[Rush Lindell] What nobody wants to say.
[Rush Lindell] The Supreme Court is about to hand down one of the biggest rulings of this decade,
[Rush Lindell] and most of the media is still asleep at the wheel.
[Reagan] And
[Rush Lindell] Welcome to the Rush Lindell Show.
[Rush Lindell] I'm Rush Lindell.
[Reagan] I'm Reagan,
[Reagan] and Rush,
[Reagan] asleep at the wheel might be generous.
[Rush Lindell] Fair point.
[Rush Lindell] Today we are all over Trump versus Barbara,
[Rush Lindell] the birthright citizenship case that Newsweek is already comparing to
[Speaker 3] an ancient myth.
[Rush Lindell] Comparing to Dobbs in terms of sheer constitutional weight,
[Rush Lindell] SCOTUSblog flagged
[Reagan] Yes.
[Rush Lindell] at least twelve opinions still outstanding before this term closes.
[Rush Lindell] This one is in that pile.
[Reagan] And the term ends soon,
[Reagan] so the clock is actually ticking.
[Rush Lindell] Ticking loud,
[Rush Lindell] Trump signed Executive Order 1461 on his first day back,
[Rush Lindell] January twentieth twenty twenty five,
[Rush Lindell] and then showed up in.
[Rush Lindell] In person to watch oral arguments on April first,
[Rush Lindell] first sitting President ever to do that.
[Reagan] During April Fool's Day,
[Reagan] for the record.
[Rush Lindell] The calendar does not lie.
[Rush Lindell] Now we're going wall to wall on this.
[Rush Lindell] Reagan walks us through the constitutional fight at the center,
[Rush Lindell] five words from the Fourteenth Amendment and what they actually mean.
[Reagan] Subject to the jurisdiction thereof.
[Reagan] That's the whole ball game,
[Reagan] and the competing interpretations go back to eighteen ninety eight.
[Rush Lindell] Then we get into the court room itself,
[Rush Lindell] because Trump's own three appointees pushed hard against the government's position.
[Rush Lindell] That's the story most people are missing.
[Reagan] Hmm.
[Reagan] And there's a second story underneath all of this:
[Reagan] a denaturalization apparatus running quietly alongside the Supreme Court case.
[Reagan] That one deserves its own hour.
[Rush Lindell] It does.
[Rush Lindell] But we're covering it today.
[Rush Lindell] The 14th Amendment battle does not end with one ruling,
[Rush Lindell] and we're going to prove that.
[Rush Lindell] First segment starts right now.
[Rush Lindell] Before we dive in, a quick reminder.
[Rush Lindell] We love hearing from you. 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] The Supreme Court has twelve opinions left to issue-twelve! The term ends within days,
[Rush Lindell] early July at latest,
[Rush Lindell] according to Newsweek.
[Reagan] And Newsweek called it the most consequential ruling since the court overturned abortion rights jurisprudence in 2022.
[Reagan] That's the weight we're talking about.
[Rush Lindell] That's not nothing.
[Rush Lindell] You know what nobody wants to say?
[Rush Lindell] This one lands different because this isn't a policy debate dressed up.
[Rush Lindell] Stop is a legal question.
[Rush Lindell] It's a constitutional reckoning.
[Rush Lindell] January twentieth twenty twenty five,
[Rush Lindell] day one:
[Rush Lindell] Trump signs Executive Order fourteen one sixty protecting the meaning and value of American citizenship.
[Rush Lindell] Two categories of children gone.
[Reagan] hmm right children born here to mothers who are unlawfully present and children born to mothers on temporary visas both fathers not citizens or permanent residents
[Reagan] That's the Executive Order according to the Library of Congress.
[Rush Lindell] And then April first rolls around-April Fool's Day.
[Rush Lindell] Trump shows up in person to watch oral arguments-first sitting President in official records to ever do that.
[Reagan] A first.
[Rush Lindell] A first.
