Birthright Citizenship Survives, But Agencies Just Lost Their Shield

Grant: Welcome back to Power Check. I'm Grant. Maya: And I'm Maya. And dude, we've got a stacked one today. Grant: We do. The Supreme Court just handed down two rulings in two days that pull in almost opposite directions. Maya: Okay, okay, okay. Opposite how? Grant: One reigns in a president, the other hands him a pretty significant new power over federal agencies. Maya: Right, so we're talking the birthright citizenship fight? Grant: And Humphreys Executor ninety years of precedent gone in the same week. Maya: The same week? Grant: One day apart, actually. Maya: That's wild timing. So we'll walk through what Chief Justice Roberts actually wrote and how Trump is already reacting. Grant: We'll also get into how close that vote really was, because it wasn't as clean as the headlines make it sound. Maya: Plus what this agency ruling means going forward, who's protected, who's not. Grant: And whether Congress can even do anything about the citizenship piece. Maya: It's complicated. Grant: It's always complicated. That's the job. Maya: All right, let's get into what actually happened this week, starting with the line that got everybody talking. Grant: A child born on American soil and subject to American law was made an American citizen. That's Chief Justice Roberts. Tuesday—six words that just ended a fight Trump started on Day One. Maya: And within hours he's on Truth Social calling it "too bad for our country" while begging Congress to fix it through legislation instead. Grant: Which, by the way, isn't really how the Constitution works. Maya: Yeah, I noticed that too. Grant: So let's back up. This order, deny citizenship to babies born here to undocumented or temporary visa parents, Trump signed it his first day back in office. Maya: January twentieth twenty twenty five: I remember the headlines. Grant: Right; but here's the part people forget: it never actually took effect, not for one single day. Maya: Seriously? Eighteen months, and it just sat there? Grant: NPR reported every lower court judge who looked at it blocked it; one judge called it "blatantly unconstitutional" before it ever touched a single birth certificate. Maya: So the whole thing was frozen in place the entire time it was making headlines? Grant: Exactly; a policy that existed only on paper and the Supreme Court still had to spend eighteen months killing it for good. Maya: And Roberts didn't just say no, he went back to to English common law, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Wong Kim Ark case from eighteen ninety eight—he built a wall around this thing. Grant: Six to three—that's not a squeaker. Maya: Which is what makes the timing so strange: this landed one day, one day, after the court gutted Humphreys Executor and handed presidents way more power to fire people who are supposed to be independent. Grant: So in the same week the court says you can't touch the Constitution's text. It's text on citizenship. Maya: But you CAN reshape how the entire executive branch is run. Grant: Funny how the referee only blows the whistle on some plays. Maya: Is that consistency or did the court just pick its spots? Grant: That's the real puzzle we're chewing on today. Maya: So what actually WAS in this order and how did a case out of New Hampshire end up deciding who counts as American? Building on that gut punch, let's get into mechanics. Executive Order 14-160 would have stripped citizenship from babies born here if both parents were undocumented or just here on a visa. Grant: So no green card for mom or dad. No citizenship for the kid. Blunt is that. Maya: And it's not some rounding error. One widely cited estimate puts it around 150,000 kids a year. Who'd have been born here without citizenship. Grant: A hundred and fifty thousand babies a year, reclassified overnight! Maya: Intro a legal gray zone, stateless unless another country claimed them. Grant: Which is strange against the actual text-the Fourteenth Amendment says anyone born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction of it, is citizen. Maya: Fourteen words carrying a lot of weight. Grant: Subject to the jurisdiction that phrase alone is the whole fight. Maya: So how does something this specific even reach the Supreme Court? Grant: That part's tangled. It didn't go straight up. A year earlier, in Trump v. CASA, the court ruled federal judges can't issue nationwide injunctions anymore. Maya: Wait, so the order could have applied in some states and not others? Grant: Exactly the chaos that created. Maya: Wow. Grant: The Library of Congress. A number of Congress's breakdown on Congress.gov shows lawyers filed a class action in New Hampshire the same day CASA came down-Barbara v. Trump-to cover every affected baby nationwide again. Maya: Clever work around. Grant: It held that New Hampshire cases literally would carry this to Roberts' desk. Maya: So the paperwork mattered almost as much as the Constitution. Grant: Sometimes more—and six justices didn't even agree on why they struck it down. Maya: Ooh, tell me the split. Grant: Yeah—okay, walk me through the numbers, because six three sounds decisive, but it wasn't the same six three all the way through. Maya: Building on that, Roberts writes the majority, joined by Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson; five justices signing on to constitutional grounds, plus himself. Wait, so that's six on the actual amendment question? Grant: Exactly. But then Kavanaugh concurs in the result. Not the reasoning. He agrees the order fails, Maya: Mm-hmm. Grant: just not because of the Fourteenth Amendment. Maya: So what's his angle? Grant: He thinks it violates federal statute. It's like structuring a deal around a loophole clause instead of the actual contract terms. Maya: Which leaves Congress a theoretical opening to rewrite that statute later. Grant: He leaves that door open, narrow but open. Maya: Which is exactly what Trump's threatening on Truth Social now. now. Grant: Right; then Thomas dissents, joined by Gorsuch, with Alito writing separately. Maya: What's their read? Grant: Thomas argues the Citizenship Clause was written for freed slaves and their children after the Civil War, not a blanket rule for anyone born here. Maya: That's a narrow reading of "all persons born. Grant: It is, and Roberts doesn't dodge it. NPR reported he leaned on Wong Kim Ark. The eighteen ninety eight case as controlling precedent. Maya: Hold on! Eighteen ninety eight—that's a hundred twenty eight years this rule's been standing! Grant: A hundred and twenty eight years! Roberts treats it as settled ground, not something to relitigate because one President doesn't like it. Maya: So five justices rock solid on the Constitution, one hedging on a technicality, three saying it was misread from day one! Grant: And it shows the constitutional question wasn't close; the fight was over the path to get there. Maya: Which makes what happened one day earlier even stranger. Grant: Now flip that on its head, because this same Court had loosened its grip on something else entirely just one day before. Yeah. Maya: Quick pivot, you teed this up last part. Grant: Right. One day before Barbara, on Monday, the court hands down Trump v. Slaughter. Maya: The FTC case? Grant: That one. They don't just side with Trump, they kill Humphreys Executor outright. Maya: Wait, that's the case protecting agency heads from being fired without cause? Grant: Ninety years old, dating back to the Roosevelt era, the ABA Banking Journal covered the ruling and flagged that Roberts wrote the court overrules whatever's left of Humphreys. Maya: That's a mic drop, not a footnote! Grant: Trump can fire FTC commissioners whenever he wants now. No cause required. Maya: So, Monday, presidential power expands, Tuesday it gets slapped down on birthright citizenship. Grant: Same nine justices, same week. Maya: Is coin flip or is there actual logic in there? Grant: There's a carve out that tells you the logic. Trump versus Cook came down that same Monday. DLA Piper's write up flagged that the court protected the feds specifically. Maya: Why does the Fed get special treatment? Grant: Monetary policy independence reads as its own category. The court treated the central bank as structurally separate from FTC-style agencies. Maya: So presidents get more control over agencies Congress built to be independent, just not the- It's not the one lever that could tank the economy? Grant: Exactly. Birthright citizenship is a different bucket entirely-pure Fourteenth Amendment text. Executive orders don't get to rewrite the Constitution. Maya: So the through line: expand control over agencies Congress built to be independent, but leave the Constitution alone. Grant: Whether that's principled or just where the votes landed, that's worth sitting with. Maya: Which is exactly what Trump is testing next. He's saying Congress can just legislate its own. It's laid its way around the ruling. Grant: Good luck with that math. So Trump's already floating Plan B: get Congress to write