Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kamala Harris citizenship conspiracy theories


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Tone 15:26, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Kamala Harris citizenship conspiracy theories

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Propose redirecting to Natural-born-citizen clause. You should really see the talk page of the article for context, but I'll try to sum up as best I can: this is a WP:FRINGE legal theory (/ conspiracy theory) best dealt with in the context of the constitutional clause involved. A standalone article shows WP:RECENTISM and WP:UNDUE coverage of the fringe theory.

Others on the talk page have favored such an approach. We floated John C. Eastman or Kamala Harris as possibilities, but I was convinced that Natural-born-citizen clause is the best choice, since that article also lists people in similar situations.

Finally, I do not see any need to merge anything from this article. Coverage at my proposed section is proportional and adequately searched. I'm only not proposing outright deletion since the title will remain a helpful search term for readers. BDD (talk) 15:13, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. BDD (talk) 15:13, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. BDD (talk) 15:13, 27 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete or merge There is no ongoing coverage. Right-wing lawyers have long argued that the Citizenship Clause of the U.S. constitution does not apply some or all children of aliens in the U.S. The theory predates Harris and in fact was the official U.S. government position for the first thirty years after the clause was enacted. There is no need to duplicate coverage of this theory in an article about Harris. TFD (talk) 17:06, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Obviously meets WP:GNG. KidAd   talk  18:07, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete or merge For John C. Eastman, this may be his greatest claim to fame. It certainly bears mentioning in the article on Donald Trump's racial views. However, I don't think it has much of a place merging into Kamala's page, personally; it's not factual, and it does not reflect her, unless we wish to simply note further how much of a natural born citizen she is. "Birtherism" about Barack Obama was a massive and entirely unsubstantiated phenomenon, but it must have a page because of how major it was. Even among more fringe Republicans and Trump supporters, I don't believe these Harris theories have any hold. I support merging it into John C. Eastman's page, or maybe into Kamala's, but not keeping the page. PickleG13 (talk) 18:30, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * How would this be "racial views". Wouldn't that be more like Trump's legal view / citizenship views / constitutional views ? The issue is whether Trump thinks a fetus inherently owed SANGUINIS regardless of where they are born, still being owed supplemental SOLI by the US. That is purely an issue of nationality, not race, and would also apply to a "white" child with jus-soli citizenship rights from England or Norway or Russia who is born in the US. 64.228.90.251 (talk) 22:16, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. This particular bit of fringe nuttery has not achieved significant coverage among sources, so no enduring notability. May be adequately dealt with in the appropriate article (John C. Eastman, Racial views of Donald Trump). Neutralitytalk 18:33, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete - this information is sufficiently presented at John C. Eastman and Natural-born-citizen clause. The subject is a fringe legal theory does not merit its own page. Reliable sources stopped covering this less than a week after Eastman published his opinion. --WMSR (talk) 19:27, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect as proposed - the target section already covers this in as much detail as Wikipedia needs to, and with appropriate context to related instances of the same conspiracy theory. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:29, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete Not much more to say than "people are racist and wrong" Reywas92Talk 19:37, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect as proposed This is not a genuine controversy, just the fringe views of a publicity-seeking hack in Newsweek. Does not deserve a standalone article.,P-K3 (talk) 20:43, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete I don't know who would actually search this up on own. Makes way more sense to have a subsection in her article; maybe add a sentence on her article saying someone said it, but its wrong? ping me when responding, gràcies! TheKaloo talk 23:17, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete, with no redirect as this is not a likely search term. The basis of the article is Eastman's debunked op-ed in Newsweek that received almost no significant support, even by consevative legal scholars. No serious legal pursuit of the claims have been made in the courts. As such, giving the idea this amount of attention is undue weight to a fringe viewpoint. As to notability, there were several sources devoted to debunking, but the coverage was so brief that WP:NOTNEWS applies here. Sjakkalle (Check!)  07:30, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment on "not a valid search term": since this page was created on 14 August, it has had an average of 1,000 page views per day, with a peak over 4,000 and gradually trailing off. The threshold we commonly use in redirects for discussion for determining if a title is useful as a search term is one or two daily page views. This title is clearly useful as a search term; arguments to the contrary are wrong by three orders of magnitude, and I'll also remind everyone that notability is not temporary. The only really valid discussion here is whether this should be a standalone article, or to which article this title should redirect. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 12:53, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I largely agree, which is why I favor redirecting (though I would not be opposed to deletion as a second choice), but page views for an active article and page views for a redirect is very much apples-to-oranges. I expect those numbers to plummet regardless of this discussion's outcome, though probably not as low as 1-2 per day. --BDD (talk) 14:34, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect as proposed seems like a fair compromise. This article has been nothing but trouble since its inception.--Woko Sapien (talk) 18:06, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete Everything and anyone can have tons of conspiracis pushed on them these days, I see nothing here that's not run of the mill. ★Trekker (talk) 18:24, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep it is undergoing a rename discussion as the issue of whether or not she is a "natural born citizen" is an object of discussion (media posed it to president, president commented, media reacted to president's comment) regardless or whether or not we choose to focus on the media's calling it a "conspiracy theory" to discuss whether or not one would be a jus soli 'natural born citizen' of the United States if you are born with jus sanguinis citizenship of Jamaica via your father. A much bigger deal is clearly being made of this than that silly thing with Ted Cruz, she's a VP candidate so it deserves it's own article just like Obama's does. It just really needs a rename because there aren't any actual notable "conspiracy theories" like with that "he wasn't even born in Hawaii, they faked the birth cert" silliness done with Obama. There is no notable "faked birth cert, she wasn't born in California" stuff with Kamala (despite what media misusing 'conspiracy' leads people to assume) but rather what seems to be whether "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in Fourteenth Amendment excludes who already inheriting jus sanguinis citizenship from a parent (you touch your parents' DNA prior to touching the soil) or if being subject to another nation's jurisdiction first would prevent it from applying. The Wong Kim Ark case seems to keep coming up. I don't fully understand the "but Kamala's parents weren't permanent residents when she was born" thing because I don't think WKA's parents were permanent residents either, weren't they just here on whatever the equivalent of a work visa was in 1898? Also nobody seems to be bringing up the precedent for that in circuit court with Look Tin Eli in 1884 or "Ex parte Chin King and Ex parte Chan San Hee" in 1888. Of course the omission of 1873's Slaughterhouse Cases supreme court case is even more glaring. 64.228.90.251 (talk) 20:10, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * comment I don't agree with Maile's trying to axe a disambig page, as there are certainly non-Obama uses of the term even if his is still the most prominent topic. Certainly not as a means of presupposing the deletion of this Kamala Harris birtherism article. The only reason not to have birtherism (disambiguation) is if birtherism itself expands from a redirect into that disambig, instead of being an Obama conspiracy redirect. Our and the media's lumping the Kamala objections in with Obama's ("conspiracy") seems racist because there hasn't been any "Kamala wasn't born in California" whispers like there were "Barack wasn't born in Hawaii" ones. That's why the Obama memes deserve to be called CTs while the Harris memes do not. There are entirely different forms of "birther" arguments for the two: BO was "was he born here?" whereas KH is "does 14th amendment apply to those who are already inherently subjects of Jamaica?" I would say the reason the Kamala objection needs an article while McCain's objection does not is because it's already gotten far more exposure than McCain's dilemma ever did throughout his entire campaign. 64.228.90.251 (talk) 22:57, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The article is, in fact, not undergoing a rename discussion. I waited for the RM to close before nominating. --BDD (talk) 15:11, 31 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment: this argument seems misconceived. This is no a "conspiracy theory", an example of "fringe nuttery" or "racism". It is just a conservative legal argument.--Jack Upland (talk) 02:36, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete or Redirect to Natural-born-citizen clause. We don't need a stand-alone article for each piece of mud thrown in an election. Related, I've put Birtherism (disambiguation) up for AFD. We don't need articles and disambiguation pages for every word or phrase that pops up in an election year. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid. — Maile (talk) 23:09, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The whole issue is the politics of distraction, which seems to be the norm in every election now. The same issue came up with John McCain 2008 presidential campaign, and he was national hero.  In his case, the mention of it did not merit its own article, but is one lone section in the article about his Presidential campaign. — Maile  (talk) 13:48, 30 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Redirect to Natural-born-citizen clause, where the topic of the theory/phenomenon of similar is discussed. User:Djflem (talk) 16:47, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete Already covered at Natural-born-citizen clause. --Enos733 (talk) 17:40, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete: The facts stated in this article are covered under Natural-born-citizen clause and every thing else is plain codswallop. A redirect can easily be removed and people's votes in an election should be based on facts and worthiness of the candidates, not conspiracy theories. TheRedDomitor (talk) 06:30, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete as uneducational. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:57, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete, as just a footnote. A recurring footnote in many US politicians running for president or VP.--Astral Leap (talk) 07:39, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete and redirect as suggested by the mover. PrimaPrime (talk) 21:24, 2 September 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.