[Rush Lindell] He stays for about ninety minutes,
[Rush Lindell] listens to his Solicitor General argue the case,
[Rush Lindell] then walks out,
[Rush Lindell] gets back to the White House and posts on Truth Social:
[Rush Lindell] And I'm going to quote this directly because it matters.
[Rush Lindell] He wrote:
[Rush Lindell] "We are the only country in the world stupid enough to allow birthright citizenship.
[Reagan] Which is factually not accurate.
[Reagan] Over thirty countries allow it.
[Rush Lindell] Right!
[Rush Lindell] But the President wasn't at the court doing legal analysis-he was doing theater,
[Rush Lindell] and that's the honest read.
[Reagan] What I'd push back on slightly,
[Reagan] the legal argument itself.
[Speaker 4] If health is separate from the theater,
[Speaker 4] the executive order raises a real constitutional question about five words in the Fourteenth Amendment.
[Rush Lindell] Five words,
[Rush Lindell] subject to the jurisdiction thereof-that's the whole fight; that's what twelve justices worth of scrutiny is about to land on.
[Speaker 4] And the clock is running." SCOTUSblog reported twelve opinions still outstanding as of yesterday-an opinion is expected before this term closes.
[Rush Lindell] However this comes down,
[Rush Lindell] and we'll get into the legal architecture of that argument,
[Rush Lindell] the bigger story starts the day after.
[Rush Lindell] day after.
[Rush Lindell] So what exactly does that executive order say the 14th Amendment means?
[Speaker 4] That's where it gets complicated fast.
[Rush Lindell] So those five words-the whole constitutional fight lives in them.
[Rush Lindell] Walk me through the two sides.
[Speaker 4] The government's argument is that subject to the jurisdiction thereof means allegiance,
[Speaker 4] not just physical presence; their read,
[Speaker 4] the Fourteenth Amendment was written to give citizenship to freed slaves after Dred Scott,
[Speaker 4] full stop.
[Speaker 4] Children of people here illegally or temporarily,
[Speaker 4] different situation entirely.
[Rush Lindell] So they're saying context matters.
[Rush Lindell] eighteen sixty eight,
[Rush Lindell] not twenty twenty six.
[Speaker 4] Right; and the Washington Times editorial out today makes that case bluntly:
[Speaker 4] "Can any serious legal scholar argue the amendment's authors intended citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil regardless of circumstance?
[Rush Lindell] Strong words!
[Speaker 4] It's an opinion piece,
[Speaker 4] but that's the originalist argument in plain English.
[Speaker 4] Now,
[Speaker 4] the other side points straight to Wong Kim Ark,
[Speaker 4] eighteen ninety eight,
[Speaker 4] Supreme Court,
[Rush Lindell] Mm
[Speaker 4] six
[Rush Lindell] -hmm.
[Speaker 4] to two.
[Speaker 4] Two,
[Speaker 4] born in San Francisco,
[Speaker 4] parents were Chinese nationals, never eligible for citizenship.
[Speaker 4] Court said it didn't matter.
[Speaker 4] Born here?
[Speaker 4] You're a citizen.
[Rush Lindell] And that case is,
[Rush Lindell] what,
[Rush Lindell] 128 years old?
[Speaker 4] 128 years.
[Speaker 4] The challengers say Wong Kim Ark already answered this question.
[Speaker 4] The government's trying to relitigate settled law.
[Rush Lindell] So the government's response is,
[Rush Lindell] what,
[Rush Lindell] that case doesn't apply?
[Rush Lindell] Doesn't apply!
[Speaker 4] They argue Wong Kim Ark only covered children of permanent residents—people with domicile here,
[Speaker 4] not someone on a tourist visa,
[Speaker 4] not someone who crossed the border illegally.
[Speaker 4] That's the narrowing theory.
[Rush Lindell] That's doing a lot of heavy lifting on one word in a hundred and thirty year old opinion.
