3586 - Border Czar Bribes; Stripping Citizenship w/ Amanda Frost

Summary

The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode 3586 – September 22, 2025
Main Theme:
A deep dive into the fraught history and current reality of U.S. immigration and citizenship — particularly the weaponization of “citizenship stripping” — with expert guest Amanda Frost. The episode also investigates recent news on Trump-era corruption at the border, chilling developments in immigration policy, and their historical echoes.

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Episode Overview

Sam Seder, Emma Vigland, and legal scholar Amanda Frost examine both breaking news (border corruption scandals and denaturalization plans under Trump) and the long, turbulent history of who gets to be an American—and who doesn’t. Professor Frost offers context from her research into the often-overlooked history of citizenship stripping, highlighting the ongoing contest over the boundaries of national identity, belonging, and rights.

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Key Discussions & Insights

1. Trump-Era Border Corruption Scandal

• [12:50] Sam Seder details a recent investigation:
  • Tom Homan, former acting ICE Director ("border czar"), was caught on hidden FBI video in 2024 allegedly accepting a $50,000 cash bribe delivered in a “Cava fast food bag.”
  • The bribe was in exchange for promises to award border enforcement contracts if Trump returned to the presidency.
  • After Trump’s election, DOJ leadership quashed the investigation; legal experts contend that Homan could still be liable for conspiracy to commit bribery, even though he wasn’t a public official when the bribe was taken.
    • Quote: "He's making it clear that he has no association with them at that time, which makes the bribery charge harder to pin because he doesn't have the ability to do—he's getting paid on a hypothetical. This is like an if-come bribe, if you will." — Sam Seder [17:55]
  • DOJ impunity and the use of potential blackmail as a loyalty mechanism is discussed.
    • Quote: “The number one test for his administration’s loyalty—it’s not competence. So if you have blackmail over someone... why is Tom Homan out there on every media hit selling the Trump administration’s agenda? It’s cuz he owes them.” — Emma Vigland [20:10]

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2. The Weaponization and History of Citizenship Stripping

Overarching Theme:

• [30:27] Amanda Frost: U.S. citizenship is not a settled concept—its boundaries have always been fought over, often to exclude marginalized, racialized, or politically undesirable people.

Historical Patterns:

• Systemic Denial Focused on Non-White, Non-Male Citizens

  • Quote: "The fight is never over... there’s always this push-pull between those who want to define America with an exclusionary definition... and others who say no, that’s antithetical to the values on which our nation was founded." — Amanda Frost [30:27]
    • White men have never faced systematic removal of citizenship; women, racial minorities, and dissenters have.

• Race, Ideology, and Gender

  • Women lost U.S. citizenship by marrying non-citizens (1910s–1930s).
    • Example: Ethel McKenzie barred from voting in California after marrying a Scot, lost Supreme Court case 9-0.
      Quote: “She goes to cast her vote... and she’s barred from voting because she married a non-citizen.” — Amanda Frost [51:42]
  • Naturalized citizens stripped for political views, especially during the Red Scare/Cold War.
  • Mass “repatriations” and deportations of U.S.-born citizens of Mexican descent (Operation Wetback).
    • Quote: "Many of the people sent to Mexico from the United States had never actually lived in Mexico... There wasn’t really any kind of due process." — Amanda Frost [59:31]

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3. Birthright Citizenship and Its Precarity

• Dred Scott & the 14th Amendment
  • Dred Scott (1857): Supreme Court ruled Black people, slave or free, could never be citizens.
  • Post–Civil War: 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship to all born in the U.S., aiming to overrule Dred Scott and racially exclusive definitions of national belonging.
    • Quote: “If you’re an originalist, you should be comfortable with the idea that the birthright citizenship provision of the Constitution applies far beyond Dred Scott...” — Amanda Frost [54:03]
  • Current Trump legal challenges dispute this, seeking to limit the clause to descendants of slaves (not immigrants’ children).

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4. Current and Future Threats to Citizenship

• Naturalized Citizenship No Longer Secure
  • Trump’s DOJ under Sessions and Miller planned/attempted mass denaturalizations (only succeeded on small scale).
  • The second Trump administration planned to use denaturalization as an “immigration enforcement tool.”
    • Quote: “That was the impetus for the book... watching the Trump administration declare that naturalized citizen status was at risk. And that was as shocking to me as it seems like it was to you.” — Amanda Frost [35:19]
• Could Even Birthright (Native-Born) Citizens Lose Citizenship?
  • Frost: It's not far-fetched to imagine attempts, especially against political dissidents or people with “wrong” ancestry.
    • Quote: “I got my eye on this because I think that’s the goal, destabilize everyone’s status.” [42:34]

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5. Immigration Policy: Fears, Facts, and Fictions

• "Open Borders" Explained

  • No U.S. politician (including Democrats) supports genuine open borders (free movement like between U.S. states or EU countries).
  • Needs distinction: More legal work visas, modernized asylum, not blanket amnesty or chaotic inflow.

