[Rush Lindell] So here's what's going on right now,
[Rush Lindell] and I want you to feel the weight of this.
[Rush Lindell] The Supreme Court is in the final stretch of its term,
[Rush Lindell] 22 cases pending,
[Rush Lindell] clock ticking,
[Rush Lindell] and the question sitting right at the top of the pile is who gets to be an American.
[Reagan] Wow.
[Rush Lindell] That's not a metaphor.
[Rush Lindell] That is literally what's on the docket.
[Speaker 3] And U.S.
[Speaker 3] news laid it out this week: birthright citizenship,
[Speaker 3] mail-in ballots,
[Speaker 3] independent agency firings, all of it dropping before July.
[Speaker 3] The court already handed the administration a loss on the tariffs.
[Speaker 3] What's coming next is a different animal entirely.
[Rush Lindell] Different animal is right.
[Rush Lindell] Trump v. Barbara,
[Rush Lindell] that's the birthright citizenship case,
[Rush Lindell] is the one I want people locked in on.
[Rush Lindell] Day one of the President's second term,
[Rush Lindell] the President signed an executive order,
[Rush Lindell] lower courts blocked it,
[Rush Lindell] now nine justices are going to decide whether a hundred fifty eight years of constitutional practice survives.
[Speaker 3] And the legal theory the Administration is running is genuinely contested.
[Speaker 3] SCOTUSblog has been tracking the argument around what domicile means under the Fourteenth Amendment.
[Speaker 3] It's not as settled as the headlines suggest.
[Rush Lindell] Nothing is ever as settled as the headlines suggest—that's why we're here.
[Speaker 3] Fair.
[Rush Lindell] And then—wait for it!—there's the denaturalization drive running parallel to all this—we're talkin'
[Rush Lindell] quota systems,
[Rush Lindell] field offices.
[Rush Lindell] It's numbers that make your head spin when you put 'em next to the historical average.
[Speaker 3] That's the part that deserves real scrutiny.
[Speaker 3] Quotas and individualized legal process are not the same thing.
[Rush Lindell] Not even close.
[Rush Lindell] So SCOTUS preview,
[Rush Lindell] birthright citizenship,
[Rush Lindell] denaturalization and what it all means.
[Rush Lindell] I've got the legal precision and the outrage.
[Rush Lindell] Let's see which one wins today.
[Speaker 3] I'll take that bet.
[Speaker 3] First up, the Court's packed June finish.
[Rush Lindell] Before we get started,
[Rush Lindell] a quick reminder.
[Rush Lindell] 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] Twenty-two cases,
[Rush Lindell] that's what's left on the docket right now,
[Rush Lindell] and the Court is aiming to wrap by early July,
[Speaker 3] Wow.
[Rush Lindell] Twenty-two,
[Rush Lindell] and they didn't save the easy ones for last.
[Speaker 3] No,
[Speaker 3] they definitely did not.
[Speaker 3] NPR had a good rundown on this.
[Speaker 3] The cases still pending include birthright citizenship,
[Speaker 3] presidential firing power,
[Speaker 3] transgender athlete bans,
[Speaker 3] mail ballot deadlines,
[Speaker 3] the heavyweights.
[Rush Lindell] And keep in mind, this term already delivered a blockbuster.
[Rush Lindell] SCOTUSblog reported the court struck down Trump's tariffs back in February,
[Rush Lindell] so these remaining opinions land on a court that has already handed the president one major loss.
[Speaker 3] Which is exactly why the political temperature going into these rulings is as high as it's going to get.
[Speaker 3] The administration knows what's at stake.
[Rush Lindell] They do.
[Rush Lindell] Trump literally showed up to oral arguments himself,
[Rush Lindell] first sitting president to do that.
[Rush Lindell] He sat there and watched his solicitor general argue the
[Speaker 4] president's case.
[Rush Lindell] argue the birthright citizenship case.
[Rush Lindell] That's not a normal thing.
[Speaker 3] Look,
[Speaker 3] I get why people read that as a show of force, but attending doesn't change the legal math,
[Speaker 3] and right now the legal math is not great for the administration on that one.
[Rush Lindell] You know what nobody wants to say?
[Rush Lindell] Five justices, maybe seven,
[Rush Lindell] looked skeptical of the executive order at oral argument.
[Rush Lindell] That's a significant number.
[Speaker 3] That's what SCOTUSblog reported,
[Speaker 3] yeah.
[Speaker 3] At least five,
[Speaker 3] possibly more.
[Speaker 3] And every lower court that examined this order found it likely violates the Fourteenth Amendment,
[Speaker 3] every single one.
