Can Trump Undo Our Citizenship Rights? (with ACLU’s Cecillia Wang)

<v Speaker 1>Welcome to The Oath and the Office podcast. I'm John
<v Speaker 1>Fiegel saying we've got a packed one this week. Redistricting,
<v Speaker 1>the mass comes off and there's a hood underneath. John
<v Speaker 1>Roberts and the Dirty six on Leach, a wave of
<v Speaker 1>rapidly racist jerry mandering, an attack on democracy like we've
<v Speaker 1>never seen. Not to be outdone, the DOJ has a
<v Speaker 1>new push to start stripping citizenship, and Trump's attacking his
<v Speaker 1>own judges. Plus to special guest Cecilia one legal director
<v Speaker 1>at the ACLU who argued the birthright citizenship case before
<v Speaker 1>the court. So let's bring in the star of our podcast,
<v Speaker 1>the author of The Oath and the Office, Professor Corey Bretschneider.
<v Speaker 1>It's good to see you, sir.
<v Speaker 2>Thanks so much, John.
<v Speaker 3>I look forward to this every week, and you know,
<v Speaker 3>this is really an amazing episode, one that speaks to
<v Speaker 3>the core of why we started this show in the
<v Speaker 3>first place. Trump's assault on birthright citizenship is attempted to
<v Speaker 3>reverse the Fourteenth Amendment first section guaranteeing birthright citizenship. You're
<v Speaker 3>born in the United States, You're a citizen, one of
<v Speaker 3>his most blatant attacks on the Constitution, and so to
<v Speaker 3>have an episode in which we're going to be joined
<v Speaker 3>by the person who argued the case. And it wasn't
<v Speaker 3>just any argument. It really was a superb argument. You'll hear,
<v Speaker 3>really how brilliant this person is, Cecilia Wang, this amazing lawyer.
<v Speaker 2>So we have a lot to talk about.
<v Speaker 3>Of course, the attack on our voting rights, and you
<v Speaker 3>know what's at stake in birthright citizenship is not just
<v Speaker 3>about non citizens being denied citizenship, but also the wider
<v Speaker 3>issue we'll speak to about this idea that the Trump
<v Speaker 3>administration is actually trying to take away citizenship from those
<v Speaker 3>who already have it.
<v Speaker 1>That is correct, that is part of the goal, and
<v Speaker 1>we have a lot to unpack, so let's dive into it.
<v Speaker 2>Corey.
<v Speaker 1>Of course, to nobody surprise, as soon as the Supreme
<v Speaker 1>Court told the states that they can go ahead and
<v Speaker 1>jerrymander their districts anyway they want, as long as it's
<v Speaker 1>not based you know, on color, as long as it's
<v Speaker 1>not to redress historic and yeah, as long as it's
<v Speaker 1>not to address historic injustices but just perpetuate new ones
<v Speaker 1>have at it, and we have seen a feeding frenzy,
<v Speaker 1>particularly among the former Confederate States, Republican Party is ninety
<v Speaker 1>percent white. African Americans vote for Democrats about eighty five
<v Speaker 1>percent minimum, and it seems like Republican in this case
<v Speaker 1>is really a euphemism for white, so they can hide
<v Speaker 1>behind partisanship, but the impact is going to be the same.
<v Speaker 1>Tennessee is a state with a forty percent black population
<v Speaker 1>and majority black. Memphis hasn't lost the vote, They've just
<v Speaker 1>lost the power of the vote and any kind of
<v Speaker 1>representation as that city has been carved into thirds by
<v Speaker 1>a white supermajority that's now made those votes diluted and
<v Speaker 1>be minority members of all white districts. So it's tricky
<v Speaker 1>Cory they you know, some of our liberal friends say, oh,
<v Speaker 1>they're going back to Jim Crow. This is something more
<v Speaker 1>insidious and new ones. They haven't stripped them of their votes,
<v Speaker 1>but they have stripped them of their votes in Congress.
<v Speaker 1>We're going to see no black congress people from the
<v Speaker 1>South in either party by the time this is done.
<v Speaker 1>Are we really still watching isolated voting rights disputes or
<v Speaker 1>are we witnessing the beginning of a long term minority
<v Speaker 1>rule system that uses courts and maps and election law
<v Speaker 1>to dominate.
<v Speaker 3>Wow you know, we talked last week about the Louisiana case,
<v Speaker 3>and we've talked before.
<v Speaker 2>About the assault on voting rights.
<v Speaker 3>But what we're really seeing this week, really within a
<v Speaker 3>few days, is why the Supreme Court, when it gives
<v Speaker 3>a green light to discrimination, people are going to take
<v Speaker 3>them up on that. And that's really the story of
<v Speaker 3>this week. So the Supreme Court read the nineteen sixty
<v Speaker 3>five Voting Rights Act essentially require kind of color blindness.
<v Speaker 3>Anytime race is taken into account, you have to show
<v Speaker 3>that it's intentional discrimination that you are fighting against, if
<v Speaker 3>you're trying to preserve black votes, if you're trying to
<v Speaker 3>preserve black voting power. And what the Supreme Court is
<v Speaker 3>really saying is an attempt to preserve black voting power
<v Speaker 3>and to create districts in which actually black.
<v Speaker 2>Representatives will be elected. That that's no good anymore.
<v Speaker 3>Even though, now let me just let this sink in.
<v Speaker 3>In nineteen sixty five, there was a movement, the civil
<v Speaker 3>rights movement. We know these images. We learned about them.
<v Speaker 3>Some of us grew up with them, others learned about
<v Speaker 3>it in school. But people being beaten, in many cases
<v Speaker 3>near death to try to get enact a very specific law,
<v Speaker 3>the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act, and in fact,
<v Speaker 3>even radical politics Malcolm X's speech The Ballot or the
<v Speaker 3>bullet is about how important this law was. People from
<v Speaker 3>all political vantage points, Moderates, some conservatives who were worried
<v Speaker 3>about the problem of race, liberals, progressives, and even radicals
<v Speaker 3>all joined together to push for this legislation. And what
<v Speaker 3>happened last week was nothing less than really eviscerating it.
<v Speaker 3>It was about legislation to protect black voting power, that
<v Speaker 3>recognize that attempts to dilute the black vote in particular
<v Speaker 3>wouldn't be allowed, and opening ways both through legislation but
<v Speaker 3>also for legislators who wanted to make good on the
<v Speaker 3>demands of this law to draw districts in a way
<v Speaker 3>that would preserve black voting power and that would elect
<v Speaker 3>black representatives. And the court just ripped into that. It
<v Speaker 3>left in place restrictions on things like literacy tests, but
<v Speaker 3>it did a lot to really say no more, we
<v Speaker 3>really to evsterate this nineteen sixty five Civil Rights Act,
<v Speaker 3>and in particular Section two.
<v Speaker 2>And what's happened as a follow up is that.
<v Speaker 3>You know, basically, lawyers used to tell those who wanted
<v Speaker 3>to draw lines in a way that would dilute black votes.
<v Speaker 3>You can't do that. There's a law that prevents it.
<v Speaker 3>And now I think Republican legislators are hearing the opposite.
<v Speaker 3>Go for it, you're no longer restricted. Just pretend it's
<v Speaker 3>about party, not about race, and you can do it.
<v Speaker 1>That's it. And they are perpetuating an even more racist system,
<v Speaker 1>possibly the largest rollback of minority representation since reconstruction. And
<v Speaker 1>they're perpetuating this race through a really diabolically smart way
<v Speaker 1>by saying racism doesn't exist, it's not racist, we have
<v Speaker 1>nothing against them. We're just doing this for politics. We're
<v Speaker 1>not stealing the black vote because we hate black people.
<v Speaker 1>We're stealing the black vote because we are historically unpopular.
<v Speaker 1>Gas is so expensive, the Epstein files are not going away,
<v Speaker 1>and we need to cheat to win an election. So
<v Speaker 1>we're not rac we're not racist. We're just going to
<v Speaker 1>put a racist system in place to help us hold
<v Speaker 1>power at a time that we are historically unpopular. And again,
<v Speaker 1>we touched on this briefly last week, but look at
<v Speaker 1>look at this mentality race conscious college admissions to address
<v Speaker 1>centuries of discrimination. Well, that's illegal. Race conscious voting maps
<v Speaker 1>to remedy centuries of voter dilution that's illegal, but race
<v Speaker 1>conscious immigration crackdowns, race conscious policing, race conscious travel bands.
<v Speaker 1>This court really only seems to think, Professor, that we've
<v Speaker 1>got to be color blind only at the times when
<v Speaker 1>race is used to help minorities. And what we've witnessed
<v Speaker 1>with the Virginia Supreme Court is downright diabolical. These Republican
<v Speaker 1>governors who have just imposed these just imperially imposed these redistrictings.
<v Speaker 1>Whereas California and Virginia went to the voters and said,
<v Speaker 1>Republicans are doing this, we don't want to do it,
<v Speaker 1>should we do it to save democracy and counter their
<v Speaker 1>attempts to steal the House? The voters decided, and then
<v Speaker 1>three white people undid the votes of the majority of
<v Speaker 1>Virginians and now they're going to try to redistrict and
<v Speaker 1>rob people of their vote. I mean, how significant was
<v Speaker 1>the Virginia Supreme Court decision striking down the voter approved
<v Speaker 1>redistricting system. This isn't really just a legal dispute at
<v Speaker 1>this point. It's representing courts just overriding democratic self government.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I mean, you know, one hope was Okay, we've
<v Speaker 3>eviscerated the nineteen sixty five Voting Right Tact.
<v Speaker 2>Maybe we'll leave things to the states.