[Speaker 4] It is,
[Speaker 4] and apparently Roberts agreed.
[Speaker 4] According to last month at the Supreme Court,
[Rush Lindell] Yes.
[Speaker 4] the Solicitor General argued both
[Speaker 3] sides.
[Speaker 4] Argued the court needs to expand its reading to address a "new world": birth tourism,
[Speaker 4] eight billion people.
[Rush Lindell] One plain right away.
[Rush Lindell] Roberts stopped him cold.
[Rush Lindell] Well,
[Rush Lindell] it's a new world; it's the same Constitution.
[Reagan] That's the whole argument right there!
[Rush Lindell] It tells you exactly where Roberts was sitting when he heard that brief; so the Government's theory,
[Rush Lindell] allegiance over geography,
[Rush Lindell] runs straight into a hundred and twenty eight years of precedent and the Chief Justice cutting them off at the knees in open court.
[Reagan] That's the set-up.
[Reagan] The question is whether the rest of the bench agreed.
[Reagan] And that's where the oral argument gets interesting,
[Reagan] because the answer isn't as clean as Roberts made it sound.
[Reagan] Yeah,
[Reagan] Alito and Thomas were in a different zip code entirely.
[Reagan] We'll get there.
[Reagan] So now we know who lined up where,
[Reagan] and,
[Reagan] oh,
[Reagan] man,
[Reagan] this is the part I've been waiting for!
[Rush Lindell] The irony?
[Reagan] The irony!
[Rush Lindell] Alito and Thomas,
[Rush Lindell] the two justices most likely to hand Trump a win,
[Rush Lindell] according to last month at the Supreme Court,
[Rush Lindell] Alito went after the challengers.
[Rush Lindell] He argued illegal immigration was basically unknown when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in eighteen sixty eight.
[Rush Lindell] eight:
[Rush Lindell] Thomas Same Direction
[Reagan] Those two are probably the dissenters-the math gets brutal from there.
[Rush Lindell] Right; because then you've got Gorsuch,
[Rush Lindell] Kavanaugh and Barrett,
[Rush Lindell] Trump's three picks,
[Rush Lindell] his people; and Gorsuch is in that argument telling the Solicitor General,
[Rush Lindell] quote,
[Rush Lindell] 'I'm not sure how much you want to rely on Wong Kim Ark.' That's not help; that's a warning shot.
[Reagan] Gorsuch also pointed out that in eighteen sixty eight
[Reagan] Anyone could show up in the U.S. and establish domicile.
[Reagan] There were basically no immigration laws,
[Reagan] so the government's domicile theory kind of collapses on its own historical evidence.
[Reagan] He used their argument to argue against them:
[Reagan] chef's kiss.
[Rush Lindell] And Kavanaugh? He asked why bother ruling on the constitutional question at all when the court could just resolve it on statutory grounds,
[Rush Lindell] the Immigration and Nationality Act.
[Rush Lindell] Act.
[Reagan] Which means even if Trump squeaks through on the Constitution,
[Reagan] Kavanaugh might hand the other side a win anyway on a technicality.
[Rush Lindell] That's not a technicality; that's the court doing what courts do; but the practical result is the same.
[Reagan] And Newsweek is reporting Trump himself isn't optimistic.
[Reagan] After oral arguments,
[Reagan] he's not feeling great about his own case.
[Reagan] The man sat in that courtroom and watched his appointees.
[Reagan] Please probe the Solicitor General.
[Rush Lindell] SCOTUSblog's transcript analysis puts the most likely outcome at six to three or seven to two against the government.
[Reagan] So the president who reshaped the court may be reshaped by it.
[Reagan] You cannot write this stuff.
[Rush Lindell] Look,
[Rush Lindell] skeptical questions don't always predict votes,
[Rush Lindell] but the pressure was asymmetric:
[Rush Lindell] Gorsuch,
[Rush Lindell] Roberts,
[Rush Lindell] Jackson all concentrated fire on the government side.