[Rush Lindell] So we've got birthright citizenship,
[Rush Lindell] we've got presidential firing power in Trump versus Slaughter,
[Rush Lindell] we've got the transgender athlete cases,
[Rush Lindell] Little versus Hecox and West Virginia versus BPJ,
[Rush Lindell] and we've got mail ballot deadlines in Watson versus the RNC.
[Rush Lindell] Four cases,
[Rush Lindell] four very different fights.
[Rush Lindell] But they're all
[Speaker 3] Uh
[Rush Lindell] asking
[Speaker 3] -huh.
[Rush Lindell] the same basic question underneath:
[Speaker 3] Which is, how far does executive authority reach,
[Speaker 3] and who does the Constitution actually protect?
[Rush Lindell] Or who counts as American?
[Rush Lindell] That's the one that sits at the bottom of all of it.
[Rush Lindell] And birthright citizenship is where that question lives.
[Speaker 3] So what does the administration's actual legal argument look like? Because it's not nothing.
[Rush Lindell] So,
[Rush Lindell] Trump's day one executive order,
[Rush Lindell] the one that says if your parents are here illegally or on a temporary visa,
[Rush Lindell] you don't get birthright citizenship,
[Rush Lindell] every single lower court that looked at it said the same thing: almost certainly unconstitutional.
[Speaker 3] And now the Supreme Court has to actually answer the question the 14th Amendment poses.
[Speaker 3] The Citizenship Clause is 28 words,
[Speaker 3] all persons born or naturalized in the United States.
[Speaker 3] It's and subject to the jurisdiction thereof; that's the ball game.
[Rush Lindell] And the Administration's whole theory hangs on one word that isn't even in those twenty-eight words—domicile.
[Speaker 3] Right.
[Speaker 3] Solicitor General Sauer argued at the April first oral argument that the citizenship clause presupposes lawful domicile,
[Speaker 3] not just physical birth on U.S. soil.
[Speaker 3] The word jurisdiction implies domicile; that's the move.
[Rush Lindell] A word that isn't in the amendment implying a concept that rewrites one hundred twenty-eight years of settled law—bold.
[Speaker 3] The battlefield is Wong Kim Ark,
[Speaker 3] the eighteen ninety eight
[Speaker 4] U.S. Supreme Court decision.
[Speaker 3] In the Eighth case,
[Speaker 3] both sides claim it.
[Speaker 3] The Library of Congress Research Service laid this out clearly:
[Speaker 3] the Administration says domicile was central to that ruling because the Court mentioned it twenty times; challengers say it was just a background fact nobody contested; Wong's parents had lived in San Francisco for twenty years; it wasn't the holding.
[Rush Lindell] And Justice Barrett basically asked,
[Rush Lindell] How do you even adjudicate domicile at the moment of birth?
[Rush Lindell] You'd have
[Speaker 3] Yeah.
[Rush Lindell] newborns in legal limbo while courts figure out whether Mom
[Speaker 4] and Dad were married or not.
[Rush Lindell] Their mom intended to stay permanently.
[Speaker 3] SCOTUSblog covered the April arguments closely,
[Speaker 3] and their read was an icy reception for the domicile theory,
[Speaker 3] several justices skeptical,
[Speaker 3] Gorsuch,
[Speaker 3] Kavanaugh,
[Speaker 3] Roberts all pushing back.
[Rush Lindell] Now,
[Rush Lindell] uphill climb for the administration,
[Rush Lindell] I'll grant that.
[Rush Lindell] But here's what nobody's saying out loud:
[Rush Lindell] a narrow ruling could move the goalposts without being a headline win for Trump.
[Rush Lindell] The Court could define domicile in a way that
[Rush Lindell] Either doesn't hand him this case and still plant the seed.
[Speaker 3] An estimated one hundred fifty thousand children a year are affected by that executive order.
[Speaker 3] That's not abstract,
[Speaker 3] that's real administrative machinery waiting on nine
[Speaker 4] people.
[Rush Lindell] Invokes
[Reagan] And if SCOTUS decides who gets born American,
[Reagan] the next question is who gets to stay American after earning it the legal way,
[Reagan] which,
[Reagan] Reagan,
[Reagan] is exactly where we're going.
[Reagan] Now flip that on its head.
[Reagan] Who gets to stay American?
[Reagan] You know what nobody wants to say out loud?
[Reagan] The administration quietly ordered USCIS field offices to supply DOJ with 100 to 200 denaturalization cases per month.
[Speaker 3] Per month!
[Reagan] The New York Times first reported the internal guidance,
[Reagan] and for context,
[Reagan] from 1990 to 2017...
