Jay Town on Birthright Citizenship, Judicial Restraint & Political Accountability - 7-7-26
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Transcript
53 segmentsJackson here with you and thrilled to be here with. You also thrilled to have our next guest with us. Jay Town, former U.S. Attorney Northern District of Alabama. We had him on yesterday, but I got bogged down into silly nonsense. I'll just be completely honest with you. We talked a lot of really silly nonsense. But let's get a little more serious here today. And that's not a setup for another silly statement. I want to actually talk to you about some serious stuff here. So Jay Town joins us on the Alabama A&M $350 million Bulldog Hotline. We appreciate him joining us here. Alabama, A&M, $350 million. That's the economic impact on the state of Alabama. Learn more at aamu.edu. All right, Jay, let's start out this birthright citizenship thing. In the ruling from a couple days ago, We had a situation where Brett Kavanaugh came out. Brett Kavanaugh, I think, sided. I may have this correct. Let me make sure I got it right. Brett Kavanaugh sided and said, look, we can kind of do away with this personality citizenship thing, but you're not there. And there's a big problem with getting the right number of votes or decisions on the Supreme Court. Here's how you might be able to get there. Now, a lot of people would say, well, you need a constitutional amendment to do so. But a lot of people, including Brett Kavanaugh, think that maybe you could do it legislatively. And there's a couple reasons why one would be the Native Americans were not included in this. And then legislatively they said, but what about Native Americans? And off they went and they got birthright citizenship as well. So the argument would be if you can give, maybe you can rescind. I mean, is that a fair way of looking at what Brett Kavanaugh was saying? I think so, and a lot of times in these opinions where a justice recognizes that this is an injustice. And, you know, the problem I have with the opinions that the Constitution cannot possibly postulate that bearing allegiance to another nation other than the United States doesn't matter. If you're born on U.S. soil, you're an American, simple as that. That means that the words subject to the jurisdiction thereof have no meaning in the Constitution whatsoever. And so I don't believe that Brett Kavanaugh thinks that. I think that what he believes is that in the 14th Amendment and in other articles, Article 1 in particular, it does give Congress certain powers to define terms that are in the Constitution. And I think what Brett Kavanaugh is painting as a roadmap. for legislation, specifically an amendment to the Nationality Act, which right now just lists all instances where there is a grant of citizenship. So two American citizens travel abroad, have a baby. That child, while it can't be present in the United States, is an American citizen. So those are sort of the exceptions to the birthright citizenship or the citizenship clause. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that you're a citizen if you are born overseas. It says you're a citizen if you are here and born here. And so clearly, the legislature has the opportunity and has the power to create these exceptions in the negative.
to the citizenship clause. They will all be challenged, but I don't know, even though Brett Kavanaugh joined the opinion, and frankly, Chief Amy Coney Barrett, I'm sorry, John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, both It came at this from sort of a textualist perspective, if you really read their opinions. And in those opinions, they were saying, look, they didn't say that in the 14th Amendment that the parents had to be citizens. Now, there's a lot in the on the... I mean, they're just focusing on the word born in that, right? Like is the word born in the 14th Amendment is getting a lot of doing a lot of heavy lifting here, right? It is. And they're essentially juice soli is the is the, uh, is the Latin, which just means on the soil. And if you're born here, then you are a citizen. Unless, you know, asterix, there is some prescription against that. And so the birth tourism, the illegal aliens, things like that, at least Brett Kavanaugh believes. And I think that Amy Coney Barrett and Chief John Roberts would come over to Brett Kavanaugh's side. If it was ever challenged to the Supreme Court, which it would be, any amendment to the Nationality Act saying, if you're an illegal immigrant or this is just birth tourism, and the government can prove that, so it would be on DHS to prove it, or DOJ, then you're not a citizen. And that would be a case-by-case basis, but the legislation itself... would be the big primer here. And it is possible. I really do believe that it is. And if John Thune could get the Senate to do anything, I'm certain that the Speaker of the House would pass such a bill. But it is a massive lift in order to get there and pass something like this. And I mentioned this when the thing was passed. You saw members of Congress on the Republican side being like, great, this is wonderful. And this is, I'm glad this is resolved. And, you know, the birthright citizenship is absolute. And I hear a bunch of stuff about like birthright citizenship. And they talk about Floron Balagon. And they're like, oh, he's a birthright citizen. And this is so wonderful. And I'm like, yeah, but you know who else is a birthright citizen? Me. Okay. So let's remember what this actually is. And also, on a more serious note, Hasan Piker is a birthright citizen. You know, he was born. And I, if I. Elon Musk Omar. Well, if she had kids. Okay, her kids, yes. But the reason I mentioned Hasan Piker, if I was a Republican, this is how I would do it. I would say Hasan Piker, this lunatic who's coming to the country and basically said, I'm here to destroy this. And I'm going to use, he can't go to the UK, but he can stay in America forever because he's a birthright citizen. And this guy was born three, and his mom, he said it straight up.
