The Reflecting Pool fiasco is newsworthy because it reeks of corruption. A no-bid contract was issued, a bunch of money was spent, a stunningly incompetent job was done. The showcase of Trump’s incompetence is newsworthy, but the obvious suspicions here are a much bigger deal.
“Trump is America’s first urbanist president” - what in the unholy name of Cthulhu is this nonsense? Trump is no urbanist. He hates cities, because that’s where the pointy-headed librul elitist woke anti-American Dumocrats live, with their college degrees and organic soy milk lattes. Granted, Trump hates nature too, and has probably never gone hiking or camping in his life. Trump’s preferred habitat is Mar-a-Lago, a tacky, gold leaf-spackled hotel on a golf course.
I'd argue that Trump's obsession with aesthetics is one of our few bulwarks against him doing irreparable damage where it counts. If a Rushmore-level vanity project diverts his administration's focus from corrupting our election systems, I'm swallowing the bitter pill 10 times out of 10.
Wow. Downplaying the debacle that is the East Wing as “illegal” is so much of an understatement that the issue is treated as an aside in this piece. Rather than asking for more money for NPS, Trump has cut funding and is merely underfunding and cutting heads at all other national parks, to fund ego trips in DC. The underfunding elsewhere is probably part of long term plans to introduce more private investment in national parks. Not to mention his pigeonholing of the housing bill. If this is what it takes to make an “urban president,” no thanks.
The other thing about “Trump Kennedy Center” is that it fits this broader pattern of a) conservative figures doing something whose express purpose is to attract attention; b) flubbing it royally; c) getting called out for it by virtue of the outsize window of attention; and d) conservative fanboys being like “why are you paying attention to this thing that doesn’t matter?”
I think it is a big, important story to cover when the President says “Watch me; I am going to do X; I am prioritizing it over other things,” and then - despite knowing everyone is watching - royally bungles thing X. Not for incidental reasons, mind you, but because of the pervasive weaknesses of his leadership style (in this case, rank cronyism).
Let’s get some more fountains in that big circle! Like the kind that spray up and kids can run through. Worked great at the Warf. Then just let some ice cream trucks and food trucks park near by and it would be great for the city.
This is the closest I've ever come to admitting that constitutional jurisprudence is calvinball. I'm utterly disgusted by the dissenters, who cherry-picked a handful of words from one of the senators during the original debate and shamelessly constructed an entire justification around it, despite it being completely inconsistent with the rest.
I'm very unhappy with Gorsuch's vote overall, but I was somewhat amused in reading his individual dissent because it sounds like Gorsuch would probably still allow birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants and deny it only in "birth tourist" situations or where the mother was only accidentally on US soil at the time of the birth.
Well, I'm not endorsing that position. I just find it amusing because the people sh!tting their pants over birthright citizenship are also fanatically anti-illegal immigration and I'm pretty sure that the number of children of illegal immigrants getting birthright citizenship in any given year is greater than the number of children of "birth tourists" by literally an order of magnitude or more, maybe even two orders of magnitude.
I mean, how do you codify " who is really here to try to stay and who happened to have a baby while visiting" in a way that preserves the important parts of birthright citizenship. "Was born on American soil to non -diplomats" is pretty clear.
Not endorsing this, but it seems pretty easy to come up with something Gorsuch would probably accept? Exclude from citizenship any births from mothers (1) whose lawful presence at the time of birth is based on any non-permanent residency form of visa or (2) who have unlawfully resided in the US for less than one year at the time of birth.
The latter is marginally overinclusive, but I doubt Gorsuch would find it that troubling. It would also be in spirit a variant on the Medieval "City air makes men free" doctrine, where a serf who fled to a free city and lived there for a year and a day was deemed to automatically be released from serfdom. (And, in fact, I've long suspected that many Americans already believe a variant of this doctrine applies. I've encountered multiple people IRL who are genuinely shocked to learn that an illegal immigrant doesn't somehow automatically turn into a legal resident just by mere passage of time.)
I don't like the arbitrariness of a length - I preferred it as "intends to stay vs doesn't", so I had in mind your (1) but wasn't sure that was sufficient.