<v Speaker 3>This example shows is no state supreme courts, just like
<v Speaker 3>the United States Supreme Court can undo decisions of local
<v Speaker 3>majorities the same way the Supreme Court really.
<v Speaker 2>Undid Let's just call it what it is, the decision.
<v Speaker 3>Of a national majority to enact that law, the nineteen
<v Speaker 3>sixty five Voting Rights Act. I do want to, in
<v Speaker 3>the big picture, come back to something that you said,
<v Speaker 3>because I want to make sure listeners are following it.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, it really is the case that now, if
<v Speaker 3>you want to be involved in diluting black votes and
<v Speaker 3>making sure there are no black representatives in your state, the.
<v Speaker 2>Supreme Court has given you a roadmap.
<v Speaker 3>It said, even though that's prevented by the nineteen sixty
<v Speaker 3>five Civil Rights Act. You can't say it explicitly, but
<v Speaker 3>just pretend that you're doing partisanship, that you're trying to
<v Speaker 3>maximize Republican votes and Republican seats, and then we won't
<v Speaker 3>say anything about it. Now here's the pernicious part. Just
<v Speaker 3>to expand on your point, if you're trying to rectify
<v Speaker 3>a current and pass system of discrimination against black voters
<v Speaker 3>and draw districts in a way to comply with the
<v Speaker 3>nineteen sixty five Civil Rights Act demand that really non
<v Speaker 3>discrimination in the vote means respecting black voting power. If
<v Speaker 3>you're trying to enable black voting power, that's highly suspicious
<v Speaker 3>and almost certainly unless you can show that you're rectifying
<v Speaker 3>intentional discrimination, that you have the goods, the kind of
<v Speaker 3>smoking gun that's very, very hard to get, then I
<v Speaker 3>don't think so you can't do it. You mentioned the
<v Speaker 3>travel band. I mean, what a horrible instance. You know,
<v Speaker 3>Donald Trump in the travel band case said I want
<v Speaker 3>to complete in total shutdown of Muslim immigration.
<v Speaker 2>Into the United States.
<v Speaker 3>And then he did a little bit. His lawyers did
<v Speaker 3>a little bit to try to cover that up. That
<v Speaker 3>was an example of intentional discrimination. This is just going
<v Speaker 3>to illustrate how hard it is to show the lawyers
<v Speaker 3>covered it up.
<v Speaker 2>How did they do it?
<v Speaker 3>They added North Korea and Venezuela, which are not Muslim
<v Speaker 3>majority countries. They got rid of the preference for Christian
<v Speaker 3>over Muslim refugees that was in the first travel ban.
<v Speaker 3>They took out any marker of intentional discrimination.
<v Speaker 2>And unbelievably.
<v Speaker 3>The court was like, oh, that's not intentional discrimination, it's
<v Speaker 3>just by coincidence, relates to that other travel band that
<v Speaker 3>they're talking about before the election. And one last sentence,
<v Speaker 3>Trump Trump told us repeatedly, I prefer the first travel band.
<v Speaker 3>He let us know that the whole thing was a subterfusion,
<v Speaker 3>and the court still didn't do anything about it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>In the Virginia case, you know, democracy, we tried to
<v Speaker 3>resolve the problem through democracy.
<v Speaker 2>The people voted, and here came the.
<v Speaker 3>Virginia Supreme Court and overrode a process that took millions
<v Speaker 3>of dollars. Many people were involved in the voters of
<v Speaker 3>Virginia spoke, and they just undid it. Now, that's a
<v Speaker 3>different set of issues legally from what's happening at the
<v Speaker 3>national level, but it's certainly part of the wider story
<v Speaker 3>of undoing Yeah, guarantees some civil rights and non discrimination
<v Speaker 3>to vote.
<v Speaker 1>And again, you know, they seem to think that this
<v Speaker 1>isn't racist because they don't have hate in their hearts.
<v Speaker 1>This is what systemic racism looks like because they've rigged
<v Speaker 1>it that there's not going to be any black Republicans
<v Speaker 1>in Congress either, they have rigged it so black people
<v Speaker 1>will still get to go vote, and maybe those votes
<v Speaker 1>will count for state and local elections in some areas,
<v Speaker 1>but in other areas.
<v Speaker 2>No.
<v Speaker 1>They have found a way to make sure that majority
<v Speaker 1>black neighborhoods are now minorities in a wider white neighborhood.
<v Speaker 1>And this is how the system works. They're arguing that
<v Speaker 1>they're defending constitutional originalism Corey, they're defending judicial restraint. But
<v Speaker 1>when courts overturn voter approved reforms only after voters approved them,
<v Speaker 1>that's an important point. They didn't come out and say
<v Speaker 1>before the referendum, you can't do this. They waited to
<v Speaker 1>see how the referendum went, and then they came out
<v Speaker 1>and said, oh, that's what you want. Uh, well, that's wrong.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, when courts are overturning the will of the
<v Speaker 1>voters after the voters approved them, how should Americans interpret that? Louisiana,
<v Speaker 1>they're throwing out votes that have already been cast so
<v Speaker 1>they can cheat.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Their argument is that this legislation came too late, The
<v Speaker 3>process took too long, and some of the people who
<v Speaker 3>voted thought they were voting under the old scheme, not
<v Speaker 3>the one that had been voted into Virginia's law, and
<v Speaker 3>so the Supreme Court struck it down on the grounds
<v Speaker 3>that you know, this was not There wasn't fairness, there
<v Speaker 3>wasn't kind of notice that it was retroactive. But the
<v Speaker 3>bottom line is, you know, in the big picture that
<v Speaker 3>we have the Supreme Court undoing democracy by really rewriting
<v Speaker 3>the nineteen sixty five civil rights sacks. So it wouldn't
<v Speaker 3>be recognizable to anybody at the time. The idea that
<v Speaker 3>this is somehow based in the text is beyond foolish.
<v Speaker 2>You know, people fought not.
<v Speaker 3>For white rights, not for worries about discrimination against white
<v Speaker 3>people in drawing maps, which is essentially what the Supreme
<v Speaker 3>Court has done, has rewritten it to mean that. And
<v Speaker 3>then you know, one common thing that you hear from
<v Speaker 3>conservatives too is well, states rights, states rights.
<v Speaker 2>States rights, and used to say that, yeah.
<v Speaker 3>The moment that a state engages in a democratic process
<v Speaker 3>to preserve the vote, the Supreme Court of Virginia steps in,
<v Speaker 3>and you know, I don't see it used to be
<v Speaker 3>maybe there would have been recourse under the nineteen sixty
<v Speaker 3>five civil rightsack that we could have brought this to
<v Speaker 3>the Supreme Court. I would have said federal law, you know,
<v Speaker 3>is play here. But what I'm hearing from experts is
<v Speaker 3>no that Virginia's spoken. The nineteen sixty five Voting Rights
<v Speaker 3>Act has largely been a viscerated, and this might be
<v Speaker 3>the end of it.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, you're right, they only care about states rights
<v Speaker 1>when they want to be racist in some way. If
<v Speaker 1>the state of New York wants to have gun safety laws,
<v Speaker 1>they don't believe in states rights, then medical cannabis. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>we've seen so many areas where they don't really care
<v Speaker 1>about states rights. They care about their own power, and
<v Speaker 1>they'll believe whatever they have to believe to push that over.
<v Speaker 1>So everyone's saying, all right, how are these Democrats going
<v Speaker 1>to fight back? How are we going to save this democracy?
<v Speaker 1>How hard are they going to play hardball? I mean,
<v Speaker 1>I heard that Chuck Schumer was so angry he tore
<v Speaker 1>one of the tassels off of one of his loafers.
<v Speaker 1>Like that level of rage. We need more than that.
<v Speaker 1>And there's a lot of ideas floating around, And I
<v Speaker 1>want to ask you about a very interesting legal theory,
<v Speaker 1>which is that, okay, if they're going to do this,
<v Speaker 1>if they're going to throw out the will of the voters. Well,
<v Speaker 1>under Virginia's constitution, they let the General Assembly set mandatory
<v Speaker 1>retirement rules for judges. So if Democrats wanted to approach
<v Speaker 1>this and play it the way Republicans do, you know,
<v Speaker 1>dirty but legal, they could constitutionally lower the judicial retirement age,
<v Speaker 1>force these judges out of work, and then appoint all
<v Speaker 1>new judges and reopen the entire redistricting fight. Again, it's
<v Speaker 1>dirty as sin, but legally it could work, and the
<v Speaker 1>amount of rage on Fox News over this idea almost
<v Speaker 1>makes it worth it. This reminds me of how Fdr
<v Speaker 1>when three Supreme Court judges were trying to undo the
<v Speaker 1>new Deal. He didn't really try to pack the court.
<v Speaker 1>He just threatened to pack the court, and those judges
<v Speaker 1>back down. I'm all in favor cory of Democrats going
<v Speaker 1>for this as hard as they can. Whether they do
<v Speaker 1>it or not, I think people just want to see
<v Speaker 1>them on the offense and say, all right, if you're
<v Speaker 1>going to use procedure as a weapon against democracy, we're
<v Speaker 1>going to try that out too.
<v Speaker 3>Well, go back to that, durppoint, it's worth going into
<v Speaker 3>a bit of history with this. That exactly as you say,
<v Speaker 3>He never carried it out, but the idea was during
<v Speaker 3>the New Deal, conservative justices on the Supreme Court, this
<v Speaker 3>is going to resemble many ways what we're facing now.
<v Speaker 3>We're looking at democratically passed legislation and not rewriting it
<v Speaker 3>in the way the Court did with the nineteen sixty
<v Speaker 3>five Voting Rights Act. They didn't strike it down or
<v Speaker 3>say it was unconstitutional. They essentially reinterpreted it until it
<v Speaker 3>meant nothing. But at the time they were more aggressive.