birthright restrictions into law instead-cleaner path, he says. Maya: Cleaner? Grant, the Guardian reported he's threatening to abolish birthright citizenship through Congress the same day the ruling came down. That's not Plan B-that's a tantrum with a strategy attached. Grant: Maybe, but look at the paperwork. Roberts didn't rule on some statute; he ruled the Fourteenth Amendment itself guarantees this. Maya: Mm-hmm. Grant: You can't legislate around constitutional text; you need an amendment. Maya: Which needs two thirds of both chambers plus thirty eight states. Grant: Right. That's not a bill, that's a moonshot. Maya: Okay, so it's like buying a car with a rebuilt title and telling yourself the paperwork's a formality. And Grant: That's exactly it. The cops say it's worth nothing, but the seller keeps pointing at the shiny paint job. Maya: the politics don't help him either. Reuters and Ipsos polled this back in April. 64% of Americans want birthright citizenship kept as is. Grant: 64 is not nothing. Maya: It's not close, is what it is. Even a chunk of Republicans broke that way. Grant: So where's the actual opening, if there is one? Maya: Kavanaugh! Grant: Kavanaugh!" His concurrence stayed on statutory ground, not constitutional. If Congress ever wanted to test a narrower version, say, around the specific parental status question he flagged, that's the one seam in the wall. Maya: But even that's a maybe wrapped in a maybe. Grant: The math doesn't work, and I think everyone in that room knows it. Maya: So why announce it at all? Grant: Because saying I'll fix it in Congress sounds better on Truth Social than saying I lost. Maya: Fair. But if the legislative doors basically bolted shut- Grant: Then who's actually left holding the check on this stuff? Maya: Yeah, about that. Because after what we just walked through with Slaughter, I'm not sure I love the answer. Grant: Verdict time. I want us to grade both rulings honestly, not split the difference. Maya: Barbera's a check working the way it's supposed to-six justices, one hundred and twenty eight years of precedent, a president told no. Grant: Slaughter is my problem child-same court, same week and suddenly it's five four on agency structure? Maya: Right, and that Kavanaugh concurrence keeps nagging at me; it shrinks. Thinks Barbara's wind down to a statutory crack, not a locked door. Grant: So the "six three" number is basically window dressing? Maya: Not window dressing, but the real fight was five four on the constitutional core. That's the number that matters if a future administration tries something bolder. Grant: Mm-hmm. I'd push back a little. Five justices holding the line on the actual text of the Fourteenth Amendment is still a wall. Congress can't legislate around it, period. Maya: Fair, my worries forward looking. This bench drew a hard line on citizenship text, then handed the White House total control over firing commissioners at agencies like the FTC Grant: So the message to the next President is "Don't touch the Constitution's plain words about agency independence as fair game?" That's my read-two very different appetites for restraint-same nine people, same week. Maya: What I'm watching now, do lower courts read Slaughter narrow or wide? Does it spread to the SEC, the NLRB, the FCC, one agency at a time? Grant: And whether Congress actually moves on Kavanaugh's statutory opening or it dies the way most symbolic bills do. Maya: Either way, this court just showed us exactly where its line's set; now we watch you test them next. Grant: Given this White House, someone will probably before the ink dries. So if there's one thing to sit with from today, it's that consistency question: did the court actually protect a check or just pick its spot? Maya: Right, because Roberts drew a hard line on birthright citizenship, but Slaughter opened the door wide on agency removals. Grant: A policy that never even took effect, and it still took the The court 18 months to kill it. That's the wild pine. Maya: 18 months of headlines for something that existed only on paper. Wow. Grant: The takeaway, courts can hold a line in one case and hand over ground in another, same week, same bench. Maya: Which is exactly why we keep doing this show. Grant: If this helped you make sense of any of it, send it to one person who would actually care. Maya: Follow us wherever you listen, leave a review if you're feeling generous. Yes, it genuinely helps. Grant: Thanks for spending your week with us. Maya: We'll see you next time. Take care, everybody.