Given that we're talking about Gorsuch just kind of making stuff up, maybe he'd think that was fine. He might decide that citizenship requires parents to wear Cat in the Hat hats in order for their kids to be citizens -- after all, anything goes when you're essentially re-writing the Constitution at your whim.
If we're grounding this in history or precedent, it's kind of problematic. The Wong Kim Ark case guaranteed citizenship for a child born to immigrants who were explicitly blocked from becoming citizens. It didn't expressly consider temporary immigrants on a B-2, but it did say that private foreigners who enter another country for "business or caprice" owe "temporary and local allegiance" and are "amenable to the jurisdiction" of that country.
The legislative history of the 14th amendment isn't any better for a Gorsuch "temporary citizenship exception" rule. The Senate had a lively debate about mass immigration and whether Chinese immigrants would "pour in" to California, and talked about how they routinely came and went and didn't usually bring women here. It also talked about Roma/Gypsies who had "no homes," "live nowhere," and "settle as trespassers wherever they go." And the Senators agreed that their children would get citizenship too, before everyone went ahead and ratified the thing. Maybe Gorsuch could claim that since they didn't have temporary visa cards back then, everything is totally different. Or he could just go with the hats.
"Again and again, the dissents cast the common law as "feudal," "medieval" — a remnant of "the darkness of the middle ages." That was not the view of the Reconstruction Congress. Where the dissents see feudalism, the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment saw emancipation."
It's a brief 20-odd page judgement, and to this lay person at least it is a thrilling read. John G. Roberts at his best.
5 1/2 of them did. Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito dissented. Kavanaugh concurs in part and dissents in part. He says that the EO does not violate the 14th Amendment but does violate the federal statute that codified the 14th Amendment. Which, okay. IANAL.
Relying on the statute is not the problem here. The problem is his subsequent argument. He ruled that the statute law does not allow exceptions, which is quite reasonable. He then left open the possibility that the Amendment could allow new statute law that does contain exceptions. However, this poses an obvious problem, given that the language is identical in both places. So you’d have to come up with some exogenous rationale for reading exactly the same wording to mean two very different things.
Alito was the only one I expected to fully dissent. I thought Thomas might do a "Concurring in the judgment" and go with a statutory argument like Kavanaugh did because Thomas has joined previous SCOTUS opinions that stated Congress has plenary power over immigration and naturalization, but he's apparently now more Fox News Superfan than man.
Gorsuch just basically concurred with Thomas. I've eliminated his in-line references because they interrupt the flow of the argument.
"At the heart of today’s dispute lie two competing views of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. On one account, the Clause incorporated the English common law rule of jus soli (literally, the “right of the soil”). That rule, developed in feudal times, had more to do with being a subject than a citizen. It was based on the notion that a “man owed personal service to the lord of the soil, the same as his master owed it to the king; and it was born with the child and only ended in the grave.” On the other account, the Clause adopted a distinctly American settler’s view of citizenship. One that promises the full “dignity and glory of American citizenship” to any child born in this country to parents who have made this Nation their permanent home, regardless of their race, religion, or national origin. To my eye, the latter understanding better accords with the Clause’s original public meaning and that leads me to join JUSTICE THOMAS’s dissent."
I uploaded Alito's dissent to NotebookLM and asked for a clear outline. Yes, Sharty, I know, you'll see me in hell. Fine. Just skip this comment, then. Anyway, here's NotebookLM's overview:
I. Core Thesis: Citizenship Requires Exclusive Allegiance
Justice Alito argues that the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause does not confer citizenship on virtually everyone born on U.S. soil, such as the children of "birth tourists" or illegal immigrants
.
Instead, he contends that the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship only to children who, at the time of their birth, owe their allegiance solely and completely to the United States
.
II. Rejection of the British "Feudal" Rule
Alito fundamentally disagrees with the majority's premise that the Fourteenth Amendment codified the British common law rule of birthright subjecthood
.
He explains that the British rule was rooted in a feudal, monarchical system where a king's authority was divinely ordained, and subjects owed perpetual, non-consensual servitude to the crown simply by being born on its soil
.
The American Founders emphatically rejected this foundation in the Declaration of Independence, establishing a government based on the consent of the governed
.
