Stephen Miller Goes on Unhinged Rant After Supreme Court Loss

Summary

Bulwark Takes Podcast Summary
Episode: “Stephen Miller Goes on Unhinged Rant After Supreme Court Loss”
Date: July 2, 2026
Host: Ben Parker (Bulwark)
Guests: Adrian Carrasquillo (Bulwark, Huddled Masses newsletter), Michelle Lapointe (National Immigration Council), Todd Schulte (FWD.us)

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Overview

This episode breaks down the recent Supreme Court rulings on immigration, especially surrounding birthright citizenship. The panel examines what the decision means for American law and politics, Stephen Miller’s controversial reaction, and a string of other immigration rulings with major humanitarian implications. The discussion leans into the consequences for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders, asylum seekers, and the recurring volatility of U.S. immigration law. Listener questions prompt deeper dives into the intersection of legal policy, public perception, and political opportunities ahead of the midterms.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Supreme Court Affirmation of Birthright Citizenship

• Background: The Court struck down a Trump executive order seeking to restrict birthright citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants or temporary visitors, affirming that the 14th Amendment still governs.
• Panel Reaction:
  • Todd Schulte: “People should wake up, they should go outside, they should touch grass. Life should not have changed in that regard.” (01:23)
  • Michelle Lapointe: Emphasized the relief that the Constitution’s plain meaning was upheld, but found it “really troubling that only five justices thought that the executive order … was unconstitutional.” (02:07)
• Worrying Margin: The majority was narrower than expected, with only five justices fully rejecting the Trump policy on constitutional grounds.
• Quote: “Concerning when you see so many justices were open to letting Trump rewrite the Constitution via executive order.” – Adrian Carrasquillo (05:15)

2. The Stephen Miller Reaction & Rhetoric

• Panelists play and analyze Miller’s statements, which veered into nativism and coded racism.
• Miller’s Quote:

  “We have people from all over the world, from third world nations, nations that on their own would have never invented the wheel … and then that baby can sit on a jury when he turns 18 and sit in judgment of you … Citizenship means nothing if it is open to everyone.” (04:17–05:01)

• Panel Assessment:
  “He was just saying basically these people are not as industrious and smart as Americans. We all know what's going on there.” – Adrian (05:01)

3. Other Major Supreme Court Immigration Rulings

a. Asylum Case: “Turnback Policy” (Alo Trolado)

• Decision: SCOTUS allows officers to physically block asylum seekers from crossing the border and starting the process if they haven’t stepped onto U.S. soil.
• Michelle: “The plaintiffs have no recourse, that there is—the government can station officers at the limit line and turn people back, and there’s no obligation … to inspect and process those individuals.” (08:58–09:17)
• Dissenters say this exposes people to exploitation and “is really kind of a hollow promise given the facts.” (09:17)

b. TPS Ruling

• Todd Schulte:
  “Effort to streamline the administration’s ability to do this are deeply, deeply concerning and troubling.” (10:16)
  • Holders of TPS can lose protection en masse. CA example: Haitians and Syrians, many of whom have been here for decades, now at risk.
  • “They didn’t [follow the legal process], there was not a basic process here … so rather than the court come out and say, ‘here’s all the things the President said about Haiti and that’s not racial animus,’ … they found this workaround.” (10:16–13:28)
  • “In a handful of weeks, hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their deportation protection or their work authorization.” (13:45)
• Real Life Example: Adrian recounts a South Florida nurse caring for an elderly American—“these caretakers become more than just a person to help … [they're] her friend.” (15:18)

4. Listener Questions Segment

Several questions answered (18:02–31:50), covering:

a. DACA Implications

• Todd: “At a high level the directionality of the court is [against protections].” While not a direct ruling, the trend is ominous. (18:17)

b. Congressional Fixes for TPS

• Michelle: “Just having TPS does not provide you a pathway to permanent residence ... what we really need is congressional action … that actually gives them meaningful pathways to permanent status in this country.” (19:23)
• Todd: Political pressure is crucial; “they could do just kind of a punt … give people another two years to get their affairs in order ... that would be a better solution than days from now, hundreds of thousands of people being in a really, really dire situation.” (20:24)

c. Extreme MAGA Policy Proposals

• Kelly’s Question: MAGA idea to bar pregnant women from getting visas to prevent “birth tourism.”
  • Michelle: “This whole so-called birth tourism issue is wildly exaggerated… the idea that we would eviscerate the 14th Amendment to address this… is shocking… you don’t need something like this to address an imaginary problem.” (23:22)
  • Todd: Warns these ideas are “brain rot stuff” and politically toxic. “They are asking … [if] to get a visa stamp, you have to pee on a stick?” (25:13)
  • Notes the “crazy” is now close to the policy mainstream: “How outlandish are these ideas, or how much are they just going to be the new mainstream in six months?” – Ben Parker (27:38)
  • Adrian: “Stephen Miller was on the fringes of these conversations back in 2015, and now he’s one of the most powerful people in the world… these are now the conversations happening post-birthright decision.” (28:00)

