New York mayor’s speech cut ideological counterpoint to policies of president, who will deliver his own remarks later today

New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, exalted the city’s legacy of immigrants on Friday in a historically laden, ideological counterpoint to a US semiquincentennial address that was expected later in the day from Donald Trump – who has sought to deport immigrants en masse throughout his second presidency.

Speaking from behind a desk at New York’s city hall that belonged to the US’s first president, George Washington, and which itself is a century older than the Resolute desk in the White House, Mamdani was surrounded by naturalized citizens like himself as he listed the waves of immigrants who shaped the city.

“Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants arrived with stomachs aching from a famine manufactured by imperial cruelty,” Mamdani said. “Chinese sailors settled in what is today Chinatown. Millions more traveled under the Statue of Liberty and through Ellis Island. Jewish people escaping pogroms, Italians fleeing poverty. Syrians seeking economic opportunity.

  • OwOarchist@pawb.socialEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    Well, unfortunately, the text of the 14th Amendment and the text of Article 2 are a bit different. Here’s Article 2’s pertinent part:

    No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President

    You have to be a ‘natural born’ citizen, not naturalized. And ‘natural born’ is pretty much universally taken to mean being a US citizen when born.