[Rush Lindell] Today is the last day of the Supreme Court's term.
[Rush Lindell] That means Trump v.
[Rush Lindell] Barba,
[Rush Lindell] the birthright citizenship case,
[Rush Lindell] drops today.
[Rush Lindell] Done. Final.
[Rush Lindell] No more waiting.
[Reagan] Wow
[Speaker 3] And this one's been hanging over everything.
[Speaker 3] ABC News calls it one of the most anticipated rulings of the year.
[Speaker 3] Roughly 150,000 children born on U.S. soil each year are in the crosshairs.
[Rush Lindell] 150,000 per year,
[Rush Lindell] and Trump went on Truth Social.
[Rush Lindell] Before the ruling even came out and said he expected to lose,
[Rush Lindell] you know what nobody wants to say?
[Rush Lindell] That's not legal strategy,
[Rush Lindell] that's a man with a clock ticking.
[Speaker 3] And he attended oral arguments in person,
[Speaker 3] first sitting president on record to do that.
[Rush Lindell] Historic for all the wrong reasons, depending on who you ask.
[Rush Lindell] So we are going to walk through every layer of this:
[Rush Lindell] the government's legal argument,
[Rush Lindell] why it didn't land in the courtroom,
[Rush Lindell] and what the two paths to a ruling.
[Rush Lindell] actually look like?
[Speaker 3] That second path is the one cable news is going to completely miss.
[Speaker 3] There's a narrow statutory route under the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act that leaves the constitutional question open entirely.
[Speaker 3] Future fight!
[Rush Lindell] And while everyone's watching birthright,
[Rush Lindell] the DOJ is running a parallel track.
[Rush Lindell] CBS News reported the administration is targeting 250 denaturalization cases by October.
[Rush Lindell] By October (as in revoking citizenship from people who already have it).
[Speaker 3] That's an entirely different legal mechanism,
[Speaker 3] different courts,
[Speaker 3] different standards-will pull those two tracks apart.
[Rush Lindell] Two tracks,
[Rush Lindell] one ruling dropping today and a Truth Social post from the president basically calling his own shot.
[Speaker 3] So the clock's been running since about ten a.m. Eastern this morning.
[Rush Lindell] Then let's get to work.
[Rush Lindell] First segment,
[Rush Lindell] we start where the case started:
[Rush Lindell] what the government
[Speaker 4] asked the court to decide.
[Rush Lindell] government actually argued and why it didn't land.
[Rush Lindell] Before we dive in,
[Rush Lindell] a quick reminder: we love hearing from you.
[Rush Lindell] If you have questions or topics you'd like us to cover,
[Rush Lindell] head to the link in the description and submit your question.
[Rush Lindell] We read every single one.
[Rush Lindell] So here's what's going on today.
[Rush Lindell] And I mean today,
[Rush Lindell] right now,
[Rush Lindell] this morning,
[Rush Lindell] the Supreme Court is sitting on the last day of its term,
[Rush Lindell] four cases still pending.
[Rush Lindell] One of them is Trump v.
[Rush Lindell] Barbara,
[Rush Lindell] the birthright citizenship ruling.
[Rush Lindell] And if they don't drop it today,
[Rush Lindell] they adjourn for the summer.
[Rush Lindell] That's the clock we're watching.
[Speaker 3] That's the procedural reality.
[Speaker 3] ABC News confirmed the court must rule before summer recess.
[Speaker 5] Yes; today is it.
[Rush Lindell] Today is it!" And look,
[Rush Lindell] everybody's been pretending they understand this case all week-the anchors,
[Rush Lindell] the panels,
[Rush Lindell] the whole circus-but here's what most of them won't tell you:
[Rush Lindell] Trump himself already told you how this ends.
[Rush Lindell] On Truth Social in May,
[Rush Lindell] he posted that a negative ruling on birthright citizenship is not economically sustainable for the United States of America.
[Rush Lindell] The
[Speaker 3] mm-hmm.
[Rush Lindell] President of the United States predicted his own loss-in writing!