5. Paths Forward & Closing

a. Systemic Immobility and Opportunity

• Michelle: “Without [a pathway to citizenship] we … continue to tinker at the margins… lost in litigation… with no long-term solutions.” (30:53)

b. Hopeful Note—Voters and Policy

• Todd: “I am really hopeful that people are seeing with clear eyes what is wrong … And that optimism has grown.” (31:55)
• Legalization and rebalancing of enforcement and legal pathways are critical; “There isn’t going to be a secure and orderly process at the border … unless we fix legal immigration.” (32:30)

c. Political Opportunity

• Adrian: “Republicans … can be really creative with how anti-immigrant they can be … Democrats have this opportunity. Yeah, it’s a challenge because … it will take courage. But I think … Democrats will probably be smart to sort of open up what they think about immigration and not just be so scared to discuss it.” (33:48)

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Notable/Memorable Quotes

• “We all know what’s going on there.” – Adrian Carrasquillo on Miller’s nativist language (05:01)
• “The plaintiffs have no recourse ... there’s no obligation ... to inspect and process those individuals.” – Michelle Lapointe, on asylum ruling (09:17)
• “In a handful of weeks, hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their deportation protection or their work authorization.” – Todd Schulte (13:45)
• “It will be difficult and will take courage. But I think that we’re going to see a Democratic primary where people are going to really be ... want actual solutions and ideas ... not just be so scared to discuss it.” – Adrian Carrasquillo (33:48)
• “It's 70% of the country still supports birthright citizenship according to the polling. So just messing with it ... would be wildly unpopular.” – Michelle Lapointe (30:03)
• “The conversations that we're having are divorced from the reality of what people are dealing with ... this is why people avoid sort of the news coming out of Washington.” – Adrian (28:00)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Birthright Citizenship Ruling & Reactions (00:45–05:38)
• Stephen Miller’s Rant & Panel Analysis (04:17–05:38)
• Other Major Supreme Court Rulings (Asylum, TPS) (05:38–15:18)
• Personal Impacts—Stories from the Ground (15:18–18:02)
• Listener Q&A (DACA, TPS, Congress) (18:02–21:44)
• Extreme Policy Proposals (Birth tourism, MAGA) (22:42–30:14)
• Reform: Hope, Challenges, and Pathways Forward (30:14–35:28)

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Overall Tone and Style

The conversation was urgent, detailed, and occasionally exasperated by the real-life stakes for immigrants impacted by evolving policies. There was both relief and alarm at the short-term legal victories and losses, with a strong call for broader, more humane reform. The group’s tone remained focused, fact-based, but not detached—inserting both analytical rigor and lived stories of those affected.

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For more analysis and reporting, visit The Bulwark or subscribe to the Huddled Masses newsletter.

Transcript

[A]

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[D]

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[C]

Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bulwark. This is Bulwark Takes. Make sure to like and subscribe to the channel. I am joined today by the Bulwulk's own Adrian Carrasquillo, author of the Huddled Masses newsletter about immigration, as well as Michelle Lapointe of the National Immigration Council and Todd Schulte of Forward Us. That's FWD us. This immigration expert dream team here. So thank you all for joining me. And let's start right off just around the horn. Obviously the biggest news we have is that we have birthright citizenship in America, which actually I don't think is news. So let's start. Todd, if we could with you, what are the most important things we need to know about the Supreme Court's ruling in the birthright citizenship case?

[B]

Yeah, I think great place to start. I think there's a couple ways to look at this. This is something that birthright citizenship predates, actually the country kind of the common law. It predates the Reconstruction Amendments. It has been affirmed by the court four times. It's in Congress. And so this should be a 9, 0 decision. And so it is good, I want to be clear, it is good that it is affirmed. People should wake up, they should go outside, they should touch grass. Life should not have changed in that regard. And also, and I know we'll get into this, really, really troubling to see this as kind of a 6, 3 ish, 5, 4 decision on the kind of basic fundamental question and clear read of the Constitution on birthright citizenship this morning.