<v Speaker 3>They said, this is all the New Deal essentially is
<v Speaker 3>all illegal. It's violating the federal Constitution. There's no power
<v Speaker 3>in particular of the federal government to enact a new deal. Now,
<v Speaker 3>America was in the Great Depression and FDR realized that
<v Speaker 3>this couldn't stand. They couldn't be passing his signature agenda
<v Speaker 3>with the support of Congress, and here come these unelected
<v Speaker 3>Supreme Court coming in and striking it down on pretty
<v Speaker 3>dubious legal theories I think, I mean longstanding, but ones
<v Speaker 3>that certainly since the New Deal have been abandoned. One
<v Speaker 3>thing that he did, in addition to arguing in court
<v Speaker 3>for the constitutionality of his own agenda, was to say, well,
<v Speaker 3>what if we add justices until the existing justices votes
<v Speaker 3>are so diluted, and there's nothing illegal in that nothing.
<v Speaker 3>We've had different numbers of Supreme Court justices at different
<v Speaker 3>points in time, and so through legislation, you could up
<v Speaker 3>the number, say to thirty, and keep getting through the
<v Speaker 3>again the legal process of nomination and confirmation new justices.
<v Speaker 3>So now, as we're facing this plethora of attacks on
<v Speaker 3>our democracy, it's looking more and more like the crisis
<v Speaker 3>of the New Deal.
<v Speaker 2>And I'm not underplaying that crisis. It was a real crisis.
<v Speaker 3>How FDR didn't have to actually carry it out. Scholars
<v Speaker 3>disagree about the reasons, but I think one reason why
<v Speaker 3>the Supreme Court magically changes its mind. In fact, there's
<v Speaker 3>something called the switch in time that saves nine, where
<v Speaker 3>all of a sudden, the New Deal goes from being
<v Speaker 3>struck down to being upheld. Go figure. Partly it was
<v Speaker 3>about this threat. Partly it was about the power of Congress.
<v Speaker 3>The justices just couldn't see themselves opposing a democracy in
<v Speaker 3>this massive sense. So now the question is should we
<v Speaker 3>do this now too? Should we threaten to if Democrats,
<v Speaker 3>of course, would have to retake both Congress and.
<v Speaker 2>The presidency we add justices. Should we play constitutional hardball?
<v Speaker 2>This is certainly an example, and I'm affirmed yes.
<v Speaker 3>I mean how that's going to play out, whether the
<v Speaker 3>number is thirty, whether it's doing it, you know, in
<v Speaker 3>a variety of different ways, using impeachment.
<v Speaker 2>There are a lot of legal tools to do this
<v Speaker 2>that also we.
<v Speaker 3>Can talk about it. I've talked about packing the court,
<v Speaker 3>my colleague. This is the phrase court reform. So I'm okay,
<v Speaker 3>I'll call it court.
<v Speaker 1>Reform whatever I'm need it.
<v Speaker 2>And that is a very good analogy of that point
<v Speaker 2>in history.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I can't wait to interview and support and donate
<v Speaker 1>to candidates who are going to really bring the fight
<v Speaker 1>because they care more about democracy than power. Of course,
<v Speaker 1>Republican friend.
<v Speaker 3>John, you know, during Biden's administration, there were so many opportunities,
<v Speaker 3>including a moment where this was at least looked into,
<v Speaker 3>I know, and much to my disappointment, Biden, you know,
<v Speaker 3>in so many ways, really failed to make the structural
<v Speaker 3>reforms that we needed to our constants.
<v Speaker 1>Because he worshiped norms.
<v Speaker 2>Can't be we can't allow it to escape again.
<v Speaker 1>He worshiped norms and wanted to be the good guy
<v Speaker 1>and didn't want to do this sort of thing, which
<v Speaker 1>is understandable, but you know, I'm old enough to remember,
<v Speaker 1>because amnesia is the most deadly airborne virus in this country.
<v Speaker 1>These Republicans decided one time to change the Supreme Court
<v Speaker 1>from nine to eight for an entire year, just to
<v Speaker 1>deny a black president an up or down vote on
<v Speaker 1>his duly appointed Supreme Court nominee. I mean, I remember
<v Speaker 1>how right after doing that, they rushed Amy Cony Barrett
<v Speaker 1>through an election, after votes were already cast, before Ruth
<v Speaker 1>Bader Ginsberg was even cold. Yet, all we're talking about
<v Speaker 1>is doing the same kind of things that Republicans keep
<v Speaker 1>doing over and over again, because Republicans don't respect norms
<v Speaker 1>and they don't respect doing the right thing.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and for those you know, there are a lot
<v Speaker 3>of objections, of course to what we're saying, And of.
<v Speaker 1>Course there are some of them, but they're not coming
<v Speaker 1>from but I'm sorry, but those subjections came from people
<v Speaker 1>who had dick to say when Mitch McConnell decided we
<v Speaker 1>could have an eight person Supreme Court in a whole
<v Speaker 1>and that it's.
<v Speaker 3>Going to be my point that look, what the objection
<v Speaker 3>normally says, is this the objection says, Look, if we
<v Speaker 3>engage in court packing or court reform, whatever you want
<v Speaker 3>to call it, but constitutional hardball of these different kinds,
<v Speaker 3>then what's going to happen is that now once Republicans
<v Speaker 3>are in power, they're going to do the same, and
<v Speaker 3>there's going to be you know, one hundred members of
<v Speaker 3>the Supreme Court, or it'll just be a back and forth.
<v Speaker 3>We're already there, and that moment that you're talking about
<v Speaker 3>with Merrick Garland's nomination and the refusal to act on
<v Speaker 3>it was the destruction of the norm And so if
<v Speaker 3>one group is just destroying the norms and the other
<v Speaker 3>group is pretending that the norms are still there.
<v Speaker 2>I don't think so.
<v Speaker 3>It's the same thing with redistricting too that California and
<v Speaker 3>New York.
<v Speaker 2>California has already moved on this. New York needs to
<v Speaker 2>move really need to yes to reshape votes. I don't
<v Speaker 2>even want to call it, Jerrymann. It's a way of
<v Speaker 2>protecting against the destruction of dem Dockers, thank you.
<v Speaker 3>What's happened on the other side, it's democratic defense.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, Jim Cliburn's seat in South Carolina will disappear.
<v Speaker 1>They are not going to try to get rid of him.
<v Speaker 1>He's too popular, so they're just going to make sure
<v Speaker 1>that the folks who vote for him have votes that
<v Speaker 1>don't count for anything. Then the Court just allowed Alabama
<v Speaker 1>to pick a different map for this year's congressional elections,
<v Speaker 1>totally last minute. Again, Louisiana is throwing out thousands and
<v Speaker 1>thousands of votes because they don't care and Corey. Tennessee
<v Speaker 1>forty percent non white, and yet they're trying to dilute
<v Speaker 1>their representation. How should Americans understand what's happening in Tennessee historically.
<v Speaker 3>Well, I think Tennessee, Alabama, where you know, there's an
<v Speaker 3>attempt to get the Supreme Court to intervene here on
<v Speaker 3>the basis of the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act.
<v Speaker 3>What we're going to see in a lot of these
<v Speaker 3>cases is, as there's an attempt to dilute black votes,
<v Speaker 3>black voting power, there'll be lower courts that intervene in
<v Speaker 3>the right way based on the old interpretation of the
<v Speaker 3>nineteen sixty five Civil Rights Act. And I shouldn't say old,
<v Speaker 3>they should say the right interpretation.
<v Speaker 2>Thank you.
<v Speaker 3>They will push back on a lot of these attempts
<v Speaker 3>to destroy districts that ensure black voting power.
<v Speaker 2>But here's the problem.
<v Speaker 3>The Supreme Court, I'm almost certain, is going to come
<v Speaker 3>in and say that in almost all these cases you
<v Speaker 3>failed to show intentional discrimination. The breakup of these districts
<v Speaker 3>is about partisanship.
<v Speaker 2>And that's okay.
<v Speaker 3>And that's why this decision matters so much because we're
<v Speaker 3>seeing on the ground already you mentioned Tennessee and Alabama
<v Speaker 3>attempts to destroy black voting power. We'll see lower courts
<v Speaker 3>push back, and then the Supreme Court's going to say,
<v Speaker 3>did you not read what we did?
<v Speaker 2>You know a few days ago? And U that's where
<v Speaker 2>we are. Okay.
<v Speaker 1>We got to take a quick break back in just
<v Speaker 1>a moment. This is the Oath in the Office. Welcome
<v Speaker 1>back to the Oath in the Office podcast. I'm John Feugelsang, Corey,
<v Speaker 1>let's talk about citizenship for just a minute. The DOJ
<v Speaker 1>is reportedly expanding their efforts to take citizens away from
<v Speaker 1>some American citizens because they feel like it historically, Corey,
<v Speaker 1>how rare is de naturalization as a political tool in
<v Speaker 1>this country.
<v Speaker 3>Wow, it really is a tool of authoritarianism to say,
<v Speaker 3>if we don't like you, we're going to take not
<v Speaker 3>only you know, potentially violate your rights, but violate what
<v Speaker 3>the Supreme Court is called the right to have rights,
<v Speaker 3>the right of citizenship in the first place. And not
<v Speaker 3>only did the Court in the past rebuke these kind
<v Speaker 3>of efforts in many cases, there's one where they really
<v Speaker 3>use that phrase, the right to have rights, which is
<v Speaker 3>also made famous by the political philosopher Hannah or Rent,
<v Speaker 3>and it was a case called Trump versus Dulles, where
<v Speaker 3>the Supreme Court said that it was a violation of
<v Speaker 3>cruel and unusual punishment the Eighth Amendment to strip away
<v Speaker 3>as punishment for a crime, the rights of a citizen. Now,
<v Speaker 3>over time they made an exception for that, which is
<v Speaker 3>that if you committed fraud in your application.
