6/30/26 Panel

I'm Good morning. Welcome to the Roundtable for this Tuesday, the 30th of June. I welcome you to the program. We have a winner for you. A great show yesterday. We have a great show today. And we're very excited to have you with us and being a part of it. So let me just tell you how a little sketch. First of all, I apologize during the billboard that is that one minute where I describe what's going to happen. And all of a sudden, my headphones went on. And I thought it was off the air. But apparently I wasn't off the air. And it was just me sort of going. Now they know. Yes, that's right. I want to bring them into all the, yes, the anxiety and angst that we feel here. But I was telling, what I was getting ready to say was that we are going to hear part two of our series. We still hold these truths, America at 250, and that'll be at 11 o'clock this morning with one slight little hitch. which is that at 1007 this morning, we're going to be going over to National Public Radio and their coverage of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of the United States's last decisions for this session, which includes, of course, birthright citizenship. So we've been waiting for this for weeks, and today's the day. It's the last day of their session. So it's going to happen today. We're going to take the coverage and we'll see how long that lasts. And then hopefully they'll do their thing and then they'll come back to us and then we'll finish up. But we'll see and we'll keep you posted as we go along. So that is coming up. And on the segment this morning in our special. We still hold these truths. We are going to feature a interview with a guy by the name of Michael Oslin, who has written a fascinating book about the Declaration of Independence, not only the Declaration of Independence on what it means and what it stands for, but about the object itself, about the parchment, about the ink, about what it takes to keep it in the National Archives and not shriveling up and... dying. So, we will have that interview coming up. Also, we will talk to Mike Hare. Mike Hare and I have known each other for, oh, darn near 40 years, and we're in radio together very early on in the mid-80s, and Mike is a terrific, was a terrific broadcaster, and now he's a

their history book club. And he's going to come on this morning and tell us, because normally we would have book picks on Tuesday, he's going to tell us about great books to read about American history. So that will be coming up as well. All of that. Not to mention, we have news beyond the Supreme Court decision, and we'll get to that with our... Incredible group this morning. Let me introduce them to you. Semi-retired editor-at-large columnist, editorial writer. Times unions Jay Jachniewicz joins us. Good morning, Jay. How are you? I'm well, and I just should probably tell you up front, I am in a cease radio mode today in honor of all the accomplishments we've made in Iran. So I will be talking. I will be sipping coffee. I will be holding forth, occasionally opining. But I am in a total cease. fire in a cease radio mode. Yes. And one other thing, the area around my chair is completely passable unless I decide otherwise.

Well, I'm glad you let us know. And by the way, for the next, like, eight appearances, you can say the same thing. I can. Yeah, it's great. It's still a cease radio. It'll be incredible. We welcome Justin Patch, Associate Professor of Music at Vassar College, Studies, Music in American Politics, Sound Studies, East Asian Art. music and music in the African Diaspora. Justin, it's always great to have you here. Thank you very much. Great to be here with you. Thank you. Mike Spain is here, former Times Union associate editor, long time WAMC panelists. Good morning, Michael. Good morning. How are you doing? I'm all right. I'm doing fine. I went to go see James Taylor last night. It's back. What a lovely evening. Just a lovely, easy evening. It's going to be a Tanglewood this weekend. Third and fourth, right? Yeah. Yeah, I went with a high school, where I say high school. I was actually a kindergarten buddy. We've known each other forever. He came out from Philadelphia to see the show. We went to go see Paul Simon. We went to go see James Taylor and just had a lovely, lovely time. Or as he put it to me, 162 years of musical expertise. Wow. Wow. They are veterans out there, aren't they? But it was. Great. It was just absolutely fantastic. Catherine Tan joins us Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Vassar College. Her research is on health, wellness, and medical knowledge. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks for having me. It is a delight to have you. Thank you very much for being here as always. Let's go to... Our stories of the day. Well, we are waiting, as I mentioned, waiting for what the Supreme Court has to say, and certainly on birthright citizenship and the remaining cases. However, we want to talk a little bit about what happened yesterday. And many decisions. We talked about some, but they were coming out. We were sort of doing it in real time yesterday. The mail-in ballot law, Supreme Court upholding Mississippi's late-arriving mail-in ballot law, was one that I would like to talk a little bit more about this morning, and then also the independence of the Fed, where the justices are expanding Trump's power-to-fire officials and twin rulings. The Supreme Court affirmed the Fed's independence and said its leaders could... not be fired at will, but said President Trump could fire other independent regulators for any reason. Who understands that? So, Amy Coney Barrett understands it. Okay. She does. She said these two decisions are in such tension. I don't have the exact quote of my thick of tips. But she's right. You can't on the one hand say, well, Congress once upon a time a hundred years ago created something that's an independent entity. And we're going to respect that because that's the tradition of that agency and so on and so forth and blah, blah, blah. But yet Congress created all these other independent things. And they're not.

They're not like the other thing because we say so, and that's the way it is. And... I did expect that it was going to happen like this, and I've been saying it for months, that they will let him do a lot of things in the name of advancing the conservative project, but they are not going to let him screw up the economy. And they threaded, they didn't even thread a needle. I think when you're threading a needle and the thread breaks and you pull half of it through and the other half doesn't and ends up nodding. of what they got here. I don't, I understand it in as much as they, this ideological group of people had a desire to do certain things. They did them and they made it look like they, and they couched it in legal language that I don't think holds up to really close scrutiny. Mike Spain. Yeah, I mean, they were trying to split the baby here. Essentially, they said when you appoint all those other boards, the Federal Trade Commission and, you know, maybe the labor boards and others, the environment watchdogs, when Congress does those and establishes them as independent agencies, you can fire them. But don't mess with the Fed. In other words, they must recognize that this president at this time. was really going to screw things up by requiring his appointed commissioners to lower interest rates when it would have been a wreaked disaster on the economy. And they saw that and they said, oh, you can't do that. So in other words, they're saying. We'll let you do this. We'll let you take all those agencies. And, you know, FDR wanted to pack the Federal Trade Commission because it made some decisions that contradicted the New Deal. And, you know, the Supreme Court said, no, you can't do it. Well, now they're saying you can do it. They're letting them do just so much. But they're not letting them mess with the Fed. I'm glad they're not letting them mess with the Fed. Congress did establish these as independent agencies with rotating chairmanship and board members so that there would be an evolution. Sure, a president gets to fill vacancies, but it's not this radical remaking of things that now Trump has license to do. Jay, I think you're right that to point out that they're not going to let him just like. tank the economy, right? I mean, he's already doing that, but they're not going to let him have a full, full control to really drive this down faster and further. But it's still really short-sighted, right? This is, for now, it's like, okay, we're going to give you the rest, but not this piece. But this is incredibly short-sighted because, you know, we know he likes to

carry out these retaliatory, you know, these retribution and go after individuals that sit on these agencies. So, you know, I hate to see what's going to come out of this now that they've expanded his power so broadly. And it's what's wild is... Even after saying that he can't immediately remove Lisa Cook, I think it was last night or this morning, I saw another article where he's like, no, I'm still going to pursue this. And that whole case just... I mean, nothing surprises any of us anymore. But the hypocrisy is just incredibly amazing. So he's accusing Cook of, like, mortgage fraud. And that's why she should be removed from the Federal Reserve. At the same time, he has committed all kinds of crimes on the side. Right? In the same breath that they're saying, okay, we're going to let you... have firing power over these other agencies, they're also holding him to... pay E. Jean Carroll. And it's like, over here, you've been, you know, you've been charged with, like, sexual abuse and defamation, but you're going after Cook because of mortgage fraud that has, and there's no evidence. There's no evidence that there's mortgage fraud going on. Before we proceed, can I just read a quote that Trump put up yesterday? I don't think you're going to read. He said, quote, we will take appropriate action immediately to make sure that someone who has committed wrongdoing will not. be making vital decisions concerning the welfare of the United States of America. Oh, wonderful. Said a 34 count felon. I mean, exactly what you're saying, Catherine. And, you know, just a couple of, it was a couple of days ago, he basically handed over some enormous mining contract to his sons. Yeah. He's like, okay. Yeah, let's talk about fraud. Let's talk about, uh, I think. So I understand the legal theory or the political theory behind what drives this decision is that those who regulate. the citizenry and the business and all that should be accountable to the people. So I understand the political theory about independent bodies. I get that. The problem is that expertise is actually a real thing. And in order to run a country of 320, 330 million people with the largest economy in the world,