[Speaker 3] To be fair-and I think this matters-Trump also attended the oral arguments in April,
[Speaker 3] first sitting president to do that in the official record; he sat in that courtroom,
[Speaker 3] heard the justices questions,
[Speaker 3] and apparently reached the same conclusion the legal analysts did.
[Rush Lindell] Trump has to pay attention,
[Rush Lindell] he's definitely not surprised.
[Rush Lindell] SCOTUSblog said after oral argument the court appeared likely to side against him.
[Rush Lindell] Tim,
[Rush Lindell] which means the President watched the hearing,
[Rush Lindell] went home,
[Rush Lindell] and posted what amounts to a concession speech on social media,
[Rush Lindell] weeks before the ruling.
[Speaker 3] Preemptive grievance. It's a genre now.
[Rush Lindell] It is.
[Rush Lindell] And look,
[Rush Lindell] the executive order has never once been enforced,
[Rush Lindell] blocked continuously since January 25th, 2025,
[Rush Lindell] over a year and a half of injunctions. The ACLU estimates this ruling could affect...
[Rush Lindell] affect the citizenship status of more than 200,000 children born to immigrant parents every year.
[Speaker 3] Which means the stakes aren't abstract.
[Speaker 3] That number represents real families in legal limbo right now waiting on nine justices.
[Rush Lindell] Exactly right.
[Rush Lindell] And the question that nobody's actually answered yet,
[Rush Lindell] what does the Constitution say word for word,
[Rush Lindell] and does this executive order survive contact with it?
[Rush Lindell] So the text:
[Rush Lindell] "Four words,
[Rush Lindell] subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
[Rush Lindell] the whole fight lives right there.
[Speaker 3] And the Administration didn't argue that those words mean something new-that's the tell.
[Speaker 3] They went back to Wong Kim Ark,
[Speaker 3] the eighteen ninety eight case,
[Speaker 3] and said look,
[Speaker 3] domicile was in there,
[Speaker 3] that's the key!
[Rush Lindell] They borrowed the precedent they were trying to beat!
[Speaker 3] Exactly.
[Speaker 3] The Library of Congress CRS brief.
[Speaker 3] The brief lays this out precisely:
[Speaker 3] the Solicitor General told Justice Sotomayor directly,
[Speaker 3] "We're not asking you to overrule Wong Kim Ark,
[Speaker 3] we're asking you to read it differently:
[Speaker 3] domicile appeared in that eighteen ninety eight case therefore domicile is the constitutional threshold.
[Rush Lindell] Which sounds clever,
[Rush Lindell] until...
[Speaker 3] Until you realize why domicile appeared-Wong's parents had been in San Francisco for over twenty years.
[Speaker 3] Nobody disputed that; it was stipulated background fact; the holding didn't turn on it.
[Rush Lindell] So they took a footnote level detail and tried to make it the whole argument.
[Rush Lindell] Right; and the Fourteenth Amendment doesn't say "domicile," it says "jurisdiction." Congress chose that word in eighteen sixty eight,
[Rush Lindell] then re used it verbatim in the nineteen fifty two Immigration and Nationality Act.
[Rush Lindell] Justice Kavanaugh caught this at oral argument:
[Rush Lindell] "If you mean something new,
[Speaker 4] you have to say it.
[Rush Lindell] If something narrower,
[Rush Lindell] why would Congress keep borrowing the exact same phrase?
[Rush Lindell] That's the question that writes the opinion.
[Rush Lindell] Maybe—and Roberts had his own moment—the Solicitor General appealed to modern circumstances.
[Rush Lindell] Birth tourism changed migration patterns.
[Rush Lindell] Roberts cut him off.
[Rush Lindell] According to reporting on April first argument,
[Rush Lindell] he said,
[Rush Lindell] "Well,
[Rush Lindell] it's a new world,
[Rush Lindell] it's the same Constitution.
[Rush Lindell] The six words—the whole case.
[Rush Lindell] What's devastating about the domicile argument isn't just that it's textually weak; it's that if the court bought it,
[Rush Lindell] determining citizenship at birth would require a factual inquiry.