My mom came here and they were tricky. I was an anchor baby. They had me. Three months later, they took me to Turkey and raised me as an anti-Westerner, as a communist, a pro-Islam individual, and I'm back to destroy things. And you can't do a damn thing about it, you stupid racist. And I would look at that and be like, damn, this is the argument against it. Could Hasan Piker have been denaturalized and could he still be, or is that cat out of the bag? Well, people can be denaturalized. Now, if he was born here, he's a citizen. But you can be a U.S. citizen and lose your citizenship when you renounce, you know, the United States or renounce your citizenship. There is a process for that. It's another heavy lift, and it's one by one. We need, obviously, you know, mass. you know something that sweeps in a bunch of people and so but here's the deal and you know when you mention Islam I'm really struggling with it because I do believe that we you know we have freedom of religion and that is constitutionally protected but when your identity becomes your ideology and any attack on the ideology becomes an attack on you it gets very dangerous and it starts crossing lines between religion and politics and and you know when you have a group of people a large group of people who hate this this country that hate the and this is the socialists as well that want to destroy capitalism destroy our constitutional republic I'm not so sure that that you know that's not something that can be prescribed against in some ways very narrowly obviously but it is disgusting to me the number of people in this country that hate this country and we're allowing them to be elected to congress there just there just has to be a way that that that's not a possibility now better discourse winning that argument that's the best way Right. And in some ways, those people are helping the Republican Party right now. What Plantner's going through, what Zohran Mamdani is doing in New York City. That's all really helping the Republican Party right now because people see how much it has failed. But at the same time, I just don't understand if you hate this country and want to destroy it, why you should be able to legislate in the United States Congress. I just feel like you have to pledge allegiance to the flag if you're going to serve under it. That's just something that I think is you can want to change things and you can hate things about the country. You know, I don't like my tax rate. But I'm not going to, you know, take an e. and, you know, vow to destroy the United States of America and bring in Sharia law. It's just not, that mean, you can't even see there from here. No, I agree with that. I agree with that. I want to come back to the New York thing here in just a second. But sticking on the birthright citizenship part,
The constitutional amendment's going to be impossible, and it's set up that way. Let's just be real about it. It's set up that way to be almost impossible to amend. You hear about the convention of the states or whatever Article 5 convention, not going to happen. It's going to have to be done legislatively. They can't get the SAVE Act passed, which means they can't get this passed. I mean, that's, I'm asking you a political question, not a legal question, but, I mean, do you agree with that? Yeah, two-thirds of each house would have to agree before it even goes to three quarters of the states, right? So, I mean, you can't get 54 senators to agree on anything. So it's we're struggling. Yeah, and you have a hard time getting every Republican on board with this. I don't think you could. Personally, I just don't think you could get every Republican on board on this at all. So I don't foresee that being something. Can I just say something on that, though? And the same thing, this applies to illegal immigration, applies to the SAVE Act. It applies to a number of things. If we can't get it passed, we can't get it passed. But make them vote. Put it on the floor and have the 220 people that vote against, you know, voter ID or whatever. Or 51 senators say, I want people who birth tourism. I want to be legal in this country. Make them be on the record. That's where they sort of swing and miss. Is that they, you know, same thing with an impeachment of somebody like Jeb Bosberg. Yeah, I get it's a fool's errand. I get that maybe it comes out of the house, but the Senate never convicts. those senators say what Boseberg is doing is good. It's just, that's what the justice system should look like. That's exactly how a district court judge should function, especially in the face of the Supreme Court rulings against him, right? That's fine with us. Fine. That's okay. At least we have that record and we know where those people stand and we can run against it. Correct. Correct. All right. I want to ask you something. The E.J. Carroll case. is being referenced a lot by some of your colleagues, some of your best colleagues, I think. And, you know, I think you guys were all roommates in college, Joyce JD Vance and Barbara Quaid and all these. It comes again. And all these MS now and people who were not actually your roommates. But the point is this, they're out there running around and they're like, well, E.J. Carroll and Republicans didn't care about that. Why should we care about Graham Platner? This is a Republican problem, which is laughable. But in my understanding in the E.J. Carroll case, they basically, and I'm asking you for your opinion here, so you can answer this however you want. It sounds to me like with the E.J. Carroll case, they're like, hey, you guys don't like Donald Trump, right? Here's your chance to get him, and the jury's like, hell yeah. That's how it looked to me in these cases, civil cases, and then the defamation case afterwards, which now we're treating like a criminal case. I mean, That's how it appears to me that they were just like, hey, you guys don't like Donald Trump, right? Look at the terrible stuff he did. Punish him here. Am I off base? You're not off base. And the hypocrisy of it is that, you know, they just, you know, were absolutely distraught an apoplectic about the E. Gene Carroll case. But then when Graham Platner does it.
