A person born in Puerto Rico can run for president of the United States.

This should not be a recurring national puzzle. It should be basic civics.

The United States Constitution sets only three requirements: the president must be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years old, and a resident within the United States for 14 years. Puerto Rico does not fall outside that framework. It falls within it.

The decisive fact is simple: people born in Puerto Rico are US citizens at birth under federal law. Not later. Not by naturalization. At birth. Once that is clear, most of the fake mystery disappears.

Yes, the Insular Cases cast a long shadow. They ruled the ugly doctrine that territories could belong to the United States without being treated as fully part of it for every constitutional purpose. That doctrine was rotten when it was made and looks worse with age. But it did not make Puerto Rico foreign, nor did it erase the legal reality that Congress granted US citizenship at birth to people born there.

Puerto Rico should not be lazily folded into one generic “territories problem.” Not all territories stand in the same legal position.........

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