[Rush Lindell] Is this parent domiciled here?
[Rush Lindell] Justice Barrett flagged exactly that:
[Rush Lindell] a newborn's citizenship left in legal limbo while domicile questions get sorted out.
[Rush Lindell] That's a bureaucratic nightmare dressed up as constitutional fair.
[Rush Lindell] ...of theory; and no one on that bench seemed
[Speaker 4] to doubt that he was right.
[Rush Lindell] And interested in owning it,
[Rush Lindell] conservative or liberal.
[Rush Lindell] You know what nobody wants to say?" The Administration walked into that argument knowing the text was against them.
[Rush Lindell] That's why Trump was already posting the loss prediction before the ruling.
[Reagan] Which sets up the next question:
[Reagan] when six justices are skeptical,
[Reagan] how do they write the opinion?
[Reagan] Because there are at least two paths,
[Reagan] and one of them the media will completely miss.
[Rush Lindell] That's where this gets genuinely interesting.
[Rush Lindell] Let's get into it.
[Speaker 3] Hmm
[Rush Lindell] So the whole court basically looked at that domicile argument and said no.
[Rush Lindell] The New York Times flagged it after argument:
[Rush Lindell] "Two possible paths for ruling against the Administration:
[Rush Lindell] Path one,
[Rush Lindell] reaffirm Wong Kim Ark directly on Fourteenth Amendment grounds; path two
[Reagan] The INA.
[Rush Lindell] Right,
[Rush Lindell] the nineteen fifty two Immigration and Nationality Act.
[Rush Lindell] Congress codified birthright citizenship in statute.
[Rush Lindell] Acute,
[Rush Lindell] the court could kill the executive order on that ground alone and never touch the constitutional question.
[Reagan] And Justice Kavanaugh actually raised that at argument:
[Reagan] "The constitutional avoidance doctrine-decide on the statute,
[Reagan] skip the bigger fight.
[Rush Lindell] You know what nobody wants to say-that's the outcome cable news will completely miss.
[Rush Lindell] A narrow statutory ruling looks like a Trump loss on the scoreboard.
[Rush Lindell] Win for the challengers.
[Rush Lindell] Congress executive order dead,
[Rush Lindell] and every anchor calls it a defeat for the Administration and moves on.
[Reagan] Okay,
[Reagan] but Rush,
[Reagan] is that actually wrong?
[Reagan] The order gets blocked either way.
[Rush Lindell] No, it's not wrong,
[Rush Lindell] it's incomplete.
[Rush Lindell] Here's what the statutory ruling leaves on the table:
[Rush Lindell] the constitutional question is technically unresolved.
[Rush Lindell] Any future president-this one,
[Rush Lindell] next one-comes back with a statute,
[Rush Lindell] or Congress passes something.
[Rush Lindell] And the fight starts over.
[Reagan] That's a fair point; a Fourteenth Amendment ruling forecloses that; a statutory ruling doesn't.
[Rush Lindell] Exactly; the ACLU's own lawyers told Kavanaugh they'd rather have the court reaffirm Wong Kim Ark on the merits-their words; it would be prudent to go ahead and reaffirm it-even the winning side wants the bigger ruling.
[Reagan] So the narrow path is the one that satisfies nobody.
[Reagan] Nobody completely.
[Rush Lindell] And that's exactly why it's possible!
[Rush Lindell] Courts love a landing strip that avoids a fight.
[Rush Lindell] SCOTUSblog flagged it.
[Rush Lindell] If there aren't five clean votes on the constitutional question,
[Reagan] Yeah.
[Rush Lindell] the statutory route becomes attractive.
[Reagan] Alito and Thomas were the two votes most sympathetic to the Administration; that's a seven to two,
[Reagan] or thereabouts,
[Reagan] if the court goes constitutional.
[Rush Lindell] Right-which means five votes for reaffirming Wong Kim Ark.
[Rush Lindell] That isn't exactly hard math,
[Rush Lindell] but five votes for a specific constitutional rationale everyone agrees on-that's different.
