Birthright Citizenship Survives, But Agencies Just Lost Their Shield

GrantWelcome back to Power Check. I'm Grant.

MayaAnd I'm Maya. And dude, we've got a stacked one today.

GrantWe do. The Supreme Court just handed down two rulings in two days that pull in almost opposite directions.

MayaOkay, okay, okay. Opposite how?

GrantOne reigns in a president, the other hands him a pretty significant new power over federal agencies.

MayaRight, so we're talking the birthright citizenship fight?

GrantAnd Humphreys Executor ninety years of precedent gone in the same week.

MayaThe same week?

GrantOne day apart, actually.

MayaThat's wild timing. So we'll walk through what Chief Justice Roberts actually wrote and how Trump is already reacting.

GrantWe'll also get into how close that vote really was, because it wasn't as clean as the headlines make it sound.

MayaPlus what this agency ruling means going forward, who's protected, who's not.

GrantAnd whether Congress can even do anything about the citizenship piece.

MayaIt's complicated.

GrantIt's always complicated. That's the job.

MayaAll right, let's get into what actually happened this week, starting with the line that got everybody talking.

GrantA 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.

MayaAnd within hours he's on Truth Social calling it "too bad for our country" while begging Congress to fix it through legislation instead.

GrantWhich, by the way, isn't really how the Constitution works.

MayaYeah, I noticed that too.

GrantSo 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.

MayaJanuary twentieth twenty twenty five: I remember the headlines.

GrantRight; but here's the part people forget: it never actually took effect, not for one single day.

MayaSeriously? Eighteen months, and it just sat there?

GrantNPR 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.

MayaSo the whole thing was frozen in place the entire time it was making headlines?

GrantExactly; a policy that existed only on paper and the Supreme Court still had to spend eighteen months killing it for good.

MayaAnd 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.

GrantSix to three—that's not a squeaker.

MayaWhich 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.

GrantSo in the same week the court says you can't touch the Constitution's text. It's text on citizenship.

MayaBut you CAN reshape how the entire executive branch is run.

GrantFunny how the referee only blows the whistle on some plays.

MayaIs that consistency or did the court just pick its spots?

GrantThat's the real puzzle we're chewing on today.

MayaSo 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.

GrantSo no green card for mom or dad. No citizenship for the kid. Blunt is that.

MayaAnd 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.

GrantA hundred and fifty thousand babies a year, reclassified overnight!

MayaIntro a legal gray zone, stateless unless another country claimed them.

GrantWhich 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.

MayaFourteen words carrying a lot of weight.

GrantSubject to the jurisdiction that phrase alone is the whole fight.

MayaSo how does something this specific even reach the Supreme Court?

GrantThat 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.

MayaWait, so the order could have applied in some states and not others?

GrantExactly the chaos that created.

MayaWow.

GrantThe 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.

MayaClever work around.

GrantIt held that New Hampshire cases literally would carry this to Roberts' desk.

MayaSo the paperwork mattered almost as much as the Constitution.

GrantSometimes more—and six justices didn't even agree on why they struck it down.

MayaOoh, tell me the split.

GrantYeah—okay, walk me through the numbers, because six three sounds decisive, but it wasn't the same six three all the way through.

MayaBuilding 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?

GrantExactly. But then Kavanaugh concurs in the result. Not the reasoning. He agrees the order fails,

MayaMm-hmm.

Grantjust not because of the Fourteenth Amendment.

MayaSo what's his angle?

GrantHe thinks it violates federal statute. It's like structuring a deal around a loophole clause instead of the actual contract terms.

MayaWhich leaves Congress a theoretical opening to rewrite that statute later.

GrantHe leaves that door open, narrow but open.

MayaWhich is exactly what Trump's threatening on Truth Social now. now.

GrantRight; then Thomas dissents, joined by Gorsuch, with Alito writing separately.

MayaWhat's their read?

GrantThomas argues the Citizenship Clause was written for freed slaves and their children after the Civil War, not a blanket rule for anyone born here.

MayaThat's a narrow reading of "all persons born.

GrantIt is, and Roberts doesn't dodge it. NPR reported he leaned on Wong Kim Ark. The eighteen ninety eight case as controlling precedent.

MayaHold on! Eighteen ninety eight—that's a hundred twenty eight years this rule's been standing!

GrantA hundred and twenty eight years! Roberts treats it as settled ground, not something to relitigate because one President doesn't like it.

MayaSo five justices rock solid on the Constitution, one hedging on a technicality, three saying it was misread from day one!