• Labor & Exploitation

  • Many U.S. industries depend on undocumented labor; lack of legal status enables wage theft and abuse.
    • Quote: “We would starve without them. Our food prices would rise without them. We need more legal ways for those people to come.” — Amanda Frost [46:20]
  • Current system benefits employers more than workers; legalizing status improves protection for all.

• Immigrant Contributions & Global Competition

  • U.S. faces declining enrollments and “brain drain” as countries like Canada poach high-skill immigrants frustrated with U.S. policies.
    • Quote: “Immigrants power our economy—and that has never been so obvious as now.” — Amanda Frost [38:12]

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6. Defining American Values

• What values are threatened by denaturalization and citizenship-stripping?
  • Constitutional: Due process, equal treatment, non-penalization for ancestry or speech (First Amendment, 14th Amendment).
  • American identity: “We the people” principle, rejection of hereditary caste, suspicion of government power over individuals.
  • Quote: “These are all enshrined in our Constitution. These are not contested—that those are the founding values.” — Amanda Frost [66:55]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "The fight is never over... this book runs through that history. And it is a long and troubling history of denying citizenship to groups and individuals, often on the basis of race, but also on the basis of ideology and gender."
  — Amanda Frost [30:27]

• “He’s making it clear he has no association with them at that time, which makes the bribery charge harder to pin... This is like an if-come bribe.”
  — Sam Seder [17:55]

• "If you have blackmail over someone... why is Tom Homan out there on every media hit selling the Trump administration’s agenda? It’s cuz he owes them."
  — Emma Vigland [20:10]

• "The history of that really is the history of our nation's fight over citizenship and who belongs."
  — Amanda Frost [53:24]

• "If you’re an originalist, you should be comfortable with the idea that the birthright citizenship provision applies far beyond Dred Scott..."
  — Amanda Frost [54:03]

• “These are the founding values of our nation and we have to keep fighting for them.”
  — Amanda Frost [68:40]

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Timestamps — Key Segments

• [12:50] — Tom Homan border bribe sting, FBI undercover, case quashed by DOJ post-Trump victory
• [17:15–17:55] — Homan’s third-person defense, legal details of “if-come” bribes
• [30:27] — Amanda Frost introduces the book and enduring battle over the meaning of citizenship
• [35:19] — Durability of naturalized citizenship; history of denaturalization; Trump policy ramifications
• [38:12] — Role of immigrants in the U.S. economy, Canadian poaching of immigrants
• [42:34] — Can even native-born citizens' status be undermined?
• [51:42] — Story of Ethel McKenzie & stripping of women’s citizenship after marrying non-citizen men
• [54:03] — Dred Scott, 14th Amendment, and the originalist argument for broad birthright citizenship
• [59:31] — Operation Wetback: mass deportation of Mexican-American citizens
• [62:28] — Fritz Kuhn and the German-American Bund; ideological v race-based citizenship stripping
• [66:55] — What are the American values behind citizenship rights?
• [68:40] — Conclusion: importance of defending constitutional values

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Conclusion

This episode of the Majority Report delivers a sobering but essential examination of the ongoing struggle over U.S. citizenship, the dangers of weaponizing identity for political ends, and the ways in which immigration policy remains a frontline of America’s democratic and constitutional battles. With Amanda Frost’s expert historical and legal context, listeners gain nuanced insight into the stakes and complexities of immigration, naturalization, and belonging—past, present, and future.

Transcript

[Sam Seder]

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[Emma Vigland]

Cartridges.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah. Yep, it's Monday. Sale ends September 28th at 11:59pm Eastern. See their site for terms and conditions. And now time for the show the Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Monday, September 22, 2025. My name is Sam Seder. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Professor Amanda Frost, professor of immigration and citizenship law at the University of Virginia, author of you are not American Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers. Also on the program, speaking of citizenship stripping, ICE head Tom Homan took a $50,000 cash bribe delivered to him in a Cava fast food.

[Amanda Frost]

Bag.

[Sam Seder]

High end, high end to influence Trump administration. And then Trump's DOJ quashed the investigation. Meanwhile, Trump directs supposed independent Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute his enemies. This as he fired as a federal prosecutor quits over pressure to charge Letitia James. Meanwhile, back on the Capitol Hill, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries demand Trump negotiate before the government shutdown at the end of this week and if not, they will demand it again. Wow, that would be two Demands us to offer all options to help salvage Argentinian economy wrecked by Javier Milei Trump regime kills US Hunger reports. That way the hunger goes away and the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday delays its inflation related report. UN convenes in New York as Britain, Canada, Australia, Portugal. Portugal recognized the Palestinian state over the weekend. France and others to follow suit as Israel continues to level Gaza. Meanwhile, over the weekend, the Congressional Progressive Caucus endorses a bill to block offensive weapons to Israel. Meanwhile, the White House is in disarray over its new H1B visas policy as rural hospitals face massive medical staff exodus. Also over the weekend, Trump hands TikTok over to a cabal of right wing oligarchs as pro Palestinian posts are purged. And lastly, desperate to deliver on an autism cause, RFK Jr set to blame acetaminophen. All this and much, much more on today's Majority Report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for joining us at the beginning of this incredibly busy week. Emma Vigland here recovering from a We won't even talk about what happened to the Giants. I was A lot of people are saying things, but I'm not going to say anything about the Giants loss.

