Donald Trump, The Supreme Court, And Birthright Citizenship

This message comes from IXL, a learning platform for helping students maintain summer academic progress. A single subscription covers math, science, and reading for all children in a household. Receive 20% off at IXL.com slash NPR. If you're born in the United States, with few exceptions, you become a U.S. citizen. That principle is called birthright citizenship and it's existed since the end of the Civil War. 160 years later, President Trump wants to change that principle. On his first day back in office, he signed an executive order that tries to narrow the category of babies who are eligible for citizenship. The Supreme Court hears Trump v. Barbara, the case regarding birthright citizenship on Wednesday. On Monday, President Trump weighed in on his social media site, saying in part, quote, birthright citizenship is not about rich people from China and the rest of the world who want their children and hundreds of thousands more for pay to ridiculously become citizens of the United States of America. It's about the babies of slaves. We are the only country in the world that dignifies this subject with even a discussion. At least 33 other countries, mostly in the Americas, allow birthright citizenship with no stipulations. We're already hearing from some of you about the case. Here's Jerry in Alexandria, Virginia. It is very clear. It is very simple. It is very straightforward. I can't imagine how there's any way to interpret what is written on the page, as it were, when it comes to the amendment that conveys birthright citizenship. And a member of our text club writes, I believe it's a simple constitutional rule. If you're born here, you are a citizen. If we change it, how far back would Republicans want us to trace our ancestry before deciding we can be citizens? What could the outcome of this case mean for U.S. citizenship for new immigrants, for their children, and for native-born citizens? I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A podcast. Today we ask, what could the outcome of this case mean for U.S. citizenship, for new immigrants, for their children, and for native-born citizens? We'll be back with more after this short break. Stay with us.

This message comes from CubeSmart self-storage. Whether you're moving, renovating, or need more space, CubeSmart puts you first. With options ranging from storage lockers to climate-controlled units and a team of storage experts ready to help find your perfect unit. Get your first month three and up to 40% off select units now for a limited time. Discount applies to select units only. Additional terms and conditions apply. For more details, visit cubsmart.com. This message comes from MintMobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks, MintMobile is for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash switch. Taxes and fees extra. See MintMobile for details. Just over a year ago, Congress eliminated more than a billion dollars in funding for public media, yet we have not backed down. When you donate to independent nonprofits that make up the NPR network, we hold the powerful to account together. It's the kind of journalism democracy requires that we, the public, need to protect. Don't wait, join the community of people who power this work before the month is out. Head to plus.npr.org. Welcome back to the 1A podcast. Let's get into our conversation and meet our guests. In studio with us is Pema Levy. She's a reporter for Mother Jay Jones. Pam, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Also joining us from Washington, D.C. is Cody Wafsey. He's deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants Rights Project. He's also part of the ACLU legal team leading representation for the plaintiffs in the birthright citizenship case. Cody, it's great to have you. Thanks so much for having me. And a quick note, we did reach out to the Department of Justice, which is arguing the case for the Trump administration. We did not hear back from them in response to our questions about the case. So, Pam, first, what is the basis of this case, Trump v. Barbara? So on Trump's first day in office, January 20th, 2025, he issued an executive order purporting to say that he is going to... return our practice of birthright citizenship to the way that he says the framers of the 14th Amendment intended it. And he says it was never intended to apply to the children of people who are here who are undocumented. And it was never meant to apply to the children of people who are here on a temporary basis, say a student visa or a work visa or traveling. And so all of those people, he's going to start denying them citizenship. So immediately. And he said that he would do this within 30 days. So essentially immediately, you would start to have thousands of babies born in this country, possibly stateless, without a country of their own subject to deportation, not able to get food assistance, not able to get health care potentially. So it was an immediate crisis. And so immediately... people who were about to have babies who would fall into this category and civil rights groups sued. And now, for the first time, the question of whether or not that order was legal and constitutional has reached the Supreme Court. So, Cody, I just want to better understand the argument in this case. Is this a question of what the 14th Amendment says about citizenship? Is it a question about the extent of presidential power or some combination?