[C]

Michelle, what do you think is the most important takeaway from the decision?

[A]

Yeah, I agree with Todd. We can all Breathe a sigh of relief on this one. The Constitution means what it says, and John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, and the three liberal justices all agree that that is the case. But it is really troubling that only five justices thought that the executive order limiting birthright citizenship and excluding the children of undocumented immigrants or those who are temporarily in the country was unconstitutional. We had Justice Kavanaugh agree with the holding, the ultimate holding, that the executive order had to be struck down, but he would have only relied on the statute, the law passed by Congress, which is troubling. And I think we didn't all see coming from the oral argument, which kind of indicated that there were more justices troubled by this than ultimately said that they would find it unconstitutional or illegal.

[C]

Adrian, we just had an emergency issue of your Huddled Masses newsletter go out. So tell us not only what your take is from these, from this, from these opinions, from this decision, but also what you're hearing from people. Is this a sigh of relief moment dodged a bullet, or is this danger on the horizon?

[D]

I think even prepping for this day, when I spoke to folks like Todd, like Michelle, and just sort of like what they were expecting, you know, there is. It is important to say that this was a blow to the things that Trump and Miller wanted to do when on, you know, hours after Trump is inaugurated, he puts forward this executive order saying that he wants to get rid of birthright citizenship. And we understand how this is like in the fabric, in the DNA of mass deportation and all the pieces that we've seen, we've seen the horrible detention, we've seen National Guard attacking US Citizens, and US Citizens getting their face pressed against concrete. We've seen all of that. But. But ultimately what they want is to have less people from other countries coming. We saw Stephen Miller's unhinged rant after this, which, you know, again, they always are really good at giving away the game. And he was just like, people are going to come here from countries where they can't create the wheel.

[C]

Being on US Soil does not make you a citizen or qualified to carry on or capable of executing the inheritance of this country. We have people from all over the world, from third world nations, nations that on their own would have never invented the wheel, let alone modern technology, let alone medicine, let alone air travel, and they can just come into the country, have a baby at a hospital and paid for by you and me, and then that baby's automatically a citizen. That baby can sit on a jury when he turns 18 and sit in judgment of you.

[B]

And sit in judgment of me and

[C]

sit in judgment of our loved ones can decide who our mayors are, our

[B]

governors are, our presidents are.

[C]

Citizenship means nothing if it is open

[D]

to everyone, whatever's going on there. Yeah, he was just saying like basically these people are not as industrious and as smart as Americans. We all know what's going on there. So look, this was important and it was important to stop this. But, but again, and we're going to get into it, as Todd said, I think just so many people understanding that there are other parts to this, that there are other parts to these other cases that came down. And so While yes, for July 4th, we still have a country, ladies and gentlemen, sigh of relief. It is concerning when you see that so many justices were open to letting Trump rewrite the Constitution via executive order. That concerns me. Just, you know.

[C]

Yeah, it just, it concerns me too. But you mentioned those other rulings. We had a major ruling about asylum cases at the border and what the definition of at is. I'm oversimplifying, obviously. And we had a major ruling that Jim Swift wrote about for us reporting from Springfield, Ohio, about whether the Trump administration went through the legal process. Right. Of reversing or ending temporary protected status for many, many Haitians and Syrians who were here for a long time, built lives re revitalized communities. So Michelle, what about those other rulings? Is this like a sort of glass half full for the Trump administration? It sounds like apart from birthright citizenship, they're kind of getting to do whatever they want.

[A]