You need people with expertise to do the regulation. I don't care what anybody says regulation is not easy. I think Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are finding out right now that the business of government requires people who have spent a lot of time in government to make happen to make happen well. And so these things need to be put into a balance. And I think Congress needs to revisit what it means to be independent in light of, you know, a very, what I think is a very like cogent critique that those who regulate should be accountable balance with the fact that those that regulate should be experts. competent at least yeah yeah i was thinking about what uh what katherine was saying and the thing that had jumped in in my mind as this as he was saying this about Lisa Cook was uh his endorsement of Ken Paxton in texas yeah like this is the this is the best person we have running for the state of texas is this guy who's Bribery charges. 42. That's right. And felony charges and of impeachment. That's right. And it is extensive allegations of corruption and bribery and abusive office. And so, yes, it does make one wonder, but not that hard, I guess. It's what's... interesting about this. I mean, if you just take it, you know, just taking a step back and trying not to be too depressed about it. You know, it also is a continuation of the dismantling, I think, of civil service protections in general government. That's right. And the idea that, you know, as you said, you know, kind of a professional government, having competent people in government. And little by little, we are turning into, you know, the idea, they're taking the idea of a unitary executive. to, I think, we're seeing where it goes, which is we have no, you know, objectively competent government, objectively or permanent government in a sense of government workers, the people who keep the lights on. And, you know, when you do that, you end up in, you know, just a system of incredible cronyism. I mean, New York State functions in something like that way. But you have civil service. You have unions. You have a civil service and so forth. And then when a new governor comes in, pretty much they can wipe the whole government clean of executives and appointed people who are there, understandably. I don't disagree with this to carry out the mission they were elected to carry out. But to just fire everybody willy-nilly, that's where we're headed. There's a saying in political theory that those who... who do revolution at the business end of a gun are not the best qualified to make sure your trash gets picked up at the time. And you have to be able to have people who have pure, very boring, bureaucratic competence if you're going to deliver services to 330 million people.

And I think that that point needs to be made over and over again, that this is about delivering services to people. Like the FDA needs to make sure that your food is safe. We all want that. And it's unsexy and it's boring. But you know what? It's what we need. It works. You're right to bring up the point of how we are devaluing. And taking for granted the importance of having experts sitting on an agency. You know, you want, I mean, we're seeing this with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and DHS. Like, you need competent experts who know what they're talking about to make these big decisions. Otherwise, you know, we get screwed down the line. And what's happening right now is they're moving these experts one at a time or, you know, at the beginning it was, you know. one swoop and we're going to see we're going to quickly see the impacts of that right as we're removing these people I mean they're you know to let Trump just you know fire whoever he has he has taken issue with any any new enemies he has made um He, you know, he's not thinking about, like, how is this going to impact the decision-making process in these agencies? How is it going to impact, you know, American lives and the policies and programs that are put out? But we're going to see the impact of this as we're removing experts. We're going to take a break and we'll be back. We'll talk about the other decision, the other big decision yesterday on mail-in ballots. We'll discuss that, of course, awaiting the Supreme Court's decisions this morning and we'll have coverage coming up in our 10 o'clock hour. All of that and more. First, this short break.

Good morning. Welcome back to the roundtable and to our panel discussion this morning. Jay Jockdenwitz, Justin Patch, Mike Spain, Catherine Tan, and we welcome all of you, your letters panel at WAMC.org. We spent the first part of the program talking about one of the decisions that came from the Supreme Court yesterday. We'll talk about another decision in just a moment. Meanwhile, The justices today will issue major decisions regarding birthright citizenship and state laws that bar the participation of transgender girls and women in school sports. We will have coverage of those decisions coming up at 1007 this morning from National Public Radio. So the other big decision yesterday came regarding mail-in ballots, and this is something obviously that has been talked about a lot over the last several, well, years, months, weeks. in the sense of how this was going to be the impact that this would have on the midterm elections and what it meant for states. And so yesterday we found out about this. And I think, Mike, a bit of a surprise from the court. Yeah, it seemed like an easy one that the court could have invalidated ballots that arrive after election day. That's what the president wanted. That's what Republicans in Congress have pushed for. And yet, they're saying that if a state decides, and that's important, if a state decides that it will allow you to count ballots that come in reasonably after election day if they were postmarked before election day. especially service men and women who are overseas or others who may have difficulty in rural areas getting their votes in. You know, if a state decides to do that, the Supreme Court says that's their right. I mean, you might want to clean up the The program, or you might want to amend it, like California is under a lot of criticism right now because it takes them so long. They're going to invest $50 million into it, I read, to try to speed up the counting of ballots. But that's all on the states, and that's a good thing, that they're leaving it to states in that regard. But it worries me, too, because what if a state starts requiring you to have a... A language test or what if a state test makes up some, you know, obscure rule that makes a big hurdle for a lot of people. That I guess the Supreme Court is deferring to states and that's good in that sense. This was the Mississippi law, as you mentioned. And one of the things that's fascinating, I find, I mean, many of this, the story is over and over and over again, but that.

You're looking at the story that is being told by the president and the White House about how this system is rife with fraud. And there seems to be little to no proof that is the case. And the Supreme Court, if they were going to rule in another way, would have had to at least come to that. To my mind, anyway, would have had to come to that decision, too, that there was fraud and the way to avoid it is to not allow these ballots. So somebody who is much wiser than I, when the Republicans first started their crusade against voting in 2010, said this is a solution in surge of a problem. And we know, I think more or less we've been fortunate. Excuse me. that the Supreme Court has upheld the state's rights to do voting. But I think one of the hidden problems is that Trump, in all of his delusions about voting, has cost a lot of states and municipalities an awful lot of money that could have been spent elsewhere. And, you know, you brought up $50 million. For the state of California, $50 million is not a lot. No. But the pressure to change voting machines in some places where they had made a relatively substantial investment in Dominion voting machines. And then people rose up and decided Dominion was terrible. Where did they get that idea? Yeah. But that was a pretty substantial investment in some places that there was. political pressure for them to get rid of machines and have to buy new ones, which, you know, let's face it, even if we're talking about, you know, Duchess County, that's money that could have been productively used for something else that suddenly they're, you're short, $250,000, which for a state budget is nothing for a municipal budget. That is real money that people could have used to do something else. And that, to me, is... Pire a few election workers to count balance or any of that, yeah. You know, there's any number of things. And that's the thing that's kind of bugging me, is this political pressure is outsourcing the cost at some, sometimes to municipalities that simply don't have the money to do it. All based on complete misinformation. Based on nothing. No, disinformation. Disinformation. Deliberately wrong information being pushed out there. Absolutely right. Based on deliberate disinformation. And it is, you know, you feel like you're living in some sort of surreal parallel universe when one ignorant leaders. set of lies can cost us so much money and not just that but it you know it creates a lot of confusion among the voting public on whether and you know on what to do and it creates like barriers to actually you know whether that's