[Emma Vigland]

How magnanimous of you.

[Sam Seder]

A lot of people are saying things, but I'm not going to. Good.

[Emma Vigland]

You're going to dance right next to me as I cry. Basically. That's kind of what we're thinking of.

[Sam Seder]

Well, we'll play that clip later. How dare you. I want to say something about this autism, Tylenol or acetaminophen connection. I think it was about two years ago and I had. I don't know, I may be repeating myself because about a month ago there was a court case and I think at that time I had said something I certainly intended to. I may have forgotten, but two years ago I interviewed an attorney at the Torts conference that I attend annually or twice annually. I'm going to be going again in October and he was pursuing a case.

[Amanda Frost]

Of.

[Sam Seder]

That claimed a connection between autism and and into mothers who took excessive amounts of Tylenol while pregnant. And I am quite sure at that time I was very careful in telling people like this is an early case. This stuff needs to be adjudicated. There is no indication that it's real at this instance. But I've also been involved with, you know, a lot of these cases in their early stages that turn out to be, you know, quite important to, to, to let people know about. About a month ago this case hit the a New York federal court. I believe it was the Eastern District off the top of my head. And the case was dismissed by the judge. They had brought it together in a multi district litigation. This is different from a class action. Multi district means that the class here is. It's not a classic class action. It's called a mass tort. And the difference being that the harm is different for everybody but the cause is the same. Whereas a class action, the harm is similar. So for instance, like the big C8 case was a mass tort because some people got cancer from C8, some people got gastrointestinal problems, some people got different types of cancer, et cetera, et cetera. Apparently Trump and RFK Jr are going to announce that there's some type of connection between acetaminophen and autism. The case, the claim is likely based upon an a paper by Andrea Basarelli which was an overall sort of like paper on all of the studies that have been done in the past. This person has been a paid expert in other plaintiff lawsuits alleging this link. But in this, this litigation in it was the Southern District of New York, Judge Denise Coates excluded Bottrilli and other plaintiff experts from testifying under what is known as the Daubert standard, where a judge in these instances can measure the credibility of these expert witnesses or the expert wet witness, excuse me, studies. The judge found method, methodological flaws in their scientific analysis and concluded their testimony lacked sufficient reliability and scientific merit to establish causation in court. And so that case was basically rejected. And so to the extent that there is any even association with Tylenol and or acetaminophen and pregnancy, there are two things you should know. The studies that have shown any type of association at this point get not causation, just association, not even quite necessarily correlation. But those studies when they have been redone, controlling for siblings, that causes or association goes away. Now again also there may be other things that are associated with taking acetaminophen that may also be a factor in terms of autism. Like for instance, if you have a very severe fever and you take Tylenol, it's possible that it could be the fever or it could be the thing that gave you the fever, I mean, and I'm not implying that fevers or that stuff, you know, causes autism.

[Emma Vigland]

I don't know, it could be a health issue.

[Sam Seder]

But the point being that just because you see, you know, you could also say, well, a lot of those women were wearing pants. And, you know, that's also correlated. But there has been no discernible massive increase in the use of Tylenol by people over the course of the past 30 years when. When supposedly the incidence of autism has risen as opposed to diagnoses. Exactly. So. Well, folks should be aware of that. As this comes out, it remains to be seen what the Trump administration is going to do with this, other than to supposedly offer some type of directive or who knows what. But we shall see. But I wanted to mention that at the top of the show. Now, let's get to what I think should be a massive story, but of course, nobody will be talking about it in 24 hours. I imagine Tom Homan, the head of ICE. I don't know what he's. I guess he's the border czar.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

Last year, in 2024, September, actually, almost to the day, September 20, 2024, hidden cameras were set up by the FBI. They were actually investigating somebody bigger than Tom Holman. We don't know who this is. And a federal investigation was launched in western Texas in the summer of 2024 after a subject in a separate investigation claimed Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for awarding contracts should Trump win the presidential election. You'll recall, certainly by the fall. But over the summer, Tom Homan was marched out every other day by the Trump administration and was saying, I'm going to come back and I'm going to be the ICE head and I'm going to deport all sorts of people. I mean, he was bragging about it, and I think he was even named by Trump in, like, a shadow cabinet. I don't know if it was at this point, but this is. According to an internal Justice Department summary of the probe reviewed by MSNBC and people familiar with the case, the U.S. attorney's office in the Western District of Texas, working with the FBI, asked the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section to join in its ongoing probe, quote, into the border czar and former acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Tom Homan and others, based on evidence of payment from an FBI undercover agents in exchange for facilitating future contracts related to border enforcement. They have hidden video camera recordings. Now, I understand, like, there'd be some room if it was just audio, because it's It's Tom Holman. And it's, you know, here's eligible. Here's your 50. Here's your 50 grand.