[Rush Lindell] You could get a fractured constitutional ruling or one clean statutory one.
[Reagan] So tonight,
[Reagan] watching the decision drop-what's the tell?
[Rush Lindell] If the opinion leads with the INA and barely touches the Fourteenth Amendment,
[Rush Lindell] that's the narrow ruling.
[Rush Lindell] The administration loses,
[Rush Lindell] the headlines say it's over.
[Rush Lindell] And it is absolutely not over.
[Rush Lindell] Watch for that.
[Rush Lindell] Now, here's where it gets interesting,
[Rush Lindell] actually,
[Rush Lindell] speaking of what the administration was selling to justify the order in the first place,
[Reagan] Birth tourism.
[Rush Lindell] Birth tourism, and that part of the argument?
[Rush Lindell] Not entirely made up.
[Rush Lindell] Okay,
[Rush Lindell] so the policy concern.
[Rush Lindell] Birth tourism.
[Rush Lindell] Let me just say it plainly. It's real.
[Reagan] It is real.
[Rush Lindell] I'm talking about agencies, I'm calling them the womb concierge industry,
[Rush Lindell] charging anywhere from $15,000 to over $80,000 to fly rich Chinese and Russian nationals over here,
[Rush Lindell] set them up in maternity hotels,
[Rush Lindell] deliver the baby on U.S. soil,
[Rush Lindell] and hand you a passport application. That is an...
[Speaker 5] It's an actual business model.
[Reagan] Over 500 of those companies reportedly operate out of China alone.
[Reagan] That number came up on oral argument.
[Speaker 5] 500.
[Speaker 5] That's not a loophole.
[Speaker 5] That's an industry.
[Reagan] Right.
[Speaker 5] And Trump actually said it on Truth Social,
[Speaker 5] quote,
[Speaker 5] birthright citizenship is not about rich people from China who want it for pay.
[Speaker 5] He's describing a genuine problem.
[Reagan] He is,
[Reagan] and I'll give him that completely.
[Reagan] Birth tourism is worth fixing.
[Speaker 5] But The
[Reagan] But the executive order wasn't a fix for birth tourism.
[Reagan] It was a fix for all birthright citizenship.
[Reagan] Every child,
[Reagan] every undocumented parent.
[Reagan] That's a completely different scope.
[Speaker 5] problem is real.
[Speaker 5] The remedy was wrong.
[Reagan] And there's the separation that matters:
[Reagan] you can acknowledge the abuse without validating an unconstitutional executive order as the mechanism to stop it.
[Reagan] Those are two separate questions.
[Rush Lindell] So what's the constitutional fix?
[Rush Lindell] Because visa fraud enforcement,
[Rush Lindell] State Department rule changes,
[Rush Lindell] those exist already.
[Reagan] Exactly.
[Reagan] FactCheck reported a twenty twenty Trump-era State Department rule that already created grounds to deny tourist visas for birth tourism purposes.
[Reagan] That tool was already on the shelf.
[Speaker 5] So you're telling me there was a scalpel available and they went with a sledgehammer?
[Reagan] That's one way to put it.
[Rush Lindell] Look,
[Rush Lindell] the womb concierge industry deserves every enforcement action it gets.
[Rush Lindell] I'm on board.
[Rush Lindell] But you don't re write a hundred fifty years of constitutional law to close a premium service immigration loophole.
[Reagan] And here's what nobody has been talking about:
[Reagan] while SCOTUS has been consuming all the oxygen,
[Reagan] the Justice Department has been running a completely separate track:
[Reagan] denaturalization cases.
[Reagan] And those numbers are something.
[Rush Lindell] So while everybody's been watching the SCOTUS clock tick down,
[Rush Lindell] there's a whole other machine running in parallel,
[Rush Lindell] and the press has completely buried it.
[Reagan] CBS News reported it straight:
[Reagan] the DOJ plans to file at least two hundred and fifty denaturalization cases in federal courts by September thirtieth,
[Reagan] end of fiscal year.
[Rush Lindell] Two hundred and fifty.
[Rush Lindell] Now hold on.