actual material access or like just psychological barriers to voting right he's done enough damage without setting up um these these actual obstacles right in in how people understand voting and whether or not they feel like they have access to it and that that is that's really taking it to democracy right this is you are you are, even if someone is not directly impacted by whatever new systems that state's set up, just the idea that voting is at stake, or rather that there are obstacles to voting is really detrimental. And what's so annoying is he knows better. You know, if there's an early count of, you know, 1% that shows somebody leading and then, you know, and then the night kind of fills in and other districts, you know, start to report in. And the election dramatically changes once you have like 5% of the vote in or 10% or 50%. He is fraud. Look at the votes. The votes changed. How did they change? Why did they change? Who changed them? And, you know. It is not just Trump, and that's what really bothers me. We saw an example of this, you know, election manipulation on a different level going on, you know, just locally in Rensselaer County across the river, where the board of elections, and, you know, we could not figure out for a long time why the Democrats were going along with this because it was an advantage to the Republicans. They were closing polling places. So the state put in early voting, which was, clearly going to help people who could not work out their schedule on a Tuesday, which is no longer a holiday in this country. I think it was when I was a kid, but it isn't anymore, you know, for the average working person. So, you know, mothers with children that, you know, would have to get a babysitter to go out to the poll. Even if it was an early voting situation, they would have to go a distance. So they specific, I'm sorry. rushing through this a little too fast. They specifically closed the polling places in the city of Troy so that early voting had to be done out in the suburbs. So the people who this would benefit, which would be the low-income people in Troy who can't work out the time to take off on Tuesday, now had to hire, now had to get a bus or a taxi, and they'd have to drag all the kids out or get a babysitter. The people who needed early voting the most were... Make it, you know, you can say it sounds so sensible. Why don't we just count all votes on election day? It sounds perfectly logical. But you, behind this is an insidious effort to target people who can't do it that way. Yeah. Right. Accessibility, just, you know, because it's available on this one day and everyone has or anyone who's eligible to vote has the right to vote, accessibility is not equal across the board. As you mentioned, you know, people...

need child care or they're working and their hours are not compatible. There are all these things that create barriers. So early voting is supposed to lift some of those or alleviate some of those barriers. But when you move it to the burbs, then a lot of the people who would have benefited from this are unable to take advantage of it. But we luckily have a 18th century system in place, which puts a like two month gap or two and a half month gap in between voting day and when you start your new job. So what is the rush to find out within 24 hours? Like, chill, man. Let people. We have a 24-hour news cycle. We need to feed that feast. What is wrong with people? Like, you have two months before you start a new job. Why do we need to know the night of? This is stupid. On that note, go ahead, Mike. Well, I'm just going to say there is a philosophy. Catherine, you referenced it. You both referenced, you know, how people deliberately put obstacles in front. There's a philosophy that you want to make it more difficult for people to vote, and that way you only get the most. you know, earnest voters. You don't get the casual voters. And that's a good thing because we don't need those other people. I mean, that's the way it's portrayed by some. They think that it is good to add friction to the process so that not everybody can just vote easily. And that is so contrary to the whole way it has been prior to... the recent decades, you know, that you just want to make it easier for people to vote. You want to add, you want to lower the age to 18 back, you know, in the 70s. You want to, you want to make it easy to mail in votes. And this is a democracy. You want to make it for easy, easy for people to participate. And making it more difficult is so anti-democratic. Well, it's anti-Democrat, too. We'll take a break. When we come back, we'll continue bringing us up to the top of the hour and news. We welcome your input panel at wamc.org. Panel at wamc.org. We'll return right after this break.

Good morning. Welcome back to the roundtable and to our panel discussion for this morning, Jay Jockowitz, Justin Patch, Catherine Tan, and Mike Spain. We have a great group, and we welcome you panel at wamc.org. Panel at wamc.org. So, we have a couple of letters, this one from Eileen. Is there any possibility that a municipality could win a lawsuit if that city sued the people who spread disinformation, assuming that the misinformation did, in fact, cost the city money? And are there any other kinds of disinformation that cost cities money they could successfully sue over? I mean, my thought is the Dominion stuff you might be able to just because that defamation suit was already adjudicated. And so once somebody has been found liable, it becomes very easy for you to say, hey, look, this had an impact. Although, to be fair, it was elected officials that made that call. And so it would be easy to defend yourself and say, hey, look. Elected officials were the ones who decided that Dominion machines were tainted and we needed to sever that contract, lose the machines, lose the rest of the money in the contract, and get a new one with a different supplier. I think that counter argument is very easy to make like you didn't have to do this. You chose to do it. Therefore, you have to eat the money that was used. It, you know, this may be a bit of a reach, but I'll try it. The idea that people are accountable for what they say was, was starting to be tested, I think, in the Trump January 6th case. Yeah. That What the argument was was that this was more than just a politician spewing whatever he wanted to spew. This had a profound effect on the rest of the country and ultimately defrauded the public. So, you know, could you make that argument in a lawsuit to say this disinformation defrauded? the municipality, they defrauded the elected officials, they deprived everybody of an ability to have facts at there. I don't know. I think the bigger issue here is that political speech is overprotected by American law, and that is something that needs to be revisited in a very serious and sober way. The trouble is that, and this would come up in any suit that the listener suggests. It is disinformation. Somebody is distributing false information based on no facts. You know, the way Rudy Giuliani was making up stuff in Georgia, all that stuff. But then people who follow them truly do believe it. So they believe it. They're told by officials that they respect. God knows why. And they believe it. And then people who...

are believing it, are spreading it. And they don't know it's intentionally incorrect information. They believe it to be true. And then that becomes part of the motive. This is what I was told. We've gotten things wrong before. We've made studies about science and, you know, that affect our health. We've made studies about, you know, the way water systems work or the way municipal roads might work. You know, how many roads and projects have they put in like... Albany made a big mistake in the 60s by putting in the 787 bypass, and now they regret it, and they've regretted it for years. You know, people make mistakes honestly because they listen to other people. And if we happen to be listening to those promulgators of disinformation, We're victims of that, and we act on that, and it's very hard to prove. But people in positions of authority should be held to an entirely different standard. Which is the point about the Supreme Court case that was made. by a lot of conservative think tanks, is that people who do regulation should be accountable to voters. So we're back. We sort of went a little bit full circle on this. But expertise matters. And this, I mean, look, when you talk about infrastructure, man, expertise is everything. So speaking of expertise, our Aaron Pissity, who is a professor of economics at Ciena University and a regular on our program on Fridays, and also our Fed guy. He's our Fed guy. We got a guy for that. That's right. We got a guy. And he writes and says, excellent analysis of the hypocrisy of the Supreme Court's decision on the ability for the president to fire regulators at will, with the exception of the Fed. I think the justices know that allowing a president to fire governors of the Fed will tank the economy and thus their investment portfolios. But the decision on the other regulatory agencies will also tank the economy by increasing uncertainty and decreasing business investment. Business spending on long-term capital investment, like electric vehicles, construction projects, and so on, is what allows for an increase in our long-term standard of living. But by allowing regulators to be fired at will by any president will create a yo-yo effect every four years, what business will invest in, a multi-million, multi-decade project when they know... The regulations governing their investment can change every presidential term. This will slow business spending and job and income growth in both the long and short run. In other words, this decision will also tank the economy by stunting economic growth. It will be policy chaos that will likely be worse than what we saw with the tariffs. God help us. Please, writes Aaron. Aaron, thank you for that. Good analysis. Catherine. Well, I mean...

Trump fires people based on personal beef and self-interest. It's not like he's judging someone at an agency to be doing a poor job. That has nothing to do with his decision-making process for going after someone like Letitia James and Lisa Cook and Jerome Powell, right? Like he is just, he goes after people if it's going to serve him on some personal individual way. He's not making some judgment on their expertise at all. That's not part of his calculation ever. Well said. I mean, in fact, all you have to do is look at, you know, Kevin Warsh, the new Fed chairman. He first, his first meeting, he didn't lower interest rates like Trump had promised he would get to happen. And they asked Trump about, he says, whatever. I mean, he likes worse. He doesn't like Jerome Powell. And that's really all it was was a personal thing with Jerome Powell because Jerome Powell wouldn't bend his knee to Trump. You know, I think Aaron starts to get at, you know, the broader problem here, which is the, you know, just we now, we are headed toward an unfettered presidency. And so you ask yourself, well, what, okay, so he can't be criminally. investigated or indicted. He's virtually immune to that. He can't be bothered really with civil suits except, you know, maybe something hanging over from the previous, from his previous life before he was elected. He can fire anybody who disagrees with them in his own government. So what's the break? And the break is, what is what power is left for Congress if they can't even put in, you know, appoint these. individual, these independent commissions. So we seem to be down to the purest thing possible, which is either the power of the purse or the... or impeachment. And I'm afraid that, you know, at the moment, we're not going to see either of those things, you know, exercised by this Congress. But the next Congress could very welcome in and say, all right, fine, you want to wreak havoc on the FTC? We're going to zero out the funding for it. Not going to be an FTC as long as you're the president. You know, and you could go down the line. I don't know all the independent boards out there. I mean, that would be the hardball that Congress is going to have to play with this president. But I mean, you're talking about as if Congress doesn't have power right now, right? have power right now but they're not they're they're they're relinquishing it right they're abdicating um and that's the problem it's it's what it has revealed to us what this administration has revealed to us is that you know our trump trump has so much power not because of who he is as an individual but everyone around him who is allowing for him to just run this country into the ground, right? He's, in a way, you can't put all the blame on Trump, even though we would like to, right? Because it's, you know, he's such an easy, despicable target. But you look at everyone else around whom, who is, you know, supporting this, right? The Supreme Court justices, the people in Congress, it's wild.