<v Speaker 2>The theory was, well, you never really became a citizen
<v Speaker 2>in the first place, so if you could.
<v Speaker 3>Show fraud in the application process, it was a narrow win,
<v Speaker 3>but it was not one that was widely used, and
<v Speaker 3>it was one that the Court made very clear too.
<v Speaker 3>You can't just use that as your excuse for really
<v Speaker 3>engaging and stripping the citizenship of your enemies or people
<v Speaker 3>that you don't like.
<v Speaker 2>Yet here we are revisiting this.
<v Speaker 3>They're going to try to use this narrow exception, the
<v Speaker 3>supposed fraud, in order to go after I think a
<v Speaker 3>lot of naturalized citizens who they consider enemies. They've already
<v Speaker 3>said in the Khalil case that non citizens have no
<v Speaker 3>First Amendment rights.
<v Speaker 2>Just insane. Yeah, and now they're trying to say you
<v Speaker 2>don't have a right to citizenship if you were naturalized. Amazing.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I mean, I don't know how to be
<v Speaker 1>scared about this. Do we need to start viewing citizenship
<v Speaker 1>not as a constitutional guarantee but something conditional, something revocable.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, have we crossed that authoritarian line?
<v Speaker 3>We should view it as anything, but we should view
<v Speaker 3>it as irrevocable. And one of the amazing things and
<v Speaker 3>it's just coming up in a few minutes that Cecilia Wang,
<v Speaker 3>the legal director of the ACLU, has done, is present
<v Speaker 3>a beautiful argument for the Constitution as clear as day
<v Speaker 3>says if you're born in the United States, you're a citizen.
<v Speaker 3>So that's step one is pushing back there. Now we
<v Speaker 3>have to recognize there are multiple fronts. This is the
<v Speaker 3>second front that they've opened up against the right to
<v Speaker 3>be a citizen. And here we've got to say too,
<v Speaker 3>using this really important case Trout versus Dulles, one of
<v Speaker 3>the most important I think when it comes to our
<v Speaker 3>rights as citizens, the.
<v Speaker 2>Idea that we have a right to have rights, that.
<v Speaker 3>Citizenship can't be stripped away as punishment for.
<v Speaker 2>A crime, and we've got to insist on that.
<v Speaker 3>We've got to do it through litigation, and we've got
<v Speaker 3>to do it I think through legislation. These are among
<v Speaker 3>the laws that need to be passed if Democrats ever
<v Speaker 3>retake the Congress and the presidency.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's pretty terrifying. I thought we had safeguards against
<v Speaker 1>this sort of thing. Do you think they'll be successful, Corey,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, do you think they'll just tell people you're
<v Speaker 1>not one of us anymore?
<v Speaker 3>Well, I think the first test is, and we're about
<v Speaker 3>to talk about it, the birthright citizenship case.
<v Speaker 2>And I was really hardened to listen to that case.
<v Speaker 3>Here the justices defend the Constitution, and I think this
<v Speaker 3>is as clear here too, that you can't just take
<v Speaker 3>away somebody's citizenship because.
<v Speaker 2>You don't agree with them.
<v Speaker 3>Now, they're going to look for cases in the beginning
<v Speaker 3>in which there might really be fraud, and in those
<v Speaker 3>cases I think the administration, even though their motive is not,
<v Speaker 3>you know, just to combat fraud, they might get away
<v Speaker 3>with them. But as they go deeper, that's where the
<v Speaker 3>pushback will have to happen. And as with birthright citizenship,
<v Speaker 3>they're going to try, certainly to take away all of
<v Speaker 3>our rights. They're trying to destroy democracy. The administration Trump
<v Speaker 3>is and that's what it's about, and we'll fight back
<v Speaker 3>as hard as we can.
<v Speaker 1>God we live in the only country on earth to
<v Speaker 1>produce white trash oligarchs. We're also seeing Trump publicly attack
<v Speaker 1>his own hires, Amy Cony Barrett and Neil Gorsich after
<v Speaker 1>rulings he disliked. When I say his hires, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>you know, the Federal of Society handing him a piece
<v Speaker 1>of paper saying this is who you like. But Corey,
<v Speaker 1>how unusual is it for a president to pressure justices
<v Speaker 1>from his own ideological cult in such per terms, so
<v Speaker 1>nakedly and publicly. I mean, I think I maybe heard
<v Speaker 1>George Bush Senior complain about suitor once.
<v Speaker 3>Maybe Well, it shows you how little he understands about
<v Speaker 3>how the Constitution is supposed to work. He thinks that
<v Speaker 3>he appointed his judges and they're supposed to say this
<v Speaker 3>guy is great, the same way that the sick advance
<v Speaker 3>like Stephen Miller around him say every.
<v Speaker 2>Day, and they're not saying that.
<v Speaker 3>They are I think approving too much of his agenda
<v Speaker 3>through the shadow docket, which we've talked about.
<v Speaker 2>And will continue to talk about.
<v Speaker 3>But what he just saw at the Supreme Court and
<v Speaker 3>he walked out mid argument, was these justices essentially saying
<v Speaker 3>you can't do that.
<v Speaker 2>What are you talking about?
<v Speaker 3>The fourteenth Amendment says if you're born in the United States,
<v Speaker 3>you're a citizen, full stop.
<v Speaker 2>And I think that really he can't quite understand it.
<v Speaker 3>If you're an authoritarian, the idea that you were people,
<v Speaker 3>you were judges, and you know, even the way he
<v Speaker 3>talks about them, Neil and Amy, you know, these are
<v Speaker 3>supposed to be my people, that they're pushing back. It
<v Speaker 3>shows you how little he understands about this system. When
<v Speaker 3>you and I met I wrote a piece for Politico
<v Speaker 3>called Trump Versus the Constitution of guys right, and this
<v Speaker 3>is the latest iteration of Trump versus the Constitution.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, how much do you think about all these struggles,
<v Speaker 1>all these constitutional conflicts, How much is it really ultimately
<v Speaker 1>about pluralistic democracy itself. Who gets representation, who gets citizenship,
<v Speaker 1>whose votes count equally? Because these guys seem to despise
<v Speaker 1>the concepts of democracy while pretending to love it, and
<v Speaker 1>much the way they despise the teachings of the New
<v Speaker 1>Testament while pretending they love it.
<v Speaker 3>Well, I think that really is when we talk about
<v Speaker 3>defending democracy, what you and I mean, we should use
<v Speaker 3>the phrase explicitly is multi racial democracy, multi ethnic democracy,
<v Speaker 3>pluralistic democracy. When Trump talks about democracy means a democracy
<v Speaker 3>where the white people are in charge. And you see
<v Speaker 3>that in so many of his animous, hatred based policies.
<v Speaker 3>The travel band we mentioned earlier, and the clearest example
<v Speaker 3>is trying to revoke one of the places where the
<v Speaker 3>Congress couldn't have been clearer in its fourteenth Amendment that
<v Speaker 3>if you were born in the United States, you are
<v Speaker 3>a citizen. It wasn't just a reversal of the dread
<v Speaker 3>Scott case that said black Americans are not citizens in
<v Speaker 3>our constitution, They're not even legal persons. It was meant
<v Speaker 3>to create a much broader multiracial democracy, and one that
<v Speaker 3>means what it says when it says, if you're born
<v Speaker 3>in the United States, full stop, you're a citizen. We're
<v Speaker 3>going to apply a test of parentage of race, and
<v Speaker 3>this president's trying to destroy it. That's why we're going
<v Speaker 3>to focus on this case in such depth today.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I'm excited for this guest. Let's take a quick break.
<v Speaker 1>We'll be back in a moment on the Oath in
<v Speaker 1>the Office.
<v Speaker 4>Hey all, Clang Kershner here. Friends, I hope you'll join
<v Speaker 4>me on my audio podcast, Justice Matters. We talk about
<v Speaker 4>not only the legal issues of the day, but we
<v Speaker 4>also talk about the need to reform ethics in our government.
<v Speaker 4>Here's one example. The Oath of Office, you know, the
<v Speaker 4>one I do solemnly swear to support and defend the
<v Speaker 4>Constantute US against all enemies foreign end domestic. Let's add
<v Speaker 4>twenty two words to that oath quote, and I will
<v Speaker 4>promptly report any instances of crime and or corruption by
<v Speaker 4>government officials and employees of which I've become aware. Friends,
<v Speaker 4>our democracy is worth fighting for. Join us in this
<v Speaker 4>fight because justice matters. Look for Justice Matters wherever you
<v Speaker 4>ordinarily find your podcasts.
<v Speaker 3>Welcome back to the Oath in the Office. It really
<v Speaker 3>is an honor today to introduce to you Cecilia Wang,
<v Speaker 3>who is the ACLU's National Legal Director most recently, and
<v Speaker 3>this is what we're going to talk to her about.
<v Speaker 3>She in the Supreme Court argued that Trump's executive order
<v Speaker 3>essentially revoking birthright citizenship was unconstitutional, and she's going to
<v Speaker 3>walk us through some of that argument, what it was
<v Speaker 3>like to participate in it. And as of course listeners
<v Speaker 3>know listening to this show since the beginning, since we've
<v Speaker 3>started it, we've regarded this promise to revoke birthright citizenship
<v Speaker 3>as really a symbol not just any ordinary case, but
<v Speaker 3>a symbol of Trump's attack on the Constitution. So this
<v Speaker 3>isn't any ordinary case. It's a historic one that was
<v Speaker 3>I listened to it. It was an amazing argument, a
<v Speaker 3>historic argument, one that will be taught in constitutional law,
<v Speaker 3>I think for forever. As long as we have a country,
<v Speaker 3>we have constitutional law. So Cecilia Wang, welcome to the
<v Speaker 3>oath in the office.
