Kamala Harris is a natural-born U.S. citizen 

Sen. Kamala Harris is an American citizen because she was born in Oakland, California, in 1964.

So says her birth certificate and the weight of American jurisprudence, including the common law concept of jus soli, known as birthright citizenship, and the 14th Amendment, which says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

These details only bear repeating because this week Harris will accept the Democratic Party’s nomination as vice president, and some political hatchet carriers have prepared specious arguments that she is disqualified because the Constitution requires presidents and vice presidents be “natural born” citizens.

The legal framework for interpreting the Constitution’s clause goes back to 1898 and the Supreme Court’s decision in the United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which notes that the document doesn’t define “citizen” and “natural-born citizen” beyond the wording of the 14th Amendment. The decision in the case said the 14th Amendment “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory” with limited exceptions.

Yet the lack of colonial-era clarity of “natural born” has led to a long tradition of presidents or hopefuls being questioned about their eligibility due to birth on military bases, or to a parent who wasn’t a citizen. The list includes Chester A. Arthur, George Romney, Barry Goldwater, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Ted Cruz.

While political opponents may have grumbled about the natural-born question, no legitimate legal challenge barred their runs. In fact, in 2008 the U.S. Senate passed a nonbinding resolution — co-sponsored by Obama — stating that McCain, born in the Panama Canal Zone to American parents, was a natural born citizen. And some Republicans have gone even further, pushing for an amendment to get rid of the natural-born language and even attempting to get Austria-born Arnold Schwarzenegger, then the GOP governor of California, a shot at the White House.

Enter Harris. Her case is as cut and dry as that long list of presidents and candidates: she was born in California to parents from India and Jamaica who met as graduate students at Berkeley and were legal residents.

But President Donald Trump has taken a different tack, telling reporters last week that he “heard” that she “doesn’t meet the requirements,” apparently referring to a Newsweek op-ed whose editors appended a note saying the piece “was intended to explore a minority legal argument about the definition of who is a ‘natural-born citizen.’” Trump later tried to shrug off the issue as something he wouldn’t be “pursuing” but he didn’t full-throatedly put it to rest.

That’s unacceptable, particularly since Trump pushed similarly baseless birther claims about Obama for years to gain political attention before finally admitting in 2016 that his predecessor was born in the United States. This ugly slander playing on racism and anti-immigrant bigotry — which Trump has often used — should have no place in the 2020 campaign.

— The editorial board