How, I mean, they have the power of the purse now and they're not doing anything. That brings us to the letter from Terrence, who is on your page. At some point, we need to stop blaming only Trump. I've disliked the guy from the first time I saw his name anywhere decades ago. We need to start holding the rest of Congress accountable for the disinformation that has gone on. In particular, the GOP has supported all of this. It's disgusting. It's discussing that they perpetuate the lies and don't stand up to this person. Thank you, Terrence. Which has made it journalistically uncomfortable, I should add, because we have, you know, we've struggled for, you know, as an industry not to be partisan about things, but when one party is doing something, in this case not doing something in Congress, you know, you don't want to paint a broad, you don't want to paint an overly broad brush. So, you know, I find myself often when I'm writing an editorial correcting myself and saying it is not Congress. It is the Republican majority in Congress. that's doing this. And I have to be clear on that. And I think it's fair to the reader to do that. And it is not a partisan thing for me to do. But boy, is it uncomfortable as a journalist to be constantly saying the Republicans? Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of enabling. And I think it's... an outgrowth of how capricious Trump is is that Republicans for the last 12 years have not had a party platform because everything is like, well, whatever Trump says. And so that's why you see these wild inconsistencies and why people in Congress will never stand up because they're not sure what the party line is going to be because there is no. line and we're seeing how problematic that is and just personally they know that you know if they were to step out of line he's petty enough to go after them and even if he doesn't have any legal power to do that to them personally he has his you know his base who will docks people figure out where they live harass their families we they're There's a record of this. Well, I mean, what's his name? McKay said even a frivolous lawsuit costs you an awful lot of money to defend yourself. That's right. We are going to take a break. When we come back, we'll continue. And we are expecting to go over to NPR for their coverage of the Supreme Court. We'll have news. We'll come back for a moment or two and then go to NPR. All of that and more coming up. First, the news. Good morning. Welcome back to the roundtable and to our panel discussion. Today, as we mentioned, is the last day of the Supreme Court, and we are expecting in just a few minutes a decision in Trump v. Barbara, the case that considers the president's attempt to limit birthright citizenship as well as other major rulings. And because of these significant rulings, we're going to be going to...

Go to NPR coverage in just under a minute. Decisions are coming in right now, and we don't exactly know which will be first, but we're also, the other case, of course, is the law that, the state law that bars transgender girls and women from participating and girls and women's sports teams at public schools. It is also possible. that there will be other announcements by the president or members of the administration that will come later. So we'll go to NPR coverage, and if they end before 11 o'clock, we'll come back to this group and talk about the decisions that were laid down by the Supreme Court. In the meantime, we welcome you to write in panel at wamc.org. We now go over to NPR's coverage of this. This is live special coverage from NPR News. I'm Steve Inski. And I'm Michelle Martin. Good morning. Today, the Supreme Court is deciding its final cases of the term. Moments ago, they ruled on two cases dealing with trans athletes in high school and college sports, deciding that publicly funded schools can determine eligibility for women's and girls sports based on biological sex. We're still waiting on a major decision that will decide a fundamental question of who is considered an American. Yeah, any moment now, we expect the court to rule. whether the Constitution automatically grants citizenship to all babies born in the United States. We're live, and whenever that decision comes out, you will have the experience of hearing us read it live on the radio and try to make sense of it live on the radio. This is a right enshrined by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Pretty straightforward, but President Trump is trying to limit that right. only to children who are born to U.S. citizens. Okay, let's talk through what we know so far. There is this ruling in a case involving trans rights. West Virginia versus BPJ is the formal name of the case. And NPR's Carrie Johnson has been reading with us. She's here in Studio 31. Carrie, good morning. Good morning, Steve. Okay, what do you make of this ruling? This is actually a pair of cases out of West Virginia and Idaho that deal with when women and girls can participate. participate in high school and college-level sports. These involve trans girls and women in these states. And Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, has written that schools can determine eligibility for women and girls' sports based on biological sex, that that does not violate Title IX and important federal law that bars discrimination on the basis of sex. And it also does not run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. This matters. Steve, because about half the American states have issued these kinds of bans. A very small number of trans athletes appear to be involved, and yet the issue has taken on outsized importance because the Trump administration has been taking a lot of action against trans people. Yeah, the specific objection, as President Trump would put it, or as many conservatives would put it, as boys in girls' sports. We're talking about trans girls who want to play on the girls' team. And as I read the... Title IX says you can have separate boys and girls' teams, and you also can define that by biological sex, to use the words of the court, as opposed to somebody's gender identity. Is that right? That's right. And, you know, one of the interesting wrinkles here is that about six years ago, Justice Neil Gorsuch ruled that trans people are covered under separate federal law that bans discrimination in employment.

Today the court says schools that receive federal funding are different. I'd like to go to Mara Liason on this. She's our NPR National Political Correspondent. Mara, are you here? Yes, I am. So Mara, you just heard Kerry say that there are actually, there's a very small number of people of trans athletes participating in women's sports, especially at the highest level, the D1 level and I'm not sure it's an indeterminate number at the high school level. Why do you think this issue has become such a, I guess, a brush fire? politically for the country? Well, I think it's something that Donald Trump has seized on and the Republican Party. This is the idea of transgender athletes on girls' teams is something that is banning that is something that's pretty popular. When I talk to Democrats and ask them, what's your position on this? They say, well, the safest place to stand is to let... to let families and parents and school districts deal with this themselves. But this is a culture war issue and the idea of someone who has perhaps gone through puberty and then become transgender, which is a really different thing than if you do it before puberty because some parts of puberty are not reversible by surgery or hormones. And I think it's something that Donald Trump... is pretty comfortable with, that it's a very popular position among his base. And it's not something that I think that the majority of people are going to vote yes or no on because of this one issue. Carrie, though, was this decision unanimous? I understand that we're sort of, as Steve pointed out, we're all reading through this in real time, but it's my understanding that it's actually a fairly complicated decision that we're going to take a little bit of time to parse. It's 9-0 in some parts at 6-3 and other parts. Do you have any sense just in your first read? of where the justices landed on this? Yeah, it's a little bit complicated in part because we're talking about two separate legal authorities. The first is Title IX, that landmark federal law that bars discrimination on the basis of sex in schools that receive federal funding. And the second is the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. And the justices appear to have been fractured on where they come out on these issues with respect to each of those laws. back to Title IX, it appears that the court is more united, and it appears that the... liberal justices, including Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson are fracturing from the conservative majority when it comes to equal protection and the constitutional holding in this case. Do we have any sense of what the immediate impact of this will be? I mean, we're currently, you know, in the summer, most schools, you know, high schools and colleges are not sort of currently in competition mode unless you've already sort of moved into maybe some of the, there are, you know, playoffs at sort of finals. It's just a few sports, maybe baseball, you know, for example. But do we have any sense of what the immediate impact will be when most students return to their campuses in the fall? You know, I think that most people, based on the oral argument in this case, thought it would come out this way with these bans being upheld. And it's also been clear from the direction of the court the last few terms that the court has ruled against transgender people in some other important cases. You know, I'm looking at Justice Sotomayor's