Yeah, so the core questions are about the 14th Amendment and also a statute that Congress passed in 1940 that uses the same language as the 14th Amendment and that re-enshrined the right to birthright citizenship as kind of a backup protection. That's really the issue, and it's an issue that the Supreme Court has already decided. In 1898, the Supreme Court... issued an exhaustive opinion looking all the way back to England through all the history, through what the words mean, and explained that the text of the Constitution means what it says, and that if you're born here, you are a citizen, with only this narrow set of exceptions for people like the children of ambassadors in the United States. That's been the rule ever since. Everyone has understood it. And that's what we expect the court to say again in this case. Well, as we mentioned, you're part of the legal team for the plaintiffs in this case. Cody, tell us about the named plaintiffs. Yeah, absolutely. So we represent a class of all the children who are targeted by this executive order. It's tens of thousands of babies being born every month. And there are three families who are standing in to represent all those children before this court named plaintiffs. The families are very much like... the broader group who's represented. The parents and all these families have different immigration statuses, different situations, but it's things like folks who are here on long-term work visas or long-term student visas. You can think of like Ph.D. candidates. people who have long-term different kinds of status, whether it's DACA recipients who may have been here since they themselves were children or people on temporary protected status. Other people who may not have any immigration status at the moment, but have lived here for maybe years or decades, building their life, contributing to their communities, as well as folks who are here seeking safety, asylum, and other forms of protection are... named plaintiff families represent sort of different aspects of that overall group of families targeted by this order. And like I said, those families are different in various ways, but one thing that holds them all together is that even at this moment of, you know, an intense personal moment for many families, either pregnant or with young children, all the stresses that come along with that, the federal government is targeting their newborn babies and trying to strip away their birthright citizenship.

Well, we're hearing from more of you. One of you shared this. I am a birthright citizen. I was born to legal immigrants awaiting U.S. citizenship and immigration services determination. My parents were also Holocaust survivors. I wish the U.S. had been more open to refugees, so my mother wouldn't have suffered a concentration camp, and my grandparents wouldn't have been murdered at Auschwitz. Our population is diminishing. We need both immigrants and people born here to immigrants. In writing this executive order, Pema, the president and his administration opened up this debate around the meeting of the first sentence of the 14th Amendment. As a reminder, it reads, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. Cody alluded to the landmark case, the U.S. v. Wang Kim Ark. Just briefly give us an explanation of what happened in that decision. Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco, I believe in 1873. His parents were... living here legally in San Francisco, due to anti-Chinese animus, which was increasingly building during that time, they ultimately moved back to China. And Wonka Mark went to visit them at one point. He came back to the United States, and they wouldn't let him in. They said, because of your ancestry, we're going to apply the Exclusion Act to you, and you will not be able to come in. They actually detained him for months. And so... He sued and said, actually, I am a citizen. I was born here. Look at the 14th Amendment. And the court affirmed his citizenship. And in a ruling that really said, look, this is the common law from England. This is how it has always been determined. The exceptions to birthright citizenship are very small.

Almost reluctantly, at a time of virulent anti-Chinese sentiment, they said, no, he is a citizen. And that really put to bed for more than 100 years, the idea that you could restrict birthright citizenship beyond, again, this very small and limited number of exceptions. Cody, what connections, if any, do you see between that case from 1898 and the Trump administration's decision? to now challenge the meaning of birthright citizenship, potentially changing how it works. Yeah, so that decision... interprets the Constitution, it provides the rule, and it's completely inconsistent with and forecloses the Trump administration's executive order. But to your point about connections, I think that it's one of the things that's remarkable about this case is the extent to which the government is just recycling the same arguments, the same sources, the same quotes that the government had offered up. to the Supreme Court back in 1898. Those arguments were wrong and were rejected then, and they are wrong, and we have every expectation they'll be rejected now. We got this email from Jim, who says another point that I haven't heard addressed, the president is moving the Overton window by challenging a constitutional amendment via an executive order. In Pam, what are the administration's claim for why the president? could make this change via EO. Yeah, it's kind of wild, right? To be able to say, as president, I'm just going to sign a piece of paper saying the Constitution says something that it just obviously doesn't say. But they're saying because this is the original correct interpretation, we're not technically changing the Constitution. We're just returning it to what it originally said. Well, let's get into more of that after the break. Before we go, a member of our text club writes, being born in the USA means you are a U.S. citizen. It must not be changed. Coming up, why the court ruling in this case could matter for everyone in the U.S. regardless of their citizenship status. That's just ahead.