[Reagan] And all of this drama,
[Reagan] all of it, comes down to five words in one sentence written in eighteen sixty eight,
[Reagan] which actually,
[Reagan] well,
[Reagan] someone should probably explain that in a way regular people can follow.
[Rush Lindell] Are you proposing a seminar?
[Reagan] Something like that. Stick around.
[Reagan] All right,
[Reagan] Welcome to the part of the show I am calling The Five Word Constitutional Crisis-Five Words Written in eighteen sixty eight,
[Reagan] and lawyers have been billing by the hour ever since.
[Rush Lindell] One Hundred and Fifty Eight Years of Billable Hours
[Reagan] Subject to the jurisdiction thereof. That's it.
[Reagan] That's the whole thing.
[Reagan] That's what we're doing here,
[Reagan] people.
[Rush Lindell] Riveting
[Reagan] Now the Solicitor General John Sauer walks into the Supreme Court and drops this line:
[Reagan] "Eight billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who's a U S citizen.
[Rush Lindell] Wow.
[Reagan] Eight billion!
[Rush Lindell] Okay,
[Rush Lindell] but by that logic-
[Reagan] Apply it to the Second Amendment:
[Reagan] "Eight billion people are one plane ride away from owning a firearm." Where's that panic?
[Rush Lindell] Or the First Amendment:
[Rush Lindell] "Eight billion people one plane ride away from filing a strongly worded op ed.
[Reagan] Terrifying; and Roberts cool as ice goes,
[Reagan] well,
[Reagan] it's a new world.
[Reagan] It's the same Constitution.
[Rush Lindell] Which is the whole ball game, honestly.
[Rush Lindell] That's Roberts telling you exactly where he lands.
[Reagan] Meanwhile,
[Reagan] cable news has boiled this entire constitutional question down to "Trump wants to steal baby citizenship.
[Reagan] Versus liberals want open borders.
[Reagan] That's it.
[Reagan] Pick a side.
[Rush Lindell] No mention of Wong Kim Ark,
[Rush Lindell] no mention of eighteen sixty eight ratification debates-just vibes.
[Reagan] Just pure distilled vibes-five words that broke the Internet-and almost nobody's actually reading them.
[Rush Lindell] And while everyone's watching the court,
[Rush Lindell] there's a whole other story happening,
[Rush Lindell] one the media framing has completely buried.
[Reagan] That's the story that should terrify people,
[Reagan] and that's exactly where we're going.
[Reagan] So while every one's been watching the Supreme Court case,
[Reagan] the Administration's been running something else entirely-a parallel operation,
[Reagan] already live.
[Rush Lindell] The American Immigration Lawyers Association documented it cleanly:
[Rush Lindell] three prongs:
[Rush Lindell] end birthright citizenship,
[Rush Lindell] make naturalization harder to get,
[Rush Lindell] and strip citizenship from people who already have it.
[Reagan] In that order:
[Reagan] Birth to Oath
[Reagan] To revocation-the whole chain.
[Rush Lindell] And the revocation piece,
[Rush Lindell] that's the one the cameras aren't on.
[Rush Lindell] USCIS field offices.
[Speaker 4] Wow.
[Rush Lindell] The New York Times got internal guidance showing the target 100 to 200 denaturalization referrals per month.
[Rush Lindell] Now, to be clear,
[Rush Lindell] there's a legitimate legal argument for going after fraud,
[Rush Lindell] people who lied on applications.
[Rush Lindell] That's existed forever.
[Rush Lindell] That's how we got Nazi war criminals.
[Reagan] No argument from me:
[Reagan] fraud is fraud.
[Rush Lindell] But here's where I push back on the quota model.
[Rush Lindell] Between 2017 and 2025,
[Rush Lindell] eight years,
[Rush Lindell] there were just over 120 cases total.
[Rush Lindell] Now they want 100 to 200 every single month.