[Emma Vigland]

Could have been home and could have been a garbage disposal.

[Sam Seder]

Exactly. Exactly, Exactly. Undercover FBI agents posing as contractors communicated and met several times last summer with a business colleague who introduced them to Homan and with Homan himself, who indicated he would facilitate securing contracts for them in exchange for money once he was in office. This is according to documents and the people familiar with the case. Let's play a. And then, when Trump filled in, FBI agents and department prosecutors took no further steps in the final months of 2024. What were the final months of 2024 were after Donald Trump gets elected. And several federal FBI and Justice Department agents believe they had a strong criminal case against Homan for conspiracy to commit bribery based on videotaping him accepting cash and his apparent promise to assist in contracts, according to four people familiar with the probe. Homan could have been charged with a crime then, legal experts say. But his case was unusual. He was not a public official, and Trump was not president at the time. He accepted money in the FBI's undercover sting. So his actions didn't clearly fit under a standard bribery charge. That's interesting, because here is Tom Homan. What. What's the date on this? November 11th. Okay. Which would be a full week after Trump is elected. And surely people in the DOJ who knew that Trump was coming in would have at that point alerted Homan to, hey, man, there's videotapes of you taking cash, saying, if you become, you know, if you work for Trump, you're going to help them out. So maybe you should make it clear that you're just an average dude. Yeah. Make it clear to the extent that you can articulate it, you're just an average dude.

[Tom Homan]

Let me be clear. I don't work for the campaign. I haven't taken a dollar from the campaign. Tom Holman is doing it because I think he's the greatest president of my lifetime. I want to see him back in the White House.

[Sam Seder]

Third person.

[Tom Homan]

Roman says Tom Holman's working for the campaign. Tom Holman is working for campaign. Tom Holland working in interest in the campaign. Tom Holman does an employed by campaign and interest. I'm doing it because Tom Holman retired Ice Creek. The guy spent three and a half decades doing his job. I want him to be president. I'll do what I can to help him. That's what it is.

[Emma Vigland]

Now, he does protest a little bit too much. I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart, not just because I think that if he gets into office he will drop this case.

[Sam Seder]

He's making it clear that he has no association with them at that time, which makes the bribery charge harder to pin because he doesn't have the ability to do he's getting paid on a hypothetical. This is like an if come bribe, if you will. It is still a crime, however, for anyone to seek money to improperly influence federal contracts, the legal expert said. And whether they are a public official or not, or whether they ever delivered on their promise or not, if someone who is not yet a public official but expects to take bribes in exchange for agreeing to take official acts after they are appointed, they can't be charged with bribery, said Randall Eliasson, former chief of public corruption. But they can be charged with conspiracy to commit bribery. In a conspiracy charge, the crime is the agreement to commit a criminal act in the future. And so what Homan's doing in that instance is trying to make it clear like I'm in no way affiliated with them. So I'm just out here doing this for the sake of like any other citizen. I love Donald Trump, et cetera, et cetera.

[Guest or Contributor]

I'm like one of you in the crowd.

[Sam Seder]

Try and guess who is in charge at the DOJ of shutting this down. Think of of the DOJ officials who have been in the Trump administration, who and you can name a name who is the most despicable and has shown that they are completely they don't care about justice in any measure or form. Who do you think it was? There's not many names we know about the from the Trump DOJ at this point. Bove or Bovey, the guy who was in there to bribe Eric Adams, the guy who was in there who said we don't listen to the courts and the guy that the Republicans just appointed and nominated and confirmed to be a federal judge and he was in charge in February or late January or February 2025. Former Acting Deputy Attorney General email Bovey was briefed on the case and told the Justice Department official he didn't support the investigation, according to people familiar with.

[Emma Vigland]

The case and the through line with the Eric Adams thing and Beauvais and Holman is using the threat of prosecution as a way to keep people working for you in line and on message and doing what you need them to do. We've talked about this before about the Pete Hegseth allegations. Trump sees people's pasts that may have some, you know, shady elements to it as Assets. Because the number one test for his administration's loyalty, it's not competence. So if you have blackmail over someone, why is Tom Holman going out there on every Sunday, every night media hits, selling the Trump administration's agenda? It's cuz he owes them.

[Sam Seder]

And to be fair though, he also, I think is a unreconstructed racist.

[Emma Vigland]

I've agreed.

[Sam Seder]

So it's probably can be both things.

[Amanda Frost]

Definitely.

[Sam Seder]

He just wants you to know Synergy. I like it. It works both ways. Good stuff, Tom.

[Guest or Contributor]

Anyway, get in a potato chip bag next time.

[Sam Seder]

It's unbelievable. Can't you get like something that looks like, like. Well, that's briefcase is too obvious. No one wants to hand them an envelope.