Yeah, unfortunately, I think it's more than glass half full for them. They got what they wanted on almost on every other immigration case this term and the two you mentioned. I'll start with the asylum decision, the Alo Trolado case, which was brought by the American Immigration Council, my organization, along with partner organizations and co counsel. This is a long running case that deals with restrictions at the border specifically related to access to ports of entry. So the official Customs and Border Protection locations that travelers, not just asylum seekers, but regular travelers, go through in order to enter the United States and under our asylum laws, you can approach a port of entry if you are an asylum seeker and seek protection from persecution in your home country. Now, this policy, when it started actually under the Obama administration, essentially, essentially was that the CBP officers would turn people back to Mexico. The government calls it metering, we call it the turnback policy. But it was a policy that was substantially expanded under the first Trump administration where they actually had CBP officers standing at the limit Line standing at the border, that literal border between the US And Mexico, and not allowing people to access the ports of entry to start the asylum process. And the plaintiffs won every step of the way. We won at the district court. We won at the ninth Circuit. They tried to get the ninth Circuit to reconsider it, the full court. They lost again, the government, that is. And so they took it to the Supreme Court, which unfortunately last week decided that the plaintiffs have no recourse, that there is the government can station officers at the limit line and turn people back, and that there's no obligation for the government to then inspect and process those individuals to begin the asylum process. They really focused on, as you said, the meaning of arrives in the United States. It's a highly technical, formalistic kind of opinion focusing on that language really divorced from the reality of what was going on, which was that people were fully turned back, not just delayed in their processing, and they were left to live in squalor, essentially along the border in camps, where they were vulnerable to exploitation, to other kinds of abuses. And it was a real humanitarian tragedy. And against the laws of the United States, you know, that we had repeatedly won at the lower courts, saying that the government had the obligation to allow these people to access the asylum system. So, unfortunately, that is. That was a big loss.

[C]

So just so I have this straight. The law says, the asylum law says if you make it to a port of entry, like a crossing point on the border or something like that, you get to claim asylum. But the government says you can't do that if we prevent you from reaching the point of entry. So it's like the government's loophole wins in court against the government's law. Is that right?

[A]

Yeah, that's exactly right. It's like the obligation does not even attach. It does not even begin until the person physically steps across the limit line. They have a foot on the soil of the United States. At that point, yes, the government has to inspect and process them and allow them access to the asylum system. But if they just stand there physically blocking that, that crossing over. The court has now said that they. That there's no obligation that attaches. Now, majority opinion drafted by Justice Alito did say if there were a total shutdown of the system, if. If there were absolutely no way to access, then surely that could be challenged again. But as the dissent by Justice Sotomayor points out, it's really kind of a hollow promise given the facts established in this case.

[C]

Right. It's a theoretical case. So, Todd, can you talk to us about the TPS ruling because that was the other major one from this term. And that's going to affect a lot of people who are living here, working, leading lives, raising kids, going to church.

[B]

It's a really tough decision. I don't, I don't like, want to sit here and be like one. All the things you've heard about over the last year and a half, one's worse than the other. This is really, really high stakes. And the efforts taken by this court to streamline the administration's ability to do this are deeply, deeply concerning and troubling. Would be a nice way to say it. So TPS or Temporary Protected Status, it's a form of humanitarian relief. If you're in the United States already and the government goes through a process as it's not safe to return people there, you get Temporary Protected Status. It's in law. It's been around for a number of decades. This is so that when it's not safe to deport people to Afghanistan into the arms of the Taliban after a major earthquake, a place like Haiti or Syria that have been war torn countries, the United States says it's not safe to return you there. And in the meantime you're going to get temporary protection from deportation and you get a work permit. TPS has worked for people who need it for a short period of time. And TPS has also been in place for countries where it's not been safe to return people for a really long period of time. So watchers and readers of the Bulwark are probably pretty familiar with the President's comments about Haitians. But just to say whether it is lying about saying people eat pets, talking about how Haitians have aids, talking about shithole countries, there is a clear pattern of, you know, racial animus is the term in the law here. If, if that doesn't qualify as racial animus, which would forbid the President from getting rid of TPS for that reason, then I don't know what those words mean. And I, and I don't think it's a clear common sense reading. So this case had to do with one, did they go through the proper way to get rid of this Temporary Protected Status? They basically only had to do two things, not show racial animus. And then they had to go through a really basic consultation process where the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department consulted on it. And they didn't do that. Like they just didn't do it. There was not a basic process here. They didn't follow the law. And how they had to get rid of this. And so rather than the court come out and say, here's all the things the President said about Haiti and that's not racial animus. And rather than the court come out and say, well, he didn't actually do anything like a very basic process, they found this workaround and they said, well, that doesn't really qualify. And also it's not really reviewable. So essentially what that means is the following. For hundreds of thousands of Haitians, people who are working and living all across the country, some have been for a handful of years, Many have been here for 15 or 20 years. They are working in industries like health care, where they're concentrated in states like Florida and Massachusetts. We are going to have this incredibly cruel and disruptive practice and process in a handful of weeks where hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their deportation protection or their work authorization. They've also removed basically any basic legal break on the ability for the President to get rid of additional TPS protections. So countries like El Salvador and Honduras, where they've either tried to get rid of it or they've indicated they will try to get rid of it, and you're talking about 1.3 million people who have TPS. Probably a half million of those people have been here since last year, century or longer.

