Week 27: Whose Birthday Is It Anyway

Max: It would be America250, Two Hundred and Fifty years old today. Blake: And the Supreme Court picked this exact week to rule on who actually counts as a citizen under it. Max: Talk about timing. Blake: Not exactly subtle. Max: I'm Max. Blake: And I'm Blake. Welcome to the Common Thread. So today we're pulling apart a ruling that looks six-three on paper but reads a lot closer than that. Max: Way closer. Wait till you hear how thin that actual majority is. Blake: We'll also look at the celebration signs, tall ships, a daytime ball drop and block parties everywhere. Max: Because nothing says birthday like a flotilla. Blake: Ships and ball drops on the same week as a Supreme Court fight over citizenship. Shit! Hmm. Max: And then there's the branding, a new passport, a giant arch, and real questions about where the money went. Blake: Wait till you hear how little of that appropriation is actually shown up. Max: Plus the parts of the founding story that don't fit a firework show, including who's sitting this one out entirely. Blake: Birthday, courtroom, and a country still arguing over its own promises. Max: Let's start where the week actually started—the ruling. In seventeen seventy-six, fifty-six men signed one promise, that all men are created equal. This week, two hundred and fifty years later, two American institutions tested whether that promise holds. Oh, we're opening there? All right, I'm Max. Blake: I'm Blake. Max: And it's actually the day, July Fourth Twenty Twenty-Six, America250 says we're commemorating the signing of the Declaration this weekend. Blake: Right; and separately the White House has its own version: Freedom250, the Salute to America Task Force. President Trump called it "the greatest political journey in human history. Max: Which, fair enough, kind of is. Fireworks, flyovers, the whole production. That's interesting. Blake: Spectacle we've got covered; substance is the open question. Meaning the same week we're hanging bunting on every courthouse, the Supreme Court the court quietly ruled on who actually counts as a citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment. Max: Wait, this week?--like this actual week? Blake: This actual week. Max: Oh, nobody planned that timing. Blake: No, but it's the test, isn't it? Two hundred and fifty years of all men are created equal does the birthday party mesh the ruling. Max: So which is it: cake and confetti or the real thing? Blake: That's what we're pressure testing today. Max: So who did nine justices say actually gets to be American? Before we get to the parade stuff, the vote breakdown on this ruling is wild. Blake: It is: "six three to strike the executive order but five four on the actual constitutional question" closer than almost anyone predicted. Max: Wait, walk me through that gap: six three but five four? Blake: Kavanaugh agreed the order had to go, but on statutory grounds, not constitutional ones. So the majority actually saying the Constitution guarantees this is Roberts, Sotomayor, Kagan. Jackson and Barrett. Max: Barrett, huh, she's the only one of the more conservative justices who signed on to the constitutional holding. Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch all dissented. Blake: That's the number nobody's talking about enough. In the actual filing on supremecourt.gov, Roberts writes that citizenship was the right to have rights. Then he traces a straight through Wong Kim Ark, the eighteen ninety eight case about a man born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents: remind me what that case actually settled. Birth on U.S. soil made you a citizen, full stop, regardless of your parents' status. Roberts leans on it hard, says the Framers extended it to every free born person in this land. Max: So legally this week nothing changes for families; kids born here are still citizens. Blake: Correct. The executive order's dead. But the Kavanaugh opinion basically hands Congress a playbook here, doesn't it? Doesn't it? That's the part a lot of coverage buries. CNN's framing was that this wasn't a complete loss for the administration. Kavanaugh's language leaves room for Congress to legislate new exceptions without touching the amendment itself. So Speaker Johnson's got something to work with. News4Jax's coverage this week has Johnson signaling that fight moves to the House next. Whether it survives the Senate is a different question. Sure, because nothing says smooth legislative session like Max: like birthright citizenship. Blake: Exactly, the kind of bill that sits in committee for a decade. Max: So for a family watching this at home, nothing changes today, but there's a real fight brewing that could run for years. Blake: The Constitution held; the politics didn't end there. Max: Speaking of things that actually happen on a fixed date, there's a much less contentious birthday event on the water this week. Blake: Yeah, let's go look at some ships. Max: Okay, courtroom to confetti now. I need to talk about ships. Ships! Tall ships, Blake. Sail4th 250 is bringing more than 30 tall ships into New York Harbor July 3rd through the 8th for the 7th International Naval Review. Blake: And Sail4th 250 is projecting millions of people along the shoreline for that one. Max: Somewhere there's a hot dog eating contest happening this same week and I refuse to be told it's unrelated. Blake: That's Coney Island, on the actual fourth, different pier. I like the instinct, though. Max: Fine, fine. But here's the other one: Times Square is doing a daytime ball drop, 2 p.m. Eastern, Blake: Wow. Max: timed when the Declaration got adopted. Blake: First ball drop outside New Year's Eve ever. Max: That's the part that gets me. Blake: What I actually care about is who built the grassroots layer. layer underneath all that. America250 says it's behind the block party push, giving forth potluck kids for neighborhoods. Max: Wait, so that's not a White House production? Blake: No. Separate operation entirely. America250 traces back to a bipartisan commission Congress created in 2016, and its own site says George W. Bush and Barack Obama both signed on as honorary national co-chairs. Max: Bush and Obama? Same committee? Blake: Same committee-that's about as close as we get to the Founders' actual town square instinct-folding tables, not a stage. Max: I love that; bring a casserole, watch some ships, done. Blake: Simpler than a courtroom, at least. Max: Way simpler. But there's a whole other layer running right alongside it, a lot more political. Blake: The branding fight. Max: Yeah, and it involves an actual arch and somebody's face inside a passport