Concurrents and dissent, agreeing in part, disagreeing in part. And just little details of this get at the hot button nature of this issue and also the very small number of people affected. She begins by saying respondent BPJ is a transgender girl. Already we've used language that some people in America would not accept at all. They would say that's just a boy, the end, and they would deny the entire idea of it. But then she goes on and she talks about this case. BPJ apparently... is suing against a ban in West Virginia that's been in place for five years. And Justice Sotomayor writes, in the five years since this ban has been in place, BPJ is the only transgender girl publicly identified in the whole state who is sought to play sports with other girls, which I think is typical in a lot of states. This is a very small number of people, even though the emotions are very large. A small number of people, and yet President Trump and the Republican attorneys general in many states have been campaigning on some of these issues. They argue that to allow some of these trans athletes into women's sports teams would disadvantage some of the other athletes on the teams and competitors. The facts here are a little less clear some of these people involved in. this litigation, for instance, perhaps have transitioned earlier and maybe haven't had the full advantage? It is also fair to say, though, that there have been a number of female athletes in some places who have also taken this issue on for themselves because they feel that it isn't fair, especially in sports in which decisions about who wins and who loses and how you rank can come down to seconds. And so it has to be said that this is an issue that has taken some sort of broader significance. Martina Navratilova, just to give one name of a woman who has pushed on this issue. Go on. If you're just joining us, we are in live special coverage. We're receiving the Supreme Court's decisions on the last day of this term. Any minute now, we expect the court to rule on a very important case that came before the court this term, whether the Constitution automatically grants citizenship to all babies born in the U.S. This is a right enshrined by the 14th Amendment. It was understood to be settled law, but it's before the court now. Carrie, could you just remind us of how this issue came before the court, why this issue is before the court now. This was understood to be a settled matter for what? A century? So how did we get here? Over a century. We got here, Michelle, because on the first day of his return to the White House, President Donald Trump issued an executive order, basically upending the... agreed upon understanding of what it counted and who could be an American. And he sought to limit citizenship for babies born in this country as of the date of that executive order. And it resulted in a wave of litigation that's still underway. The Supreme Court has now dealt with this issue twice. We're waiting to hear what they are deciding in this birthright case. But last term, they took up a version of this case and basically limited the power of lower court judges to issue injunctions or temporary freezes because this issue is so important to so many people. Were President Trump's view to hold, it would...

upset how babies are registered in birth certificate processes in virtually every American state. It could create tens of thousands of stateless children around the country, and the implications would be enormous, enormous for everyone, including parents who are American citizens, because the registration process would have to be reconsidered everywhere. This is a discussion of the meaning of the Constitution, and I want to bring in Jimenez-Bistillo, who covered... immigration for us. You did something, Jimena, on NPR's Morning Edition this morning that thought was very useful. You just quoted the Constitution, the actual phrase. Section 1, 14th Amendment, right at the top, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. It seems pretty straightforward. All persons. But what is the basis on which the president or opponents of this interpretation would say there's some kind of leeway here, latitude here? The president and many of the people in his administration are saying that interpretation of this amendment has just simply gone too far. They say that people who are not here permanently, as in legal permanent residence or green card holders, or with citizenship, that their children should not automatically be granted U.S. citizenship. Now, there are already some select carveouts, for example, the children of some diplomats and kind of folks like that. He says that it needs to go further. And if you're here without legal status, if you're here temporarily, if you're here on a student visa, and you have a child, that child should not be granted U.S. citizenship. Amen, and Carrie Johnson may have thoughts about this as well. It is very interesting to hear part of the argument the president has advanced and others because they have said, well, look at the context of this amendment. It was after the Civil War. It's about slavery. It's about making sure that those who were enslaved are now citizens. But the language that's there, if you are actually in terms. Perpeting the language of the law doesn't say this only applies to people who are enslaved. Absolutely. And President Trump's representative before the Supreme Court, the solicitor John Sauer, got a lot of tough questions about this at the oral argument. Remember, even some of the conservative justices called his cherry-picking of history idiosyncratic and outside the mainstream and quirky. When you said idiosyncratic, I thought you were going for another word. But go on, please. Continue. Well, you know, people have generally. understood birthright to mean what it said since the enactment of the 14th Amendment. And it's only of the last few decades that people allied with the MAGA movement and the Trump administration have tried to adopt a different view. Hemanah, have you encountered people in your reporting who would definitely be affected by this depending on how the court were to come down? And are they thinking a lot about this case? Yeah, absolutely. So like Kerry mentioned, this wouldn't be retroactive to forever. It would be a... about effective as, you know, within a few weeks of the executive order that was signed. There was a very specific date. It would be somebody born in August. Yeah. And so, you know, the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. estimates that about 250,000 babies born each year could be impacted by a ruling like this. And keeping in mind that there are many mixed status families in the country that would naturally be impacted by this kind of decision. I mean, in general, President Trump has... vowed to not just do mass deportations, but he did promise that he would do this. He campaigned on this, I mean, as early as at least 2023, saying that he would make this part of his second term. And all of this is a broader effort to limit not just who can come in, but who can stay. Let's go back to Maura Eliasson, NPR national political correspondent. Mara, what, pick up on what Jimenez just said. How does this fit into the president's sort of broader program?

around immigration. Well, it hits into it perfectly, but it would be a seismic, seismic change. I mean, it would change who gets to be an American, what it means to be an American. I think this would be the most consequential change that President Trump affected if, in fact, the court rules for him. And don't forget, he's not saying how people would become Americans. Remember, he started out his immigration policies saying he was only going to focus on people who are here undocumented with criminal records. And then he pretty quickly moved on to people who were here legally, maybe with green cards or other statuses. And what does this mean? Does it mean that the president gets to decide who is a citizen or not? it would basically create an incredibly chaotic system. But also, I think more fundamentally, it really goes to the heart of who's an American. And don't forget, that 14th Amendment was upheld. I think in 1898, Carrie can probably cite the case. I mean, this is a longstanding rule in the United States, and it's integral to what the United States is as a welcoming country, a country of immigrants. And that would totally, if the court rules with Trump, that would upend that completely. You noted earlier just a minute ago that this move against transgender athletes, a small group, though they may be, is broadly popular with the American public, at least it is now. Perhaps if people see the consequences of it, they may have a different view. We don't know. But what about this? Is this issue the kind of thing that resonates with the public broadly? I think it would depend on how the debate is shaped. Just like Donald Trump's early in immigration policies, let's deport people who are here illegally and have committed crimes. That was popular. But then as he went on and started deporting people who are here legally, it became unpopular. So it would depend on how this was implemented. I think people haven't focused on this. I haven't seen a lot of polling on this. It's pretty abstract right now. You know, what babies born in the United States get to be. be citizens and which babies don't. But this would be a huge, huge political debate. But noting that, Carrie, if I think I have this right, the President Trump is the first sitting president to actually sit in the courtroom. as the justices heard the arguments over birthright citizenship. And, Carrie, I have to assume that this is a sign of how important it is to him. I am curious, though, of what your recollection is of how was this received. Do we have any sense of how this was received by the justices? They didn't say anything in public. They didn't acknowledge his presence at all on the day of the argument. And in fact, we know he got up and left a few minutes after Cecilia Wong, the advocate for the American Civil Libert Union, who was... representing immigrants in this case, started to speak and answer questions. We also know, based on his own public statements, President Trump, since May or June has thought he's going to lose in this case. He's been posting on Truth Social about it a lot. He said, no other country in the world has this. It's totally...