This message comes from CubeSmart self-storage. Whether you're moving, renovating, or need more space, CubeSmart puts you first. With options ranging from storage lockers to climate-controlled units and a team of storage experts ready to help find your perfect unit. Get your first month three and up to 40% off select units now for a limited time. Discount applies to select units only. Additional terms and conditions apply. For more details, visit cubsmart.com. This message comes from MintMobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks, MintMobile is for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash switch. Taxes and fees extra. See MintMobile for details. This message comes from Jerry. Noticing your car insurance rate creep up even without tickets or claims, you're not alone. That's why there's Jerry. Jerry handles the legwork by comparing quotes side by side from over 50 top insurers so you can confidently hit by. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Jerry even tracks rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. Drivers who say with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Don't overpay. Download the Jerry app or visit jerry.a.ai slash NPR today. Let's jump back into our conversation. We're discussing the Supreme Court case about birthright citizenship in the U.S. Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for Wednesday. Joan in Alexandria, Virginia, texted to say, I support birthright citizenship 100%. And thinking about it, it's possible my late mother and her two siblings were born before her parents had attained legal citizenship. I'm not sure of the finer points of Trump's nasty xenophobic order, but under such a law, it's possible that Mom might have been stateless. She sure couldn't have gone back to the pogroms in Eastern Europe. And Mariana in Minnesota writes, I don't think it needs to be changed, even for undocumented people. I believe in the Constitution. This is just another reason the current president wants to tear up the Constitution. Pam, I want to better understand perhaps the administration's timing here. This is an executive order President Trump issued in his second term, and it's going before a very conservative court. Is that something you think the administration took into account when deciding to bring... to challenge over 100 years of precedent. Yeah, I think the administration absolutely knows that they have a friendly court. And not just because the members of the court are Republican appointees, six out of nine, who are conservative jurists, but because we've seen over more than a year now that they have almost always sided with this administration, whether or not it's allowing other executive orders to take effect, whether or not it's allowing... various policies to take effect that are breaking the law, that are breaking the Constitution. This court has sort of waved them through again and again, you know, racial profiling by ICE. Go ahead. Deporting people to third countries without due process. Go ahead. So there are so many examples here. Let Doge violate the Privacy Act. Sure, why not? And so at that point, the administration says,

Yeah, why don't we just continue and appeal this? We want to enforce this order. Let's go ahead and take this up to the Supreme Court and try our chances. I just want to mention here we spent some time talking about third country deportations here on 1A. If you want to better understand that policy and how it affects people who are being deported to third countries, head over to the 1A.org. You'll find the conversation there. Cody, you sound confident that the Supreme Court will rule in your favor. Why? Yeah, I mean, I think... All the indications, all the arguments cut in our direction. The history here is on our side. As has already been mentioned, this has been the rule since the beginning of the country and going all the way back to England. If you were born on U.S. soil, even if your parents were immigrants, regardless of their situation, you were a citizen. That's the rule that was enshrined into the Constitution. That's exactly what the Supreme Court said. in Wong-Kamark, and again, there is an entirely independent ground on which we can prevail in this case, which is the statute. The government's wrong on the text, it's wrong on the history, and it's wrong on the precedent. And yet we have seen this Supreme Court be willing to overturn long-establish precedent. So what would the ACLU do if the court rules in the administration's favor that the president can change the principle of birthright citizenship? What would be your next step? I mean, look, in that extremely unlikely scenario, obviously we'll have to see whatever the court has to say. But, you know, I do want to emphasize, we understand the stakes are incredibly high. A ruling in favor of the government here would have catastrophic effects, not just on the children. who are targeted by this executive order and their families, but on potentially millions of other Americans. That's why we and our partners and our allies have been doing everything we possibly can to make sure that this is a fight we do win. Pam, I want to talk about some of the stakes here. If the judges decide the administration has made... An argument that they can stand behind? Who might that ruling affect? It'll affect everyone. The more I look into this, the more I'm certain that... there's no way to predict where these ripple effects might end. So immediately you might think of a baby born here. Are the parents even going to go to the hospital at that point, right? Are they worried that ICE is going to be marching through maternity wards, deporting newborns? You're going to have kids who aren't getting...