Well, it's, I mean, you know, it's unsubstantiated and who knows and maybe he should drop out, but it's still, he's a good guy. You know, I mean, none of this is a surprise to anybody on the left that this might be an accusation planners facing. And yet it didn't matter when he was physical towards women, that he was harassing women, the Nazi tattoo, the Porta John exploits, right? I mean, none of that, all that was just fine. But if Trump were to have done it, there would be pink hats on the mall right now in Washington, you know, millions of them. So it's, there's, there's enough hypocrisy to go around right now. The difference is the ideas of the men. And one wants to destroy America, the other wants to save America. And he is saving America, in my view. All right. Last thing here, and this is just an overall broad view on the Supreme Court rulings. This is my very stupid non-lawyer take on this particular Supreme Court, which a lot of Republicans are mad at. But I'm just going to say this. It appears to me that this Supreme Court as a whole, and obviously there's a bunch of different opinions on it, but as a whole, has taken the position of, uh-uh, that's not our job, that's your job. You guys do it, not us. That seems to be the overall viewpoint they seem to be taking. With the transgender athletes, they said, let the states do whatever they want. With the postmark ballots of Mississippi, they said, let Mississippi do whatever the hell it wants. When it comes to birthright citizenship, they're like, hey. The president can't just declare this. Congress needs to do something about this. All these things, it appears that their overall view, and I don't know what the philosophy would be, the judicial philosophy, or maybe you have a name for it that I probably have heard before, but I can't name it off top of my head. The judicial philosophy seems to be, no, no, no, stop bothering us with this. This is y'all's issue. What's that called? Well, I mean, it's an originalist position. And I mean, the alternative is. And even though. Am I right about that? Is that what generally they're saying? You are correct, but what the alternative is is judicial activism. We saw that with Obamacare. And so, you know, look, I'd rather have a Supreme Court that says, this is not an Article III issue. The Constitution doesn't prescribe against that or is for it. This is a legislative issue, so Congress do your thing. I'd rather have that than them just create law. like they did with the penumbra of rights that span throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and instead say, you know, this is not in the Constitution. Find me where abortions in the Constitution are a right to privacy, for instance, right? I mean, those are things that are legislative in nature. And so I don't disagree with it. And, you know, frankly, when they do put into their concurring opinions a legislative roadmap,
Something we can all get behind the Stolen Valor Act. Stolen Valor Act as it was passed was unconstitutional. Samuel Alito put in, here's how you can make it constitutional. And 90 days later, President Obama signed the Stolen Valor Act 2.0 into law. And it's still law today. So there are ways to do this. It's just that we can't get the Congress to do anything. And it's very frustrating, I think, to the American people to have both houses and the White House. And we can't get the Trump agenda across the finish line. I agree with everything you said there because you agreed with what I said, so I like it. Last thing here, actually, I lied about this. That's how it goes, folks. Don't get yourself in any trouble here. But when we were discussing this, not you and I, when I was discussing with my audience, I said, you know, after the midterms, if Republicans hang on, I could see a Supreme Court justices to be like, it's just kind of time for me to maybe go home, you know, take some time off. And, you know, Donald Trump, go ahead and appoint it because you got a Republican Senate to appoint. some more people to keep the court conservative for decades to come. Two-part question, have you heard any scuttle butt behind the scenes and when do they nominate you? So probably very soon to take it in reverse order, right? Okay. It's just sort of waiting, right? You know, in case there's an emergency. I can see Clarence Thomas stepping back if we were to win the Senate. I can. I mean, he's been at it for a long time. I know he's frustrated with the court. And maybe justices, Samuel Alito and Chief John Roberts as well. I mean, do you give that a pretty good chance of happening? Something like that happened? One of them, yes. Now, Thomas isn't leaving if we lose the Senate. He's just not. He'll ride it out. He'll write it out. It's only two more years and then JD Vance or Marco Rubio become president. All right, there we go. J-Town, thank you very much, future Supreme Court justice. You heard him say it here first. I mean, that's we heard. All right, Jay Town. Former U.S. Attorney Northern District of Alabama, always appreciate him being here. We'll give him off until next Monday. But we appreciate him being here and we'll talk with him soon on the Alabama A&M $350 million Bulldog Hotline. Everyone else, stay tuned. This is The Dale Jackson Show.
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