insufferable. Which is false. That is false. That is false. That is false. He's also said that it is not economically or otherwise sustainable. You know, since the country has been living with it more than 100 years, I think some scholars would disagree with that point of view. But he's been blasting some of his own appointees because he thinks in this and in some other cases, they're likely to vote against him. So it's not at all clear that his presence, Trump's presence, the court for this argument in birthright did him any good, any favors? Well, as we walk through as we wait for the next decision, which may well be the birthright decision, we're waiting on a couple of other, one other case as well. Now we're told we do have a decision, and yes, we do. This is, okay, this is National Republican Senatorial Committee versus the Federal Election Commission, so this is not the birthright case. And we'll just note, we're watching decisions drop on a website from the Supreme Court, and we now do have a second ruling this morning, or technically a third. ruling this morning, and this is National Republican Senatorial Committee versus the Federal Election Commission. The question at issue is how much political parties can spend in cooperation with candidates, Republican party leaders, want more latitude, fewer limits, which has broadly been their position for a while. And even as I'm talking, I'm flipping through this and trying to get what's going on here, it says, held the political party coordinated expenditure limits. violate the First Amendment. And so fundamentally what we have here is another of the few remaining campaign finance limitations has been knocked away. Carrie Johnson on first read, on first glance, really. What are you seeing here? Yeah, this is an enormous victory for the Republican National Committee, which took this case all the way up to the High Court and has wanted for a long time to do better coordination in spending with its political candidates. This ruling is coming at a time when we're about to experience. midterm elections. And the question for me now is how quickly the RNC and other parties can operationalize some of this. But of course, this Supreme Court, dating back to the Citizens United ruling, has a very particular view of money and politics in the First Amendment. And this decision, majority decision by Brett Kavanaugh, it continues to advance that view, knocking down limits on spending. And we've noted here, we'll note in this decision, they observed that in the past, it's been made clear that the First Amendment allowed political parties to make unlimited expenditures if they wanted. The question is, how closely can you coordinate with an individual candidate whose spending might be subject to certain limits? And essentially, they're saying you can spend whatever you want, you can coordinate whenever you want. Is that right? Without having read every single word of the decision, Steve, I think this is very good news for the political parties who want to do more coordination with candidates. And I also think it's yet another guardrail this Supreme Court has knocked down with respect to trying to police Congress, trying to police money and politics. Let's bring Mara Liason back in on this. Maura, do you have any sense of whether this latest ruling... actually changes anything. I mean, I think the sense most people have is that there's already a lot of wink-wing coordination between candidates and the parties. And it's not just the coordination. I think what this would mean is that the campaign committees and the Republican Party would be allowed to buy.

advertising at the same rate that candidates do, which is cheaper. I think the bottom line here is that it just makes the already incredible advantage that Republicans have with money this cycle even bigger. In other words, usually both parties are pretty much equal. Maybe one party has slightly more money than the other, but this time is different. The Democratic Party is on the back foot. The Republican Party and their campaign committees have raised hundreds of millions of dollars more. than the Democrats. And now it's going to be even easier for them, not just to coordinate, but also to get cheaper rates for television advertising. So it's just one more structural advantage for the Republicans this cycle when they are facing a whole bunch of organic disadvantages like public opinion and enthusiasm. So this is definitely just a clear political win for Republicans. And why is it that they have such a significant fundraising advantage this cycle? Is it coming from any particular sector? there's a lot of reasons. I mean, Donald Trump has, his critics would say, have a pay-to-play presidency. And billionaires who want favors from the Trump administration, Democrats would argue, fork over a lot of money. Also, he's been an incredibly friendly president to corporate interests. And they've... responded in kind. And the Democratic Party itself, the Democratic National Committee, is kind of in a lot of trouble. It's been accused by Democrats of being disorganized, not raising enough. It's just a huge difference. Even though, as I said, organically, in terms of enthusiasm and public opinion, the Democrats have those things going for them. I guess, Mara, we should just observe, and you've covered so many campaigns, you know, very well. When you have all the power, you get all the money. Yeah, yeah. They have all three branches of government. And so people contribute for... results. And so they contribute to the people who can get a bill passed for them, get a regulation change for them, whatever else. That's constant, but there are special features to this presidency as well. And there's nothing surprising, by the way, about this ruling because the conservative majority on the court has made it very, very clear that they believe that money is speech. In other words, campaign donation should be protected just like the First Amendment protects speech. And there's nothing unusual about this ruling. Mara, there's another thing that occurs to me is we wait now for the... birthright decision, which is the final decision in the entire court term to be released. We're waiting for that. But another question occurs to me. Carrie Johnson raised the question about whether Republicans would be able to leap quickly enough to take advantage of this Supreme Court ruling in the current midterm election that we're in the middle of. It does occur to me that they've already shown they can move very quickly. There was a Supreme Court ruling recently on redistricting, and it took them about 30 seconds to pick up several congressional seats or the advantage in several congressional seats. States. Right. You're asking me if they can take advantage of this campaign finance ruling, of course. They can take advantage of it tomorrow. Because money is fungible. You can move it around. Yeah, yeah. No, this doesn't take very long to pay for a political ad. Carrie Johnson.

This raises a question. I mean, this is going to be in people's minds as they're listening as to whether the judges, the justices are acting in a partisan manner. Of course, they're going to say they were not. They're following the law and there's a vote and everything else. How, how? How do they try to guard themselves against that suspicion that they're acting out of partisan motives in the way they choose to interpret the law? Or do they? Well, we've heard different justices in various talks they've given this year, talk about how they're not partisan hacks, how they shouldn't be referred to as Trump judges or Obama judges or Biden judges for that matter. And that being the case, there are any number of decisions this year where the court has not broken down. down along ideological lines. But by my count, this campaign finance decision we just got today is the 14th of this term where they've broken down six to three along ideological lines. Conservatives and liberals, even though they don't like the term, that's how they're voting in many cases. In many cases and in many important cases, including the enormously consequential case from yesterday giving President Trump and future presidents, the fire to fight. the power to fire many federal employees at will. Did they have, Carrie, and you've been covering justice issues for quite some time, but you've only just recently been assigned the court to focus on the court per se. But I am curious about whether this court, which has shown a willingness to overturn precedent, the Dobbs case being the main example of that, which eliminated a sort of nationwide access to abortion under certain circumstances, under most circumstances, actually is a reversal of precedent, which is something that we thought that court was loath to do. Have you observed a reversal of precedent of this court's perspective on, say, issues like executive power once the administration changed? Well. One of the things that's really struck me over the last several terms is we've not only seen the overturning of Roe, the abortion precedent, but also the affirmative action precedent. The president yesterday dating back 91 years as to the president's control of what we used to call independent agencies. A couple of terms ago, this court overturned another longstanding precedent basically saying that agency interpretation and expertise would not necessarily be deferred to by courts or the president. So we're seeing this court really being willing to strike down understandings of law that have been in place 60, 70, 100 years or more. And unapologetically so. They're moving very quickly and in a hurry here. And so the question becomes would they be moving so quickly and in such a hurry if the president were different?

And I assume that they've been asked this question. What do they say? With respect to today's campaign finance decision, I think the writing has been on the wall since Citizens United. The question, which is now several decades old, the question is now what limits do continue to exist with respect to money and politics? And as Elena Kagan said in her dissent today, in her view, this is all about integrity and democracy. I want to note that we now have the birthright decision in front of us. This is the President of the United States versus Barbara, which is the first name of... a woman in this case. This is the birthright decision we've been waiting for. I'm looking at this at the same time as perhaps you are at home. It says this is held. Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. and are citizens at birth under the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause. Carrie Johnson, I understand that to mean that the traditional idea of birthright citizenship has here been upheld. That's right, Steve. And not a complete surprise, given the way the oral argument went in this case. Remember, Chief Justice John Roberts actually said to the solicitor, General John Sauer, it may be a different world with respect to people being able to travel to the United States way more easily than they did in the 1890s, but it's the same Constitution, the same 14th Amendment. Worth noting here, there is a dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas. We're going to get through that. But this holding basically makes clear that the chaos some of the people had feared if President Trump's interpretation of the law took hold would not be unleashed across the country. And that's subject to the jurisdiction, that was the key phrase for people who wanted to overturn this. They wanted to argue that somehow people who are here. unlawfully, without a lawful presence, without a legal status, were not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. I guess the Jimenez-Bistillo, I guess the court kicked that aside, since, of course, you could be arrested for violating a law, regardless of your legal status here in the United States. Right. And I think that a lot of people are really hoping that this would go this way, because as Kerry mentioned, it would have been very, very chaotic to suddenly make several babies not citizens. But the way that we were hearing the oral arguments go there was. was so much skepticism on the legal theory that the administration was trying to apply and then the practical implementation of this kind of policy. I just want to note here, I'm sorry, Michelle, let me make a point. I'm going to turn it over to you. I'm just counting. I'm counting the justices here. And it seems to me this is a considerably closer decision than people might have imagined. Five justices delivered this opinion that we just heard. There's a sixth justice who partly concurs and partly dissents.