[Rush Lindell] Let me put that number next to something.
[Rush Lindell] From nineteen ninety to two thousand seventeen,
[Rush Lindell] that's twenty seven years.
[Speaker 5] The government averaged 11 denaturalization cases per year.
[Reagan] Eleven.
[Speaker 5] Eleven per year for nearly three decades.
[Reagan] And now, 250 by October.
[Speaker 5] Yeah,
[Speaker 5] Sit with that.
[Reagan] Wow!
[Speaker 5] And it doesn't stop there.
[Speaker 5] Internal USCIS guidance,
[Speaker 5] reported by the New York Times,
[Speaker 5] directs field offices to refer 100 to 200 cases per month to the DOJ for fiscal year 2026.
[Speaker 5] That's potentially 2,400 cases annually.
[Reagan] Hold on-that's the referral pipeline rush.
[Reagan] Those don't all become "filed cases," but even if a fraction do,
[Reagan] you're talking about a structural transformation,
[Reagan] not an enforcement uptick.
[Rush Lindell] But I want to make sure people understand what we're even talking about.
[Rush Lindell] Because this is not the birthright citizenship fight.
[Reagan] Right.
[Reagan] Completely different legal track.
[Reagan] Denaturalization targets naturalized citizens-people who went through the immigration process and got citizenship through naturalization,
[Reagan] not people born here.
[Reagan] These are two separate legal mechanisms running simultaneously.
[Rush Lindell] Two tracks:
[Rush Lindell] the SCOTUS case argues about who gets citizenship at birth;
[Reagan] Mm-hmm.
[Rush Lindell] the DOJ track argues about whether citizenship already granted can be taken back.
[Reagan] And the government has actually been winning those,
[Reagan] according to TRAC reports.
[Reagan] They track federal filings-at least thirty three new cases were filed in May and June,
[Reagan] twenty twenty six,
[Reagan] alone,
[Reagan] and the DOJ went eight for thirteen in cases it filed in twenty twenty five.
[Rush Lindell] Eight out of thirteen.
[Rush Lindell] So they're not just talking-they're winning.
[Reagan] That said,
[Reagan] the legal standard is genuinely high:
[Reagan] the burden is clear,
[Reagan] convincing,
[Reagan] and unequivocal evidence—federal court every time,
[Reagan] no administrative shortcut.
[Rush Lindell] Which is where it gets complicated,
[Rush Lindell] because the government is also building a quota system.
[Rush Lindell] And the question nobody wants to ask:
[Rush Lindell] can you maintain that standard at two hundred and fifty cases by fall,
[Rush Lindell] and then potentially twenty four hundred a year?
[Reagan] That's the question sitting right underneath all of this,
[Reagan] and it connects to something bigger than the case count.
[Rush Lindell] It does,
[Rush Lindell] because when you pull back,
[Rush Lindell] the birthright fight and the denaturalization push aren't two stories,
[Rush Lindell] they're the same argument,
[Rush Lindell] and that argument has an asterisk in it.
[Reagan] I think you're going to need to explain that asterisk.
[Rush Lindell] Oh, I'm going to.
[Rush Lindell] So let me give you the unified theory here.
[Rush Lindell] Two tracks,
[Rush Lindell] one argument.
[Rush Lindell] The administration is saying American citizenship has an asterisk.
[Reagan] An asterisk?
[Rush Lindell] Born here to the wrong parents?
[Rush Lindell] Asterisk.
[Rush Lindell] Naturalized but the DOJ found a paperwork problem from 1999?
[Rush Lindell] Asterisk.
[Rush Lindell] We all know what's really happening here.
[Rush Lindell] They're not attacking the ceremony.
[Rush Lindell] They're attacking the...
[Rush Lindell] The permanence-
[Reagan] And UVA law professor Amanda Frost nailed it.
[Reagan] She's written that the administration has targeted 700,000 naturalized citizens for investigation,
[Reagan] and the chilling effect alone changes behavior.
[Reagan] Permanent residents stop applying for citizenship entirely.