[Guest or Contributor]

If someone, if you hand Tom a big. A large pizza box, no one will think twice about it.

[Emma Vigland]

But that's what the FBI, that was their. That was their ploy. The kaba bag. And we just want to give you some lunch here in this Texas.

[Sam Seder]

He was like, it was actually $100,000, but I ate half of it. So I realized it was money. I had no idea. I had no idea. All right, in a moment, we're going to be talking to Amanda Frost. She is a professor of immigration citizenship law at the University of Virginia, author of you Are Not American Citizenship Stripping From Dred Scott to the Dreamers. But first, a couple of words from our sponsor. One is Cozy Earth, and Cozy Earth products bring ultimate comfort that shows up day in, day out. Cozy Earth nailed comfort with their bamboo joggers and their everywhere pant. Next level. I wore my Cozy Earth hoodie in to work today. Same material as the jogger. I have the jogger as well. They are incredibly soft, but also structured. Does that make sense?

[Emma Vigland]

Yes.

[Sam Seder]

Does that make. Honestly, yes, it does. I can't really figure out, like what it is I like about them, but they're very soft. But they feel like they're not like.

[Emma Vigland]

Well, you need a little structure. If you're wearing it outside the house. You can't just have, you know.

[Sam Seder]

Exactly. But even the sweatshirt, even the hoodie is more structured, but it's also very soft. The thing I love about the hoodie and the joggers, the exact same way. It keeps you warm, but it feels cool. Does that make sense?

[Emma Vigland]

Yes.

[Sam Seder]

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[Emma Vigland]

Right.

[Sam Seder]

It's comfortable, but also Looks sort of structured. I'm onto something here.

[Guest or Contributor]

Does that make sense?

[Amanda Frost]

Yes.

[Emma Vigland]

The concept of athleisure. Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

Okay, well, we didn't have that when I was a kid.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah. Got it.

[Sam Seder]

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[Emma Vigland]

Agreed. I have the duvet.

[Sam Seder]

I'm excited about it when I talk.

[Emma Vigland]

About it, so I understand.

[Sam Seder]

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[Amanda Frost]

Thank you for having me.

[Sam Seder]

So the before we get into the specifics because, you know, sort of this more or less historical sort of, I guess, trip through the various ways in which citizenship was redefined or undefined, etc. Like what? Over the course of the 200 and some odd years that we're covering here, what is the overarching theme? Is it the malleability of citizenship or how citizenship or expatriation is weaponized?

[Amanda Frost]

I think all of those things overarching theme is that the fight is never over, that there's always been this push, pull back forth between people who want to define America with an exclusionary definition that usually limits people based on lineage and ancestry and others who say no. That's antithetical to the values on which our nation was founded. And this book runs through that history. And it is a long and troubling history of denying citizenship to groups and individuals, often on the basis of race, but also on the basis of ideology and gender. US citizen women, native born women who married non citizens, lost their citizenship for a 20 year period. So it is all of those things. And as we see today, the contest is never completely over. We're never fully done with our debates over who is an American.

[Sam Seder]

Is it, I guess maybe, maybe you just answered that question. But is it a coincidence that it's never been, there's never been a systemic denial of citizenship to white men?

[Amanda Frost]

Well, yeah, so what's really interesting to me about citizenship is all of the different facets of citizenship. So citizenship is a set of, we think of it today is very much about political rights. Like all citizens can vote who are over 18, except for felons in some states, serve on juries, serve in federal and state office. But citizenship is more than just those legal rights, of course, also I should add the very important legal right to enter and remain in the United States, more important today than ever. But citizenship is also about a sense of belonging. And I will say that all white men have not always had political rights. In fact, you had to have property to be able to vote. And some non citizens who were wealthy and propertied could vote when us native born men who were considered citizens couldn't because they, they didn't own property. But I will say that I think white men were always accepted as rightly belonging in the United States. And Chief Justice Taney of course, said that in Dred Scott. And that's the backdrop, the background to our birthright citizenship principle. A reaction against Dred Scott to say everyone born here is a citizen, whatever the color of their skin, religion, or the immigration status of their parents.

[Emma Vigland]

When you say born here, I mean, it's also, I would imagine, intrinsically linked with immigration. And when there were those periods of contraction, when there were quotas, I mean, who got to come here in the 20th century to expressly racialize? But immigration, how is it connected to immigration in the United States in like the 20th century and 21st century?

[Amanda Frost]

Yeah, so the book that we began by speaking about, which I published a couple of years ago, and you are not American about citizenship stripping. And it's now current again, I'm sad to say. So that book gives the history of citizenship stripping. But I'm writing a book about something that I think is worth celebrating, which is the history of birthright citizenship added to our constitution in 1868. And so that book is forthcoming. And the last third of that book will address the fact that, just as you said, Emma, the birthright citizenship guarantee, that said, if you're born in the US You're a citizen. Then brought with it all of these fights over immigration, because, of course, in order for someone to be born a citizen, they have to have a parent, a mother, actually physically present in the US when they're born. Right. For that birthright citizenship principle to apply. So you're absolutely right. Our debates over citizenship start with our debates over immigration. Who should be allowed to become an American. And I should add, of course, that you can also naturalize. So people who are born outside the U.S. non citizens, can come to the U.S. and become citizens through a naturalization process. The U.S. has generally been, while making it difficult to come to the US if you're here and legal, you can get citizenship more easily than in many countries. And that's another way in which immigrants have powered our economy and our society in a very beneficial way for the United States.

