Citizenship Shouldn't Need A Presidential Renewal Notice

The revealing part of Barack Obama's response to the Ilhan Omar investigation is the warning about the next president. It leaves the current administration with a surprisingly awkward question: would you like the powers you're defending to come with someone else's signature?

NBC News reports that Obama condemned the federal search of Omar's home and warned that presidents of either party could reuse such tactics. He disputed the citizenship theory described in the investigation. The Justice Department has not publicly presented the evidence behind its probe; Obama's condemnation is an argument, not a court's finding.

Still, his warning usefully moves the discussion beyond whether a politician is likable. Citizenship cannot sensibly become a renewable expression of presidential satisfaction. The oath would need an extra paragraph explaining which administration currently handles customer retention.

Omar is a fierce Trump critic. Trump denies involvement in the investigation and has publicly called for sending her to Somalia. Those statements do not establish who ordered the search. They do make it difficult to mistake presidential hostility for a neutral assessment of somebody's right to remain an American.

The next-president test is modest. Imagine the authority changing hands. If the reassuring explanation suddenly requires the officeholder to be your president, the reassurance has disclosed its most important exclusion.