Understanding the Historic Supreme Court Victories & Losses this Week

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The Supreme Court ruled that abortion drugs can keep being sent through the mail. No doctor visit. No in-person exam. No one checking whether a woman is being pressured, whether she's too far along, whether she's safe. These are powerful drugs. And right now, there is almost nothing standing between these drugs and your mailbox. And that's why I want you to know about Americans United for Life. For more than 50 years, they've been the legal backbone of pro-life movement. They fight in the courts. They hold the abortion industry accountable. And right now, they are leading the efforts to restore basic safety protections for these drugs. If anyone can fix this, it's AUL. Now here is how you can help and why it matters now. A donor has put up $250,000 to match every gift to Americans United for life. Dollar for dollar, but only through June 13th. $25 becomes 50.50 becomes 100. But that window closes in days. There are women right now who need someone in their corner. And A-U-L is that someone. And be a part of it. Go right now to A-U-L.org forward-slash verdict. That's A-U-L-O-R-G forward-slash verdict. Give before June 13th and your gift will be doubled. Again, that's AUL.org forward slash verdict. All right, so, Senator, let's talk about some of the victories, and one of them was a very interesting case, and it's about the president having the ability to fire people, and this was one of those that maybe wasn't on a lot of people's radar screen, but it's a really important case. Well, let's start with two decisions, and this is a big victory, Trump versus slaughter and Trump versus Cook. And it dealt with the ability of the president to file, fire people in his administration. So almost 100 years ago, the court decided a case called Humphrey's executor. Humphrey's executor, actually 91 years ago, the court concluded that the president cannot fire a commissioner of the federal trade commission. And the Federal Trade Commission was set up as a so-called independent agency. It was an agency with three commissioners appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate from the majority party, and two commissioners appointed by the president confirmed by the Senate from that minority party. And the so-called independent agencies arose coming out of the Woodrow Wilson era, coming out of the progressive era as a way to limit presidential power. And Humphrey's executor said, the president doesn't have the ability to fire an FTC commissioner without cause. Well, in my view, Humphrey's executor was wrong the day it was decided 91 years ago.

And it has been wrong every day for nine decades since then. Why? Because under the Constitution, the first three articles of the Constitution, Article 1, Vest all legislative power in the Congress of the United States. Article 2 vests all executive power in the president of the United States. And Article 3 vests all judicial power in the judiciary. What Humphrey's executor did is severely limit the president's Article 2 authority over the executive branch. Anyone in government, you are either in one of those three buckets. You're either a legislative official. I'm a legislative official. I'm elected by the people of Texas to represent them in the Senate. I'm in the legislature. I'm in Article 1. You could be a judicial official. That is appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate. You're a judge with life tenure, adjudicating cases. That's in Article 3. Everyone else is an Article 2. Article 2 is the executive. And under the Constitution, the president has authority over the executive. Humphrey's executor said, no, no, you don't. There could be someone that works for the executive, and yet somehow Congress has taken over the ability of the president to control that person. Well, when President Trump came in in the second term, he fired two FTC directors, commissioners, rather, one of which was Rebecca Slaughter. Rebecca Slaughter is a Democrat. She was one of the five FTC commissioners, and he fired her. He said, you know what? I just want Republican commissioners. I'm not appointing Democrat commissions. Now, he did that knowing it would prompt a legal challenge. and anticipating that it would be a legal challenge he would prevail him. I will tell you, I've said publicly multiple times for a long time, Trump was going to prevail. And, you know, as I talked to reporters, they'd say, well, what do you think about this case? I said, Trump's going to win, and he's going to win because Humphrey's executor was wrong. The president has the authority over the executive branch, and I believe the court is going to overrule Humphrey's executive. Well, this week that prediction came true. By the way, we talk on this podcast a lot about the predictions we make and the vast majority of the predictions we make come true. And we hold ourselves accountable. When they come true, we lay them out. When they don't come true, we lay them out. In this instance, Chief John Roberts wrote the majority opinion. He was joined by Samuel Alito, Justice Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett. and Clarence Thomas in part. So it was a six three decision. And the court overturned Humphrey's executor, said the president can fire an FTC commission. That's a big victory. That's a big victory for presidential authority. That's a big victory for the text of the Constitution. That's a big victory for the original understanding of the Constitution. Now, here's kind of a weird wrinkle. There was another case. that was Cook versus Trump. So Lisa Cook was a Federal Reserve governor. Yeah. And Trump also fired Lisa Cook. Now, interestingly enough, look, you would think the same principle should apply that if Trump can fire an FTC commissioner, he ought to be able to fire...