[Reagan] The historical average was roughly eleven cases per year-eleven a year!
[Speaker 5] So the quota alone,
[Speaker 5] if met,
[Speaker 5] would exceed the entire historical annual average by more than a hundredfold.
[Reagan] Right; and NPR reported that on May eighth DOJ filed civil denaturalization complaints on twelve individuals in a single day.
[Reagan] Historically,
[Reagan] that's a full year's work.
[Speaker 5] Wow.
[Speaker 6] Wow.
[Reagan] In one day!
[Speaker 5] Look,
[Speaker 5] the steel man here is real.
[Speaker 5] Fraud happens.
[Speaker 5] People do lie on naturalization applications.
[Speaker 5] Denaturalization is a legitimate legal tool.
[Speaker 5] It requires a federal judge and clear,
[Speaker 5] convincing,
[Speaker 5] unequivocal evidence.
[Speaker 5] The law hasn't changed.
[Reagan] Sure,
[Reagan] but a former USCIS official named Sarah Pierce told the Times requiring monthly quotas ten times higher than the
[Reagan] Then the total annual number turns a serious tool into a blunt instrument.
[Speaker 5] And that's where I push back on the mechanism.
[Speaker 5] When you set a numerical quota,
[Speaker 5] you're no longer asking,
[Speaker 5] did this person commit fraud?
[Speaker 5] You're asking, do we have enough cases this month?
[Speaker 5] Those are structurally different questions.
[Reagan] That's the tale.
[Reagan] NPR reviewed thirty four publicly announced cases through late May.
[Reagan] A Boston College law professor said they're within normal legal parameters.
[Reagan] legal parameters so far,
[Reagan] but so far is doing a lot in that sentence.
[Speaker 5] The pressure to hit a number is the problem; it creates incentives to lower the threshold,
[Speaker 5] assign cases to generalist prosecutors instead of specialists,
[Speaker 5] and push borderline situations through.
[Reagan] Twenty-six million naturalized citizens in this country.
[Reagan] The quota math says the Administration is prepared to process a chunk of them like a production line.
[Reagan] That's the story,
[Reagan] and it connects directly to where we're headed next because SCOTUS is drawing the left edge of citizenship while D.O.J.
[Reagan] pushes on the right edge.
[Reagan] Same frame,
[Reagan] two hands.
[Reagan] So now you have both tracks in front of you,
[Reagan] SCOTUS rewriting who gets citizenship at birth,
[Reagan] DOJ revoking it after the fact,
[Reagan] same administration,
[Reagan] same direction,
[Reagan] nobody in the press is connecting the dots.
[Speaker 5] I'll give you the frame,
[Speaker 5] but I want to add some precision because the legal machinery is genuinely different.
[Reagan] Go ahead.
[Speaker 5] The Birthright case lives in the 14th Amendment,
[Speaker 5] constitutional territory.
[Speaker 4] three
[Speaker 5] Denaturalization runs through federal statute and DOJ enforcement discretion.
[Speaker 5] Different constitutional anchors,
[Reagan] Mm-hmm.
[Speaker 5] different burdens of proof.
[Speaker 5] To win denaturalization,
[Speaker 5] the government has to prove fraud by clear and convincing evidence; to reshape birthright citizenship,
[Speaker 5] they just need five votes.
[Reagan] Right—one costs them nothing but a brief; the other costs somebody their passport.
[Speaker 5] Exactly.
[Speaker 5] So rhetorically,
[Speaker 5] yes,
[Speaker 5] same frame.
[Speaker 5] Legally two very different fights.
[Reagan] And that's where SCOTUSblog flags something worth sitting with:
[Reagan] both tracks are the Administration asserting expanded power to define who is and isn't American.
[Reagan] The delivery mechanism differs; the direction
[Speaker 5] Right.
[Reagan] doesn't.
[Speaker 5] That's a fair
[Speaker 7] Wow!
[Speaker 5] read.
[Speaker 7]
[Reagan] The press covers this as two separate beats; the immigration reporter and the courts reporter never talk to each other.
[Reagan] other,
[Reagan] but you're watching one coherent story of the second Trump term,
[Reagan] and it's hiding in plain sight.
[Speaker 5] Hiding because nobody filed a joint brief connecting them.
[Reagan] That's the work somebody should have done.
[Reagan] Now, there's more on the SCOTUS docket independent agencies,
[Reagan] mail ballots,
[Reagan] transgender athletes,
[Reagan] the rest of the card is still on the table.
[Reagan] All right, let's run the rest of the scorecard fast-three cases,
[Reagan] big stakes,
[Reagan] small window before the rulings drop.
