An UNMUTED Debate: Mamdani for President?

​DOORS OPEN AT 6:30, SHOW STARTS AT 7

​Twenty-five million Americans. That's roughly how many naturalized citizens live in the United States: people who studied for the test, took the oath, and can do almost anything a native-born citizen can. They can command armies, sit on the Supreme Court, run the CIA. But there's one job the Constitution says they can never hold, no matter how long they've been American or how much the country has trusted them: the presidency.

​The clause dates to 1787, when the fear was a European aristocrat scheming his way onto a brand-new throne. Two and a half centuries later the country is built largely by immigrants, and still that one door stays locked.

​So: should naturalized citizens be allowed to run for president?

​Arguing for eligibility, Bruce Peabody is a professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, who has spent his career on the Constitution's harder questions: the clauses everyone cites and few actually read.

​Arguing against, Sateesh Nori, a lawyer, law professor, and author...who was also born in India. A naturalized citizen himself, making the case that the door should stay shut, arguing, in effect, against his own eligibility.

​Moderator to be announced. MC is Ed Manzi.

​UNMUTED is the place where talking points go to die. Talk politics. Keep your friends. Make new ones.