[Rush Lindell] 700,000 flagged for investigation?
[Reagan] Yeah. And Frost's point is that a quota
[Rush Lindell] Wow.
[Reagan] -driven system creates its own.
[Reagan] Its own pressure!
[Reagan] When you're aiming for two hundred and fifty cases by October the incentive shifts from 'find the worst fraud'
[Reagan] to 'meet the number'.
[Rush Lindell] That's the thing that should scare everyone; left,
[Rush Lindell] right,
[Rush Lindell] doesn't matter.
[Rush Lindell] The legal standard for denaturalization is clear,
[Rush Lindell] convincing,
[Rush Lindell] and unequivocal.
[Rush Lindell] That bar exists for a reason.
[Reagan] The salience circular matters,
[Reagan] but we shouldn't take our eyes off the bigger picture.
[Reagan] What does it mean to create a definition of inconsistent application?
[Reagan] How do you find that line between simple human error and something more malicious?
[Speaker 3] Right-the assembly line is fine until it isn't; and once the precedent is set at scale,
[Speaker 3] the asterisk becomes standard operating procedure.
[Reagan] Frost also flagged something darker:
[Reagan] historically,
[Reagan] denaturalization got weaponized against ideological opponents.
[Reagan] opponents the nineteen fifties Red Scare.
[Reagan] It hasn't happened yet in this cycle,
[Reagan] but the infrastructure is now built.
[Speaker 3] The machinery matters.
[Speaker 3] Even if you trust the people running it today,
[Speaker 3] machinery doesn't expire when administrations do.
[Reagan] That's the argument that outlasts today's ruling.
[Speaker 3] So tonight the networks are going to flash a chyron:
[Speaker 3] "Trump Loses Birthright Citizenship Case-Full Stop-End of Story.
[Reagan] And if it's a statutory ruling under the INA,
[Reagan] that's exactly the wrong read.
[Speaker 3] The constitutional question stays open,
[Speaker 3] a future executive tries again with a different argument,
[Speaker 3] and this ruling doesn't stop them.
[Speaker 3] That's what nobody's going to say on cable.
[Reagan] And the denaturalization push-two hundred fifty cases?
[Reagan] Cases targeted by October?
[Reagan] That train doesn't stop,
[Reagan] regardless of today's outcome.
[Reagan] CBS News had this on the record from a Justice Department official.
[Speaker 3] Two completely separate tracks.
[Reagan] Right.
[Speaker 3] One ruling doesn't touch the other.
[Reagan] Read the actual opinion,
[Reagan] not the summary.
[Reagan] The holding and the reasoning are going to tell very different stories.
[Speaker 3] That's exactly why we're here today,
[Speaker 3] before the networks got to it first.
[Speaker 3] All right,
[Speaker 3] bottom line today:
[Speaker 3] the Supreme Court is out of time.
[Speaker 3] Trump v.
[Speaker 3] Barbara gets decided,
[Speaker 3] and the question isn't just birthright citizenship.
[Speaker 3] It's whether an executive order can rewrite what the Fourteenth Amendment actually says.
[Reagan] And the Wong Kim Ark move they tried,
[Reagan] borrowing the precedent to redefine domicile,
[Reagan] didn't survive the oral arguments.
[Reagan] Roberts,
[Reagan] Kavanaugh,
[Reagan] justices across the spectrum saw right through it.
[Speaker 3] The President predicted his own loss on Truth Social.
[Speaker 3] Social in writing-that's the episode right there.
[Reagan] And don't sleep on the denaturalization track.
[Reagan] That runs regardless of how today goes.
[Speaker 3] Two separate fights-one ruling won't end either of them.
[Speaker 3] Watch tonight's coverage carefully-the narrow ruling trap is real.
[Reagan] That's the homework.
[Speaker 3] If this show gave you something to think about,
[Speaker 3] subscribe,
[Speaker 3] drop us a five star review,
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[Speaker 3] New episodes every weekday.
[Reagan] Thanks for being here.
[Reagan] We'll see you tomorrow.
[Rush Lindell] Stay sharp.