[Speaker 5] Starting with Trump versus Slaughter,
[Speaker 5] the President's power to fire heads of independent agencies.
[Reagan] Six conservative justices already let Trump boot the FTC Commissioners while the case was still live.
[Reagan] Chief Justice Roberts called Humphrey's Executor-that's the ninety year old precedent protecting agency independence-a dry husk.
[Speaker 5] Wrap.
[Speaker 8] Well!
[Reagan] That's not a man who's about to uphold it.
[Speaker 5] The court seems likely to side with Trump broadly:
[Speaker 5] the one carve out analysts are watching:
[Speaker 5] the Federal Reserve.
[Speaker 5] Kavanaugh's been signaling the Fed is different and the court has already said as much in interim rulings.
[Reagan] Right,
[Reagan] because if the president can fire the Fed chair on a Tuesday,
[Reagan] the markets notice by Wednesday,
[Reagan] so they'll probably save one hostage.
[Speaker 5] One very important hostage.
[Reagan] Moving on.
[Reagan] West Virginia versus BPJ.
[Reagan] A. Transgender Athlete Bans Oral arguments in January and SCOTUSblog reported the court appeared likely to uphold the bans. Twenty-seven states have these laws already on the books.
[Speaker 5] The legal stakes go beyond the scoreboard.
[Speaker 5] The challengers are arguing Title IX and the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
[Speaker 5] The open question after arguments was whether the court writes a narrow ruling or something that touches the broader Bostock framework on gender identity.
[Reagan] How we got to a constitutional showdown over girls'
[Reagan] middle school cross country is a story I will tell my grandchildren.
[Speaker 5] The legal path here matters; a broad ruling could reach well past sports.
[Reagan] NOTED.
[Reagan] Last one,
[Reagan] Watson versus RNC,
[Reagan] mail ballots.
[Reagan] Fifteen states,
[Reagan] including DC,
[Reagan] let ballots arrive after election day if postmarked in time.
[Reagan] The conservative majority looked skeptical at argument.
[Reagan] Justice Alito basically said,
[Reagan] quote,
[Reagan] we don't have election day anymore.
[Speaker 5] A ruling against those grace periods hits before November's midterms, states would have to rewrite election law on a short clock.
[Reagan] Three cases,
[Reagan] one term,
[Reagan] and that's before we talk about what happens when all these land in the same week, because they might,
[Reagan] and that scenario,
[Reagan] that's where things get genuinely wild.
[Reagan] All right, so let's play it out.
[Reagan] Two scenarios.
[Reagan] Picture this,
[Reagan] same
[Rush Lindell] In week,
[Rush Lindell] birthright citizenship,
[Rush Lindell] independent agencies,
[Rush Lindell] and mail ballots, all three go the administration's way.
[Reagan] Wow.
[Rush Lindell] What does cable news look like that night?
[Reagan] Oh, I can script it already.
[Rush Lindell] Of course you can!
[Rush Lindell] Every panel show dusts off the same chyron.
[Rush Lindell] I'll give it a nickname:
[Rush Lindell] call it Democracy Mourning Week.
[Rush Lindell] Six guests,
[Rush Lindell] all speechless,
[Rush Lindell] all somehow talking at once.
[Reagan] Accurate.
[Reagan] Though I will say,
[Reagan] a full sweep actually gives the left a clean villain.
[Reagan] Every loss is one story.
[Rush Lindell] Now the split-that's where it gets different-the court hands Trump a loss on birthright citizenship,
[Rush Lindell] but delivers on agencies and trans athletes-you know what that means?
[Reagan] The court looks balanced,
[Reagan] and that legitimizes everything else they ruled.
[Rush Lindell] Deb Pam,
[Rush Lindell] exactly-the media runs 'Court Checks Trump'
[Rush Lindell] as the headline and, buried in paragraph nine-oh,
[Rush Lindell] by the way, the president can now fire
[Speaker 4] Mueller.
[Rush Lindell] Now fire any commissioner once,
[Rush Lindell] nobody reads paragraph nine.
[Reagan] That's the structural danger; a split outcome lets the rulings that expand executive power land quietly,
[Reagan] which from a legal standpoint may matter more long term than birthright citizenship.
[Rush Lindell] The Hill reported just this week:
[Rush Lindell] "Conservative justices have already signaled they want to overturn Humphreys Executor."
[Reagan] Right.
[Rush Lindell] They telegraphed that months ago.
[Rush Lindell] If that falls the same week birthright gets blocked...
[Rush Lindell] The press will only cover the loss.
[Reagan] And the denaturalization machinery is already running regardless.
