Rep. Nancy Mace is trying to write a new loyalty test into the Constitution, and it has Washington buzzing. The South Carolina Republican filed a joint resolution this week that would amend the Constitution to require that Members of Congress, federal judges and other Senate-confirmed officials be "natural-born" citizens. She is pitching it as a patriotic safeguard, arguing that anyone wielding federal power should have been an American from birth. If it ever passed, the change would touch dozens of sitting lawmakers and trigger a long list of legal and political fights.
In a May 20 press release, Mace declared, "If you hold power in the American government, you should be a natural born American citizen," and singled out Reps. Ilhan Omar, Pramila Jayapal and Shri Thanedar as examples, according to Rep. Nancy Mace's office. The text of the joint resolution lays out a phased timetable. Representatives and senators would be covered starting with the next term, while federal judges and other appointed officers would be brought under the rule several months later, language that also appears in the release. Mace's office is framing the idea as simply extending the natural-born requirement that already applies to the presidency to other top federal posts.
Who Would Be Affected?
The Congressional Research Service counts 26 representatives and six senators, 32 members in all, who were born outside the United States, which shows just how many officials could be swept up if a broad natural-born rule ever took hold, according to the Congressional Research Service. High-profile examples that routinely surface in this debate include Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar and Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal. Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, who was born in Bogotá and became a U.S. citizen at 18, is another name critics point to when they talk about how far the amendment could reach, according to AP News. That lineup cuts across party lines even if Mace's push appears trained on a small group of Democrats.
Legal And Political Hurdles
Changing who is eligible to hold federal office is not something Congress can do by simple vote. It would require a full Article V constitutional amendment: approval by two-thirds of both the House and Senate, then ratification by three-quarters of the states, a high bar that the National Archives details in its overview of the process. Legal scholars say those mechanics make sweeping changes like this far-fetched. "Most of these proposed constitutional amendments are essentially dead on arrival," George Mason law professor Ilya Somin told reporters, as Just The News reported.
Supporters argue the amendment would close a perceived loophole in federal eligibility rules. Critics counter that the whole point of naturalization is to put immigrants on equal footing with citizens by birth, and that this proposal would effectively undo that promise. "It would essentially create two tiers of citizenship," Art Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies told KTRH, according to WOAI.
Reaction In Congress
Democrats moved quickly to blast the resolution. "This narrow-minded, xenophobic legislation has no place in Congress," Rep. Pramila Jayapal said in a statement from her office, according to Jayapal's office. Other detractors seized on what they saw as built-in hypocrisy. Commentators noted that the measure would rope in Republican lawmakers born abroad as well, and names like Sen. Bernie Moreno and Sen. Ted Cruz quickly surfaced in coverage of the proposal, as The Daily Beast reported.
For now, though, Mace's amendment looks more like a political marker than a live constitutional threat. The resolution was introduced without any cosponsors and sent to the House Judiciary Committee, where proposals to amend the Constitution often quietly stall, Just The News noted. Experts say the amendment route is intentionally difficult. Even so, the move underscores how fiercely questions of immigration, identity and loyalty are likely to keep shaping the 2026 political calendar.