[D]

Whoa.

[B]

In a lot of cases, okay, at least 300,000 people have been here from the last century. A half million people have been here close to that. So this is both an incredible humanitarian protection and it is an absolutely unprecedented effort to revoke legal status from people who've been here a really long time.

[D]

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[C]

Yeah, that's a lot of More than a million people is a lot. Real quick Interjection here. Just because at the Bulwark, we think the most patriotic thing you can do is work to make the country better. And that's the community we're building. It really is a community unlike anything else, the Internet, where we're all just trying to be the best citizens we can, the kind of citizens the country needs and deserves. So we'd love for you to join. If you like this video, if you like the Bulbourg Takes channel, if you like what the Bulbourg is doing, generally go to thebullwork.com July 4th, that's thebullwerk.com/july numeral4 to get a special July 4th discount code, please. We'd love to have you in our community and like, and subscribe to the channel because we're going to do a lot more of this. Adrian, in your reporting, are people, are people, like, getting ready to go to a country they haven't been to in 25 years? I mean, is that. Are we expecting big ice roundups in the coming weeks? Is that what's happening?

[D]

Yeah, I mean, we, we heard Homan saying, you know, after birthright citizenship, that they're doing record enforcement, they're going to do even more. I think in moments like this, I always find that it's really difficult when we try to explain to the audience and we even try to wrap our rounds around our arms around 250, 000 people, 300, 000 people. Like, what does that mean? And that's just so hard to scale. And our colleague Jonathan Cohen has done a great job of like, zooming in and saying, okay, there are a lot of Haitians with TPS in South Florida. So he went to go speak to a woman, you know, and he said, you know, they're basically, they're going to come after the care of our grandmas. Right. And he spoke to a woman, American woman, and her Haitian caretaker, and the way that she helps her with, you know, her iPad, troubleshooting when she needs it, but also just they play games together and she's her friend. Right. You know, I actually have, you know, my mom has someone who helps her, but also they sort of really help my aunt and an uncle who are in their 80s and 90s. My uncle's 92. Right. And so these caretakers become more than just a person to help. And. And when I was on this call the other day, the American Business Immigration Council did, it was about the fact that they're going to lose these people and not just these people that are very important to their lives. Some seniors have memory problems, so it's actually really problematic to take away their caretaker, you know, and, and, and like one of the people in the, the Goodwin Living, you know, center, which is like a faith based center, the CEO, he didn't get mad, right? He, he said he, his number one feeling was sadness for these elderly people who are not going to get the care that they need. So when we talk about these things and it's really easy to hear horrible racist things about Haitians. And like, you know, when Todd says last century, you know, there are people here where they could only get TPS if they were here 25 years or 27 years ago, you know, 2001. So I think it's like oftentimes very easy. And we know, and Michelle knows how wonky immigration is and how like, you know, how dense it can be. It's easy to imagine that a lot of immigrants have come here in the last 12 months or the last two years or during the Biden administration. And then you realize that these people are, you know, in church with you, in the grocery store with you, they're helping your grandma with her care. And so I think that this is like the stuff that we need to understand about how insane that was. And, and I think just to your question, people are going to be scrambling and that's the stuff we're going to be figuring out, you know, in the coming weeks. And we definitely will, we'll cover, but it's just, it's a really big deal and I think that people should understand that.

[C]

I want to get to some of these listener questions now and I want to get through as many of them as possible. Adam G on Substack asked what these rulings mean for daca, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the so called dreamers. Todd, you tell us if DACA is implicated in any of these decisions.

[B]

I think at a high level the directionality of the court is. But in terms of what this means for DACA, which is a protective program for dreamers, they had to come here 20 years ago or longer. They've had to go through this process. This is probably not directly weighing in on it. At the same time, I do want to say we have seen from this administration an all out attack on basically every immigration avenue to the United States except one white Africanus. And even DACA recipients are seeing a dramatic rise in delays to where they're losing work authorization. So I think one way to think about it is these attacks on tps, this attack on a different Temporary status DACA are part of a really deeply troubling pattern, even if this doesn't rule on Deferred Action vs Temporary Protected Status directly.