And then we have Thomas Samuel Alito and Gorsuch all dissenting to this decision. So it's, I guess you'd say, five and a half to three and a half or something like that. But not a unanimous court by any means. I think that the vote was actually seven to writing for the majority on the sort of the program, but there are some differences of opinion on other issues. Dissenting opinions. Okay. Okay. In any case, not a unanimous decision. Go on. Agreeing in part and disagreeing in part. Kim under just to clarify this, and Carrie, you may want to weigh in here too. The issue was not just that the president wanted to deny citizenship to people whose parents had committed a crime or who were here illegally or were out of status. He also wanted to deny citizenship to people who were here perhaps on student visas, who weren't here permanently. For example, have to note that a couple of the stars of the U.S. men's soccer team were here in the United States, were born in the United States in part because their parents were studying here. Or their mothers were too far along in their pregnancies to go back home as had been intended. They had intended to. They spent their time sort of transnationally. So do I have it right that the intention here was not just to deny citizenship to people who'd broken the law, but also to people who did not have permanent legal status here as citizens? Yes. This was not just about illegal immigration. This was about anyone who is not here permanently, as in has it. had a green card or was a citizen already. Okay, Carrie, do you want to pick it up here? Could you just clarify what the decision was? We're all reading sort of here in real time. The math isn't mathing, right? Math isn't mathing, no. So what we should say is this, I think. For many scholars across the political spectrum, this was not a close issue, and yet the vote is not only not unanimous. It's way more complicated than people thought. And there were ways for the court majority to get. get here. One was just to say, look at the words of the 14th Amendment, which are quite clear that subject to the jurisdiction thereof means you're here, you're born here on American soil, you're a citizen. Another way to get to this result would be to look to a couple of statutes that Congress passed much after the adoption of the 14th Amendment in 1940 and 1952. These were immigration laws that basically codified the same language that was in the 14th Amendment. And the justices could have used those more recent laws as a basis to come to some consensus. some of the nature of the disagreement that we're becoming to understand. I am now turning to the dissent by Samuel Alito, and we should mention we're talking about hundreds of pages of opinions here, but I've gotten to the top of Samuel Alito, one of the dissents. And my question, the question on my mind is, what is his basis for objecting to the seemingly plain language of the Constitution? And he says the court has made a serious mistake, as interpreted by the court today, the 14th Amendment converse citizenship. on virtually everyone who happens to be born in this country, including the children of, quote, birth tourists, women who come here solely for the purpose of giving birth to a child and then promptly return home. Okay, that is actually what the language seems to say, but Samuel Alito objects to that idea. He goes on to say, careful analysis of the text of the 14th Amendment.

And the process that led to its adoption shows that it does not degrade the concept of the United States citizenship in this way. It's interesting. He seems to admit that he can't quite get there by objecting to the text, so he'll look at the context in which this amendment was passed in order to raise his objection. This was one of the policy arguments the Trump administration made before the Supreme Court that they were worried about people, wealthy people from other countries coming to the United States to have their children on American soil. It does happen. We should be frank about that. It does happen, but it doesn't appear to be a widespread, particularly widespread issue. Samuel Alito asked a lot of questions about this at the oral argument. This has been a theme of MAGA and some MAGA press coverage as well, and it clearly continues to bother him. That being said, when the Solicitor General at Oral Argument said, you know, any one of these people is a plane ride away from the United States and being able to give birth on American soil, this is when Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote this majority opinion, said, yeah, it's a new world, but it's the same constitution. Mara Liason, what's the political significance of this ruling in your mind? Well, I think the political significance is... at least for the moment, the idea of who is an American and who gets to be an American is unchanged and it's subject to the Constitution, not to the President of the United States. Because don't forget, when we keep on talking about people born here who may have committed a crime, we're talking about their parents, not the children. And it's interesting to me that the dissents were written by Samuel Alito, descendant of... Italian immigrants, Clarence Thomas, descendant of slaves. And this is a debate that's going to continue. Who gets to be an American? Right now, Donald Trump wanted to offer visas, the legal right to come to America and work for $5 million, $1 million, the golden visas, the Trump visas. The gold card, yeah. Gold cards. Yeah. And I think this debate is going to continue. Carries right among the MAGA base. This is an issue. But I think for the majority of people, from the little polling we've seen, including... are stories that NPR has done. Most people in America feel very comfortable with birthright citizenship. It's an integral part of what it means to be an American. You're born here. It doesn't matter what your background is or who your parents are. You get a shot like everyone else. Emma, can you pick up on this a better part? Since you've been reporting so extensively on how these immigration policy decisions and political debates have been playing out across the country. Has this argument sort of resonated? I mean, given all the concerns that many people who are out of status, who have mixed status families already have, what this whole question of what would they do if this decision went the other way?

Has that been something that's also been a concern? I mean, we've heard this from, say, hospital administrators, for example, who would have to figure out, like, how would they register births under this regime if this were to stay? But I just wondered if this whole question of... whether you're a citizen or not upon birth, is that something that's even surfaced among the communities you've been reporting on? Yeah, I think for a lot of families, many of the policy changes this administration has enacted, you know, separate from the attempt to repeal birthright citizenship, have resulted in some of those conversations, a lot of kitchen table discussions about whether families should stay together, whether they should leave together. know what works best for their situations, even if they were here legally, but might be here on a visa or might be here under a refugee status or might even be green card holders trying to get that next step to citizenship, but their applications have been on hold. There are just a lot of really complex ways that families have been impacted. And I think this broader conversation about birthright citizenship and if you even have a right to be here at all because you were born here adds on. to that existing pressure that people are facing. Carrie, I still want to go back to those who dissented because many of the people who are described as conservatives on this court are also described as originalists. They are the people who believe that the plain text predominates. What was the intent of the founders? What was the intent at the time this amendment was written? And while it is certainly true that the circumstances were that formerly enslaved people were being brought under the umbrella of citizenship after being previously explicitly denied it in the Constitution. It is also true that subsequent cases from a very long time ago upheld this notion that you're just born here. So can you just dig into what was the sort of story that offered this wedge of how this plain text was to be interpreted or how does this... How does this align with what we understood to be their originalist views? Well, you know, the administration in advancing the argument for Trump's executive order went back into history and chose certain parts of writings from English common law and the 1800s moving forward to try to make the point that... this part of the 14th Amendment was closely cabined to the descendants of slaves and was intended to reverse maybe the most hated Supreme Court decision in history, the Dred Scott decision, which denied citizenship to a former slave. I just want to note a detail. I'm going through more of the dissents here, and I definitely have not read every word of Clarence Thomas' dissent because it appears to be the longest opinion in this entire... ruling 91 pages. He goes 91 pages, the length of a novella, objecting to this. And Clarence Thomas's argument