<v Speaker 5>Thank you so much, Corey, it's a pleasure to be
<v Speaker 5>with you.
<v Speaker 2>Can we just start with the big picture.
<v Speaker 3>We have, of course, the first section of the Fourteenth
<v Speaker 3>Amendment that until this executive order many people thought was
<v Speaker 3>pretty plain. This day, it says if you're born in
<v Speaker 3>the United States that you are a.
<v Speaker 2>Citizen full stop.
<v Speaker 3>And there is this phrase, of course that we'll get
<v Speaker 3>into subject to the jurisdiction. But let's start with a
<v Speaker 3>big picture. What's really at stake with this case.
<v Speaker 6>So the immediate stakes in the birthright citizenship case, of course,
<v Speaker 6>is whether President Trump's executive order regarding the Fourteenth Amendment
<v Speaker 6>citizenship clause can go into effect. So he contrary to
<v Speaker 6>the plain words of the Fourteenth Amendment and its historical context,
<v Speaker 6>as well as statute passed by Congress, who's trying to
<v Speaker 6>exclude the children of undocumented immigrants and people who are
<v Speaker 6>here in the United States lawfully but on a temporary
<v Speaker 6>visa temporary sometimes meaning yours from being covered by the
<v Speaker 6>Fourteenth Amendments guarantee of birthright citizenship. So those are the
<v Speaker 6>immediate stakes. Can President Trump carry out his revisionist view
<v Speaker 6>of the Fourteenth Amendment citizenship clause through an executive order
<v Speaker 6>that purports to reinterpret the Fourteenth Amendment in a way
<v Speaker 6>that's contrary to what both the Congress and the Supreme
<v Speaker 6>and all.
<v Speaker 5>Of us ordinary Americans thought.
<v Speaker 6>You know, it's been almost one hundred and sixty years
<v Speaker 6>since the fourteenth Amendment was ratified.
<v Speaker 5>So those are the immediate stakes. But to take a
<v Speaker 5>step back.
<v Speaker 6>And look at an even bigger picture, what's really at
<v Speaker 6>stake is whether the President of the United States can
<v Speaker 6>redefine and narrow our national tradition of birthright citizenship. Can
<v Speaker 6>the president decide that the people that he disfavors should
<v Speaker 6>be excluded, should not have a sense of belonging in
<v Speaker 6>our national community. And those are kind of the larger stakes.
<v Speaker 6>And if we take even another step back to look
<v Speaker 6>at the really bigger picture that you know, President Trump
<v Speaker 6>came into a second term really on day one trying
<v Speaker 6>to undo the work of reconstruction, which includes the citizenship
<v Speaker 6>clause of the fourteenth Amendment, but also so many aspects
<v Speaker 6>and progressive laws that were enacted and implemented as part
<v Speaker 6>of the second Reconstruction with the Civil Rights movement.
<v Speaker 5>And Jim Crow.
<v Speaker 6>And so those are all the stakes, from the narrowest.
<v Speaker 5>View to the broader view.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I love that you laid it out that way, because,
<v Speaker 3>of course, the immediate question is about whether this specific
<v Speaker 3>executive order is constitutional or not. But the wider question,
<v Speaker 3>of course, is what's going on with the president that
<v Speaker 3>wants to revoke a symbol of the idea of equality
<v Speaker 3>under law and the very symbol of multi racial and
<v Speaker 3>multi ethnic democracy. Well, it's because it's part of a
<v Speaker 3>wider assault on democracy. He doesn't believe. And I think
<v Speaker 3>the idea of multi racial democracy not only that you
<v Speaker 3>and I believe him, but that the crafters of this
<v Speaker 3>Fourteenth Amendment, with its birthright citizenship clause it's guaranteed and
<v Speaker 3>also of equal protection of the law, fought so hard
<v Speaker 3>for I want to get into a lot of the
<v Speaker 3>doctrine here and see how this argument played out and
<v Speaker 3>ask you about some of the questions. But I have
<v Speaker 3>to ask you, since we've been talking about Trump is,
<v Speaker 3>of course at the center of this.
<v Speaker 2>It's an executive order.
<v Speaker 3>What was it like to argue his case with the
<v Speaker 3>President of the United States, with Donald Trump sitting right there.
<v Speaker 3>I think it was historically the only time that a
<v Speaker 3>president showed up, and he showed up to hear what
<v Speaker 3>you had to say.
<v Speaker 2>So what was that like?
<v Speaker 6>Well, candidly, Corey, I didn't know whether he was in
<v Speaker 6>the courtroom or not. I'd gotten notice the night before,
<v Speaker 6>of course, when he posted I guess on social media
<v Speaker 6>that he was planning to attend. We got advanced notice
<v Speaker 6>because we needed to arrive at the court earlier than
<v Speaker 6>usual because of the increased security around the President being
<v Speaker 6>in the house, and so.
<v Speaker 5>I knew that he might be there.
<v Speaker 6>But even as I was walking into the courtroom, the
<v Speaker 6>information I was getting from the clerk's office was that
<v Speaker 6>they weren't sure one hundred percent or that the President
<v Speaker 6>would be there. So I didn't notice one way or
<v Speaker 6>the other. I was very focused on the nine justices.
<v Speaker 6>I was focused on my opposing council and what he
<v Speaker 6>was saying, and so it didn't occur to me. It
<v Speaker 6>didn't affect me one way or the other that he
<v Speaker 6>was in the room. I didn't find out until later
<v Speaker 6>that he was in fact in the room at least
<v Speaker 6>for the first few minutes.
<v Speaker 2>Amazing moment.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, one of the signs of your effectiveness is
<v Speaker 3>that he evidently walked out mid argument, and also has recently,
<v Speaker 3>as I think you know, been talking about why in
<v Speaker 3>his words, Neil and Amy have not really been loyal
<v Speaker 3>enough then, which I think might have something to do
<v Speaker 3>with watching them respond to your arguments in a sympathetic way.
<v Speaker 2>I do want to ask you about the dynamics in
<v Speaker 2>the courtroom, but I also want.
<v Speaker 3>To ask about the specifics, because of course the Trump
<v Speaker 3>administration had to come up with a reason why he
<v Speaker 3>could essentially undo this guarantee of birthright citizenship and the
<v Speaker 3>court and Trump himself claims to care about the constitutional taxes,
<v Speaker 3>so they turned to this idea of subject to the jurisdiction.
<v Speaker 3>So tell us about how that argument works and how
<v Speaker 3>it relates, in particular, the related idea that the Fourteenth
<v Speaker 3>Amendment birthright citizenship clause was really only about black Americans
<v Speaker 3>and a reversal of the dread Scott case and not
<v Speaker 3>the broader guarantee that you and I have been talking about.
<v Speaker 2>And they offer this idea of also related of allegiance.
<v Speaker 3>So tell us about what their argument is and how
<v Speaker 3>you respond to it.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, So, you know, as a lawyer, you always want
<v Speaker 6>to start the words in the case of the fourteenth Amendment.
<v Speaker 6>So the fourteenth Amendment says, all persons born in the
<v Speaker 6>United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens
<v Speaker 6>of the United States. And so the only leeway in
<v Speaker 6>that text that the president, you know, tried to explore
<v Speaker 6>or take advantage of was, of course, that phrase subject
<v Speaker 6>to the jurisdiction, which you just referred to.
<v Speaker 5>So you start with.
<v Speaker 6>Ax and then you look to two sources to figure
<v Speaker 6>out what those words meant to the framers, to the
<v Speaker 6>Republican drafting committee that wrote the words of the fourteenth Amendment.
<v Speaker 6>And we know two things. The first is that the
<v Speaker 6>framers of the Fourteenth Amendment wanted to have broad birthright
<v Speaker 6>citizenship for almost everyone in the United States, but they
<v Speaker 6>wanted to encompass these pre existing historical exceptions to birthright citizenship,
<v Speaker 6>and that was what they meant by those words subject
<v Speaker 6>to the jurisdiction. Who are we talking about. Most people
<v Speaker 6>know that ambassadors, right, you know, foreign ministers, you know,
<v Speaker 6>representatives of foreign government when they're in the United States
<v Speaker 6>have immunity. And that's a matter of comedy between the two.
<v Speaker 6>Not comedy like haha, but com I t y that
<v Speaker 6>you know, these two countries, as a matter of mutual respect,
<v Speaker 6>and in order to be able to do diplomacy, give
<v Speaker 6>each other this immunity from prosecution. The ambassador in the
<v Speaker 6>United States is treated as if they're physically still in
<v Speaker 6>their home country. And so the children of ambassadors were
<v Speaker 6>excluded from birthright citizenship under that phrase subject to the
<v Speaker 6>jurisdiction there There were a number of other exceptions that
<v Speaker 6>originated in the English common law, including the ambassador exception,
<v Speaker 6>which the Framers wanted to carry over. The only exception
<v Speaker 6>to birthright citizenship that didn't come from the English common
<v Speaker 6>law that the Framers were trying to carry over after
<v Speaker 6>the fourteenth Amendment was ratified was an exception for members
<v Speaker 6>of Native American tribes known as Indian tribes in the
<v Speaker 6>technical legal term, and so that was it to the
<v Speaker 6>jurisdiction thereof in the citizenship clause simply meant that everyone
<v Speaker 6>born in the United States who is subject to the
<v Speaker 6>jurisdiction of the United States, meaning they have to obey
<v Speaker 6>the laws and they have a protection of the laws
<v Speaker 6>of the United States, is a citizen. And the only
<v Speaker 6>exceptions were these narrow categories like ambassadors and under the Constitution,
<v Speaker 6>members of tribal nations.