now. Blake: That's next. Max: Speaking of whose story gets told, turns out that's literal now. Starting July 6th, there's a new Patriot passport, and Trump's portrait is inside the cover. Blake: Inside the cover. Not on a coin, not on a stamp. Inside your passport. Max: Right, and reporting on this pins him as the first sitting president to appear inside a U.S. passport ever. Blake: Hmm, that's interesting. Walk me through why that's different from, say, Coolidge putting his face on the 1926- Sesquicentennial half dollar. Max: Okay, so Coolidge is on a commemorative coin most people never touch. This is your actual document you hand a border agent in Frankfurt. Blake: So the line is: Coin fine, passport not fine. Max: Something like that. One's a keepsake, the other's your actual ID leaving the country. Blake: I'll grant you the optics are rough, but I want numbers, not just vibes. Max: Go for it. Blake: There's also a two hundred fifty foot triumphal arch. An arch plan near the Lincoln Memorial, approved by a commission full of Administration appointees.... Max: Two hundred and fifty feet? That's not a monument, that's a skyline addition. Blake: And there's an active veterans' lawsuit over it-sight lines, scale, the whole thing. Max: Wait-veterans-specifically? Blake: Veterans' groups, yeah, worried it blocks views tied to Arlington and the Mall. That's still working through court. Max: Okay, but here's the part that actually bugs me more than the art. THE ARCH Blake: The money? Max: The money! There's this whole other operation, Task Force Twenty-five, running parallel to the real America250 commission we just talked about. Blake: Right; the one with Bush and Obama as honorary co chairs. Max: That one. Congress appropriated a hundred and fifty million dollars for the actual bipartisan commission's work. Blake: And how much has it gotten? Max: Twenty-five. Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman's office has been saying this publicly for weeks. Blake: Wait. Twenty-five of a hundred and fifty? Max: Yeah, yeah, the bipartisan commission, the one doing the tall ships and the block parties. Blake: It's underfunded while the branded version gets the spotlight. Max: Exactly, so when we agree something crossed a line, let's say it plainly. Blake: The passport crossed it. Your travel document isn't campaign merch. Max: And the funding gap is a real accountability question, not a partisan gripe. Blake: It's Congress's own Commission getting starved of Congress's own money that's measurable. Max: Meanwhile, the actual Founding story, who got left out of it, barely gets airtime. Blake: Which is worth its own conversation. Stepping back from that money fight, let's go back to the actual document, seventeen seventy six: Max: Yeah? Blake: "All men are created equal." Didn't include enslaved people, didn't include women, didn't include Native nations. Jefferson calls them "merciless Indian Savages" a few paragraphs later. Max: That line's rough to read out loud. Blake: It is. And this week the National Congress of American Indians declined to formally join the Two Hundred and Fiftieth celebrations. Yahoo News reported the group once the moment framed as recognition rather than unqualified celebration. Max: Big difference between those two words. Blake: Huge. The mechanism this country built to close that gap is Amendment Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth; each one an argument the Founders lost the first time around. Max: Which loops right back to Tuesday's ruling. Blake: Exactly. Wong Kim Ark, eighteen ninety-eight. Trump versus Barbour this week; same fight, New Century; who does equal actually cover? Max: As a person of faith, keeping this plain and not preachy, I think people carry worth because they're made in God's image, full stop. The Declaration reached for that truth before the country lived up to it. Blake: Reaching for a truth versus fully living it—real distinction. Max: Right, you can love July Fourth, love the fireworks, and still say seventeen seventy six didn't Speaker 3: fix. Max: It's didn't finish the job. Blake: An honest patriot names both halves. Max: Loving the founding doesn't mean pretending it was finished. Blake: Naming the gap is what keeps the promise alive. Max: And that argument doesn't end in a court room. Blake: No, it ends on your street-this weekend-but that's a different story. Max: Building on that, here's something you can actually do this weekend. Grab the America250 Planning Kit-it's free, right off America250.org-and it's basically a block party in a box. Blake: Potluck, flag, maybe thirteen candles on a cake, if you're feeling extra. Max: I'm doing the thirteen candles. Blake: Second assignment: Read Trump v. Barber yourself—the actual opinion of supremecourt dot gov. It's short. Max: Roberts' section alone runs maybe ten pages—you don't need a law degree. Blake: Twenty minutes and a highlighter, that's it. Max: And talk to your kids this week; put the Declaration's actual words next to the fireworks on that new passport photo. Blake: Ask them what's different; why one's a promise and the other is a picture? Max: That's the exact conversation a school board civics curriculum should be having, too. Blake: What happens next, the sequel, is Congress. Max: Kavanaugh left the door open on statutory grounds. Blake: So watch for a birthright citizenship bill. That's where this gets decided long Max: Right. Blake: term, not in one ruling. Max: Call your rep's office. Ask where they stand before it's a floor vote, not after. America250 isn't a finish line, it's the year we found out what we're actually arguing about. Blake: Go host that potluck. Max: So that's the week—spectacle and substance living side by side. Blake: The line has stuck with me: Roberts tracing citizenship all the way back to Wong Kim Ark, decided in eighteen ninety eight. Max: I still find it kind of wild that Barrett was the only one of the more conservative justices to sign on to that. Blake: That's interesting; tells you the coalition on citizenship is thinner than a headline number. Max: My takeaway? This country is still writing the promise from seventeen seventy six. Fix one ruling at a time. Blake: Go read the opinion, the short, then throw a block party with the free America250 kit. Max: If this helped you see the week more clearly, share it with one person who needs it. Blake: Subscribe so you never miss a Saturday, and go do that one thing we talked about. Max: Your town needs you in the room. Blake: Congress's birthright bill is coming, that's the real sequel. Max: Thanks for spending part of your Fourth with us. See you next week.