rests on the word domicile. He says, he alleges, that the 14th Amendment was for people who were born and domiciled, meaning living in the United States, and therefore it should not count for people who are not domiciled or living in the United States at the time that they were born. Carrie Johnson, you're raising a hand. What does that make you think? Well, we heard a lot about that from John Sauer, the President's Solicitor General. And the complication there is what? What do you do with orphans? What in the old days we used to call foundlings? Infants that were left at firehouses or grocery stores or the police station. Where you don't know where they were, their parents were from or whatever. To base the citizenship on that idea raises a host of fundamental questions about what happens to those children, those babies. We're going to continue our live coverage for just about two more minutes here. So maybe this is a good moment to review what we've learned over the last hour. And people just jump in if you have a comment or thought. West Virginia versus BPJ was combined with another case, and this involves transgender athletes, a state may ban. transgender girls from playing in boys' sports. That's the bottom line of that ruling. We have a campaign finance case in which it's felt that the First Amendment prevails over campaign finance law that was supposed to limit coordination between candidates and political parties. And then the very biggest one is the birthright citizenship case in which it is found, the majority of the court found, that birthright citizenship is found in the 14th Amendment is fundamentally unchanged. And I'm now being told that we have a retirement announcement today. And Carrie Johnson, let's talk about this. Give us the news. It appears that Samuel Alito Samuel Alito is going to retire. Steve, this is not a complete surprise. He took quite a long time to hire clerks for next term. There were even rumors at the end of last term that he was thinking about retiring. Some conservatives thought now was the moment, in part because the... outcome of the midterms is unclear. And if Republicans lose the Senate, confirming another very conservative justice could be more challenging. You've been listening to live special coverage from NPR News. I'm Michelle Martin, along with my colleagues, Carrie Johnson, Camino Bustillo, and Mara Liason, and Steven Ski. And we'll continue covering more of this as we learn it. We've got a lot of reading to do, that 91-page opinion, just one of the opinions and many more. And so you'll hear more coverage throughout the day on NPR's Morning Edition, all things considered in other NPR programs. Thanks for joining us this morning. Well, it was kind of a...

Grand finale there. We had heard that the Supreme Court, obviously the decisions regarding birthright citizenship and upholding the state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on female sports school athletic teams. And then at the very end, the announcement made that there would be a retirement on the court by Samuel Alito, as was just mentioned on the NPR programming. Not a huge surprise in the sense of it was being talked about. The timing, obviously, was what was being questioned as to when that would be. And now we know that it will, it is here. So we have our wonderful group with us, Jay Jocknowitz, Justin Patch, Mike Spain, and Catherine Tan. Okay, so we have Samuel Alito. We have birthright citizenship. We have transgender sports and other decisions, but we have about nine minutes. Who wants to go around the – we'll go around the room here and just some quick thoughts. Jay? You know, I was not entirely surprised by the – and the one I was really watching was the – not the transgender one. the birthright citizenship one. You know, it would have, it would have been a real stretch, I think, for this court. And we've talked about this on the long break that. The idea that you could say that the founders intended any weapon that even wasn't even defined in the Second Amendment to be covered under the Second Amendment, I don't see how you could have said that some persons or people, I can't remember which word they used in the 14th Amendment. It was some persons, but not all persons. And it's only the ones we didn't mention that maybe some future generation will figure out that aren't. that are exempt from the 14th Amendment. They couldn't make that stretch, and I was glad to see they didn't. It would have been a purely personal and ideological decision on their part to do otherwise. Mike? I agree. And I'm gratified that the Supreme Court did not reverse the birthright citizenship, and I'm glad they rebuked Trump. But on another one that doesn't get as much attention, that's pretty disturbing. It's the just pretty much letting any political action committee coordinate the millions and billions of dollars that they raise with a candidate. That was allegedly not allowed, although I think it was widely... subverted, but it just, again, underscores how money, big money, money from tech, money from oil, money from gazillionaires of any type, are just taking over elections and corrupting it, and it's just another concession to that, and I'm really sad to see it.

Yeah, I agree. I think that the Supreme Court treating corporations like people with the First Amendment is there's a contradiction there because corporations, the DNC, and the RNC are not subject to the same criminal liabilities that individuals are. And because they are not subject to the same criminal liabilities, I'm not sure they should be given the same rights and responsibilities. And yet somehow they are given. all the same rights as people are. And I think this is another reason why so many people are just disenchanted with politics because they're right to say that money talks and that nobody is listening to that. But on top of that, it's not just that they are considered individuals, but as we had discussed, they're not even subject to the same donation caps. Yeah. There isn't one. There is no, as of now, there is no donation cap. And so, yes, even if you thought before money was running the game now, the Supreme Court said, no, money can run the election game. And I'm not. And I'm sure does. Yeah. And if you erase the line between them, there is no point in caps anymore on anything. So how do you fix that? Well, Mike, I think you called this another Citizens United, right? Right. It's from like 2010 where they said corporations do not have to reveal the source, you know, PACs don't have to reveal the resources of money too. I mean, it's so we don't even know. who's anonymously giving money to these political action committees that have no limit to how much they can collect, and now they can coordinate the spending with the candidates' own campaign. So basically, somebody's controlling the elections, but we don't know who. Well, I mean, I'm not surprised. at all that, you know, this was passed. I am, I mean, aside from that, I am really relieved about the birthright citizenship. I mean, this would have impacted about 200,000 babies each year. But I want to take a moment to discuss the decision on transgender athletes. I mean, my worry is that this is going to open up. the floodgates for other discriminatory practices and to make discriminatory practices legal, right? And, you know, this is not so much about women's and girls sports at all, right? Like, that's, you know, that's, that's, I don't know, I don't even know Trojan horse's right metaphor for this, but the issue is not about sports at all, right? This is a moral panic about transgender identity. And it. legitimizes these concerns, right? So this decision is incredibly disappointing and frightening to me. And, you know, thinking about the trans students that I have, trans friends that I have, like what this will mean for them in the future is really consequential. This moral panic is being legitimized by the Supreme Court, right? And so, and, you know, it's...

You know, as we talked about during the break, you know, this particular case impacts very few people. If we're looking at it, you know, 3.3% of youths between 13 and 17 identify as transgender. less than 1% of adults identify as transgender. And some of that is because of the time in which people grow up, what was the social norm, what was stigmatized. You know, a lot of people couldn't come out up until fairly recently. And even now, it's quite dangerous. And so the world that we are creating when we say, you know, when we have laws that suggest trans women are not women, you know, this is setting up a really dangerous world. in which people are, you know, people's lives are going to be harmed by this. People are going to be threatened to basically legitimizes discriminatory behavior and violence against trans people. So I'm really concerned about what this means moving forward and what other laws will be, what other discriminatory practices will be okayed. We're also in a moment where you're spending so much legislative time on 1% of the population. We just said 20 million people lose their health care. There are 8 million people that got kicked off of food stamps, which means they don't have enough to eat. We're short 7 million units of housing. These are huge numbers compared to the number of trans folks. Can't we just leave them alone? Let them live and spend legislative time and money. trying to get people insured, get people fed, get people housed. Like, this is the social necessity. Absolutely. And we're wasting time, like, trying to punch down on the small part of the percentage. All the fear around transgender identity is ridiculous because it. You know, the real threats, as you pointed out, are the budget cuts to Medicaid. Healthcare education. Letting social security go bust. Yeah. I mean, this is, it's incredible how much political capital is spent on an issue that affects so few people. And do you think like trans people want to? You know, it's not easy being a trans person in this country. It takes great courage to come out. a lot of courage. And this is going to make it more difficult for people. And it's not like people are. you know, it's not like people are coming out lightly, right? Like these are really important, scary decisions. You bet. And as you said, courageous decisions to make. We have a one minute warning here. I just want to, I want to note something that I just find interesting and probably in four minutes this will all be cleared up. But MPR is reporting that Samuel Alito Samuel Alito, who wrote the Supreme Court's opinion, reversing Roe v. Wade is retiring.

Interestingly, no other news outlet is reporting that. So I will certainly know that I trust Nina Totenberg, who is the reporter on this particular story, and trust and trust NPR. However, I do... feel that it is worth noting that as of right now, no other news source is reporting that story. That's a very interesting. Samuel Alito is retiring from the Supreme Court. So I will throw that out there just as something, as I said, probably in four minutes it will all be announced, but just. And this, of course, should it be true, is done so that it can be a new. Judge can be nominated by Trump and get approved before the midterm elections. Correct. Man, good ridd. Thanks to all of you. I appreciate it. We'll be back.