GrantAnd it shows the constitutional question wasn't close; the fight was over the path to get there.

MayaWhich makes what happened one day earlier even stranger.

GrantNow flip that on its head, because this same Court had loosened its grip on something else entirely just one day before. Yeah.

MayaQuick pivot, you teed this up last part.

GrantRight. One day before Barbara, on Monday, the court hands down Trump v. Slaughter.

MayaThe FTC case?

GrantThat one. They don't just side with Trump, they kill Humphreys Executor outright.

MayaWait, that's the case protecting agency heads from being fired without cause?

GrantNinety 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.

MayaThat's a mic drop, not a footnote!

GrantTrump can fire FTC commissioners whenever he wants now. No cause required.

MayaSo, Monday, presidential power expands, Tuesday it gets slapped down on birthright citizenship.

GrantSame nine justices, same week.

MayaIs coin flip or is there actual logic in there?

GrantThere'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.

MayaWhy does the Fed get special treatment?

GrantMonetary policy independence reads as its own category. The court treated the central bank as structurally separate from FTC-style agencies.

MayaSo 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?

GrantExactly. Birthright citizenship is a different bucket entirely-pure Fourteenth Amendment text. Executive orders don't get to rewrite the Constitution.

MayaSo the through line: expand control over agencies Congress built to be independent, but leave the Constitution alone.

GrantWhether that's principled or just where the votes landed, that's worth sitting with.

MayaWhich is exactly what Trump is testing next. He's saying Congress can just legislate its own. It's laid its way around the ruling.

GrantGood luck with that math. So Trump's already floating Plan B: get Congress to write birthright restrictions into law instead-cleaner path, he says.

MayaCleaner? 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.

GrantMaybe, but look at the paperwork. Roberts didn't rule on some statute; he ruled the Fourteenth Amendment itself guarantees this.

MayaMm-hmm.

GrantYou can't legislate around constitutional text; you need an amendment.

MayaWhich needs two thirds of both chambers plus thirty eight states.

GrantRight. That's not a bill, that's a moonshot.

MayaOkay, so it's like buying a car with a rebuilt title and telling yourself the paperwork's a formality. And

GrantThat's exactly it. The cops say it's worth nothing, but the seller keeps pointing at the shiny paint job.

Mayathe politics don't help him either. Reuters and Ipsos polled this back in April. 64% of Americans want birthright citizenship kept as is.

Grant64 is not nothing.

MayaIt's not close, is what it is. Even a chunk of Republicans broke that way.

GrantSo where's the actual opening, if there is one?

MayaKavanaugh!

GrantKavanaugh!" 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.

MayaBut even that's a maybe wrapped in a maybe.

GrantThe math doesn't work, and I think everyone in that room knows it.

MayaSo why announce it at all?

GrantBecause saying I'll fix it in Congress sounds better on Truth Social than saying I lost.

MayaFair. But if the legislative doors basically bolted shut-

GrantThen who's actually left holding the check on this stuff?

MayaYeah, about that. Because after what we just walked through with Slaughter, I'm not sure I love the answer.

GrantVerdict time. I want us to grade both rulings honestly, not split the difference.

MayaBarbera's a check working the way it's supposed to-six justices, one hundred and twenty eight years of precedent, a president told no.

GrantSlaughter is my problem child-same court, same week and suddenly it's five four on agency structure?

MayaRight, and that Kavanaugh concurrence keeps nagging at me; it shrinks. Thinks Barbara's wind down to a statutory crack, not a locked door.

GrantSo the "six three" number is basically window dressing?

MayaNot 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.

GrantMm-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.

MayaFair, 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

GrantSo 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.

MayaWhat 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?

GrantAnd whether Congress actually moves on Kavanaugh's statutory opening or it dies the way most symbolic bills do.

MayaEither way, this court just showed us exactly where its line's set; now we watch you test them next.

GrantGiven 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?

MayaRight, because Roberts drew a hard line on birthright citizenship, but Slaughter opened the door wide on agency removals.

GrantA policy that never even took effect, and it still took the The court 18 months to kill it. That's the wild pine.

Maya18 months of headlines for something that existed only on paper. Wow.

GrantThe takeaway, courts can hold a line in one case and hand over ground in another, same week, same bench.

MayaWhich is exactly why we keep doing this show.

GrantIf this helped you make sense of any of it, send it to one person who would actually care.

MayaFollow us wherever you listen, leave a review if you're feeling generous. Yes, it genuinely helps.

GrantThanks for spending your week with us.

MayaWe'll see you next time. Take care, everybody.