a federal reserve governor. Well, you'd be wrong on that. The court, by a vote of five to four, held that Trump could not fire Lisa Cook, that the Federal Reserve was different. And it was a different majority. Chief John Roberts wrote both opinions, which did not surprise me. Trump versus Cook was joined. John Roberts, joined by Justice Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson Ketanji Brown Jackson. So it was 5'4. Now, Clarence Thomas dissented, he called the ruling incorrect. He pointed out that it was inconsistent with the slaughter decision. I got to say, this did not surprise me at all. And indeed, I had predicted Humphrey's executors would be overturned, but at the same time, the court would be reluctant to accord the president carte Todd Blanche over the Federal Reserve. And in my view, look. Chief John Roberts had different distinctions about the statute of the Federal Reserve. I actually think those distinctions did not matter. This was, I believe, in significant respects, a results-driven outcome. I think at the end of the day, you did not have five justices that were willing to... accede the power to the president to fire a federal reserve governor because the role of the federal reserve with our currency with our economy was significant enough that they were reluctant to do it that doesn't surprise me the consequence of these two decisions uh is trump versus cook pure and and true to the constitution probably not But it is a fairly narrow exception to the much broader precedent, which is Trump v. Slaughter, which overrules Humphrey's executor and upholds the president's authority to fire executive branch employees at his discretion. That's going to obviously have big impact moving forward, right? Over the next couple of years for the president as well, would you agree? Yeah, no, no, it's a big deal, and it's going to mean it's a practical matter going forward. I think there's a real possibility, in fact, a likelihood that these so-called independent commissions will not have bipartisan commissions. I think going forward, you're going to see commissions like the FTC, the FCC, potentially the FEC, the various commissions that are bipartisan. What we've seen with Trump is that he says, I'm not going to appoint Democrats to it. And he leaves those seats vacant. My guess is if and when we have another Democrat president, and unfortunately, we will likely have another Democrat president. I'd rather not. I think the Democrats' policies are really damaging. But if history is any guide, we will see the Democrats in charge of the White House at some point. And I think it is quite likely that when the Democrats are in charge. They will appoint to the independent commissions, three commissioners from the Democrat Party, and zero Republican commissioners. And look, I'll say, what, 25 years ago when George W. Bush was elected president.

I came in. I was a young campaign staffer. I'd been down in Austin, Texas on the campaign team with then Governor Bush. I met Heidi on the Bush campaign. She and I came to join the Bush administration. I spent about six months of the Department of Justice. And then I went over to the Federal Trade Commission. And the FTC is what was the subject of this litigation. My boss at the time was the chairman, Tim Muris. Tim is a brilliant, conservative, lawyer, economist. And I was the head of policy at the FTC when I was 30 years old. I was a young kid. It was a fascinating job. I did that for a little over two years. Very much enjoyed the job. At the time, we had three Republican commissioners, two Democrat commissioners. And to be honest, to be a minority commissioner on an independent commission, it's kind of a weird job because you don't have the votes. But you can nonetheless express your views. You can dissent. You write opinions. You press back within the executive branch. I think the consequence of this decision is you're not going to see minority commissioners from the party out of power. You will see the independent agencies operate, much like the rest of the executive. So just like in the Department of Labor, you don't have a... Republican Secretary of Labor and then a Democrat Secretary of Labor who argues against it. Instead, you just have appointees of the president. I think you will see in the independent agencies the same sort of thing. They will just be appointees of the majority party. It's going to be very, very interesting to see, like you said, how this moves forward, but certainly that is a victory for President Donald Trump. All right, I want to move on to another one of the victories, and this was a big case. It's one that I was actually involved with more than any of the case that's ever been before the Supreme Court. My old roommate is the West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey, and they were a part of bringing this case. They knew that when they made their decision in West Virginia, it was probably going to reach the Supreme Court. Sure enough, it did. I actually went into the Supreme Court for those oral arguments that were being made that day with getting men out of women's sports. This was a massive victory. It's a fight the president wanted. It's a fight center that you've been heavily involved with protecting women's sports. And it was a huge victory that is going to have real repercussions across sports at every level in this country. Well, this is a big, big deal. The Supreme Court has now made absolutely clear that we can protect women. from men competing against them in sports. We can protect girls from boys competing against them in sports. This has been one of the things, look, you look at how the world has gone crazy. Ten years ago, even five years ago, I don't think people really could have imagined this would be a thing, and we're seeing it be more and more often a thing where boys are competing against girls, men are competing against women. It is grotesquely unfair. And the good news is 27 states have now passed laws saying this is not acceptable. We are going to protect girls. We're going to protect women in our states. This case, West Virginia versus BPJ, concerned the laws in West Virginia and Idaho, two states that have passed common sense state laws saying we're going to protect girls and women.