[Reagan] That's not enforcement,
[Reagan] that's a production line.
[Rush Lindell] And a former USCIS official told the Times that quotas change which cases get selected.
[Rush Lindell] Then you stop
[Speaker 5] asking "Is this case
[Rush Lindell] worth it?" and start asking "Can we close this fast?
[Reagan] We all know what's really happening here; Supreme Court is the visible play,
[Reagan] the cameras are there,
[Reagan] the arguments are there,
[Reagan] but this machine is already running regardless of how the ruling comes down.
[Rush Lindell] And the
[Speaker 3] little
[Rush Lindell] The legal architecture makes it volume friendly.
[Rush Lindell] Denaturalization is civil,
[Rush Lindell] not criminal; no right to a court appointed attorney; no statute of limitations; the evidentiary bar is clear and convincing,
[Rush Lindell] not the criminal standard.
[Reagan] Built for Scale
[Rush Lindell] The AILA's framing is blunt; this is a coordinated strategy,
[Rush Lindell] not three separate enforcement decisions-one administration,
[Rush Lindell] three simultaneous prosecutions.
[Rush Lindell] The spontaneous pressure points on citizenship itself.
[Speaker 4] Win or lose at SCOTUS,
[Speaker 4] the apparatus is already in motion.
[Speaker 4] That's the story nobody's leading with tonight.
[Rush Lindell] And that sets up a real question:
[Rush Lindell] What does the administration actually get depending on how the ruling goes?
[Rush Lindell] Win,
[Rush Lindell] lose,
[Rush Lindell] or split,
[Rush Lindell] none of those outcomes turns this off.
[Speaker 4] And the conservative reckoning over that-that's a conversation worth having.
[Speaker 4] Stick around.
[Speaker 5] Mm-hmm.
[Speaker 4] So!
[Speaker 4] two tracks-two very different outcomes.
[Speaker 4] Let's run the tape on what actually happens in each.
[Rush Lindell] If Trump loses and the signals from that bench were not good for him,
[Rush Lindell] the denaturalization machine doesn't shut down.
[Rush Lindell] Congress is still moving.
[Rush Lindell] Senator Eric Schmitt's SCAM Act,
[Rush Lindell] the Stop Citizenship Abuse and Misrepresentation Act,
[Rush Lindell] would expand revocation grounds to cover fraud.
[Rush Lindell] odd-terrorist ties,
[Rush Lindell] aggravated felonies within ten years of naturalization.
[Speaker 4] And the USCIS quota apparatus is already running; a loss at Supreme Court doesn't unplug that.
[Rush Lindell] Right; now,
[Rush Lindell] if Trump wins,
[Rush Lindell] even partially,
[Rush Lindell] Newsweek puts the affected population at around a hundred fifty thousand children born here per year under the current framework.
[Rush Lindell] Hospitals,
[Rush Lindell] agencies,
[Rush Lindell] state vital records offices?
[Rush Lindell] None of them are configured to make citizenship determinations at birth; that's an implementation problem nobody has a plan for.
[Speaker 6] Nobody has a plan.
[Speaker 6] Shocking!
[Rush Lindell] And this is where I want to push back on my own side for a second,
[Rush Lindell] Rush.
[Rush Lindell] There is a genuine conservative split here.
[Rush Lindell] Scholars like Ilan Wurman and Richard Epstein-serious legal minds-backed the administration's position.
[Rush Lindell] Wurman filed an amicus brief in Trump v.
[Rush Lindell] Barbara.
[Rush Lindell] ABRAHAM.
[Rush Lindell] Epstein literally wrote a book.
[Speaker 6] And they're not cranks:
[Speaker 6] these are rigorous originalists making a real textual argument.
[Rush Lindell] No question; but-and this matters-the quota driven denaturalization apparatus is a separate problem.
[Rush Lindell] Using administrative volume to strip citizenship,
[Rush Lindell] civil standard,
[Rush Lindell] no appointed counsel-that is exactly the kind of unchecked federal power a limited government conservative should resist.