<v Speaker 3>So the way as I understand that the Solicitor General
<v Speaker 3>tried to take this historical fact that they're referring to
<v Speaker 3>and turn it into an argument, I mean, I have
<v Speaker 3>to say from the beginning, I've been wondering how are
<v Speaker 3>they going to create an argument so that the thing
<v Speaker 3>that we've all seen with our own eyes, how can
<v Speaker 3>they turn it into something that makes this an even
<v Speaker 3>plausible executive order. It seems to just clash directly with
<v Speaker 3>the meaning of the Constitution and its tex So they're
<v Speaker 3>relying heavily on this idea of subject to the jurisdiction.
<v Speaker 3>I guess one thing that I don't know if I
<v Speaker 3>want to say it's a full argument resembled an argument,
<v Speaker 3>is that, well, there wasn't this i idea of undocumented
<v Speaker 3>people in the nineteenth century, that the immigration systems were
<v Speaker 3>just so different.
<v Speaker 2>So if you.
<v Speaker 3>Think of the principle that applied here, that these exceptions
<v Speaker 3>and the meaning of who the amendment refers to wouldn't
<v Speaker 3>apply to the children of undocumented people. So that raises some,
<v Speaker 3>you know, interesting puzzles about how to think about, you know,
<v Speaker 3>facts that are different in the nineteenth century from now,
<v Speaker 3>how to think about history and texts.
<v Speaker 2>So tell us how did you handle that and how.
<v Speaker 3>Did you read the justices who, of course, you know,
<v Speaker 3>I would say a majority or so heavily focused on
<v Speaker 3>the idea that the law is the text.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, So you know what you're referring to, is is
<v Speaker 6>kind of you know, there are two broad schools of
<v Speaker 6>thought when it comes to the interpretation of our Constitution,
<v Speaker 6>and the prevailing one for a majority of the Supreme
<v Speaker 6>Court currently is an originalist, a school of thought which says,
<v Speaker 6>when we're interpreting the words of the Constitution, we need
<v Speaker 6>to pay attention only to what the framers of those words,
<v Speaker 6>whether it's in seventeen eighty nine or in eighteen sixty
<v Speaker 6>eight in the case of the Fourteenth Amendment, what they
<v Speaker 6>were thinking, what was the original public meaning that was understood?
<v Speaker 6>And you know, the other school of thought, of course,
<v Speaker 6>is what you know, it might be referred to as
<v Speaker 6>living constitutionalism. So you know, the idea that you know,
<v Speaker 6>the framers weren't thinking about all possible future applications of
<v Speaker 6>their words necessarily, and that we do our best interpret
<v Speaker 6>you know, what the spirit behind those words was. As
<v Speaker 6>I said, the original school of thought is the prevailing
<v Speaker 6>one on the Supreme Court now, and sometimes that creates
<v Speaker 6>some real problems of constitutional interpretation, but not when it
<v Speaker 6>comes to the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. We
<v Speaker 6>set out a purely originalist interpretation that I just laid
<v Speaker 6>out for you and your listeners that the Republican committee
<v Speaker 6>that was drafting the fourteenth Amendment, and indeed, all the
<v Speaker 6>members of Congress who debated the words of the citizenship Clause,
<v Speaker 6>we're all in agreement that the only exceptions were ambassadors,
<v Speaker 6>tribal members, and the other very very narrow exceptions that
<v Speaker 6>only applied to a couple people at most under the
<v Speaker 6>English common law, and that would include people born on
<v Speaker 6>foreign ships, you know, that were.
<v Speaker 5>Docked in a US port, for example.
<v Speaker 6>And so it was interesting, you know, as I was
<v Speaker 6>preparing the little aside here, as I was preparing for
<v Speaker 6>the argument. You know, lawyers do these practice sessions.
<v Speaker 5>We call them moots.
<v Speaker 6>And I had a Supreme Court, a member of the
<v Speaker 6>Supreme Court bar so who's you know, very experienced Supreme
<v Speaker 6>Court practitioner, who said, this is a really weird case
<v Speaker 6>because you have the ACLU making an originalist argument, and
<v Speaker 6>you have the Solicitor General of the United States talking
<v Speaker 6>about policy. And so, you know, I bristle a little
<v Speaker 6>bit at the idea of the ACLA used normally making
<v Speaker 6>policy arguments, that they were making textual list and original
<v Speaker 6>meaning arguments all the time. But in this case, there's
<v Speaker 6>just no question that that is what the framers and
<v Speaker 6>the state legislators who ratified the fourteenth Amendment understood the
<v Speaker 6>words to mean. Now, to get to another part of
<v Speaker 6>your question, you know, what is the Trump administration trying
<v Speaker 6>to do here? And what is their move to try
<v Speaker 6>to go against what everybody has understood about the meaning
<v Speaker 6>of the fourteenth Amendment since eighteen sixty eight and certainly
<v Speaker 6>since eighteen ninety eight. And you know what they did
<v Speaker 6>was they started with a Supreme Court decision from eighteen
<v Speaker 6>ninety eight called Wonkim arc, which was the first case
<v Speaker 6>in which the US government was trying to exclude the
<v Speaker 6>US born child of a foreign national from US citizenship.
<v Speaker 6>And this was a case where the Supreme Court held
<v Speaker 6>in eighteen ninety eight that this man, Wankim Mark, born
<v Speaker 6>in San Francisco to parents who were Chinese nationals, was
<v Speaker 6>a US citizen. And the Trump administration basically used a
<v Speaker 6>move that has been tried out previously by a number
<v Speaker 6>of people on the far right, who are you know,
<v Speaker 6>anti immigrant activists.
<v Speaker 5>You know, throughout the.
<v Speaker 6>Last few decades, you know, we have seen efforts on
<v Speaker 6>the far right to take away the citizenship of people
<v Speaker 6>of non citizens, take away citizenship from the children of
<v Speaker 6>non citizens. And the move that they make is that
<v Speaker 6>in the wonkim Arc decision, the Supreme Court just dis gray,
<v Speaker 6>writing majority opinion happens to mention several times by the
<v Speaker 6>government's count, twenty two times in all, in a very
<v Speaker 6>long opinion, that wankim Ark's parents were domiciled in the
<v Speaker 6>United States. And so the Trump administration basically has used
<v Speaker 6>a move that has been tried unsuccessfully in the past
<v Speaker 6>to try to reverse engineer an argument from that happenstance
<v Speaker 6>in the wangkim Ark decision to say, oh, that means
<v Speaker 6>you have to your parents have to have been domiciled
<v Speaker 6>in the United States at the time of your birth
<v Speaker 6>for you to be a citizen under the fourteenth Amendment.
<v Speaker 5>And so that kind.
<v Speaker 6>Of explains how the President structured his executive order, at
<v Speaker 6>least in part, because the one thing that he can't
<v Speaker 6>explain still is how he can exclude children born in
<v Speaker 6>the US to unauthorized immigrants who are domiciled in the
<v Speaker 6>United States. Right, many people, millions of people in this
<v Speaker 6>country who over state of visa or who entered without
<v Speaker 6>inspection but have lived in the US and have these
<v Speaker 6>strong ties and have no other home in many cases
<v Speaker 6>for decades, in many cases since they were young children themselves.
<v Speaker 6>So that basically is how we got to the president's
<v Speaker 6>theory of the fourteenth Amendment.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that they looked at wankim Mark, which is of
<v Speaker 3>course about the idea of the plain meaning of the
<v Speaker 3>birthright citizenship guarantee that if you're born in the United States,
<v Speaker 3>you're a citizen. It of course applies beyond Black Americans,
<v Speaker 3>and yet they try to use it in a way
<v Speaker 3>to say that No, in that specific case, the facts
<v Speaker 3>were that the person had allegiance. Win kim Mark had
<v Speaker 3>allegiance to the United States because of the fact that
<v Speaker 3>he was domiciled.
<v Speaker 2>Here, I mean, so let's get into the argument.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, it's fascinating, I have to say too, just
<v Speaker 3>giving us those notes, and I think people want to
<v Speaker 3>hear more about it. That coming into this, you thought, wow,
<v Speaker 3>I don't always get to argue straight originalism to use
<v Speaker 3>the theory of justice Gorsicch and Justice Barrett and at
<v Speaker 3>least supposedly justice as Alito and Thomas. But here it
<v Speaker 3>just screams out that we have the text and as
<v Speaker 3>you've been telling us, we have this amazing case that says, yes,
<v Speaker 3>this is not just about reversing dread Scott and dread
<v Speaker 3>Scott's evil holding that black Americans don't have citizenship under
<v Speaker 3>the Constitution or even legal personnel.
<v Speaker 2>That goes way beyond.
<v Speaker 3>That to mean what it says, you know, born in
<v Speaker 3>the United States, you are a citizen. So tell us
<v Speaker 3>what it was like as you are arguing the case
<v Speaker 3>with this preparation. I mean, did you feel like the
<v Speaker 3>originalist arguments were clear? Did you feel resistance in places
<v Speaker 3>that you were surprised by?
<v Speaker 5>Yeah?
<v Speaker 6>So, you know, I think we went into this argument
<v Speaker 6>very confident in our arguments, not only because you know,
<v Speaker 6>we had written a brief that reflected, as you said,
<v Speaker 6>the plain words of the fourteenth Amendment and also, you know,
<v Speaker 6>the English.
<v Speaker 5>Common law context.
<v Speaker 6>For American citizenship right, which the Supreme Court explained in
<v Speaker 6>the Won cam Work decision in eighteen ninety eight.