plaintiffs brought lawsuits challenging that and saying the Constitution and federal law prohibits states protecting women's sports and protecting girls sports. And the Supreme Court unequivocally rejected that argument. And so the majority opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, Brett Kavanaugh was joined by Chief John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Justice Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett. So it was a six-three decision. And the court concluded that the laws in West Virginia and Idaho are constitutional, that the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. So the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution is part of the 14th Amendment. If you look at in the wake of the Civil War, we fought the Civil War or bloody war, and then we adopted three amendments to the Constitution, the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendment. The 13th Amendment prohibited slavery. The 14th Amendment, I'm going to come back to it a second. The 15th Amendment protected the right to vote and prohibited discrimination of the right to vote based on race. What did the 14th Amendment do? The 14th Amendment protected the rights of citizens from discrimination by government. And there are three key clauses of the 14th Amendment. There's the Privileges or Immunities Clause, which prohibits the states from violating the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. There is the Equal Protection Clause that prohibits the states and also the local governments from denying Americans the equal protections of the law. And there's the due process clause that prohibits the states and the local government. from denying Americans life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The Equal Protection Clause is essentially a provision of the 14th Amendment. that says government cannot treat similarly situated people differently, cannot unfairly discriminate against you. And so it was initially interpreted to protect against racial discrimination. By the way, the Equal Protection Clause is the basis on which the Supreme Court has struck down racial discrimination in college admissions and has made clear you can't discriminate based on race and college admission. That was the right decision. Well, in this instance, the plaintiffs were arguing that stopping a biological male from competing in women's sports violated the Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme Court 6.3 rejected that argument, said, that is wrong. Secondly, there are federal civil rights laws that protect civil rights. These are passed by Congress and signed by the president. And in particular, there's a decision called Bostock that is an employment discrimination case where Justice Gorsuch had written the majority opinion and had bizarrely, I think Bostock was wrongly decided. But the court in Bostock had concluded that the prohibition on discrimination based on sex also covered people who are transgendered.

She would have left the question open for future cases and refused to deny it. Look, you've got three liberal judges who, and to be clear, if the Democrats win, if they take the Senate, they want three to become five to become more, who would strike down every law in the country protecting girls' sports and protecting women's sports. So we ought to celebrate, celebrate this victory, a six-three victory that's important. But it also ought to scare us, not a single one of the liberals, that they didn't admit even a moment's hesitation. That's how extreme things have got. Yeah, it's a great point. And it's exactly why presidential elections are so important because whoever's elected, they get to appoint people. And when they do, they stay for a very long time. And it has major consequences on America. And by the way, Ben, it's not just presidential elections, the midterms in November. If the Democrats take the Senate. My prediction is they will block every single judicial nomination for the next two years. It used to be the case. You had a president of one party, a senator at the oven, but you'd move forward with judicial nominations. There'd be some moderation, but judicial nominations would proceed. I think the Democrats have gotten so radicalized. Judges shut down if they take the Senate. There are moments in life that divide everything into before and after. Walking into the Garden of Gassimony is one of them. Standing at the Jim Jordan River where Jesus was baptized is another. Watching the sun rise over Jerusalem, gold light spilling across the stones that have witnessed the entire story of faith is something you never forget. Israel isn't a destination. It's a revelation where every site you've studied. Every scripture you've memorized. Every sermon that ever moved you suddenly has an address, a landscape, a heartbeat. This is the trip that changes not just how you see the Holy Land, but how you see everything. I am, Israel. Come experience a journey your faith was literally made for. Start planning your trip today. Follow. Visit Israel on social media. That's Visit Israel on Facebook and Instagram. When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert because you know what fits your life. And getting it right starts with good information. That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients at good to know facts.org. No spin, no judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage ingredients. Visit good to know facts.org. The future won't wait, and neither should you. That's why American Public University offers master's programs designed for momentum, affordable, high quality, and flexible so you keep moving forward. With career-relevant programs in business, health care, education, IT, and more, you can gain skills you can use right away and the confidence to power your next move. American Public University, made for what's next. Learn more at APU.apus.edu. As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, this milestone is also a time to reflect on the enduring relationship between the U.S. and Israel, our greatest ally. President John F. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once said, Israel was not created in order to disappear. Israel will endure and flourish. Now, those words capture the spirit of a young democracy determined to survive. Two nations.

