Chip Roy and his friends.
Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images
Congressman Chip Roy’s campaign to succeed Ken Paxton as Texas attorney general must not be going very well. Or perhaps he isn’t getting enough extremist jollies from the role he and his House Freedom Caucus buddies are currently playing in obstructing virtually all legislation in Congress.
For whatever reason, Roy has just introduced arguably the most obnoxious piece of nativist legislation in living memory, which is saying a lot. He calls it the MAMDANI Act, as The Hill explains:
The Measures Against Marxism’s Dangerous Adherents and Noxious Islamists Act proposes amending the Immigration and Nationality Act, which dictates federal immigration law, to allow for the deportation, denaturalization, denial of citizenship or entry to any migrant that is a member of a socialist party, communist party, the Chinese Communist Party or Islamic fundamentalist party.
It also proposes imposing such restrictions on any migrant who “advocates” for socialism, communism, Marxism or Islamic fundamentalism, a sweeping term that includes “writing, districting, circulating, printing, displaying, possessing, or publishing any written, electronic, or printed matter” in support of those ideologies, according to the bill’s text.
Denaturalization of U.S. citizens is even more radical than the MAGA goal of abolishing birthright citizenship, since it involves stripping new Americans of rights thought to be inalienably secured. Under current law, denaturalization is extremely rare and mostly involves cases where citizenship was obtained fraudulently, or where naturalized citizens are guilty of heinous acts. Since the First Amendment and the 14th Amendment protect both naturalized citizens and people present in the United States who are applying for citizenship, both denaturalization and bans on citizenship based on political expression or association would be blatantly unconstitutional.
This unserious legislation asserts that all sorts of political and religious beliefs should become grounds for losing or not obtaining citizenship. It defines “communist” and “socialist” almost identically and specifically proscribes membership in Democratic Socialists of America, the non-revolutionary group to which not only Zohran Mamdani but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and several other members of Congress belong. I suppose that makes sense insofar as people like Chip Roy tend to believe that the entire Democratic Party is “socialist” or “communist.” But it’s still nuts.
You can treat this all as a dumb MAGA joke or a valentine to Stephen Miller if you want. But historically, withdrawal of collective-citizenship rights has been a blinking red alarm sign on the road to subjecting people to extreme forms of discrimination. More immediately, it’s Chip Roy’s way of saying he acknowledges no obligation to treat people whose political and religious views he finds objectionable as Americans. And that’s about as un-American as you can get.