[C]

Our next question is back to the TPS issue and Beth asks on substack, what could Congress do to clean up or change the laws around TPS to better protect immigrants with this status? I know there are some proposals already floating around Capitol Hill that would enshrine TPS and laws in a way that would make it harder for the Trump administration to undo. Michelle, what would be the sort of ideal solution?

[A]

Well, I think we have to look beyond just the TPS statute itself. Certainly it would help if they changed it so that courts could have greater authority to review decisions to terminate temporary protected status. But the bigger issue is that just having TPS does not provide you a pathway to permanent residence. Certainly there are folks who can access those pathways through other means if they are married to United States citizen and meet other requirements. But just simply having TPS does not give you the ability to regularize your status for the long term. And so what we really need is congressional action is legislation that looks toward this population and the broader population of unauthorized immigrants in this country and actually gives them meaningful pathways to permanent status in this country.

[C]

Todd, do you think that's something that's realistic or do you think, I mean, would Congress even be willing, do you think, to settle for just a legislative extension of tps?

[B]

I think the president's touched the hot stove three times on immigration over his two terms on DACA repeal on the first term on family separation at the border in 2018, and then in Minneapolis where they've really pulled back. It's possible and we should all be doing organizing on the ground to create enough pressure that Congress is going to feel the need to act on this and they should give people a pathway to citizenship. I think TPS and DACA actually show that giving everyone is building their life here. A process to go through to get right with the law to earn a pathway to citizenship is the right thing to do. They could do just kind of a punt. There's a discharge position that passed the House with 10 Republicans on that, and the Senate can move that today also. The president can just back off this like, he does not have to terminate tps. And so we work with Congress. I know Michelle does too. The President is the person who gets to decide what happens here. And if he feels enough pressure, hearing from people, whether it's from the nursing home industry, whether it's from in Republican districts, Democratic districts, who are like, this seems like a really bad idea. Can we take a year? Can we say people who've had TPS for 10, 15, 20 years, five years, they get another two years to get their affairs in order here. It's a hard world. And like, that would be a better solution than days from now, hundreds of thousands of people being in a really, really dire situation.

[C]

Yeah. Jean on Substack mentioned that she lives in Ohio and she wrote to both of her senators about this TPS issue because of, you know, she says, my Haitian neighbors up the road in Springfield. And she says that basically she got nothing back from either of them. One of one of her senators sent, you know, a polite thank you for your, thank you for your comment and the other one just literally didn't respond. So, you know, with 10 Republicans probably from states with, you know, big populations who are, who have tps, who are, you know, important to their communities, joining with Democrats in the House to pass that discharge petition, maybe we'll see some movement in the Senate. But personally, I wouldn't hold my breath.

[B]

I agree, but Ohio is a battleground state this year. I do want to say that, like, we should keep that in mind, like the road to the Senate. Ohio is maybe the tipping point state here and I don't want to tell anybody how to vote. But boy, like, I think it's a really important issue and I hope we can get people to get right with this based on the politics.

[C]

Our next question is really off the wall. But you know, maybe the best thing about the recent birthright citizenship decision is the way some on the MAGA right have been responding, which is absolute crazy cookies, hair on fire, I mean, nutso stuff. Kelly asked on substack, I heard some MAGA Republicans now want to make it impossible for pregnant women to get a visa so that they don't come to the United States and have a child that becomes a U.S. citizen. Would such a law hold up in federal court? And I thought no, wait, would it, Michelle? Do you think it would?

[A]

Well, first of all, I want to say that this whole so called birth tourism issue is wildly exaggerated by the right. It unfortunately has made its way into the mainstream discourse, including into Justice Alito's dissenting opinion. Interestingly, at oral argument in the Barbara case, the birthright case, Justice Chief Justice Roberts asked the Solicitor General what's the evidence on this, on this birth tourism issue? And he had nothing to say. It was just basically media reports. There's no hard evidence that this is actually an issue or that it's happening in large numbers. Not to say that it doesn't ever happen, but the idea that we would eviscerate the 14th Amendment to address this imaginary or this illusory issue, I think is just, is shocking. But the idea that you need a separate law for pregnant women, it just not. I mean, not only would it probably be constitutionally problematic, there are also other tools. You know, people going to the consulate, going to the embassy to get a visa, have to show to the satisfaction of the officer there, the State Department officer, that they meet all the criteria for their visa, that they're not intending to stay permanently. And their administration, certainly any administration, has plenty of tools to regulate who comes in through the visa process. You don't need something like this to address an imaginary problem.

