common law principles to argue that there would have been an exception if the class actually existed at the time of adoption, and use that as justification to pencil in a new exception that didn't exist under common law and wasn't recognized by the Wonk Kim Ark court. There might be an argument for this if the court hadn't ruled, but the court did rule, and you can't do this without overturning 130-year-old precedent.
To give an analogy I'll use a situation that comes up in my own professional life. I handle a lot of product liability cases involving occupational exposure to hazardous chemicals. The exposure to these chemicals took place many decades before the plaintiffs developed their disease. As you would imagine, the plaintiffs in these cases have to prove that they were actually present at the facilities where they are alleging exposure. Ideally, the plaintiff will testify to where he worked, but sometimes the plaintiff is deceased. In those cases, we find coworkers who can testify to where the plaintiff worked and the chemicals he may have been exposed to. But what happens if you can't find any coworkers? You can use employment records, but if the guy was in a union or otherwise visited jobsites where he wasn't employed by the owner, there's probably not going to be anything useful.
Some attorneys got the idea to use spouses, children, etc. to testify to where the plaintiff worked. The problem is that this is hearsay that doesn't fit into any exception. I was involved in a heated courtroom argument last year where plaintiff's attorney was arguing that the common law reasoning behind the hearsay rules was reliability—hearsay is presumed to be unreliable, but we make exceptions for cases when we think it is reliable. The guy in question worked as a union boilermaker for three years at a power plant while it was under construction. No one on the defense side seriously believed that the husband (along with several coworkers the couple was friends with) spent three years lying to the wife about where the husband was working. But the law doesn't allow the judge to just create a hearsay exception because he thinks the testimony is reliable.
The parallels are unmistakable: Hearsay rules developed out of common law principles. At some point, the state legislature codified these into rules of evidence. A situation arose (people developing occupational diseases 50 years after exposure) that wasn't contemplated by the rules. Someone tries to argue that the rules shouldn't apply to this case because the evidence they want to admit is in accordance with common law principles. But you can't just shoehorn exceptions in because you can theoretically justify their existence.
Rov_Scam
21d ago
If Ark has a justification of the invasion exemption that neither justifies an exemption for illegal immigrants nor falls afoul of my criticisms, then lets hear it.
To wit:
The real object of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, in qualifying the words, “All persons born in the United States” by the addition “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” would appear to have been to exclude, by the fewest and fittest words (besides children of members of the Indian tribes, standing in a peculiar relation to the National Government, unknown to the common law), the two classes of cases – children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation and children of diplomatic representatives of a foreign State – both of which, as has already been shown, by the law of England and by our own law from the time of the first settlement of the English colonies in America, had been recognized exceptions to the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the country. . . .
In other words, the exceptions are justified because the framers of the amendment sought to preserve those that were recognized at the time of ratification. There's nothing in the opinion that suggests the amendment allows for every conceivable exception under common law. I think people lose the plot after the part that says:
The principles upon which each of those exceptions rests were long ago distinctly stated by this court. . . .
The opinion then goes on to discuss those principles, but at no point does it suggest that those principles can be used to craft exceptions other than those that the court recognizes in opinion. Further on, it closes the door:
The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: the Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes....
That's it; here's the rule, here are the exceptions. It couldn't be any clearer.
Rov_Scam
21d ago
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Wong Kim Ark interprets the 14th Amendment to read that everyone born in the United States is a citizen, subject to the exceptions that were recognized prior to adoption. Indians owing tribal allegiance were among these exceptions. Furthermore, the amendment doesn't state that these are the only circumstances under which one can become a citizen, it just says that these people are citizens. So if congress wants to extend citizenship to other classes of people, they can do so, and have done so. Otherwise, there would be no naturalization and no citizenship for children of US citizens born abroad.
Rov_Scam
22d ago
The articles you linked rest on the presumption that the jurisdiction clause is a stand-in for Common Law exceptions, and that any exception that would apply in the common law would apply for the purposes of the amendment. Hence, people looking for an out tend to get lost in the weeds of the Common Law and get hung up on the justifications for the exceptions and try to apply them to illegal immigrants and other undesirables. That's not what the case says; the long discourse on the Common Law is used for the purpose of explaining why the exemptions exist, and nothing in the opinion suggests that it is to be used for the basis of coming up with additional exceptions. The court is clear:
The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: the Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes.
The authors tacitly admit this when they say they can't find a common law justification for the exclusion of Indians. That's because the clause doesn't preserve every conceivable common law exception; it preserves the exceptions that were recognized at the time of the amendment's adoption, most of which happen to derive from the common law but one of which doesn't. In any event, no such exception actually exists under the common law. Modern immigration law is a creature of statute with only limited corollary in the common law. What people asking to add an exception are asking is to pretend that a statute from 1965 was part of the common law and continue the analysis of the 14th Amendment using common law principles. This is absurd; the concept of an illegal immigrant in the modern sense simply didn't exist at common law. The court goes on to say:
The acts of Congress known as the Chinese Exclusion Acts, the earliest of which was passed some fourteen years after the adoption of the Constitutional Amendment, cannot control its meaning or impair its effect, but must be construed and executed in subordination to its provisions.
This concept seems obvious, but it's forgotten completely when people are arguing about this. If the exception didn't exist at the time the amendment was adopted, we can't statutorily write it in later. If the amendment, at the time it was adopted, includes aliens, congress can't go back years later and create a new class of "illegal" aliens who aren't covered, any more than they can write in any other exemptions. Allowing them to do so would allow them to gut the amendment entirely. To summarize:
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The clause isn't defined by common law, but by the exceptions that were recognized in the United States at the time of the amendment's adoption, regardless of whether they have any basis in common law.
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Even if the clause were defined by all the common law exceptions, "illegal immigrant" isn't a recognized exception.
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Congress doesn't have the power to create new exemptions by redefining terms.
Rov_Scam
22d ago
You and @Gillitrut and whoever else can go on with comparisons, analogies, and philosophical lucrubations involving the meaning of "under the jurisdiction thereof", but a close reading of Wong Kim Ark makes it crystal clear that there is no universe where this is necessary. When the court mentions the classes that are exempt under the jurisdiction clause, they aren't listing examples of possible exemptions; they're listing the exemptions themselves. That's it. You don't get to add to the list. The opinion makes it clear that the goal of the amendment was to confirm that freed slaves were citizens. Hence, all persons means all persons. The jurisdiction clause was only put in because the government had already recognized certain exemptions prior to the amendment's passing: Diplomats and invading armies were already excepted under common law, and uncivilized Indians were exempted based on their peculiar status in the United States.
This wouldn't be so infuriating if conservatives hadn't spent the past several decades advocating for the kind of minimalist judicial standards that we see in Wong Kim Ark. There's no equivocation, no balancing test, no attempts to shoehorn contemporary ideas into archaic concepts by broadening their scope, just clear, bright-line rules. The fact that we've since restricted immigration to the point that there are 500 different kinds of visas and some aliens who can travel without visas and a whole underclass of illegals below that doesn't change what the 14th Amendment says. It's the same logic as in Bruen, just because the world has changed doesn't mean we change the meaning of the law along with it. And that argument is much stronger here; states had been restricting firearms since the 1800s, but our definition of a natural born citizen has remained consistent until this past month.
The left would go for that in a heartbeat, if only to demonstrate the illiteracy of the GOP. The pre-1965 immigration restrictions did not impose any quotas on immigration from within the Western Hemisphere. While it put Asian immigration to a dead standstill, the focus was limiting immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.
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