BOOM! NANCY MACE UNVEILS A BOMBSHELL PLAN TO FORCE ILHAN OMAR OUT OF CONGRESS
Mace Targets Ilhan Omar With a Natural-Born Citizenship Amendment—But the Proposal Reaches Far Beyond One Lawmaker
For more than two centuries, the Constitution has allowed naturalized American citizens to serve in Congress as long as they meet the citizenship and age requirements for the House or Senate.
Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina wants to change that.
On May 20, Mace introduced H.J.Res.188, a proposed constitutional amendment that would require members of Congress, federal judges and a wide range of Senate-confirmed federal officers to be natural-born U.S. citizens. The resolution was referred to the House Judiciary Committee, and the official legislative record lists no later action.
The proposal sounds straightforward: if the Constitution requires the president to be a natural-born citizen, Mace argues, other people exercising major federal power should face a similar standard.
But the political fight surrounding the amendment is not really about an abstract citizenship rule.
Mace has explicitly pointed to Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota as one of the reasons she believes the Constitution should be changed.
Omar was born in Somalia and later became a U.S. citizen. While promoting the amendment, Mace argued that foreign-born officials have demonstrated divided loyalties and singled out Omar as a prime example of why, in her view, a natural-born citizenship requirement is necessary.
That makes the proposal highly personal politically.
But the actual amendment is much broader than Omar.
The text says that no person who is not a natural-born citizen may serve as a Representative or Senator. It would impose the same restriction on Supreme Court justices and judges of lower federal courts, as well as ambassadors, public ministers, consuls and other officers whose positions require Senate advice and consent.
That distinction matters because several members of Congress were born outside the United States, including lawmakers from both parties.
It also means describing H.J.Res.188 simply as a way to “get Ilhan Omar out of Congress” misses part of what the proposal would actually do.
Omar is clearly one of Mace’s political targets.
She is not the only person who could be affected.
There is another important detail in the actual text of the amendment.
The proposal is not written merely as a rule for future candidates.
If ratified, the House provision would take effect on January 3 of the first odd-numbered calendar year following ratification. For senators, the restriction would apply when the term for which a senator was elected ends.
For federal judges, the amendment would take effect six months after ratification. The same six-month timetable would apply to ambassadors, public ministers, consuls and other Senate-confirmed officers covered by the proposal.
So the consequences could reach beyond people seeking federal office for the first time.
That is especially important in evaluating the political claim surrounding Omar.
Mace has framed the amendment around lawmakers she believes should not hold federal power. Omar, when confronted about the proposal, dismissed the effort with a brief response: “Good luck to her.”
But introducing a constitutional amendment is very different from removing a member of Congress.
H.J.Res.188 cannot become part of the Constitution through an ordinary House majority.
The resolution itself requires two-thirds of each chamber of Congress to agree before the amendment can be submitted to the states. It then must be ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states within seven years.
That is the same deliberately difficult constitutional process that has kept successful amendments rare.
The National Archives notes that an amendment proposed by Congress requires a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate and ratification by three-fourths of the states. Only 27 amendments have ultimately become part of the Constitution.
That political reality is one of the biggest obstacles facing Mace’s proposal.
Supporters can make a simple argument.
The presidency already carries a natural-born citizenship requirement. If members of Congress write federal law, judges interpret it and senior executive officials wield substantial authority, supporters argue that applying a similar citizenship standard to those offices creates another safeguard against divided national loyalty.
Mace has made that loyalty argument central to her case.
Her position is that people exercising major governmental power should have one national allegiance, and she has repeatedly connected that argument to foreign-born members of Congress whom she accuses of putting another country ahead of the United States.
Critics start from a very different premise.
Naturalized citizens are already American citizens. They have gone through the legal naturalization process, and existing constitutional rules permit them to serve in Congress once they satisfy the required period of citizenship.
From that perspective, birthplace is not proof of loyalty.
The amendment would therefore create a permanent constitutional distinction between Americans who were citizens from birth and Americans who became citizens later—even when the naturalized citizen has lived in the United States for decades and been repeatedly elected by American voters.
That is where the argument becomes larger than Ilhan Omar.
The real question is whether natural-born citizenship should become a qualification for a much wider range of federal power.
Supporters see that requirement as protection.
Critics see it as excluding one category of American citizens from offices they are currently allowed to hold.
There is also a political complication for Republicans.
Because the amendment is written as a general constitutional rule rather than a restriction aimed at one party, it would not distinguish between Democratic and Republican naturalized citizens.
Any person covered by the amendment who failed its natural-born citizenship requirement would face the same constitutional restriction once the relevant provision took effect.
That makes H.J.Res.188 broader—and potentially more consequential—than the rhetoric surrounding Omar suggests.
At the moment, however, none of those restrictions are in force.
H.J.Res.188 was introduced on May 20 and referred to the House Judiciary Committee. The official record still lists the measure at the introduced stage.
There has been no constitutional change.
There has been no congressional vote approving the amendment.
And Ilhan Omar has not been removed from Congress by Mace’s proposal.
What Mace has done is put a much larger constitutional question on the table.
Should naturalized citizens continue to be eligible for Congress, the federal judiciary and Senate-confirmed positions under the rules that exist today?
Or should natural-born citizenship become a prerequisite for holding some of the most powerful positions in the federal government?
Mace has made clear which side she is on—and she has made equally clear that Ilhan Omar is part of the reason she wants the rule changed.
May you like
But if H.J.Res.188 ever advances, the debate will not be about Omar alone.
It will be about whether the Constitution should divide American citizens into two categories when deciding who may exercise federal power.