[Reagan] NPR reported it's proving harder than the rhetoric suggests,
[Reagan] but the Quota structure is already in motion.
[Reagan] The Court doesn't flip that off.
[Rush Lindell] Right—which is why the scenario that should worry people most isn't a sweep; it's a split that lets two or three landmark shifts walk out the door while everyone's watching the one that
[Rush Lindell] That didn't.
[Reagan] As SCOTUSblog will have same day plain language reads when these drop,
[Reagan] that's your move,
[Reagan] not waiting for cable news to frame it for you.
[Rush Lindell] Don't outsource your understanding to people whose job is to perform outrage.
[Rush Lindell] Read the actual ruling.
[Rush Lindell] So what do you do with all of this?
[Rush Lindell] Here's my answer,
[Rush Lindell] and I'm going to give it to you straight.
[Reagan] Go ahead.
[Rush Lindell] Bookmark SCOTUSblog right now, today.
[Rush Lindell] The Court drops rulings with zero advanced warning. U.S. News confirmed that,
[Rush Lindell] and SCOTUSblog is the only place where you'll get plain English analysis the same morning the opinion lands.
[Rush Lindell] Cable news frames it for you.
[Rush Lindell] SCOTUSblog gives you the actual ruling.
[Reagan] That distinction matters because how a ruling gets framed in the.
[Reagan] in the first hour is how most people carry it forever.
[Speaker 3] Exactly right.
[Speaker 3] And the second thing, and this one's more uncomfortable,
[Speaker 3] the denaturalization push is not a future concern.
[Speaker 3] NPR reported it.
[Speaker 3] Newsweek confirmed it. The drive is already underway.
[Reagan] Yeah,
[Speaker 3] Cases are being filed right now.
[Speaker 3] You don't get to wait for the SCOTUS decision to decide how you feel about this.
[Reagan] And the legal guardrails are the actual story.
[Reagan] Whether due process holds on individual denaturalization cases.
[Reagan] In cases,
[Reagan] that's what tells you if the system is working or not,
[Reagan] not the political noise around it.
[Speaker 3] You know what nobody wants to say?
[Speaker 3] The question of who gets to be American,
[Speaker 3] who counts,
[Speaker 3] who can be uncounted,
[Speaker 3] that is the foundational question of this political moment,
[Speaker 3] full stop.
[Reagan] And listeners who actually understand these cases-the legal tracks,
[Reagan] the Different burdens of proof,
[Reagan] what the Court can and can't do-they're in a position to judge that for themselves.
[Reagan] That's the point of all this.
[Speaker 3] The people Rewriting the answer to that question are counting on you to not connect the dots.
[Speaker 3] They're counting on the headlines to drown out the actual mechanism.
[Speaker 3] So don't let them.
[Reagan] Know the cases. Watch the rulings when they drop.
[Speaker 3] And don't wait for a Cable anchor to tell you what to think about it.
[Speaker 3] About three days later.
[Reagan] Yeah,
[Reagan] that ship sails without you.
[Speaker 3] We've laid out the whole architecture today.
[Speaker 3] The cases are live,
[Speaker 3] the Quota is running,
[Speaker 3] and the rulings are coming.
[Speaker 3] You've got everything you need to follow this in real time.
[Speaker 3] All right,
[Speaker 3] here's where we land:
[Speaker 3] The Supreme Court's got Twenty-two cases to close,
[Speaker 3] a July deadline and not one of them is easy.
[Reagan] And the Birthright Citizenship Fight,
[Reagan] the Domicile Theory,
[Reagan] the Wong Kim Ark battlefield-that's the one that defines everything downstream.
[Speaker 3] A word not in the Amendment,
[Speaker 3] rewriting one hundred twenty eight years of settled law.
[Speaker 3] Bold is one word.
[Reagan] That's one word.
[Speaker 3] And the denaturalization quota running in parallel-that's the squeeze; two arms,
[Speaker 3] same
[Speaker 5] Right.
[Speaker 3] policy.
[Reagan] Legally distinct,
[Reagan] but the direction is clear.
[Speaker 3] Bottom line:
[Speaker 3] Who counts as American is the defining question of this political moment.
[Speaker 3] Bookmark SCOTUSblog.
[Speaker 3] Pay attention.
[Reagan] The guardrails are the story.
[Reagan] An informed listener can judge them.
[Speaker 3] That's why you're here.
[Speaker 3] Subscribe,
[Speaker 3] leave us a five-star review,
[Speaker 3] tell someone who needs to hear this.
[Speaker 3] New episodes every weekday.
[Reagan] Thanks for listening.
[Reagan] We'll see you tomorrow.