prenatal, sorry, care that might need to be in the NICU, for example, you're going to have kids not getting their vaccinations. They might not, they won't have access to SNAP benefits, food benefits. They won't have access to CHIP to health to health care, federal health care assistance. So you see immediate harm to people. And over time, what you have is this as a fundamental break in our society. You have a society where there are millions of children growing up who don't have protection, who are subject to deportation, who might not be able to go to school, who eventually might not be able to get work permits. And you just, you stop the process of integrating people into this society. And I think in addition to Cody's point about the precedent and the law and the history, I think the reason I am optimistic that the court is going to strike down this order is how radical it is, right? So the American dream is that it doesn't matter who your parents are, you can make something of yourself if you work hard, right? This order says no. In order to be something in this country, you have to have the right parents. And that is fundamentally unpopular and really radical. The other thing I will say is... implementing this will be so chaotic that there's no way that it won't affect everyone, right? So you might be born with every right to have citizenship, but if your parents lost their documents or they don't have the right ones, you might not get it, right? All of a sudden, how do you get a passport with just a birth certificate? Because a birth certificate won't mean the same thing anymore. So how is the Trump administration... saying they would apply this change if it goes forward. Would it be retroactive or are they only talking about births that happen if this EO goes into effect? I think this is a really important question. The EO says starting 30 days after this order, but that's like a pinky swear. Right? That's not legally binding. It's just an executive order. They could write another one the next day that says we're going to use Ancestry.com or 23 and me to go find everyone whose parents didn't have legal permanent residence or citizenship or their parents or their parents. I mean, and by the way, the Supreme Court would have already said. Those people aren't technically citizens under the 14th Amendment. And so there would be nothing stopping the administration or the next administration or the next one from doing this. So it turns something that we consider settled, that the rights and privileges that we rely on as citizens, and it turns it into a completely uncertain moving target going forward for millions of people. The chaos it would unleash is stunning. We got this from Janelle in Ohio who emails, although they may not say it now, I fear that there will be a push to make a retroactive claim if this goes forward. I feel that this administration is just trying to continuously send people away and millions will lose their citizenship.

We're also hearing from Gerald in Detroit, who says the Constitution allows for amendments and changes to laws. Congress can change laws and with the states add or remove amendments. Trump is taking unconstitutional and lazy measures trying to skirt the legal ways of handling this and other issues. We also heard from Charles, who says we have to understand that persons from other countries are not all our responsibility. The First Amendment has clarifications, like you cannot break the law and use free speech to shout fire or bomb in a movie theater or airplane. have the place ought to yourself. Similarly, a pregnant woman cannot sneak into your home, have a baby, and then claim that baby has a right to stay in your home. Allowing people to cross our border, break the law, and then take advantage of our birthright citizenship is not fair to the actual citizens of this country. Birthright citizenship to children of at least one U.S. citizen is fair to all. I'd love to hear your response, Cody, to what Charles is saying there. Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of things. One is, that's not the rule that's in the Constitution. The Constitution is in universal language, all persons born in the United States, with only those narrow exceptions. And that's for good reason. The framers of the 14th Amendment were reacting to one of the worst mistakes. U.S. history, which was the Dred Scott decision that set up a vision of U.S. citizenship that was based on excluding people from the United States, specifically black people, whether they were enslaved or free, could never be citizens, is what the court said. That was what was being rejected, and the response was no. there is a principle of equal citizenship that goes all the way back to England, and we're going to make sure that's protected so that no one can ever take it away, whether it's Congress, whether it's the President, or whether it's the Supreme Court. The other thing I would say is that it's important to understand what we're really talking about here. You know, that there's a lot of rhetoric about... supposed problems of birth tourism. That's if it's a problem an infinitesimally small one and it's already illegal under federal law. But what we're actually talking about is millions and millions of American families in various immigration statuses, whether it's work visas, DACA and so forth, who are raising families here, contributing to their communities, being a part of the fabric of American life. And the idea is we're going to exclude their children from citizenship against the very terms of the Constitution and our most American of values. That is not the rule. That's not the law. And it is deeply unjust. Well, that's Cody Woffsey. He's deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants Rights Project. He's part of the ACLU legal team representing the plaintiffs in the birthright citizenship case before the Supreme Court. Also with us, Pamela Levy. She's a reporter for Mother Jay Jones. Thanks to you both.