Furthermore, Alito notes that the British rule was ill-suited for America because it failed to account for the massive enslaved population and the unique, sovereign status of Native American tribes
.
III. Textual Evidence for "Complete Jurisdiction"
Contrasting Constitutional Language: Alito points out that the Fourteenth Amendment uses disparate language in two of its clauses: the Citizenship Clause applies to those "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," while the Equal Protection Clause applies to anyone "within its jurisdiction"
. He argues this difference proves Congress meant something more restrictive for citizenship than mere territorial presence
.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866: Alito argues that the Fourteenth Amendment must be read in tandem with the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which granted citizenship only to those "not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed"
. He argues the Fourteenth Amendment consolidated these two exceptions—foreign diplomats and tribal Indians—into the single phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," meaning exclusive jurisdiction without allegiance to any foreign power
.
Naturalization Requirements: The Citizenship Clause also applies to naturalized citizens, who are required by law to absolutely and entirely renounce all allegiance to any foreign power
. Alito argues this oath would be unnecessary if the Constitution required anything less than exclusive jurisdiction
.
IV. Reinterpretation of Wong Kim Ark
Alito argues the majority wrongly relies on broad dicta from the 1898 Supreme Court decision United States v. Wong Kim Ark
.
He emphasizes that the actual holding of Wong Kim Ark was strictly limited to children whose parents had established a "permanent domicil and residence" in the United States
.
Because the Chinese Exclusion Act explicitly forbade Chinese immigrants from naturalizing, establishing a permanent domicile was the only possible way for them to show they desired to make the U.S. their permanent home and were no longer subject to a foreign power
.
V. Modern Consequences and Policy Implications
Foreign Obligations: Applying his textual interpretation, Alito notes that many illegal immigrants come from countries (like Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador) that automatically confer nationality on children born abroad
. Because these children acquire foreign citizenship and duties like military service at birth, they are "subject to a foreign power" and thus excluded from U.S. birthright citizenship
.
Grotesque Results & Security Risks: Alito argues the majority's interpretation creates "grotesque results," allowing birth tourists to instantly secure citizenship for their children while lawful immigrants wait years
. He also warns of national security risks, posing a hypothetical where the child of a brief visitor from a strategic adversary is granted citizenship, allowing them to travel freely on a U.S. passport despite having no genuine ties or loyalty to the country
NRSC v FEC overturned. 6-3, usual split. Sarah Isgur says "Again, this doesn't change donor limits to candidates or parties but it does mean that parties will have a lot more carrots and sticks to determine their own candidates---a blow to DSA and tea party movements, for example. Also likely to undermine the effectiveness superPACs."
I saw Nate Silver recently went on a tear scolding us gawkers of Poolgate to shut up and talk about other things. The thing is, in addition to being deeply funny I totally agree with Matt that it's a great encapsulation of Trumpism (the corrupt no bid contract, the totally failure of it to work, the constant bragging and boasting etc) and also the blind alley nature of known nothing populism as a governing strategy as well. Turns out maybe "The Elites" and "The Pool Establishment" actually do have useful knowledge, who'd a thunk it.
It's like how Nixon demanding a head count of all the Jews working at the BLS was hardly his worst crime, but it does kind of sum up Nixon's paranoia, bigotry, and authoritarian streak nicely. Even if yes him sabotaging the Paris Peace Talks in 1968 from behind the scenes was a million times worse. Also Tricky Dick demanding Halderman start "Jew counts" is kind of darkly funny, like the whole pool saga.
His models are still excellent and he sometimes has interesting ideas (see him on Blueskyism in progressive projects etc) BUT yes he's become that thing he hated when he got into the biz back in the Aughts: the supremely overconfident pundit
The problem here is that punditry is kind-of what keeps the lights on wrt Substack, but while Nate Silver doing analysis is very worthwhile, Nate Silver opining on current events is one of a million smart people spinning out words to justify their starting positions/biases.
Every (public) data scientist ends up becoming the thing they hate. I think it's just an inevitable trajectory of having an audience and cognitive decline.
SCOTUS said "The court holds that schools can determine eligibility for women's and girls' sports teams based on biological sex." Three liberal justices concurred in part and dissented in part.