thousands of miles apart, yet united by shared values of democracy, faith, freedom, and resilience. As America celebrates 250 years of independence, the international fellowship of Christians and Jews turns to God in prayer, asking that his wisdom will guide elected officials and lead America and Israel to moral clarity and national unity. So sign up to receive a free USA-Israel flagpin when you go online to flagpinifc.org. That's flagpinifcj.org. Vital doesn't always mean visible. Across America, advanced technology is working behind the scenes, strengthening our nation. It protects our war fighters, delivers mission-ready intelligence, advances life-saving health care, and defends the critical infrastructure that keeps our country moving. At GDIT, we power the systems that help America operate, connect, and stay secure. Every hour, every mission, every day. GDIT, behind America's invisible advantage. I want to move to another big case. It was a victory. It's a little inside baseball, but it's a very important one. It deals the FCC in coordination and expenditures. Explain this ruling as well. This is a case called NRSC versus SEC, and it's about free speech. And it's a six-three decision that there were strict rules on how much a political party can spend in coordination with its own candidates. And the court struck down those limits and said, the RNC can spend as much money as it wants to support Republicans in elections. The DNC can spend as much money as it wants to support Democrats in elections. And they can coordinate. They can talk with the candidate. The existing rules were really stupid, where the parties could spend money, but they couldn't actually talk to the candidate if they were spending money to support. That, I believe, is contrary to the First Amendment to the Constitution. You know, one of the strange things about how Democrats think about free speech. The First Amendment says Congress will make no law abridging the freedom of speech. For many Democrats, they are... robust. They are aggressive on the free speech when it concerns pornography, obscenity, kitty porn. They're like, oh, yeah, yeah. First Amendment covers all of that. You should be able to have any sort of grotesque obscenity in any context whatsoever. You should have explicit pornography in the library of kindergarten. That's what the First Amendment is all about. I understand the argument that the First Amendment is so robust. It even includes things that we would find distasteful. But the bizarre thing about Democrats is they say it somehow skips over political speech. Look, if the First Amendment is designed to protect anything, it is political speech. It is speech about our democratic process. It is speech saying...