And we'll leave at this message. One of you texted, changing birthright citizenship would be a major constitutional shift, not just a policy tweak. The current rule is simple, predictable, and has been a cornerstone of U.S. identity for over a century. If the goal is to address immigration concerns, there are more targeted ways to do that, like visa enforcement or border policy without redefining who is considered American at birth. Beyond the birthright citizenship case, it's hearing this week. The Supreme Court has a slate of other cases. It still needs to hear and multiple decisions to deliver before July. As with every year, many of these cases could have a lasting impact on our laws, how the government operates, and the day-to-day lives of people in the country. Joining us now from Ann Arbor with an overview of the court's term is Leah Littman. She's a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School and co-host of the podcast, Strict Scrutiny, which covers the Supreme Court. She's also the author of Lawless, how the Supreme Court runs on conservative grievance, fringe theories, and bad vibes. Leah, welcome back to the program. It's so great to be back. Thanks for having me. So I want to start with a decision that dropped just today. It's about conversion therapy. It's called Childs v. Salazar, and these are therapies that attempt to change a person's sexual orientation through various methods. The American Psychological Association opposes conversion therapy and says the practice should end because it harms individuals. It's not evidence-based. The court did drop a ruling today. They voted 8 to 1 that the law raised questions about the free speech concerns for the plaintiff, Kaylee Childs, and sent the case back to a lower court for further consideration. Just explain what this means. So the Colorado law here, as you know, prohibits the practice called conversion therapy. And the therapist at issue in this case argued the law was unconstitutional and triggered the most skeptical form of judicial review strict scrutiny. To the extent it prohibited her from engaging in a kind of talk therapy. That is, she did not challenge the law's ability to ban physical treatments like electroshock therapy or medications. Her challenge was that the law reflected unconstitutional viewpoint. discrimination because it allowed her to speak in ways that affirmed a client undergoing gender transition or a client's sexual orientation if the identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. But the law at the same time did not allow her to speak in ways that encouraged a client to realign their gender identity with their sex assigned at birth. or to encourage a client change their sexual attractions or behaviors. The Supreme Court, 8 to 1, largely agreed with her, argued that the law triggered strict scrutiny.

physical interventions like electroshock therapy or attempts to prescribe medication to treat an individual's gender identity or sexual orientation. Now, it is possible that Colorado and the many other states that have bans on conversion therapy will attempt to rewrite their laws such that they don't trigger the very demanding standard of review that the Supreme Court said applied to this particular law. That is, they might try to rewrite them. in ways that don't reflect viewpoint discrimination or content discrimination. They might say, for example, licensed medical professionals cannot offer a form of care that falls below accepted professional standards. That wouldn't reflect a viewpoint, and that would seem to reflect more a perspective that this law is definitely regulating treatment and conduct of medical professionals. Well, let's move on to another case. The court is hearing for a second time. This is Louisiana v. Calais. What's the question the court is considering in this case? This case is about the future of the Voting Rights Act, and specifically whether what remains of the Voting Rights Act's protections against racial discrimination in voting are still constitutional. So the provision at issue in Calais is the part of the federal statute that prohibits states from drawing legislative districts in ways that dilute the voting power of racial minorities and result in a set of districts in which voters are overrepresented. The argument in Calais is that that prohibition on voter discrimination in redistricting is itself a form of unconstitutional racial discrimination that triggers strict scrutiny and therefore is likely unconstitutional. So when we look at recent history, the Supreme Court nullified parts of the Voting Rights Act in previous cases under the tenure of Chief Justice John Roberts. In 2013, with Shelby County Beholder, the court removed federal preclearance, so that meant certain states with a history of racial discrimination in voting no longer had to get federal approval when they passed state voting laws. In 2021, the court's decision in Bernovich v. Democratic National Committee made it more difficult to bring lawsuits against discriminatory voting laws. laws. So very plainly, Leah, given that history, what could this ruling mean for the Voting Rights Act as a functioning federal law? I think it has a potential to completely nullify the Voting Rights Act's protections for the political power and representation of racial minorities. If the Supreme Court says it triggers strict scrutiny and is presumptively unconstitutional when states are required to draw districts in ways that ensure... essentially a multiracial democracy that ensure that different racial groups are represented, then there goes this remaining provision of the Voting Rights Act. So this will really be in some ways the destruction of the third leg of the stool of the Voting Rights Act because Bernovich involved vote denial claims state laws that...

