Will SCOTUS Let Trump Rewrite Birthright Citizenship? (with Michael Dreeben)

Hey, folks. Joyce Vance here. We've got a new special episode of the Insider Podcast out. Joining me is my friend and former colleague, Michael Dreben. Michael spent more than thirty years in the solicitor general's office. That's the justice department's office that represents The United States before the Supreme Court. Michael has argued more than 100 cases before the Supreme Court. We walked through several major legal questions that have reached the Supreme Court this term. President Trump's attempt to limit birthright citizenship, a challenge to the long standing president Humphrey's executor, and issues connected to the National Guard deployment. If you're a member of CAFE Insider, head to the insider feed or click the link in the show notes of this podcast to hear the full analysis. Stay tuned listeners. Stick around for an excerpt from our conversation. Members of Insider help support our work and get access to full episodes and other subscriber benefits. We're living in unreasonable times, so join our community of reasonable voices. Head to cafe.com/insider or staytuned.substack.com. And now, on to the show. Let's move on to the birthright citizenship case. Because here, in order for the president to win, in order for Donald Trump to be able to write birthright citizenship out of the fourteenth amendment, we would have to bypass the commonly accepted and much lengthier provision that's made for amending these sorts of provisions. And what it comes down to, I guess, is the language of the fourteenth amendment, which guarantees citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in The United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. And the solicitor general has a novel argument trying to reinterpret that part of the provision in a way that would allow the administration to do away largely do away with birthright citizenship. What does that argument involve, and do you buy the administration's argument? So this is one of the areas where the administration has injected a very broad and aggressive legal theory into an overall program on immigration. This is a very broad effort to redefine what it means to be an American. America has always been considered the land of immigrants. It's been built on waves of immigration that have enriched the country's culture, economy, society, and the political efforts to make immigration a wedge issue and to change the concept of what it means to be an American are perhaps most symbolized in this case. In Trump versus Barbera, the court will decide whether the president legally issued an executive order that sought to redefine birthright citizenship. So let's start on what birthright citizenship has meant since the nineteenth century up until this executive order. If you are born in this country, subject to three exceptions, you become a citizen of the country. The three exceptions are the children of diplomats who are, in a sense, viewed as islands or outposts of a foreign nation that are not subject to American law, the children of occupying armies during …