[C]

Yeah, Todd, I don't want to, I don't want to get too much into the details of how we would go about checking if visa applicants were pregnant or planning on becoming pregnant. That's not a line of thought I want to go down. But legally speaking, based on what we've heard from the Supreme Court, like, is that the kind of law that Congress could in theory make?

[B]

I mean, I. Okay, can I push back a little bit and do a little.

[C]

Please. Yeah.

[B]

I do think we should actually talk about what that is and what it would be. And I'm not a lawyer, so. So I'll leave that to others on this. I think a huge problem, a huge problem that the President has overall with his popularity is both he is doing things that are unpopular and the American public is like, why are you focusing on that? I don't think that many people get up every day and are like the reflecting pool and the Kennedy Center. My number one voting issue, I do think they get up and they say costs are going up, up. And we have a president who is focused on that costs are going up and we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on ICE and CPP and paying for it by cutting my health care to do it there. And I think this is a absolute example of a far right ecosystem that has captured itself. I don't know the folks at the Federalist, but I saw, I will just say they were talking about pregnancy checks and forced sterilization of, quote, foreigners coming to the United States. This is wildly unpopular stuff. It is brain rot stuff. And it is things that the median voter, who's going to decide who wins the House of Representatives, who's going to decide who wins the Senate and governor's races, looks at and is like, huh, wait, a friend of mine who lives outside the United States is coming to visit and they had to do a pregnancy check. And to, you know, be very blunt, to get a visa stamp, you have to pee on a stick. Like that is going to be something that like they are asking and I, I know you didn't say you want to talk about what it is and maybe that's not what they're. The last thing I would say is this. I don't think we should be anything but very, very, very clear. The people who are going to get pregnancy checked, they're going to say, oh, they're high risk for quote, unquote birth tourism. The president himself has made clear that is not going to be Norwegians, it's not going to be Scandinavians. It's not some, oh, we're going to like objectively try to come to this there and we shouldn't. It's outrageous to all the great points that Michelle said here, but this is another thing. Under the guise of vetting in the same way they've called people a terrorist or a threat and things like that. And now the new threat is going to be women who may or may not be pregnant, who may or may not be from countries that the President may or may not favor as much. So I just think we should be clear eyed. That is both really bad and I think would actually be quite politically toxic if they go in that direction.

[C]

That's not outrageous because we know that like the line from the crazy people on the far right to Stephen Miller to Homan and the guys at the White House and the guys at Department of Homeland Security who are in charge of immigration policy, like those guys all basically hang out together, that they're, they are not radically different. So like, how outlandish are these ideas or how much are they just going to be the new mainstream in six months?

[D]

I mean, it's a great point. There's so much there. Wow. You know, Todd, thank you for reminding me about the forced sterilization that the Federalist guy said because I had only remembered that he said banning women from coming in, which I thought was terrible. But you're right, the sterilization is insane. You know, I sometimes think about the fact that Stephen Miller was on the fringes of these conversations back in like 2015, you know, and now he's one of the most powerful people in the world. Right. I distinctly remember at the beginning of the term and either someone had told me this and I tried to put into the story that sort of the Miller, the Miller plan in one of the early newsletters last year was, was this sort of like whites only immigration thing. And I think it was edited out and I don't think we edited it out anymore because I think now we have all this evidence that this is exactly what we're talking about. This is. And unfortunately we've seen that they are so comfortable in these waiting in these fever swamps. I think what's important is one thing that Todd said, which is that, you know, I was at this Latino vote summit the other day and they were presenting polling on how voters have and Latino voters that supported Trump in 2024 have turned against him. And these numbers are really high. You know, from Pew to Texas polling, so national to states, we've seen that voters who supported him, you know, have sort of gone against that. And what kept coming up was misplaced priorities Reflecting Pool Ballroom Kennedy center this is patently absurd. And if a Democrat was doing this, I mean Fox News would just throw all the other coverage off and be like, no, this is going to be 24 7. This is awesome. And so it's insane. And the conversations that we're having are divorced from the reality of what people are dealing with, with, with prices and with everything that we know people actually deal with when they work two shifts. And this is why people avoid sort of the news coming out of Washington. So look, I think it's really important and it's really scary the way that these ideas have been mainstre framed and these are the conversations that are happening now post the birthright citizenship decision.

[A]

And let's remember it's still popular. It's 70% of the country still supports birthright citizenship according to the polling. So just messing with it at all, I think would be wildly unpopular.

[C]

I want to get to our last question here, which is I think the most hopeful one. So we'll end on a positive note. I think we're supposed to pronounce this Fault F A U1T asks what are the key parts of a solution in immigration? Because we hear about things like there aren't enough immigration judges or the TPS system is just too volatile with Republicans and Democrats swinging wildly in different ways and there's a non streamlined process for, for people claiming asylum. What are these sort of low hanging fruit fixes that make our immigration system just work better and maybe also just keep it out of the courts a little more.

[A]

Yeah, it's a good question. In some ways it's difficult to identify the low hanging fruit because what we need again is congressional action and a pathway to citizenship without that we just are going to continue to tinker at the margins to have different executives have different priorities, whiplash in the courts, a lot of litigation over things that directly impact people's lives, but provide no long term solutions. So, you know, I think we need to think bigger and more long term. The American Immigration Council recently put out a white paper essentially establishing proposals for a new way forward to rebuild trust in the system, recognizing that some form of enforcement is of course needed, but that there need to be pathways available to people and a way to get quote, unquote right with the law. So I would urge us to look at those bigger picture issues.

[C]

Todd, what about you? If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about the immigration system, what would it be?

[B]

I'll start with a level of hope. I am really hopeful that people are seeing with clear eyes what is wrong, what the administration is doing, whether that's Mexican American families in South Texas and Adrian's done a lot of work here who thought, oh, ICE wasn't going to go after me and my family are now turning and saying that's really bad. Whether it's the administration lying about sending people to a torture dungeon and then understanding, oh my God, they're sending like a hairdresser and they are sending someone who has an autism awareness tattoo, people are turning and that optimism has grown and grown and obviously hit a horrific inflection point after Minneapolis. But we still have an administration that like, wants to speak from both sides of its mouth in some ways. If you go to their social media, you will see an Instagram post that says, America after 100 million deportations. They love to throw out the term and scare people worst of the worst. But now they say we should send people back to Haiti and the best of the best, who they're going to deport can rebuild Haiti here. And I think the American people are tired of it. I think they're going to demand solutions and that instead of hundreds of millions of dollars more that is going to go into ramping up this enforcement, we can build an immigration system that says there is no good enforcement system at that sort of a base level here. We're going to claw back that money. We're going to give people health care. There is no good enforcement system if we don't give people legal status and a pathway to citizenship. There isn't going to be a secure and orderly process at the border for future immigration system unless we fix legal immigration system, which we haven't done in decades and decades. And we can build that system by seeing what's really being weaponized against us right now. And so I know we have a ton of really hard things ahead, but I'm optimistic that we can come out of that with the political momentum and the right policy solutions to get to a better place.

[C]

Adrian, I want to end with you. This obviously these Supreme Court rulings are at the end of the story. They are just the beginning. What are you looking at over the next, I don't know, six months or maybe just until the midterms about the immigration story and what's going to happen now?

[D]

Yeah, I think a hopeful thing that I can talk about is, is opportunity. But there's also challenge there. And Ben knows this because I've written about this a lot. Republicans have shown, no matter what you think about Trump and Miller's politics, that they can be really creative with how anti immigrant they can be. They can use every lever of the government to be anti immigrant. And when you have these conversations with Democrats, they are now benefiting in polling from the effects which I think are now are reaching their limit of Trump is bad and mass deportation is bad. And so the next question becomes, okay, so then in that vacuum of leadership, what do you support? This administration has literally beaten down and broken down an already broken immigration system and then exploited it. Right. And we've seen unfortunately in the first term there were a little bit more difficulties they had, but now they've just fully gone, you know, crazy on it. And so Democrats have this opportunity. Yeah, it's a challenge because guess what, if you take power to try to fix some of this stuff that we're seeing that is that is in really bad shape. It will be difficult and will take courage. But I think that we're going to see a Democratic primary where people are going to really be. We've seen the way that voters are reacting viscerally to some of the worst stuff here. And so they're going to want not speaking out of both sides of your mouth, but actual like solutions and ideas around this stuff that go beyond sort of like we're a country of immigrants. Like, you know, we've heard that for years. So I really do think there's an opportunity there and some Democrats will probably be smart to sort of open up what they think about immigration and not just be so scared to discuss it.

[C]

I hope you're right. Michelle lapoint, Todd Schulte and Adrian Carrasquillo from the Bulwark, thank you so much for joining me and Happy July 4th, y'.

[D]

All.