The Democrats' response to this decision will be an early indicator of the tenor of the 2028 primary debate.
If we hear overwhelming howls from prominent Democrats that this case proves we need to expand the Court then that will show the party has learned nothing from the 2016, 2020 and 2024 races.
I'm imagining one of those horrible debate questions: "Raise your hand if you oppose the Court's decision on transathletes."
If we do see that type of question posed, my early support will go to the candidate on the stage who crosses his/her arms and says, "Silly hand raising exercises is not what the job of President of the United States is about."
I really appreciate how this post, unlike the typical SB fare, was both fair _and_ balanced.
Meanwhile I have seen several articles noting that the NPS budget has been gutted to fund Trump’s DC vanity act.
The Reflecting Pool fiasco is newsworthy because it reeks of corruption. A no-bid contract was issued, a bunch of money was spent, a stunningly incompetent job was done. The showcase of Trump’s incompetence is newsworthy, but the obvious suspicions here are a much bigger deal.
It seems like the circle would have been a good place for the World War II memorial.
A statue of a GI punching a Nazi in the face would be awesome.
“Trump is America’s first urbanist president” - what in the unholy name of Cthulhu is this nonsense? Trump is no urbanist. He hates cities, because that’s where the pointy-headed librul elitist woke anti-American Dumocrats live, with their college degrees and organic soy milk lattes. Granted, Trump hates nature too, and has probably never gone hiking or camping in his life. Trump’s preferred habitat is Mar-a-Lago, a tacky, gold leaf-spackled hotel on a golf course.
How's Kate doing, Matt?
I'd argue that Trump's obsession with aesthetics is one of our few bulwarks against him doing irreparable damage where it counts. If a Rushmore-level vanity project diverts his administration's focus from corrupting our election systems, I'm swallowing the bitter pill 10 times out of 10.
I believe that one of the unique values of your columns, generally, is that you don't waste our time.
....this was the merely wasteful.
Wow. Downplaying the debacle that is the East Wing as “illegal” is so much of an understatement that the issue is treated as an aside in this piece. Rather than asking for more money for NPS, Trump has cut funding and is merely underfunding and cutting heads at all other national parks, to fund ego trips in DC. The underfunding elsewhere is probably part of long term plans to introduce more private investment in national parks. Not to mention his pigeonholing of the housing bill. If this is what it takes to make an “urban president,” no thanks.
SCOTUS grants Cert on the Illinois and Connecticut Assault Weapon Bans LFG!
yay, more unregulated killing
what a society we have
The other thing about “Trump Kennedy Center” is that it fits this broader pattern of a) conservative figures doing something whose express purpose is to attract attention; b) flubbing it royally; c) getting called out for it by virtue of the outsize window of attention; and d) conservative fanboys being like “why are you paying attention to this thing that doesn’t matter?”
“outsize window of attention”
The NY Times has had 8 pieces in the past week about the Reflecting Pool.
Big, important story.
Many of them front page above the fold!
I think it is a big, important story to cover when the President says “Watch me; I am going to do X; I am prioritizing it over other things,” and then - despite knowing everyone is watching - royally bungles thing X. Not for incidental reasons, mind you, but because of the pervasive weaknesses of his leadership style (in this case, rank cronyism).
Trump says, “Watch me” all the time. He’s not that important.
Let’s get some more fountains in that big circle! Like the kind that spray up and kids can run through. Worked great at the Warf. Then just let some ice cream trucks and food trucks park near by and it would be great for the city.
Court strikes down executive order on birthright citizenship.
This is the closest I've ever come to admitting that constitutional jurisprudence is calvinball. I'm utterly disgusted by the dissenters, who cherry-picked a handful of words from one of the senators during the original debate and shamelessly constructed an entire justification around it, despite it being completely inconsistent with the rest.
I'm very unhappy with Gorsuch's vote overall, but I was somewhat amused in reading his individual dissent because it sounds like Gorsuch would probably still allow birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants and deny it only in "birth tourist" situations or where the mother was only accidentally on US soil at the time of the birth.
Or maybe he'd allow it to people with a sufficient number of non-accented letters in their last names. Who can really say?
He's Just Asking Questions!