prevent someone from voting, Shelby County versus Holder, involve preclearance, and now you have the part of the federal statute that concerns redistricting. Well, there's several election-related cases coming before the court. On 1A, we've often talked about its emergency docket. We also call it the shadow docket. Redistricting came up in another case on that shadow docket, which the court responded to at the beginning of March, and it concerned redistricting in New York. What did the court say about redistricting in that case? So unfortunately, the court didn't say very much. What they did is they paused a New York state court ruling that had concluded the state legislature drew state districts in ways that violated the state's voting rights act by suppressing the voting power and political power of racial minorities. Now, a majority of the Republican appointees who stayed that ruling, who said that lower court ruling can't be allowed to go into effect, didn't they? explain why they did so. The only justice who did so was Samuel Alito Samuel Alito. And what he wrote was New York by requiring the state legislature to take into account whether racial minorities and different racial groups were represented were actually engaged in a form of racial discrimination. And if that's the rationale that a majority of the court used to invalidate the New York state case, then that would also doom what remains of the Voting Rights Act in the Louisiana v. Calais case we were just talking about because it would mean the federal government's efforts to ensure racial minorities are represented in districts and political power that that is actually a form of racial discrimination. There's another voting case this time involving the state of Mississippi. This is Watson v. Republican National Committee. This case is about mail-in ballots. Give us a brief rundown. So this case challenges whether states can continue to count absentee ballots that were cast by Election Day, but were not received until a few days after Election Day. The RNC, together with the federal government, the Trump administration, are arguing that the federal statute that sets Election Day as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, that that statute actually prohibits states from counting ballots that were received after Election Day. If the court embraces that argument, it could invalidate the voting laws and policies in over a majority of the states in the lead-up to the very consequential midterm elections in November, which makes it so important for people to make sure they know the rules about how, where, and when to vote. when the midterms actually come around and to ensure they mail in their absentee ballot early. Now, the court heard oral arguments on March 23rd. What types of questions did the justices ask each side? So the justices who were sympathetic to the RNC's position maintained that it was a problem that Mississippi's theory of the case might allow states to continue to count absentee ballots that are received a week or something after an election. They maintained that this theory had no stopping point as to the deadline for receiving absentee ballots.