[Sam Seder]

I wanted to get to this later, but I'll ask you now. And then maybe we can go back and go through some of Dred Scott and through Reconstruction and suffrage, suffragettes. But how durable is naturalization? Like, I mean, I think, like, up until maybe a couple of months ago, my sense was if you're a naturalized citizen, you're in. It's locked in. That's like, you can't. You can't reverse that. But it sounds like the Trump administration feels like you can reverse that. So just walk us through from a legal perspective, like, how durable is naturalization?

[Amanda Frost]

Yeah. And that was the impetus for the book you Are Not American, published now in the midst of Trump Won, because I was watching the Trump administration declare that naturalized citizen status was at risk. And that was as shocking to me as it seems like it was to you. And I'm a professor of citizenship and immigration law. So I researched the history. That's what this book does, in part. And it turns out we did have a history in the United States in the first half of the 20th century of taking away citizenship from naturalized citizens because of their political views. It was part of the Cold War era because of their race. There were people who are naturalized, who were Arabic or who were South Asian. And the US Supreme Court and the executive branch said, wait, you weren't supposed to become a citizen. We weren't supposed to allow you to naturalize. We had racial limitations on naturalization in this country until the 1950s. So people lost their citizenship based on race, based on ideology. Women lost their citizenship whether naturalized or born US Citizens if they married a non citizen. So that was the first half of the 20th century. But then the Supreme Court did away with that in 1967. It said we should almost never denaturalize people, only for some kind of fraud or error in the naturalization process. No other reason is good enough. You can choose to leave the nation and leave your citizenship, but the government can't take it away from you. And then that brought us to the first Trump administration, where they very explicitly said, this isn't like my spin on it. This is what they said in memos. Jeff Sessions, Attorney General, among others, we're going to use denaturalization as a tool of immigration enforcement, and we're going to go after people, even if there's inadvertent error, as some were. And they try to try to denaturalize people on a grand scale, a broad scale. They did start a number of investigations, but they failed to do it in any broad, mass, systematic, systematic way, in part because courts have to be involved and that slows everyone down. But they're ramping up again. And of course, this is again, part of the immigration crackdown is not just to send away immigrants, undocumented immigrants or illegal immigrants, but also to take away citizenship and deport people.

[Emma Vigland]

It's interesting that you mentioned that period, too, just because there was that piece in Rolling Stone about Stephen Miller, and Trump had asked the question, who's my Roy Cohn. Right.

[Amanda Frost]

Miller.

[Emma Vigland]

One, has a. You say Jeff Sessions. He was a staffer under Sessions. Two, he has an obsession with the Immigration act of 1924 and wants to return to the period of racial quotas, which was in part used to justify turning away boats of Jews fleeing the Holocaust during that time period. And that has been kind of with him acting like the president, basically being the shadow president. That's been their policy goal, is to return to that period that you're talking about there.

[Amanda Frost]

Yeah. And the 1924 Immigration act, as you just correctly said, was very much about racial quotas. That's what the enactors of that law said as they enacted it in this country in these cyclical ways. And it's often based on race, but not entirely. Irish immigrants came to the US in the middle of the 19th century. They were vilified, they were racialized, as the other Italian immigrants were the same then. Of course, we've moved on today to other groups, groups from, you know, South America, groups from Asia. But it's just worth noting, this has been something historically we've done, and we've had cyclical waves of xenophobia followed by embracing immigrants. Yes, this is part of Stephen Miller's plan. The fact that he's opposed to all immigration except white South Africaners, I think tells you everything you need to know about him. And I will just add, finally, that I do think we need to take a hard look at immigration policy. I'm not a fan of open borders. I think we need to have limits. The question is what kind of limits? And that is really a question about what kind of nation we are. And the final point there, I'll say, is immigrants power our economy and our nation. And that has never been so obvious as now. And I predict in a couple of decades, we're going to be competing with other nations for immigrants. And if we could be losing that race right now, Canada, for example, is building on our immigration system to try to entice people who've been approved for visas here, H1B visas in the US to come to Canada. And many are taking that offer.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, I think, I mean, the number of foreign students is down. I think we're going to be desperate in the event that we're in a position to articulate it as a country, we're going to be desperate for immigration, I think a lot sooner than a decade or two. But there's, there's two things I want, I want to get to what you mean by open borders. But before we get there are, is there anything that the Trump administration is doing in terms of immigration that is novel relative to what they attempted during their first administration? Because, you know, I think there is a general sense like, oh, they're going much further this time. But is that the case, or are they just more competent and have planned this out with their time off? Like the idea that they were denaturalization during the first round of Trump administration, I think has been lost. And now we just see them doing it in a more methodical way. Is that what's happening, or is there something that's novel?