vote for my candidate, throw this bomb out of office. Here's the rules we should adopt. Here's the laws we should adopt. I'm for gay marriage. I'm against gay marriage. I'm for abortion. I'm against abortion. I'm for protecting gun rights. I'm against protecting gun rights. I mean, that's the essence of our democracy. And for many on the left... They believe government can regulate the living daylights out of political speech, make it incredibly difficult to urge your fellow citizens. Here's who you should elect. Here's who you should not elect. And yet at the same time, they want it to protect speech at the outer edges of the First Amendment. I don't get that. The Supreme Court here, this decision is really important in terms of ensuring... robust democracy and robust free speech. And by the way, do you know what one of the key precedents was that this decision built on? What was that? The case decided in 2022 that was entitled FEC versus Ted Cruz for Senate. So it's kind of cool. I have over the course of my life, I had been a law clerk at the Supreme Court, so I have briefed and advised the Chief Justice on how to decide cases. I had prepared the first drafts of Supreme Court opinions as a law clerk. I had been an advocate and argued nine cases in front of the court, and so stood in front of the court, answered their questions, written brief, and won multiple big landmark cases. But I've also been a litigant. I've been a party. And so I filed a lawsuit that culminated in FEC versus Ted Cruz for Senate that was challenging a portion of McCain-Feingold. McCain-Feingold was the big campaign finance law that John McCain and Russ Feingold champion that put major constraints on political spending and political speech. I think McCain-Feingold was an absolute abomination. One element of McCain-Feingold. Is it limited the ability of a candidate to loan money to his or her own campaign and then pay yourself back? And so when I first ran for Senate in 2012, Heidi and I, in fact, right before the primary, I went to Heidi, and I had a pretty surreal conversation. I went to my wife and I said, okay, we need to liquidate. 100% of our liquid net worth and put it in the campaign. Because if we don't, we can't win. And listen, neither hiding nor I come from money. You know, my parents, when I was in high school, went bankrupt. My dad was an immigrant. He came from Cuba with nothing. It's a curious thing, Ben, people assume if you're in the Senate you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. Yes. Some people in the Senate, that's true for it. It wasn't for me. I mean, I've been financially on my own since I was 17. My parents went bankrupt. We lost our home. We lost our business. When I went to college, I got two jobs. I took student loans. I've been supporting myself ever since then.

But I will say over the years, I mean, I got a good education, I get a good job, and Heidi and I made some money. And so we had done well by working. And so by the time I ran for Senate, our liquid net worth, what we had that we could liquidate was $1.2 million, which is a lot of money. Look, I spent a whole life trying to earn that. I was really grateful to have that. I got to tell you, Ben, you've been married a long time. Not as long as I had, but a long time. I'm getting stressed at the idea of having that conversation, much else actually doing it. It's an interesting conversation, and I will say when I went to Heidi, I felt very confident she would say yes. But I sort of thought we would have a long extended conversation. We might talk an hour or two about, well, that was the campaign. Look, can you win? What are the prospects? And it was one of the moments I was most incredibly proud to be married to my best friend in the world. Because 20 seconds into the conversation, Heidi said, yes, do it. And we put $1.2 million in. And by the way, the last week of the campaign, that was all the ads we ran. Like if I hadn't written that check, We would have been dark on TV that last week because we were broke. We'd spent everything we'd raised. And so that was the only money we had, and we ended up winning the race. But McCain-Feingold limited the ability to pay yourself back. So when the whole campaign was over, I could pay myself back some of it. But 550,000 of that, I couldn't pay myself back. So for more than a decade, I had written a $550,000 check as a loaned to my campaign, and McCain Feingold said I had to give that as a gift, I guess, to the voters and just sacrifice that money. And it wasn't fair, it wasn't right. And so this lawsuit challenged that and said, listen, you ought to be able to invest in and invest your resources in political speech. And 6'3 I won in FEC versus Ted Cruz for Senate. big victory and it meant now and by the way those rules they didn't hurt candidates who were really poor if you had no money then it didn't matter if you could loan money to your campaign and pay it back and they didn't really hurt candidates who were super rich the the gazillionaires of the world if you're so rich it doesn't matter you can write a check and you don't miss it What it really hurt was kind of folks in the middle, folks who say were professionals like me. I was a practicing lawyer who had some resources. But, you know, most people aren't willing to put 100% of their net worth at a campaign. I mean, that's a big investment. That's literally putting your money on your mouth is. When you go sit down with a donor and you're like, hey, I'm all in. They're like, well, really, how much are you? You're like, no, like literally everything. That's a testimony to how much you believe in your campaign and what you're doing. Well, it is, and it's a question of being all in, and that decision protected basic First Amendment rights. Look, McCain-Feingold was passed by a bunch of incumbent politicians. If you're an incumbent, you've got massive advantages. You can drive media like crazy, you have a fundraising apparatus. There are huge benefits to being an incumbent. Part of why...