[Rush Lindell] Resist.
[Speaker 6] Two things going on at once-you can think birthright citizenship law needs fixing and still think that apparatus is dangerous.
[Rush Lindell] Precisely,
[Rush Lindell] and that's the honest split-the constitutional question and the enforcement machinery are not the same conversation.
[Speaker 6] You know what nobody wants to say; some of the loudest Conservatives cheering this on haven't read the SCAM Act; they're cheering the jersey,
[Speaker 6] not the bill.
[Rush Lindell] That's fair,
[Rush Lindell] and that's the productive discomfort the ruling is going to force-whoever writes that opinion.
[Speaker 4] So watch two things when the ruling drops:
[Speaker 4] first,
[Speaker 4] who writes the majority opinion; Roberts writes it,
[Speaker 4] you get a narrow textualist ruling; Thomas or Alito writes it,
[Speaker 4] you get an originalist rewrite of the citizenship question itself.
[Speaker 4] That is a very different opinion.
[Rush Lindell] And the TPS case that just landed,
[Rush Lindell] the six three ruling in Mullin v Doe,
[Rush Lindell] is the context everyone's missing.
[Rush Lindell] The Court cleared the way to
[Rush Lindell] To end protections for three hundred and fifty thousand Haitians and sixty one hundred Syrians yesterday.
[Speaker 6] On the same week,
[Speaker 6] that's the second front.
[Rush Lindell] Right; and per CNN eight cases are still pending in this term,
[Rush Lindell] including birthright citizenship,
[Rush Lindell] so the ruling drops any morning could be Monday.
[Speaker 6] You know what nobody wants to say.
[Rush Lindell] Yeah.
[Speaker 6] Whatever the court does in Trump v. Barbara,
[Speaker 6] the Fourteenth Amendment fight does not end at this ruling.
[Speaker 6] Congress,
[Speaker 6] the courts,
[Speaker 6] the denaturalization pipeline.
[Speaker 6] All of it keeps moving.
[Rush Lindell] That's the story the next week of coverage will completely miss.
[Speaker 6] And we already told you that's the difference between noise and signal.
[Speaker 4] Bottom line,
[Speaker 4] the Supreme Court has twelve opinions left to issue-twelve-and Trump v.
[Speaker 4] Dobbs is sitting at the top of that pile.
[Speaker 4] This is the biggest citizenship ruling in a generation,
[Speaker 4] and the clock is ticking.
[Rush Lindell] What I keep coming back to is what we talked about earlier:
[Rush Lindell] five words,
[Rush Lindell] subject to the jurisdiction thereof. That phrase has carried 128 years of settled law since Wong Kim Ark.
[Speaker 4] Mm-hmm.
[Speaker 6] Mm-hmm.
[Rush Lindell] The court doesn't overturn that lightly.
[Speaker 6] And Trump left those oral arguments posting on Truth Social.
[Speaker 6] That's the tell.
[Speaker 6] When the theater starts that early,
[Speaker 6] you know the legal confidence isn't exactly overflowing.
[Rush Lindell] Watch who writes the opinion.
[Rush Lindell] That's your real signal.
[Speaker 6] That's exactly right.
[Speaker 6] And remember,
[Speaker 6] even if Trump loses,
[Speaker 6] the SCAM Act and the Denaturalization Quota machine keep running.
[Speaker 6] This fight doesn't end.
[Speaker 6] It doesn't end with one ruling.
[Rush Lindell] Not even close.
[Speaker 6] Thanks for riding this one out with us.
[Speaker 6] If today's episode hit,
[Speaker 6] subscribe,
[Speaker 6] drop a five-star review and pass it to somebody who needs to hear it.
[Speaker 6] New episodes every weekday.
[Rush Lindell] See you tomorrow,
[Rush Lindell] Rush.
[Speaker 6] We'll be here.