The authoritarian moment?

The President probably has never sounded as much like the authoritarian strongman his most hysterical critics believe him to be as when he told an Axios interviewer that he could effectively amend the U.S. Constitution by executive order. He wants to end the policy of "birthright citizenship," which he believes to encourage illegal immigration. The policy is based on the 14th Amendment,  which states that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," are citizens. Critics of birthright citizenship claim that the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" clause is a qualifier that rules out the children of illegal immigrants, but the fact that any qualification would apply equally to both those born and those naturalized makes that a questionable reading. The President's apologists are quick to state that it will be the Supreme Court, not Donald Trump, that decides ultimately what the words mean. They predict that any executive order will only start a process resulting in a definitive judicial ruling on the meaning of the amendment. In our current political climate, a lower court most likely will block any executive order until the high court can have its say. Nevertheless,  this is a bad time for Trump to suggest that he could change the law unilaterally. We've just had people massacred by an extreme xenophobe because he assumed that they supported the welcoming of more refugees into the country, and we are now less than one week from the congressional elections. Now the President underscores his own xenophobia -- let no one deny that fear rather than principle drives the reaction to mass migration -- while appearing to fulfill the worst fears of both liberals and ideological conservatives about his style of governance. All you need for a perfect storm would be for that refugee caravan to arrive in time to be violently turned back before the election -- but in our climate, such a storm could blow either way.