Congress passed, McCain-Feingold, is that incumbents didn't want to be challenged. They didn't want some upstart candidate to be able to run against them and beat them. And so by cutting off the money for an upstart candidate, if a candidate has no name ID, and a candidate can't raise money, and a candidate can't invest their own money, you know what it means? You can't beat an incumbent politician. And so the decision... uh in in fec versus Ted Cruz for senate we won that six three that was a major precedent that in turn uh underlay nrc versus fec and what that means now is that the parties will be able to spend and and use look there are some people who say money isn't speech that view is objectively wrong uh virtually all speech requires the expenditure of money. You go back to the founding era. Look, the Federalist papers, the Federalist papers were op-eds printed in the newspaper in New York, and they were advocating for ratification of the Constitution. That took money. Printing newspapers take money. You look at Thomas Payne's common sense. That was printed, that took money. You look at Benjamin Netanyahu Franklin who spent a lot of money putting out political pamphlets. You go forward to today. If a little old lady goes to Home Depot and buys a steak of wood and a poster board a marker and writes, throw the bums out, that takes money. And virtually all communication, by the way, The New York Times every week spends millions of dollars running printing presses, printing newspapers, distributing newspapers. NBC spends millions of dollars communicating about politics. CNN spends millions of dollars communicating about politics. Money is how you communicate to a nation of 330 million people. And so this victory says, look, all of us have a right to participate in the political process and express our views. That's a big victory for free speech. All right, Senator, let's get to the bad cases. There's two of them that I think we need to highlight. One of them, and it's one that there's been a lot of discussion over, and that's birthright citizenship case. My take on this was, look, the president wanted there to be a grand debate nationwide on birthright citizenship. I think a lot of people around him knew that if this went to the Supreme Court and this was a fight they were willing to have, that there was a good chance it was not going to be a victory, but it did open up. a big conversation nationwide on immigration, immigration status, and birthright citizenship, people coming in, birth or tourism is a simple way of putting it. And it certainly did, I think, educate people on what's happening in this country. That for me is a victory, but the reality is in the Supreme Court. This was a loss. So it was. The question is, what does birthright citizenship protect? And in particular, our children of illegal aliens entitled to become U.S. citizens because they were born on U.S. soil. Now, as a policy matter, birthright citizenship, I think, is a very foolish policy.

It is a policy that encourages illegal immigration. It rewards people for breaking our laws. Most other countries on earth don't have that policy. If you break in illegally to another country, most other countries, if you have a kid there, that kid is not a citizen of that country. It also encourages things, as you noted, like birth tourism, where pregnant women will get on a plane and fly to America on tourist visa simply to have a baby in America so that baby can become a U.S. citizen. That's a foolish policy. Now, there's a legal question of how can you change birthright citizenship? And I talked a minute ago about the 14th Amendment. And the 14th Amendment says 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. This case turned on the phrase and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. What happened, there have long been understood as really two potential ways to change current law and birthright citizenship. The one way that is unquestionably permissible and valid would be a constitutional amendment that changes the Constitution and makes clear that the child of an illegal immigrant born in America is not a U.S. citizen. I strongly support that. I would vote for that. That's good policy. The second way, and there's dispute among legal scholars, is could Congress pass a law saying the children of illegal immigrants born in America are not US citizens? That is still a somewhat murky question. Donald Trump explored a third avenue, which is he signed an executive order that said, I am ordering the children of illegal immigrants are not U.S. citizens. if they're born in the United States. Now, to be honest, prior to Trump coming into office, I'd never heard anyone articulate a legal theory that that could be done by executive order. The Trump administration knew it was pushing the bounds of what's permissible. You are right that we've now had a robust debate on birthright citizenship and what a bad policy it is. Now, the court, unfortunately, ruled 5'4 that the executive order is invalid, and that the children of illegal immigrants born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens. That is unfortunate. Chief John Roberts wrote the opinion. I will say that that did not surprise me. It was clear from the oral argument. This was the likely outcome. This was where the votes were headed.

an amicus brief, actually two different amicus briefs in the court, joined by multiple members of Congress, in which I asked the Supreme Court to restore the original meaning of the birthright citizenship clause. And I would encourage anyone interested in this issue, go read the brief that I wrote, that laid out the original understanding of what the phrase subject to the jurisdiction thereof meant, and that someone who was unlawfully present in the country, it did not fall within those parameters. I think that's the right conclusion. I wish the court, I think the dissenters have the better argument. I wish the dissenters instead of having four votes and had five. I wish we had one more. That being said, I was not surprised. Now, I will say this. Clarence Thomas wrote a spectacular dissent, 91 pages. It is incredibly effective, and I will say Clarence Thomas' dissent cited my brief twice in that dissent. I'm glad that the dissent commanded four votes. I wish it had commanded five. Where does that leave us? Well, there's still some ambiguity on whether Congress could pass legislation defining subject to the jurisdiction thereof to exclude the children born by parents here illegally. The court did not resolve that question because it wasn't presented with that question. But let me be clear. From my perspective, This is a terrible policy outcome, and it's also the wrong legal outcome. And I would support, number one, a constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship. I would support number two legislation to end birthright citizenship. I hope we go down the road to both of those. Yeah, I agree with you there. And finally, we've got to deal with a case that deals with mail-in ballots. That's right. This is another case that is Watson versus RNC. And Watson versus RNC deals with the laws in Mississippi concerning governing absentee ballots. So the laws in Mississippi say that absentee ballots have to be postmarked by Election Day, and they can be received up to five days after Election Day. And in this case, the RNC filed a lawsuit challenging that. and saying that under the terms of federal election law, election day is understood to be the actual day of the election. And so the argument the RNC made is that you could not count ballots received up to five days after the election. Unfortunately, by a vote of five to four, the Supreme Court rejected that argument. And Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Chief John Roberts and the three liberals, concluded that election day is understood to mean the day when, quote, voting is complete, not when ballots are received. In other words, they upheld Mississippi's law allowing ballots to be received up to five days after election day. There were vigorous dissents. It was 5'4. But at the end of the day, what it means is that The court has concluded federal law does not limit late-received mail-in ballots. The consequence of this is it's going to remain state-by-state. Red states can put real and meaningful limits, can limit balloting, can limit late-received ballots. Mississippi can change their law.

But it also means that blue states, states like California can have the atrocity they had in their most recent election, their mayor's election in L.A. where they have votes coming in, days, weeks, as much as a month later. Look, this decision is unfortunate, but I'll tell you what it really underscores. It underscores the need to pass the Save America Act. The Save America Act would protect against illegal voting. I'm an original sponsor of the Save America Act. I'm fighting for it in the Senate. This decision, unfortunately, was a real loss of the Supreme Court. Yeah, it really was. Well, it certainly is a lot. As you mentioned, coming down from the Supreme Court, I'm glad we got to cover a lot of it. You know the wins, you know the losses and what it means moving forward. This is why we do the show. So don't forget we do this show Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Hit that subscriber auto download button wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss a single episode of Vertica with Ted Cruz. And we'll see you back here on Friday morning. When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert because you know what fits your life. And getting it right starts with good information. That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients at good to know facts.org. No spin, no judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage ingredients. Visit good to know facts.org. The future won't wait, and neither should you. That's why American Public University offers master's programs designed for momentum, affordable, high quality, and flexible so you keep moving forward. With career-relevant programs in business, health care, education, IT, and more, you can gain skills you can use right away and the confidence to power your next move. American Public University, made for what's next. Learn more at APU.apus.edu. Vital doesn't always mean visible. Across America, advanced technology is working behind the scenes, strengthening our nation. It protects our warfighters, advances life-saving healthcare, combat cyber threats, and defends the critical infrastructure that keeps our country moving. At GDIT, we power the systems that help America operate, connect, and stay secure. Every hour, every mission, every day. GDIT, behind America's invisible advantage. The first ever X-Games League Championship is going down live, and New Orleans has the call. Three days of elite action sports, a season's worth of competition, coming down to one final weekend. Watch July 24th through 26th on ABC, ESPN, and ESPN 2. Or stream on the ESPN app, X Games YouTube, Kick, Roku Sports Channel, and Amazon. The championship starts July 24th. Don't miss the moment it becomes history. Mom, can I have Lingo Kids? Dad, Lingo Kids, please! When did we become the Lingo Kids' house? No idea. Last week it was dinosaurs. This week it's... Lingo Kids!

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