<v Speaker 5>But we also had confidence.
<v Speaker 6>Because we had such a broad array a Friend of
<v Speaker 6>the Court briefs that were submitted on our side, including
<v Speaker 6>very conservative legal scholars and lawyers who all joined forces
<v Speaker 6>to say, look, the original public meaning of the fourteenth
<v Speaker 6>Amendment is really clear. The other thing that gave me
<v Speaker 6>a lot of confidence, and really not just confidence, but
<v Speaker 6>I felt, Corey, like I was channeling the voices of
<v Speaker 6>millions of Americans who like me, are Fourteenth Amendment citizens
<v Speaker 6>born when our parents weren't yet naturalized, and our ancestors
<v Speaker 6>all you know, most Americans, unless you were a descended
<v Speaker 6>from someone who was an enslaved person of African origin,
<v Speaker 6>or if you are descended from people, or if you're
<v Speaker 6>an Indigenous American, all of us have some ancestor at
<v Speaker 6>some point in our family's history who's been in this situation.
<v Speaker 6>And I really felt that I was standing there at
<v Speaker 6>the lectern in the Supreme Court channeling all of those
<v Speaker 6>voices of people living and our ancestors to really stand
<v Speaker 6>up for that original public meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.
<v Speaker 6>You know, you've mentioned a few times that the President,
<v Speaker 6>I think, in a really cynical move that's meant to
<v Speaker 6>try to divide people, says look, Fourteenth Amendment citizenship was
<v Speaker 6>only for Black Americans. And there was a really wonderful
<v Speaker 6>Amekus brief front of the Court brief filed by the
<v Speaker 6>historian Martha Jones, who's written the definitive history of Black Americans.
<v Speaker 6>Free Black Americans struggles for birthright citizenship both before and
<v Speaker 6>in the wake of the Dredge Scott decision. And what
<v Speaker 6>her brief made absolutely clear is that free black Americans
<v Speaker 6>who were responding to the Supreme Court's dread Scott decision
<v Speaker 6>that excluded all black people based on race from birthright
<v Speaker 6>citizenship in the United States and responding to that free
<v Speaker 6>black Americans weren't trying to win birthright citizenship only for
<v Speaker 6>Black Americans. They wanted universal birthright citizenship. And those efforts
<v Speaker 6>by Black Americans, you know, fed into the radical Republicans
<v Speaker 6>who framed the fourteenth Amendment. You know, there's nothing in
<v Speaker 6>the words of the fourteenth Amendment that say this is
<v Speaker 6>just to give citizenship to Black Americans and to overturn
<v Speaker 6>dread Scott. If that was what the framers of the
<v Speaker 6>fourteenth Amendment meant, they would have written.
<v Speaker 5>Very different words.
<v Speaker 6>And the beauty of the fourteenth Amendment and the first
<v Speaker 6>sentence of it, the citizenship clause, as a reconstruction document,
<v Speaker 6>you know, after a first abolishing slavery thirteenth Amendment, then
<v Speaker 6>you get the fourteenth Amendment. I started out by wanting
<v Speaker 6>to provide for equal rights for all people in the
<v Speaker 6>United States. But then they added this sentence at the
<v Speaker 6>beginning that dealt with citizenship, and it was centrally about
<v Speaker 6>completing the project of free black Americans who were fighting
<v Speaker 6>for universal birthrights citizenship. And there was so much history,
<v Speaker 6>such rich history behind this argument in those Amikas briefs,
<v Speaker 6>not only Professor Jones's historical brief, but a really lovely
<v Speaker 6>brief filed by Professor Tyler Ambinder and Professor Garrett Epps,
<v Speaker 6>which I actually referred to during the argument. When you know,
<v Speaker 6>Justice Alito was asking, you know, well, the framers of
<v Speaker 6>the Fourteenth Amendment in eighteen sixty six, as they were
<v Speaker 6>writing those words, there was no such thing as an
<v Speaker 6>undocumented immigrant at that point, because Congress only enacted restrictions
<v Speaker 6>on immigration a few years later. The first one was
<v Speaker 6>in eighteen seventy five. So you know, it can't be
<v Speaker 6>that the Fourteenth Amendment encompasses the children of undocumented immigrants.
<v Speaker 6>And there are many responses to that based on the history.
<v Speaker 6>First and foremost, there was a debate about the citizenship
<v Speaker 6>clause where senators, you know, were all acknowledging that the
<v Speaker 6>children of immigrants would be citizens under this language.
<v Speaker 5>And there were those.
<v Speaker 6>Senators who opposed that and said, we don't want the
<v Speaker 6>children of people they called gypsies, roma or Chinese immigrants.
<v Speaker 6>We don't want their children to become us citizens. And
<v Speaker 6>that's exactly what these words do. And then you saw
<v Speaker 6>other senators, including really movingly Senator John Conness, who was
<v Speaker 6>an Irish immigrant himself, Senator of California, who responded directly
<v Speaker 6>to the views of the opponents of the Fourteenth Amendment, saying, yes,
<v Speaker 6>the children of so called gypsies, the children of Chinese immigrants,
<v Speaker 6>much as they are reviled right now and a disfavored
<v Speaker 6>minority in my home state of California, their children are
<v Speaker 6>all going to be citizens. And that's exactly why I'm
<v Speaker 6>voting for this amendment. And there's all that rich history.
<v Speaker 6>You have the brief that I started to mention. The
<v Speaker 6>Anne Binder Epps brief also talked about the fact that
<v Speaker 6>in right before then, the ten to fifteen years before
<v Speaker 6>the Fourteenth Amendment was framed in eighteen sixty six, there
<v Speaker 6>were millions of Irish immigrants who came to the United
<v Speaker 6>States because of the famine in Ireland, and the No
<v Speaker 6>Nothing Party, which was ascended in the eighteen fifties in Congress,
<v Speaker 6>you know, was just virulently zenobic and anti Irish, anti Catholic,
<v Speaker 6>and they believed that these Irish Catholic impoverished immigrants were unassimilable.
<v Speaker 6>The No Nothing Party members felt that these Irish Catholic immigrants.
<v Speaker 5>Were less than human.
<v Speaker 6>And yet even they Know Nothing Party believed that the
<v Speaker 6>US born children.
<v Speaker 3>They didn't want to go Trump, even the No Nothing
<v Speaker 3>Party didn't want to go as far as Trump.
<v Speaker 2>That's an amazing detail, exactly.
<v Speaker 6>And so there was such a rich history about the
<v Speaker 6>movement of free black Americans for universal birthright citizenship and
<v Speaker 6>the experience of Irish Catholic immigrants and the experience that
<v Speaker 6>incredibly moving colloquy between Senator Cowan of Pennsylvania, who opposed
<v Speaker 6>birthright citizenship, and Senator John Conness of California, who spoke
<v Speaker 6>as an immigrant himself, saying, this is the beauty of
<v Speaker 6>birthright citizenship, this is the beauty of these words. We'll
<v Speaker 6>all be Americans. And that's what I' voting for all
<v Speaker 6>of that, you know, I was, I was trying to
<v Speaker 6>channel all of them while I was standing there in
<v Speaker 6>front of the Supreme Court.
<v Speaker 3>It's an amazing moment in American history. And you know,
<v Speaker 3>as I listened to it, I was thinking, you know,
<v Speaker 3>teaching the nineteenth century, teaching reconstruction, that this is an
<v Speaker 3>amazing drama because what's happening is you have an administration
<v Speaker 3>trying to essentially destroy the result of a war, what
<v Speaker 3>it took to create the idea of equal protection that
<v Speaker 3>everybody born in the United States as a citizen. Of course,
<v Speaker 3>this one case is part of, as we were talking
<v Speaker 3>about in the beginning, the wider fight for what Frederick
<v Speaker 3>Douglass long called equal protection and the words that make
<v Speaker 3>it into also the Fourteenth Amendment for a section equal
<v Speaker 3>protection under the law. And to hear that you were
<v Speaker 3>channeling thinking about this history, because in a way, you
<v Speaker 3>weren't just championing all of us. You were championing these
<v Speaker 3>long ago heroes fighting for democracy and fighting for multi
<v Speaker 3>racial demandsocracy specifically. And you know, so often the Trump
<v Speaker 3>administration brings up the people who lost that fight, the
<v Speaker 3>virulent races. I love the idea that even the no
<v Speaker 3>not that it's understood that the next generation you couldn't discriminate. There,
<v Speaker 3>come on, people, and Trump has gone too far. So
<v Speaker 3>what an amazing firsthand account of really living history, I guess,
<v Speaker 3>is what I would call it.
<v Speaker 2>That's what you were doing and channeling these voices.
<v Speaker 3>And you know, often when we talk about the text,
<v Speaker 3>it can sound very technical, very semantic.
<v Speaker 2>But what you've brought out I think in.
<v Speaker 3>This conversation is the text is there for a reason.
<v Speaker 3>And this text, in particularly the Fourteenth Amendment, for as section,
<v Speaker 3>is a realization, not just a symbol, but an encapsulation
<v Speaker 3>of the fight for multi racial democracy and literally on
<v Speaker 3>the heels of the most violent conflict in American history.
<v Speaker 3>So what an amazing thing for our listeners to hear
<v Speaker 3>that that was in your mind as you were doing it.
<v Speaker 3>Many of us would be thinking like, oh, no, are
<v Speaker 3>my notes in the right worder?
<v Speaker 5>Oh believe me, I was thinking that too.
<v Speaker 3>Can I ask Cecilia, what an amazing discussion? But I
<v Speaker 3>just as we reached the end of this amazing discussion
<v Speaker 3>wanted to ask you about of course, to me, anyway,
<v Speaker 3>this looks like a great moment, a moment where the
<v Speaker 3>Supreme Court is about to rebuke the President of the
<v Speaker 3>United States with his really racist and anti democratic executive order.