That might be an ok status quo (although I don't know how you'd codify that cleanly). There may also be bad edge cases I'm not considering.
Well, I'm not endorsing that position. I just find it amusing because the people sh!tting their pants over birthright citizenship are also fanatically anti-illegal immigration and I'm pretty sure that the number of children of illegal immigrants getting birthright citizenship in any given year is greater than the number of children of "birth tourists" by literally an order of magnitude or more, maybe even two orders of magnitude.
I agree, I was just musing about how I would feel if that's the deal that we had to take. (Vs the traditional interpretation we've had for decades)
You'd codify it by amending the Constitution.
I mean, how do you codify " who is really here to try to stay and who happened to have a baby while visiting" in a way that preserves the important parts of birthright citizenship. "Was born on American soil to non -diplomats" is pretty clear.
Not endorsing this, but it seems pretty easy to come up with something Gorsuch would probably accept? Exclude from citizenship any births from mothers (1) whose lawful presence at the time of birth is based on any non-permanent residency form of visa or (2) who have unlawfully resided in the US for less than one year at the time of birth.
The latter is marginally overinclusive, but I doubt Gorsuch would find it that troubling. It would also be in spirit a variant on the Medieval "City air makes men free" doctrine, where a serf who fled to a free city and lived there for a year and a day was deemed to automatically be released from serfdom. (And, in fact, I've long suspected that many Americans already believe a variant of this doctrine applies. I've encountered multiple people IRL who are genuinely shocked to learn that an illegal immigrant doesn't somehow automatically turn into a legal resident just by mere passage of time.)
I don't like the arbitrariness of a length - I preferred it as "intends to stay vs doesn't", so I had in mind your (1) but wasn't sure that was sufficient.
Given that we're talking about Gorsuch just kind of making stuff up, maybe he'd think that was fine. He might decide that citizenship requires parents to wear Cat in the Hat hats in order for their kids to be citizens -- after all, anything goes when you're essentially re-writing the Constitution at your whim.
If we're grounding this in history or precedent, it's kind of problematic. The Wong Kim Ark case guaranteed citizenship for a child born to immigrants who were explicitly blocked from becoming citizens. It didn't expressly consider temporary immigrants on a B-2, but it did say that private foreigners who enter another country for "business or caprice" owe "temporary and local allegiance" and are "amenable to the jurisdiction" of that country.
The legislative history of the 14th amendment isn't any better for a Gorsuch "temporary citizenship exception" rule. The Senate had a lively debate about mass immigration and whether Chinese immigrants would "pour in" to California, and talked about how they routinely came and went and didn't usually bring women here. It also talked about Roma/Gypsies who had "no homes," "live nowhere," and "settle as trespassers wherever they go." And the Senators agreed that their children would get citizenship too, before everyone went ahead and ratified the thing. Maybe Gorsuch could claim that since they didn't have temporary visa cards back then, everything is totally different. Or he could just go with the hats.
https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark%3A/67531/metadc30867/m1/13/
I don't think you can meaningfully do that, but what I know is you certainly can't codify it in a Supreme Court decision :)
"Again and again, the dissents cast the common law as "feudal," "medieval" — a remnant of "the darkness of the middle ages." That was not the view of the Reconstruction Congress. Where the dissents see feudalism, the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment saw emancipation."
It's a brief 20-odd page judgement, and to this lay person at least it is a thrilling read. John G. Roberts at his best.
They passed a basic reading comprehension test!
5 1/2 of them did. Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito dissented. Kavanaugh concurs in part and dissents in part. He says that the EO does not violate the 14th Amendment but does violate the federal statute that codified the 14th Amendment. Which, okay. IANAL.
I, also, ANAL
I adore Kavanaugh's attempt to lay this on the statute while withholding judgement on the 14th. Here's the text of 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a):
“The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
(a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof;”
It's literally the birthright citizenship clause, copied into black-letter law. Kavanaugh is an idiot even when he's trying to be clever.
Well, It is a principle of interpretation to use statue law over the Constitution. In this case the two are identical but he played by the rule.
