H.R. 8387: American Fragility
October 17, 1933, Albert Einstein fled Nazi Germany to the United States, and in 1940, he became an American citizen. The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover compiled a 1,400-page file on Einstein and considered him a security risk because of his socialist views. McCarthy-era figures sought to surveil and marginalize him. Under H.R. 8387, the federal government would go beyond what Joe McCarthy tried to do to Einstein: this bill would revoke Einstein's American citizenship and deport him back to Germany.
A Country Too Afraid of Its Own Ideas
The First Amendment was not written to protect popular speech. Popular speech does not need protection. It was written because the founders understood that a government empowered to decide which ideas are acceptable is a government empowered to decide which people are acceptable. The “Measuring Adverse Market Disruption And National Impact Act” - or MAMDANI - Act is not an economic or security bill. It is an admission, broadcast to the entire world, that some Members of the United States Congress are too frightened to defend their ideas in the open marketplace of thought.
Chip Roy does not believe he can win on the merits. The MAMDANI Act is the legislative equivalent of throwing a tantrum and taking your ball home because you are losing. It says, plainly, that the ideology driving this bill is too weak to compete in the arena of ideas that America has always claimed to champion. Its passage would signal to every democracy, every ally, and every adversary watching that the United States has abandoned its foundational confidence in free expression and replaced it with the same fear-driven suppression of thought that defines the authoritarian governments America has spent a century opposing.
For Palestinian Human Rights
The Trump administration has already established the standard that the MAMDANI Act seeks to codify into law. Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi are the two most prominent Green Card holders facing potential deportation for speaking up in defense of Palestinian human rights. Their cases demonstrate the danger that H.R. 8387 poses to naturalized American citizens, because the justification the Trump administration has used against them is the same justification this bill would weaponize against citizens: that advocacy for Palestinian human rights is equivalent to support for terrorism. This administration has accused protesters of antisemitism and of supporting terrorist organizations, associating criticism of U.S. policy of unconditional support for Israel with supporting Hamas. H.R. 8387 extends the power of the executive to deport people who have already taken the oath of American citizenship.
Under the MAMDANI Act, a naturalized American citizen who attended a protest, shared a social media post, or published an article advocating for Palestinian human rights could be designated for denaturalization. An immigration judge would make that determination, and that determination would be final. No federal court could review it. No appeal to the broader judiciary would be available. H.R. 8387 establishes these decisions as nonreviewable.
The Sunset of the American Dream
H.R. 8387 is repugnant to American values. The colonies in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maryland were established by communities fleeing religious persecution, and our founders wrote the First Amendment directly in response to that history, enshrining the principle that no government, including their own, would ever again be permitted to dictate thought, faith, or political belief to the people under its authority.
H.R. 8387 takes the approach of the totalitarian. It seeks to impose a set of political ideologies on people coming here to achieve their American Dream. If they follow every law within the United States for 40 years but attend a Democratic Socialists of America meeting, a Mosque accused of advocating for Sharia law, or share a post advocating for Palestinian human rights, they risk losing their citizenship and being deported to a place that may place their lives in danger.
The Bill’s naming after New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is particularly telling. The reason Mamdani won his race was not some conspiratorial Red-Green Alliance. It was that he told New Yorkers he actually cared about their lived experiences and offered them solutions to their problems.
A grim reality is that the American people are hurting economically, and some American political leaders choose to engage in divisive McCarthy era scare tactics rather than offering solutions to the problems that millions of Americans face every day. H.R. 8387 does not address a single one of those problems. It simply tells the world that American values have become too fragile to stand on their own, and that the only answer its authors have left is to silence the competition.
