Trump’s history of attacks on Americans of African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American ancestry—impugning their loyalty, investigating their births, threatening their citizenship, proposing to punish them collectively—isn’t about respecting immigration laws. It isn’t even about immigration. It’s about dividing natural-born Americans by race, ethnicity, and religion. His denunciation of members of Congress based on where their families “originally came from” signals an acceleration of that assault. It might galvanize Trump’s white supporters. On the other hand, it might alarm and galvanize many of us, white or nonwhite, whose parents or grandparents came from other countries. We might decide that a racist president is a threat to us all.
William Saletan in SLATE.