Relying on the statute is not the problem here. The problem is his subsequent argument. He ruled that the statute law does not allow exceptions, which is quite reasonable. He then left open the possibility that the Amendment could allow new statute law that does contain exceptions. However, this poses an obvious problem, given that the language is identical in both places. So you’d have to come up with some exogenous rationale for reading exactly the same wording to mean two very different things.
Taking a quick glance at the Opinion, Justice Brown's concurrence is a real banger.
Insane that those three dissented. I mean, am I surprised, I guess not. But insane nonetheless.
It’s to be expected that Thomas and Alito dissented. I don’t understand how anyone else did.
Alito was the only one I expected to fully dissent. I thought Thomas might do a "Concurring in the judgment" and go with a statutory argument like Kavanaugh did because Thomas has joined previous SCOTUS opinions that stated Congress has plenary power over immigration and naturalization, but he's apparently now more Fox News Superfan than man.
I guess you mean becasue the 14th is so unmistakable clear? But the pull to support Trump (the attitude he personifies) is very strong.
Reading as fast as I can, so I'm probably wrong, Alito and Thomas seem to be relying on interpretations of "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."
Seems like it would simplify life for illegal immigrants if they were not considered subject to US laws and therefore couldn’t be deported!
Gorsuch just basically concurred with Thomas. I've eliminated his in-line references because they interrupt the flow of the argument.
"At the heart of today’s dispute lie two competing views of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. On one account, the Clause incorporated the English common law rule of jus soli (literally, the “right of the soil”). That rule, developed in feudal times, had more to do with being a subject than a citizen. It was based on the notion that a “man owed personal service to the lord of the soil, the same as his master owed it to the king; and it was born with the child and only ended in the grave.” On the other account, the Clause adopted a distinctly American settler’s view of citizenship. One that promises the full “dignity and glory of American citizenship” to any child born in this country to parents who have made this Nation their permanent home, regardless of their race, religion, or national origin. To my eye, the latter understanding better accords with the Clause’s original public meaning and that leads me to join JUSTICE THOMAS’s dissent."
That certainly applies to anyone outside of a diplomatic compound.
I uploaded Alito's dissent to NotebookLM and asked for a clear outline. Yes, Sharty, I know, you'll see me in hell. Fine. Just skip this comment, then. Anyway, here's NotebookLM's overview:
______________________________________________________________
I. Core Thesis: Citizenship Requires Exclusive Allegiance
Justice Alito argues that the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause does not confer citizenship on virtually everyone born on U.S. soil, such as the children of "birth tourists" or illegal immigrants
.
Instead, he contends that the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship only to children who, at the time of their birth, owe their allegiance solely and completely to the United States
.
II. Rejection of the British "Feudal" Rule
Alito fundamentally disagrees with the majority's premise that the Fourteenth Amendment codified the British common law rule of birthright subjecthood
.
He explains that the British rule was rooted in a feudal, monarchical system where a king's authority was divinely ordained, and subjects owed perpetual, non-consensual servitude to the crown simply by being born on its soil
.
The American Founders emphatically rejected this foundation in the Declaration of Independence, establishing a government based on the consent of the governed
.
Furthermore, Alito notes that the British rule was ill-suited for America because it failed to account for the massive enslaved population and the unique, sovereign status of Native American tribes
.
III. Textual Evidence for "Complete Jurisdiction"
Contrasting Constitutional Language: Alito points out that the Fourteenth Amendment uses disparate language in two of its clauses: the Citizenship Clause applies to those "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," while the Equal Protection Clause applies to anyone "within its jurisdiction"
. He argues this difference proves Congress meant something more restrictive for citizenship than mere territorial presence
.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866: Alito argues that the Fourteenth Amendment must be read in tandem with the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which granted citizenship only to those "not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed"
. He argues the Fourteenth Amendment consolidated these two exceptions—foreign diplomats and tribal Indians—into the single phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," meaning exclusive jurisdiction without allegiance to any foreign power
.
Naturalization Requirements: The Citizenship Clause also applies to naturalized citizens, who are required by law to absolutely and entirely renounce all allegiance to any foreign power
. Alito argues this oath would be unnecessary if the Constitution required anything less than exclusive jurisdiction
.