On the other side, the justices who were skeptical of the RNC's position maintained that if the RNC and the federal government are correct, that election day or the day of the election just means a single day, that could call into question all early voting. And that could also call into question state's ability to count ballots that were received on or before election day but aren't actually counted until after. So it seemed like the court was divided into a few camps with the case likely to come down. to what Justices Amy Coney Barrett, the Chief Justice, and perhaps also Brett Kavanaugh thought. I want to move on to some other cases, but I want to talk about timing for a moment, Leah. As you mentioned, the November midterm elections are creeping up on us. I mean, when are we expected to have a decision from the court on these consequential questions about elections and voting? Because states have to prepare. They have to inform voters if rules have changed. They do. By tradition, the Supreme Court releases all opinions in argued cases, and these were argued cases by the end of June. So that's when we can expect an opinion by. Now, there is a Supreme Court doctrine that says federal courts generally shouldn't change the rules regarding an election too close to an election, lest they risk voter confusion. But during the argument in that absentee ballot case, Brett Kavanaugh asked the advocate, look, if we issued a decision at the end of June, would that be too late for the midterms? And the advocate said, no, that would give states enough time to update their voting laws or policies on absentee voting. And it didn't seem like Brett Kavanaugh disagreed with that. So it's very possible that a decision issued in late June. could be used and would be used to change the rules regarding voting for the upcoming midterms. We'll have to check in with some secretaries of state to see if they agree with that assessment. Let's talk about Trump v. Slaughter, Leah. This is one of the courts cases, this term, looking at President Trump's attempts to fire leaders at executive agencies. Now, this case concerns Rebecca Kelly Slaughter. She's a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission. The president also tried to fire Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve Board member appointed by President Biden. What power is President Trump claiming when it comes to firing leaders of these federal but independent agencies like the FTC? He's claiming a hugely consequential power to be able to fire at will the heads of effectively all federal agencies except for the Federal Reserve Board. If he's given that power, that would basically subject these agencies that have huge sweeping regulatory powers over all industries, all businesses, our safety, health, and welfare to even more complete, unfettered presidential control. So he is really asking for the power to control the entire administrative state and all of the sweeping powers that federal agencies have. Why haven't presidents had that power previously?

So Congress has, for the last century and more, insulated certain federal officials from presidential control because they were concerned that too much politics in some settings would make for bad policy. They wanted individuals who were tasked with protecting consumers to actually be able to focus on consumers' interests, the public interest. They wanted agencies that focus on areas that are technical or scientific to be able to leverage their own expertise. rather than to be driven by politics. And we've seen some of the risks of political control in some of these agencies. You know, the president, for example, had his federal trade commission enter into a pretty favorable settlement with Amazon in some litigation that had begun under the Biden administration. And Amazon, of course, is one of the corporations that donated to the presidential ballroom as well as the presidential transition committee. So by handing the president that kind of control over agencies that have such power and control over businesses, it's increased. the odds of that kind of pay-to-play system of governance. Leah, when you look across the cases the court decided to take up this term, do you see any connections, any through line? Other than these cases are hugely consequential, there are cases that sound in culture wars, there are cases that sound in the law of democracy, there are cases that implicate fundamental pillars of our constitutional order that have existed for more than a century. So this term, frankly, like the last few, is another term that reveals just the vast power the Supreme Court has acquired over our constitutional democracy and our laws and our society. As you're listening to arguments before the court and you listen to the justices question both sides do they seem to have an awareness of or at least acknowledge some of that that effect these are hugely consequential questions they're taking up sometimes they do and sometimes they don't so just to take arguments over the last week Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the absentee ballot case, we were talking about as well as an important case about asylum protections and whether the federal government could turn away individuals who were stopped at the U.S. border from applying for asylum. And in the absentee ballot case, you had justices like Brett Kavanaugh expressing grave concerns about the fallout. of the Supreme Court's decision embracing Mississippi's theory. Whereas in the asylum case, he said, look, it's not our job to think about that. We are just supposed to interpret the federal statute. So short answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Well, lots to watch in the weeks ahead, and we will be sure to cover the decisions as they come down. We've been speaking to Leah Littman. She's a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. She's also co-host of the podcast, Strict Scrutiny, which covers the Supreme Court, and she's author of Lawless, how the Supreme Court runs on conservative grievance, fringe theories, and bad vibes. Leah, as always, thanks for coming on. Thanks so much for having me. Today's producer was Michael Fowlero. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Jen White. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk again tomorrow. This is 1A. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Andrew Carnegie Corporation, formerly Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, we uncover a pattern in political ad spending. As the midterms get closer, Republicans are leaning into an issue they've won on before, immigration. We look at their message and also what Democrats are saying on the issue in a very different way. Listen now on the NPR Politics Podcast. Each story you hear on Planet Money starts with a question. What happens if we refund tariffs? Why are groceries so expensive? At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious because the forces shaping our world can be hard to see. Follow NPR's Planet Money wherever you get your podcast and start seeing how the economy really works.