Were the Executive Order restrictions on birth-right citizenship not removed before the 2026 midterm polls, not just Indian-Americans but Hispanic Americans as well would shift from Republicans to the Democrats, writes Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat
It is evident that some of the Executive Orders passed by President Trump are designed to satiate the hunger for complete curbs on immigration legal and illegal of the ultra-MAGA elements in his support base. There has been widespread comment about the curbs even on the rights of legal residents of the United States in matters relating to citizenship given to their children born in the US. Such a right is implicit in the amendment to the US Constitution that was passed in 1868, after the Civil War. Unfortunately, it took four generations before the right to equality of treatment to all citizens throughout the US became effective.
Jim Crow laws by former Confederate states that rolled back such rights for African American citizens. To its shame in the annals of history, the US Supreme Court ignored such violations of the Constitution until Earl Warren took over the Supreme Court in 1953 and in his final years, ensured that the Civil Rights Act passed under President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 was approved by the Court. Despite its conservative majority, the present US Supreme Court will not want on itself the ignominy of returning to the pre-Civil Rights days in the US, and is certain to overturn any Executive Order that goes against the US Constitution. As for the Republican Party, overall it would heave a sigh of relief at such a Court decision.
Were the Executive Order restrictions on birth-right citizenship not removed before the 2026 midterm polls, not just Indian-Americans but Hispanic Americans as well would shift from Republicans to the Democrats. As a consequence, the Republican Party would lose its majority in the US House of Representatives as well as the Senate, rendering President Trump far less able to get his legislation passed in the US Congress. Such gestures to the ultra-fringe elements in his base have been a boon to efforts by countries hostile to the US. They are using such orders to influence social media so as to try and make Trump unpopular in much of the US and in the rest of the world. The toxic narrative about Trump which has been artificially created in the disinformation labs of a superpower hostile to the US may be termed Trumphobia, and has been germinating over years since 2017.
Ever since he won the US Presidency in 2016, Donald Trump has been the target of a campaign to portray him in the least favourable manner. During one of the debates that Hillary Clinton had during the contest with Trump, she called him a “Russian agent”, an outrageous smear that took aback the Republican nominee for the Presidency who was opposing her bid to be the second Clinton and the first lady to get elected as the President of the US. Her only basis for such a claim were a bunch of online posts making false allegations, many that were by groups subsequently outed as trolls for hire.
The Clinton campaign believed that Russiagate would destroy any chance that Trump would win, only to discover to their shock that he bested Hillary on 6 November 2016, all the barbs thrown in his direction notwithstanding. Once he was sworn in, the abuse grew shriller and more outlandish rather than losing traction. Trumphobia was sought to be made mainstream, a fear of the 45th President of the US designed to make not just US citizens but the rest of the world anxious about prospects for the US and the world. These were indeed upended in 2020, not by Trump but by a virus that was created in a laboratory in Wuhan, Covid-19.
From the start in Wuhan in 2019 to its spread across the world of the pandemic in 2020, Trump called it the China Virus, a term that angered the Chinese Communist Party as well as those researchers in the US and elsewhere who had contributed to its development, including by funding some of the research. Although Anthony Fauci has been pardoned, there are others down the chain of command who were at the National Institute of Health and elsewhere who could be questioned on what actually happened, so that the truth finally emerges from the shadows into which those complicit in the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its creation, the Covid-19 virus had put it.
False reports on origin have peddled since the pandemic became public knowledge. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and a revamped NIH is certain to seek to uncover the truth about a virus that caused so much pain across the world. Key diplomatic and national security picks of the Trump administration such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz are fully aware not just of the hostility of the CCP to the US but the way in which elements linked to the CCP have infiltrated into both US official as well as civil society in a pervasive manner.
To remove such elements and prevent them from doing further harm, President Trump will need bigger majorities in the US House of Representatives and the Senate, rather than have the present strength reduced such that Republicans become a minority in both the House and Senate. He lost to Joe Biden in 2020 because he had lost the moderate middle, and he won in 2024 because enough such voters preferred him over Kamala Harris, who in the election made the error committed by Trump in 2016 by concentrating on the base rather than more vigorously attracting unattached voters. Trump needs to keep the 2026 midterms in mind while framing policies for the US, if his efforts at transformation of the US, indeed a revival of the earlier élan, is to be actualised.
Trump could do a Reagan on PRC
It is ironic that the two largest democracies, India and the US, are also the biggest contributors to the trade surplus of the PRC that is helping Xi Jinping to mitigate the impact of a sluggish economy. The annual trade deficit of India with China is over $80 billion, and that of the US is on track to cross well over $500 billion. The actual figures may be even larger, for the CCP has become proficient in using Mexico and Canada to assemble parts made by Chinese entities and get the labels changed to “Made in Mexico” or “Made in Canada”.
In the case of India, the same is being done by PRC companies based in ASEAN countries with whom India has signed FTAs. As had been warned in an earlier column, President Trump needs to be watchful of “friends” who in effect work for the objectives of the CCP. Elon Musk is not among them. Although there is worry in parts of the world that Elon Musk may be a Chinese asset in disguise, such a conclusion is false.
Given the strong national security picks of the US President, it is scarcely likely that they would not have privately warned Trump about Musk, were such speculation about him were true. His purchase of Twitter and its conversion from a politically slanted, anti-Trump platform into a more neutral one was influential in ensuring that Trump got his message across and won the Presidential poll against Kamala Harris.
As for TikTok, should it be kept alive in the US, it should only be once its equity is owned by patriotic US citizens. The difference between the contents of TikTok and in its sister platform, Douyin, speak for themselves. TikTok almost subliminally promotes a dystopian view of democracy that gets reinforced by several manufactured messages that celebrate the “successes” of the PRC and the hypertrophy of the West in particular.
Absent full US control over the platform, the ban on TikTok that has been upheld by the US Supreme Court in a unanimous verdict should stand. It would be a political disaster for Trump to allow Democrats to use the continuation of TikTok in the US with less than full US ownership to spread the narrative that while they may have been wrong about Trump being a Russian agent of influence, when he was actually a PRC agent.
Again an absurdity, but which could gain traction within voters were TikTok to be allowed to continue without the most stringent of security protocols and full ownership by US citizens. As it is, its going dark some days ago is only leading to users switching to other platforms. Such a trend would continue, hence there would be no political loss to Trump were the ban on TikTok to continue. It bears repeating that there will be an all-out effort by the Democrats to get a majority in either the US House or Senate, or both, in the 2026 midterm polls, a point that should not be lost on Trump and his party.
Tariffs that are increased step by step on PRC products would soon be replicated by other countries, very possibly including India. Tariffs are a vote getter, and will force the CCP to give larger and larger subsidies in order to ensure that its products compete in the US market. In the way Reagan succeeded in ruining the USSR by forcing Moscow to overinvest on defence, through tariffs, Trump is in a position to ensure that Beijing overspends itself into bankruptcy if not during his term, then the term of his chosen successor, J.D. Vance.
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