Birth Tourism

President Donald Trump (R) has signed a couple of Executive Orders aimed at curbing, if not eliminating, birthright citizenship. One of those orders seeks to greatly reduce, if not eliminate, birth tourism.

The second order instructs the departments of State and Homeland Security to take steps to limit foreigners from traveling to the US specifically to have children born there, a practice generally referred to as “birth tourism.” …
Though the order doesn’t specify how officials would screen for people intending to come to the US for the express purpose of giving birth….

One way to achieve this would be to not bother screening for purpose. Simply limit visas to three weeks duration for women with two months left in their pregnancy—and to strictly enforce the requirement to leave or be deported on expiry—and to refuse visas to women in their last month until after those women have given birth.

Accesses to Classified

SecDef Pete Hegseth has revoked the security clearance of Frank Kendall, ex-President Joe Biden’s (D) Secretary of the Air Force. Kendall had been quoted in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal as saying that the Air Force One jet gifted to President Trump by the Qatari government lacks the defensive capabilities of the traditional jets that fly the president.

Kendall is all wide-eyed innocence.

“I’m mystified,” Kendall said in a text message when asked for comment. “I’ve been extremely careful to not say anything that could be classified, and as far as I know I have not said anything classified.” He added, “So far no one has told me what I’m supposed to have revealed.”

Revealing the defensive capabilities of the aircraft flying as Air Force One is perfectly jake?

This is Kendall pretending to not understand the requirements of OPSEC. Or he’s cynically standing on the legalist distinction between classified material vs OPSEC material. That’s assuming, generously, that he didn’t reveal actual classified information—and I would be amazed if information regarding the military capabilities of our President’s transport aircraft were unclassified.

It’s good that Kendall has lost his accesses. More retired or resigned officials should lose their accesses.

The problem could be mitigated greatly if all employees, government or private, automatically lost their clearances as well as any other accesses when they leave the job in which they had those credentials. This needn’t be stigmatic; it should be routine: those people no longer have any need for a security clearance, and so it’s automatically revoked.