[Amanda Frost]

I wouldn't call it more competent. I might say more brazen. Look, the goal, and it was clear from the beginning I was listening to Stephen Miller speak publicly before the election and in the run up to the taking office. And basically the goal is get the courts out of it or have the courts be yes men to the degree possible. Because what slows down this administration and Trump won in deporting noncitizens. And by the way, it wasn't successful. It didn't deport that many people in Trump one or stop people from coming across the border. And what they said the problem was was courts and due process, the requirement that people have, in hearing an opportunity, be heard before they can be removed. So that's their goal, to get rid of that. And are they more competent? I wouldn't say they're more competent. They're losing in court, but they are going to. Lower courts cannot hold the line for that long and Congress is not speaking up. So to the degree that they are attempting to deport people without due process, for example, by claiming we're being invaded by Venezuela under the Alien Enemies act, not true, we're not under invasion. But to the degree they're making those kinds of claims, you know, eventually they will prevail in getting people removed from the United States because lower courts, district court judges cannot hold the line for years.

[Sam Seder]

How? I asked you how. I guess durable naturalized citizen. How durable is non naturalized citizenship? Like, I mean, you know, yours or mine as, I mean, I was born here, my parents were, you know, American citizens. But is there a world in which they get to say, you know what, you've lost your citizenship?

[Amanda Frost]

Yeah. Rosie o' Donnell has some experience with this since Trump threatened to take away her citizenship and she's a birthright citizen. So I'll say first of all that for those naturalized citizens who are listening, the Trump administration has tried to denaturalize people and investigate, but yet has yet to succeed. So I don't want people to live in fear. As for birthright citizens, that would be yet another, you know, bridge even farther. I think it's not beyond this president to want to, for example, deport what he called homegrowns, by which he meant native US Citizen crimes or sentenced to, to for crimes, and he said he'd deport them. I think there's a risk and I think this is a slippery slope. And of course, the birthright citizenship executive order reporting to limit who could be claiming a birthright citizenship is another example of how being born in the US does not guarantee you safety. I'll be clear. I don't think we're there yet. I'm not living in fear as a native born US Citizen, but I Got my eye on this because I think that's the goal, destabilize everyone's status.

[Sam Seder]

Let's also just touch upon what limitations, you know, when we say open borders. What. And you say you're not for open borders. Yeah. What. What does open borders mean in that context? And what. What limitations do you think should exist on immigration and why. And then I do want to cover a couple of these.

[Amanda Frost]

I was going to say in 30 seconds. Yeah. I'll just say no one. That certainly no political president, Democrat or Republican, is for open borders or ever has been in any recent history.

[Sam Seder]

But when we say open borders, do we just mean no borders? Yeah. Or, I mean, like, what. What is. What constitutes open borders? Is it. Do European countries have open borders with each other?

[Amanda Frost]

You know, the most extreme version of open borders is what we have between our states. Right. Between the state of Virginia and its neighbors, between, you know, European countries, although I don't think they're as open as they used to be or were trying to be when they formed the European Union. You know, I don't show a passport when I cross lines as an American living in the United States. That's what the most extreme version of open borders is. It works great, by the way, in the United States between our states. But, no, I don't think we should have that as a policy, and nor has it been the policy of any president, Democrat or Republican. And I just use that, I make that point to say having limits on immigration makes sense and they're something we should discuss as a nation. That's not the same as taking away citizenship or deporting people who are here legally or who have a right at least to be heard before they're deported. And so those are the distinctions I'm drawing. You asked about what our immigration policy should be. That is a tough question, and I wish Congress would grapple with it. That's where. That's the body that should be considering.

[Sam Seder]

This, without a doubt. I'm just curious in the sense of, like, when we talk about there should be limitations on immigration. I mean, I think one of the problems that we have right now is that there has been very little articulated about what an immigration policy would look like that is immigrant positive, if you will, which ostensibly a significant portion of the country, if not the majority, frankly, hold. But we don't see that being articulated by, as far as I can tell, you know, the Democratic Party, the opposition party here. There's just. There is more of a. Well, you know, the Republicans are extreme, but there's no, positive. So I'm just curious, when you say limitation, like, what does that look like?