IV. Reinterpretation of Wong Kim Ark
Alito argues the majority wrongly relies on broad dicta from the 1898 Supreme Court decision United States v. Wong Kim Ark
.
He emphasizes that the actual holding of Wong Kim Ark was strictly limited to children whose parents had established a "permanent domicil and residence" in the United States
.
Because the Chinese Exclusion Act explicitly forbade Chinese immigrants from naturalizing, establishing a permanent domicile was the only possible way for them to show they desired to make the U.S. their permanent home and were no longer subject to a foreign power
.
V. Modern Consequences and Policy Implications
Foreign Obligations: Applying his textual interpretation, Alito notes that many illegal immigrants come from countries (like Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador) that automatically confer nationality on children born abroad
. Because these children acquire foreign citizenship and duties like military service at birth, they are "subject to a foreign power" and thus excluded from U.S. birthright citizenship
.
Grotesque Results & Security Risks: Alito argues the majority's interpretation creates "grotesque results," allowing birth tourists to instantly secure citizenship for their children while lawful immigrants wait years
. He also warns of national security risks, posing a hypothetical where the child of a brief visitor from a strategic adversary is granted citizenship, allowing them to travel freely on a U.S. passport despite having no genuine ties or loyalty to the country
.
NRSC v FEC overturned. 6-3, usual split. Sarah Isgur says "Again, this doesn't change donor limits to candidates or parties but it does mean that parties will have a lot more carrots and sticks to determine their own candidates---a blow to DSA and tea party movements, for example. Also likely to undermine the effectiveness superPACs."
I am one thousand percent in favor of dealing blows to DSA and tea party movements. BRING BACK SOFT MONEY!
I saw Nate Silver recently went on a tear scolding us gawkers of Poolgate to shut up and talk about other things. The thing is, in addition to being deeply funny I totally agree with Matt that it's a great encapsulation of Trumpism (the corrupt no bid contract, the totally failure of it to work, the constant bragging and boasting etc) and also the blind alley nature of known nothing populism as a governing strategy as well. Turns out maybe "The Elites" and "The Pool Establishment" actually do have useful knowledge, who'd a thunk it.
It's like how Nixon demanding a head count of all the Jews working at the BLS was hardly his worst crime, but it does kind of sum up Nixon's paranoia, bigotry, and authoritarian streak nicely. Even if yes him sabotaging the Paris Peace Talks in 1968 from behind the scenes was a million times worse. Also Tricky Dick demanding Halderman start "Jew counts" is kind of darkly funny, like the whole pool saga.
I don't read Silver anymore but thanks for bringing up this nugget to confirm my choice.
His models are still excellent and he sometimes has interesting ideas (see him on Blueskyism in progressive projects etc) BUT yes he's become that thing he hated when he got into the biz back in the Aughts: the supremely overconfident pundit
The problem here is that punditry is kind-of what keeps the lights on wrt Substack, but while Nate Silver doing analysis is very worthwhile, Nate Silver opining on current events is one of a million smart people spinning out words to justify their starting positions/biases.
Every (public) data scientist ends up becoming the thing they hate. I think it's just an inevitable trajectory of having an audience and cognitive decline.
SCOTUS said "The court holds that schools can determine eligibility for women's and girls' sports teams based on biological sex." Three liberal justices concurred in part and dissented in part.
The Democrats' response to this decision will be an early indicator of the tenor of the 2028 primary debate.
If we hear overwhelming howls from prominent Democrats that this case proves we need to expand the Court then that will show the party has learned nothing from the 2016, 2020 and 2024 races.
I'd be really surprised if that happened, but then again I've spent the last ten years being really surprised.
I'm imagining one of those horrible debate questions: "Raise your hand if you oppose the Court's decision on transathletes."
If we do see that type of question posed, my early support will go to the candidate on the stage who crosses his/her arms and says, "Silly hand raising exercises is not what the job of President of the United States is about."
YES. Diana DeGette recently answered a lot of stupid "gotcha" questions with "Congress doesn't decide that issue, and I'm running for Congress."
This issue should never have gotten BEYOND all the respective school boards. What a boon for Democrats to de-nationalize this issue.
Oh, that's a good point. I wasn't thinking ahead, I was just following the decisions breathlessly.