Request for Immediate Counsel Review and Lawful Presidential Action
The President of the United States
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Re: Immediate Review of Trump v. Barbara, Supreme Court Rule 44, and Enforcement of the Reconstruction Citizenship Settlement
Dear Mr. President:
I respectfully submit the enclosed constitutional memorandum, REHEAR AND ENFORCE, for your immediate review and referral to the Counsel to the President, the Attorney General, and the Solicitor General of the United States.
The recent decision in Trump v. Barbara addressed the citizenship claims of children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present. Yet the litigation did not separately adjudicate the distinct constitutional identity, remedial citizenship, and continuing legal interests of the formerly enslaved people and their descendants—the population whose condition caused Congress to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and later secure national citizenship through the Fourteenth Amendment.
The enclosed memorandum presents an antecedent constitutional question that was not squarely placed before the Court:
What was the legal character of the federal citizenship first expressly secured to the formerly enslaved population in 1866, and what obligations accompany that citizenship when the same Reconstruction language is applied to materially different populations and circumstances?
This is not a request that you disregard the Supreme Court or govern outside the Constitution. It is a request that you use the lawful authority available to the President of the United States.
First, I respectfully ask that you direct the Attorney General and Solicitor General to determine immediately whether a good-faith petition for rehearing, clarification, or other appropriate relief should be filed under Supreme Court Rule 44.
Second, I ask that you direct a government-wide review of the continuing force and enforcement pathways of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Reconstruction Amendments, the Reconstruction Acts, the Enforcement Acts, and the related federal protections created for the primary subject beneficiaries of emancipation.
Third, I ask that your Administration establish a Federal Reconstruction Completion and Citizenship Protection Initiative to identify lawful measures concerning constitutional education, civil-rights enforcement, property, housing, employment, enterprise, public safety, homelessness, and the continuing consequences of America’s unfinished Reconstruction.
Mr. President, you have spoken of an American Golden Age and promised that the forgotten and left behind will no longer be forgotten. The descendants of those whom this nation enslaved, emancipated, and expressly brought into federal citizenship are the original constitutional population to whom that promise most urgently applies.
This matter does not require hostility toward immigrants or their children. It requires historical accuracy, constitutional honesty, and recognition that voluntary migration and involuntary hereditary chattel enslavement are not the same American journey.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was not merely an immigration rule. It was a national act of constitutional reconstruction. Its first work was to secure citizenship and enforceable civil rights for a people whom American law had previously treated as property and excluded from the national political community.
I therefore respectfully ask that you cause this memorandum to be reviewed without delay and that you direct your constitutional counsel to determine the strongest lawful course by which the United States may both seek rehearing and enforce the unfinished Reconstruction settlement.
General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is copied because the Armed Forces played an indispensable historical role in preserving the Union, carrying emancipation into effect, protecting the Freedmen, and sustaining lawful Reconstruction. No present military intervention is requested in this letter. His inclusion recognizes the historic and constitutional significance of the military dimension and preserves it for separate consideration at the appropriate time.
Mr. President, the nation is not being asked to choose between immigrants and the descendants of the enslaved. It is being asked whether the constitutional remedy created for the latter may be interpreted and extended while the original beneficiaries themselves remain unidentified, unprotected, and left behind.
You have a lawful opportunity to present this question to your attorneys, the Court, Congress, and the American people.
Rehear—so that the original constitutional injury and its primary beneficiaries are finally heard.
Enforce—so that their citizenship, rights, protection, and promised restoration are made real.
Respectfully submitted,
Ted Hayes
Mr. Citizen Patriot
Founder, Justiceville
The Society of USA Federal Citizens
Enclosure:
REHEAR AND ENFORCE: Constitutional Memorandum to the President of the United States
CC:
The Honorable Pam Bondi, Attorney General of the United States
The Solicitor General of the United States
Counsel to the President
General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff