Mail-in Ballot Regulations

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We are going to have a really interesting show today because we have so many extremely important rulings that have come down from the Supreme Court. We're going to break them into the wins and into the losses category here and let people know exactly what many of these rulings mean going forward Well, this was a landmark week in front of the U. S. Supreme Court. Huge decisions came down this week. We're going to break them down for you, try to explain them make them understandable. We had major, major victories that are enormously consequential. We also had a couple of big, big losses We're going to break all of them down for you today. Yeah, it's a lot of them, and we're going to talk about that in a moment. But first I want to talk to you about Americans United for life. 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 lifeife, AUL For more than fifty 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 two hundred fifty thousand dollars to match every gift to Americans United for life Dollar for dollar but only through june thirteenth twenty five dollars becomes fifty. fifty becomes one hundred But that window closes in days There are women right now who need someone in their corner. and AUL is that someone And be a part of it. Go right now to aul. org forward slash verdict. That's A U L d. OG Forward slash verdict Give before june thirteenth and your gift will be doubled again That's aUL dot org forward slash verdict All right, so Senor, 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 fire people in his administration So almost one hundred years ago, the court decided a case called Humphrey's Executor Humphrey's executor ninety one 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 presresident confirmed by the Senate from that minority partarty And the so called independent agencies arose coming out of the Woodrow Wilson era, coming out of the prorogressive era as a way to limit presidential power And Humphrey's executor said, president doesn't have the ability to fire an FTC commissioner without cuse In my view, Humphrey's executor was wrong the day it was decided ninety one years ago And it has been wrong every day for nine decades since then Why Because under the Constitution, the Constitution, the first three articles of the Constitution, Aticle one invest all legislative power in the Congress of the United States Article two vests all executive power in the president of the United States and Article three vests all judicial power in the judiciary. what Humphrey's executor did is severely limit the president's Aticle two 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 one 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 Aticle three. everyone else is an article two. Article two 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 takeak it over the ability of the president to control that person Well, when President Trump came in in the second term, fired two STC directors, commissioners, rather O of which was Rebecca Slaughter. Rebecca Slauer is a Democrat. She was one of the five FDC commissioners, and he fired her. He said, you know what? I just want Republican commissioners. I'm not appointing Democrat commissers He did that knowing it would prompt a legal challenge and anticipating that it would be a legal challenge he would prevail in. I will tell you, I've said publicly multiple times for a long time, Trump was going to prevail And as I talk to reporters, theyd say, well, what do you think about this case? I said Trump's going to win And he's going to win because Humphy'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 Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion He was joined by Justice Alito. Justice Gorsuch Justice Kavanaugh Justice Barrett and Justice 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 interestnterestingly 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 U 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 Justice Roberts wrote both opinions, which did not surprise me. Trump vers. Cook was joined Roberts, joined by Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan, Justice Kavanaugh, and Justice Katanjie Brown Jackson. so it was five four. Now, Clarence Thomas Deenity 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 executivors would be overturned, but at the same time courourt would be reluctant to d the president carte blanche over the Federal Reserve. And in my view, look Chief Justice Roberts had different distinctions about the statute of the Federal Reserve. I actuallyually 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 we're willing to aede 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 is Trump versus Cook pure and true to the Constitution? probablyrobably not But it is a fairly narrow exception to the much broader precedent, which is Trump versus 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 presresident as well. Would you agree Yeah. no, no, it's a big deal. and it's going to mean as a practical matter going forward, I think there's a real possibility of 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 able to point to the independent commissions, three commissioners from the Democrat Party, and zero Republican commissioners. And look, I'll say about twenty five 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 in the Department of Justice. and then I went over to the Federal Trade Commission. and the FDC 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 FDC when I was thirty 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 Democratic commissioners. And to be honest, to be a minority commissioner on independit 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 partarty 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 partarty. 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 other case. It's ever been before the Supreme Court. My old roommate is the West Virginia attorney General JB McCusky 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 I 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 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 Bys are competing against girls, men are competing against women. It is grotesquely unfair And the good news is twenty seven states have now passed laws saying this is not acceptable. We are going to protect girls, We are going to protect women in our states this case, West Virginia versus BPJ. concern 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 pllaintiffs 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 through the majority opinion. Kavanaugh was joined by Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, Justice Gorsuch, and Justice Barret. So it was a six three decision And the court concluded that the laws in West Virginia and Idaho are constitutional that The equal prrotection cllause of the Constitution. So the equal prrotection cllause of the Constitution is part of the fourteenth Amendment. If you look at in the wake of the civil warar, we fought the civil warar, bloody war, and then we adopted three amendments to the Constitutions, the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth ammendment thirirteenth Amendment prohibited slavery fourteenth Amendment, I'm going come back to in a second. The fifteenth Amendment protected the right to vote and prohibited discrimination of the right to vote based on race What does the fourteenth Amendment do? The fourteenth Amendment U. protected the rights of citizens from discrimination by government and there are three key clauses of the fourourteenth Amendment There's the privileges or immunities cllause which prohibits the states from violating the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States There is the equal prrotection 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 cllause that prohibits the states and the local governments from denying Americans life, liberty or property without due process of law The equal Protection Clause is essentially a provision of the fourteenth Amendment It 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 admissions. 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 prrotection Cause The Supreme Court sixty three 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 Gorsich had written the majority opinion and had bizarrely, I think Bosock was wrongly decided. but the Ct and Bos Stock had concluded that the prohibition on discrimination based on sex also covered people who are transgendered which I don't think is remotely within the statutory language. I think BobTock was wrongly decided The court here concluded nothing in Bostock requires biological males to compete in girls sports. That is a big, big victory. Now I want to be clear what this means There are twenty seven states that have protected girl's sports and women's sports Those laws are now constitutionally sound and they are extremely unlikely to be struck down in litigation Now doing the math, if twenty seven states have protected that That means twenty three states have not Californias, the New Yorks, the Illinois, the Blue States In this case, now look, the court was not deciding whether there is a problem with California and New York allowing boys to compete in girls sports. I think there is a massive fairness problem, there's a massive public policy problem. I would like to see Congress. I voted repeatedly in favor of Congress passing legislation prohibiting boys from competing in girls sports, prohibiting men from competing in women's sports, I think that's the right policy. The outcome of this case is those twenty three states can continue to let boys compete in girls sports. But thankfully, that means the voters can say enough is enough and get their states to pass laws protecting girls sports, protecting women's sports Yeah, it is going to be huge. And like you said, there's still going to be battles going forward, but they're going to be fought in a very different way than what we've witnessed so far. And this is again, this is about protecting women's sports. and now you're going to see a lot of people that have been pushed around who are going to say, hey, I don't have to anymore. I don't have to play in these two worlds, I can do what now the Supreme Court says I can do and that is huge I want to also move on and by the way, hold on a second, I want to say something also Snowing. that in this case, it was six three That means three justices dissented S of Bayor Kagan and Jackson and in particular They argue that the case should have been remanded to the lower court to figure out if the transgender athlete who wanted to compete. Uh whether that transgender athlete had specific medical treatments that eliminated any athletic advantage. So they wanted to be able to say, okay, if you're a biological man But you're taking so much estrogen all of the advantages of being male in terms of physically competing in sports have been eliminated, then you have a legal claim and you can strike down the law U Justice Katanji Brown Jackson wrote separately, and mind you, Katanji Brown Jackson, you'll recall during her confirmation hearing famously was asked, What is a woman? And she couldn't answer a question. Do remember what she said? Yeah, couldn't she couldn't didn't know how to answer it He said, I'm not a biologist. Well, it turns out she's still not a biologist because she descended here And she said the court did not need to define sex as biological for the purposes of Title nine. Title nine is the law that protects girl sports She would have left the question open for future cases and refuseed 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 girl's 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, notot a single one of the liberals that they didn't admit even a moment's hesitation, that's how extreme these things have got Yeah, it's a great point. And it's exactly why presidential elections are so important because what whoever's elected, they get to point people and when they do, they stay for a very long time and it has major. And by the way, man 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 senate at the other, that 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 Your faith runs deep, deeper than the words on the page. and somewhere in the back of your heart, you've always known. there was a place where it would all make sense in a way nothing else ever could. That place is Israel where the Bible isn't history. It's the ground beneath your feet where the Sea of Galilee still shimmers A dawn and the streets of Jerusalem still echo with a story that changed the world. 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Join Simon Plus, our new rewards program for free and get two point five times the points in addition to extra savings, cashback and offers that also work at shopsimon d. com Grab the fan, head to a Simon center, and make it a day for the books. It's a celebration thing. Sign up today at Simonplus d. comot Rewards program terms apply. seeee Simonplus.ot com for details. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from MintMobile. Now, I was was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for fifteen dollarars a month is back So I thought it would be fun if we made fifteen dollars bills, but it turns out It's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at midmobile d. com slash swwitch Upront pay of forty dollars for three months, ninety dollars for six months are one hundred eighty dollars for twelveth plan reired fifteen dollars for month equalent to taxes extra. initial term only greater than fifty gigabtes be slow netor is busyCat terms. The best skaters, BMX riders, and moto athletes in the world don't compete in leagues Until now. The X Games League Championship is live from New Orleans, july twenty fourth through twenty sixth. Three days of elite action sports, plus performances from Metro Booming, JID, sububtronics, and Bunt. Watch on ABC, ESPN and ESPN two. Stream on the ESPN app, Roku, Kick, Amazon, and X Games YouTube The inaugural Champion gets crowned this July 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 and coordination expenditures explain this ruling as well This is a case called NRSC versus FEC, and it's about free speech three decision that there were strict rules how much a political party spe 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 DNC can spend as much money as it wants. for 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 they were spending money to support. and that, I believe, is contrary to the First Amendment to the Constitution.ne of the strange things about how Democrats think about free speech The firstirst Amendment says Congress will make no law ab brridging 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, 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 kindindergartens. 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 skiffs 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 bump 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 U 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 You know what one of the key precedents was that this decision built on? What was that case decided in twenty twenty two 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 brief that advised the Chief Justice on how to decide cases. I had prepared the first drafts of Supreme Court opinions as a law clerk I have been an advocate and argued nine cases in front of the court, and so stood in front of the court, answered their questions, written briefs, 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 Cruiser Senate that was challenging a portion of McCain Feinold. McCain Feinold was the big campaign finance law that John McCain and Russ Feinold championed that put major constraints on political spending and political speech. I think McCain Feinold was an absolute abomination onene element of McCain Feinold 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 twenty twelve Idi 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 one hundred percent of our liquid net worth and put it in the campaign Because if we don't, we can't win. And listen, neither Heiding nor I come for money. 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, wasn't for me. I mean, I've been financially on my own since I was seventeen. 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 got 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 one point two million dollars, which is a lot of money. Look, I've spent a whole life trying to earn that. I was really grateful to have that I gott to tell you Ben, you've married a long time, notot 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, 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 a 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 twenty seconds into the conversation, Heidi said, yes, do it And we put one point two 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 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 McCain Feinold limited the ability to pay yourself back. So when the whole campaign was over, I could pay myself back some of it five hundred fifty thousand of that, I couldn't pay myself back So for more than a decade, I had written a five hundred fifty thousand dollars check as a loan to my campaign. And McCain Feinold said I had to give that as a gift U I guess to the voters and just just sacrificice 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 six three 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 gazillionaires of the world If you're so rich It doesn't matter. You could write a check and you don't miss it What it really hurt was kind of folks in the middle, folks who say we werere professionals, like me, I was a practicing lawyer who had some resources most people aren't willing to put one hundred percent of their net worth in a campaign. I mean, that That's a big That's literally putting your m your mouth is. When you go sit down with the donor and you're like, Hey I'm all in. They're like, well, really, how much are you 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 And that decision protected basic first Aendment rights. Look McCain Feinold 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 Feinold 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 deed an incumbent politician And so the decision in FEC versus Ted Cruz for Senate, we won that sixix three. That was a major precedent that in turn underlay NRSC versus FEC and what that means now is that the parties will be able to spend and use Look, there are some people who say money isn't speech. That view is objectively wrong U virtually all speech requires the expenditure of money. You go back to the founding era. lookook, 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 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 stake of wood and a poster board to 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 three hundred thirty 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 speak 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 Supreme Court and this was a fight they're 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, immmigration status and birthright citizenship, peoplee 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 the Supreme Court, this was a loss. So it was. The question is citizenship protect and in particular are children of illegal aliens entitled to become U. S. citizens because they were born on U.S. soil 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 eararth 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 foolish policy. Now There's a legal question of how can you change birthright citizenship? And I talked a minute ago about the fourteenth Amendment and the fourteenth Amendment U 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 on birthrightright 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 US 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 U. S. 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. SS. citizens if they're born in the United States. Now, to be honest, prior to Trump coming into office I've 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