<v Speaker 3>But I just invite you to talk about where you
<v Speaker 3>see the Of course, as the legal director of the
<v Speaker 3>National ACLU, you are thinking strategically about how to stop
<v Speaker 3>all of these attacks on our democracy. So how does
<v Speaker 3>this fight fit in and what are you thinking about
<v Speaker 3>when it comes to the wider assaults on democracy if
<v Speaker 3>you wanted to. We've been talking for instance about the
<v Speaker 3>dj trying to revoke citizenship of naturalized people, the next step,
<v Speaker 3>and the war on democracy, But really, any thoughts about
<v Speaker 3>this wider assault on democracy and what you, as legal director,
<v Speaker 3>are in the midst of doing in this fight.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, I would say, you know, this actually happens to
<v Speaker 6>be a tough moment. You and I are talking the
<v Speaker 6>day after the Supreme Court issued in order that vacated
<v Speaker 6>an injunction that we won through litigation against racially discriminatory
<v Speaker 6>congressional districting map in the state of Alabama. We'd won
<v Speaker 6>the case in the lower federal court and then one
<v Speaker 6>in the Supreme Court three years ago, and then, of
<v Speaker 6>course a couple of weeks ago, the Supreme Court issued
<v Speaker 6>a decision in Louisiana congressional redistricting case. We also were
<v Speaker 6>on with LDF called Louisiana versus cala and really undermined
<v Speaker 6>and gutted Section two of the Voting Rights Act, the
<v Speaker 6>crown jewel of the Civil Rights era, legislation passed by
<v Speaker 6>Congress in nineteen sixty five in order to give voters
<v Speaker 6>a tool to go into court and fight against race
<v Speaker 6>discrimination and voting laws. And you know, immediately over the
<v Speaker 6>next couple of weeks since the Calais decision came down,
<v Speaker 6>including last night, the ACLU and LDF and other partners
<v Speaker 6>around the country, but particularly in the South, have had
<v Speaker 6>to rush into court. I literally have lost count of
<v Speaker 6>how many emergency applications we filed in the last couple
<v Speaker 6>of weeks in some cases, you know, with the Supreme
<v Speaker 6>Court last night issuing this order that changes the rules
<v Speaker 6>when voting is already underway in Alabama in the primary
<v Speaker 6>election that where election day is May nineteenth, and people
<v Speaker 6>are doing early voting right now under the map that
<v Speaker 6>now has been vacated by the Supreme Court, and so
<v Speaker 6>there's a lot coming at us, you know. The Coup also,
<v Speaker 6>of course, is currently considering again the State of Louisiana's
<v Speaker 6>effort to block people's access to mifipristo and medication abortion nationwide.
<v Speaker 5>Right.
<v Speaker 6>So for those of us who are fighting for civil
<v Speaker 6>rights and civil liberties, you know, these are tough times.
<v Speaker 6>We have a lot of challenges, including in the Supreme
<v Speaker 6>Court and in other federal courts. But you know, I
<v Speaker 6>want to just say that those efforts have really borne fruit.
<v Speaker 6>The ACLU has filed I think the count currently is
<v Speaker 6>at one hundred and eighty four lawsuits we have filed
<v Speaker 6>since inauguration day last year, and in cases that have
<v Speaker 6>already been closed, we've got about a sixty two percent
<v Speaker 6>success rate. And in the cases that we're still fighting,
<v Speaker 6>you know, we're winning many of those battles and getting
<v Speaker 6>real relief from federal courts for people who are harmed
<v Speaker 6>by this administration's policies.
<v Speaker 5>But that's just.
<v Speaker 6>One piece of the story. People in these states that
<v Speaker 6>are now fighting for democracy after the Supreme Court's decision
<v Speaker 6>in Louisiana versus Calais, you know, are packing the state houses.
<v Speaker 5>Louisiana voters, you know.
<v Speaker 6>Packed the state House in Baton Rouge a few days
<v Speaker 6>ago in order to express their views that we want
<v Speaker 6>to be able to vote and have our votes count equally.
<v Speaker 6>With everyone else's, regardless of our race. We want you,
<v Speaker 6>the legislature of Louisiana, to enact a fair map that
<v Speaker 6>gives black Louisiana voters the same weight as white Louisiana voters.
<v Speaker 6>People are marching in Tennessee, where just as we file
<v Speaker 6>a lawsuit and an application for emergency relief in the
<v Speaker 6>federal court, thousands and thousands of Tennesseeans are marching in
<v Speaker 6>the streets to say, we are fighting for the life
<v Speaker 6>of our democracy in the United States right now.
<v Speaker 5>And you know, in addition.
<v Speaker 6>To filing all those lawsuits, the ACLU has trained eighty
<v Speaker 6>seven thousand people in zoom meetings about their rights to protest.
<v Speaker 6>You know, what we can do to sustain in our
<v Speaker 6>democracy and the rule of law and equality under the Constitution.
<v Speaker 6>And there's so many places where Americans are making a difference,
<v Speaker 6>whether it's lobbying your city government to enact pro civil
<v Speaker 6>rights and pro civil liberties legislation, or taking into the
<v Speaker 6>streets to protest what the president is doing. There's so
<v Speaker 6>many things that we're all doing in this moment of
<v Speaker 6>real challenges, of real struggles, where it feels like the
<v Speaker 6>federal government of the executive branch is trying to push
<v Speaker 6>us backwards and undo Reconstruction and undo the civil rights we've.
<v Speaker 3>Been Yeah, so well said, and you know, I think
<v Speaker 3>it's also a sobering but importantly honest place to end,
<v Speaker 3>which is as great a moment as this was before
<v Speaker 3>the Supreme Court, to have the Presidents sitting there as
<v Speaker 3>essentially the justices, through their questions and through their analysis
<v Speaker 3>and through your arguments, we're rebuking him and his white
<v Speaker 3>supremacy and his attack on our democracy.
<v Speaker 2>As great a moment as that is. In the end, right, it.
<v Speaker 3>Has to be a multifaceted strategy that we're using to
<v Speaker 3>stop this, because when it comes to the Court's decision
<v Speaker 3>in the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act and interpretation
<v Speaker 3>the Louisiana cases, you say it's doing the opposite of
<v Speaker 3>respecting the text. It's really undoing what was also a
<v Speaker 3>monumental second Reconstruction, a fight for our democracy, and taking
<v Speaker 3>a law that took a mass.
<v Speaker 2>Movement to create and ondoing it.
<v Speaker 3>And we've been covering that on the Oath in the Office,
<v Speaker 3>alongside your important argument in the birthright citizenship case. And
<v Speaker 3>I guess as we wrap up what I'm hearing you say.
<v Speaker 3>And I know, of course the ACLU has a multifaceted
<v Speaker 3>way of defending democracy, but that litigation is part of it,
<v Speaker 3>and that can inspire what is also a fundamental part,
<v Speaker 3>which is citizens rising up, defending our own rights and
<v Speaker 3>in various strategies, using politics and democracy to defend democracy.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, and using stories, using history, using the arts, using comedy,
<v Speaker 6>comady this time to tell a story about not just
<v Speaker 6>what the constitution says, but you know, the country that
<v Speaker 6>we are hoping to build towards and always trying to
<v Speaker 6>do better and to you know, ensure that freedom inequality
<v Speaker 6>are lived reality for everyone.
<v Speaker 3>What a great place to end, Cecilia Wang, Thank you
<v Speaker 3>for your efforts, thank you for your amazing argument before
<v Speaker 3>the Supreme Court, and thank you for your words about
<v Speaker 3>history the way that our historic fight for democracy inspires
<v Speaker 3>our current fight. It's really been a pleasure to have
<v Speaker 3>you on the oath in the office.
<v Speaker 2>Thank you for joining us.
<v Speaker 5>Thank you Corey, thank you for all your work.
<v Speaker 2>Thanks so much.
<v Speaker 1>I want to thank Cecilia Wang for coming in and
<v Speaker 1>being so brilliant and professor. I want to thank you
<v Speaker 1>for talking me off a ledge. What is the best
<v Speaker 1>way for our listeners to follow you, Corey and keep
<v Speaker 1>up with your work.
<v Speaker 3>Well, we have the oath in the office substack, we
<v Speaker 3>have all over you can review us. Be sure to
<v Speaker 3>subscribe wherever you're listening to us right now. You can
<v Speaker 3>watch us on YouTube. And I've got to just add
<v Speaker 3>a note of thanks. The ACLU, of course, has been
<v Speaker 3>a sponsor of this podcast repeatedly, and to have this
<v Speaker 3>amazing litigator, Cecilia Wang join us and talk about what
<v Speaker 3>it was like to be in the courtroom with Donald
<v Speaker 3>Trump watching her and pushing back and arguing on behalf
<v Speaker 3>of our rights, on behalf of the text of the
<v Speaker 3>fourteenth Amendment, it's first section guaranteeing that anyone born in
<v Speaker 3>this country is a citizen.
<v Speaker 2>It really was a special.
<v Speaker 1>Episode, Amen, And I want to thank everyone who puts
<v Speaker 1>the show together, especially Beowulf and Wendy. And I want
<v Speaker 1>to thank you Professor as always. You guys can hear
<v Speaker 1>me every night on Sirius XM Progress or in the
<v Speaker 1>mornings on the John Fiegelsang podcast and my book's called
<v Speaker 1>Separation of Church and Hate. Professor, thank you so much.
<v Speaker 2>I'm being a pleasure John.
<v Speaker 1>We will see you guys next time. Bubby Oath and
<v Speaker 1>the Office