[Amanda Frost]

Yeah. So there's a couple different changes that if, you know, I were immigration czar or a member of Congress who could start this conversation, I would say we should do. One is we have got to expand the number of visas available for those who want to work and have skills to work in the United States. Our number was set in 1990 at 140,000 employer employment visas. 1990 was before the Internet. And our country, of course, has grown enormously since then and our economy has changed. That is just an unrealistic number. We need more unskilled workers. Over half the people who harvest our crops are undocumented immigrants. We would starve without them. Our food prices would rise without them. We need more legal ways for those people to come. So that's where the conversation should start. We should have more employment based visas. And I'll add, I'm really frustrated by the hypocrisy because the same people who oppose immigration who refuse to allow expansion of these numbers and the same politicians who do this also live in states with enormous numbers of undocumented immigrants being employed by Americans. 5% of the working population in Texas is undocumented. They're employed by US Citizens in Texas who are violating immigration laws. But those US Citizens never face the consequences, so they both bemoan undocumented immigration and benefit economically from undocumented immigrants. We should legalize those immigrants by providing work visas and letting them come legally. And the flip side is I think we need to, we need to fix our asylum system. We needed to move people through much faster, allow them in or not. Right now, asylum had become or under Biden, a way for people to come and work. They were needed. They were benefiting our economy, but that's not the way to do it.

[Emma Vigland]

Well, you mentioned the business owners too, and the exploitative labor piece of this. And I think that doesn't get discussed enough. How someone's status with immigration can be used by a boss as leverage against that worker. And in part, the, you know, the lack of progress that we're talking about in Congress, I would argue is because of that, because this is like a sub labor, you know, this is the folks that are most susceptible to wage theft. And you can have a boss say you want to speak up a little bit about unsafe work conditions, well, we can deport you. So my question then is do visas solve that problem or would citizenship and more blanket amnesty solve that problem? Like, say, if you're going to work for. If American companies want to hire people, well, you know, they can't or put some protections in place so that that can't happen. For example.

[Amanda Frost]

Yeah, I think that protection is in place so that doesn't happen. What you just described, there's lots of empirical evidence that is what happens. That is employers look the other way, hire undocumented immigrants knowing they're undocumented, and then the minute the undocumented immigrant complains about dangerous workplace conditions or below minimum wage salary, then suddenly they report them to the immigration officials. So one way to stop that is to say, look, if an employee has been abused by an employer, then we're not going to one let the employer off the hook. They're going to have to pay the fines or suffer the costs in some cases going to jail for the heads of companies that know this is happening. So that's a disincentive to violate immigration law if it were ever enforced. And then secondly to give workers that speak up about unsafe work conditions protection from being deported if they're actually trying to protect the workplace. And I should add that when undocumented workers face unsafe work conditions, that means the US Citizens working alongside them do too. And so if you don't have any sympathy for the immigrant, I hope you do. But if you don't, then have sympathy for the US Citizen worker who faces similar dangers in that workplace. There's no perfect solution. There's no easy solution. I certainly don't have an easy solution. But we're not even trying to get to these solutions, certainly not in Congress. And that's what's frustrating.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, I guess the last big push was during I mean, presumably I think Biden offered something that never got taken up and ended up frankly, both the supposedly sweetener in there ended up being the only thing that sort of I think survived that process, which is more often than not the case that being, you know, mass deportations or you know, assaults on or trying to keep people out. And I don't know if the Democrats will have learned same thing happened under Obama that that strategy doesn't seem to work as a political matter. But let's go look at There's a couple of stories in the context of your book that I found really surprised, I was surprised about I did not know and that that at one point women could be denaturalized if they married a foreign person like their own citizenship could be put in jeopardy. You write about Sylvia Pankhurst and Ethel Koop Mackenzie. Tell us, tell us that and explain to us what that illustrates about our citizenship question.

[Amanda Frost]

Yeah, Ethel McKenzie is such an amazing story and one I was shocked to learn as well. She was fighting for the right of women to vote in California before women got the right to vote in the U.S. constitution. And that fight was intense in California. Women won the right to vote in California by a slim margin through efforts of women like her who fought so hard to get men. Men had to vote for it, to vote for it in California. And then she goes to cast her vote in the first election in which she's permitted to as a woman in California. And she's barred from voting because she married a non citizen. She married a Scottish tenor. They were this socialite, socially adored couple. They commanded the society pages of the San Francisco newspaper. She was a wealthy heiress and she used the political power that she got from that media attention to make this an issue and said, of course I should be allowed to vote. I'm a citizen. I shouldn't be allowed to lose my citizenship. There's a federal law that said I lose my citizenship by marrying a non citizen, but that violates my rights under the fourteenth Amendment's birthright citizenship provision. And she took that case to the Supreme Court in 19, I think it was 15. And she lost nine, zero. And the court kind of chided her and said, well, if you married a non citizen, that's the consequence. Same thing happened in Congress when you tried to change it in Congress. Women fought for this. But then, lo and behold, women got the right to vote in our constitution in 1920, and suddenly Congress is changing its tune. That law got repealed, although not immediately, and it excluded certain racial groups like women who married Asian men who were barred from naturalizing non citizen Asian men. So the history of that really is the history of our nation's fight over citizenship and who belongs. It's fascinating.

[Sam Seder]

It really is. I had no knowledge of that whatsoever. Let's also, I guess, I mean, maybe let's just start with Dred Scott too, just to remind people what this dynamic was. And of course, you know, everything that we saw in the Reconstruction Amendments were designed to sort of address Dred Scott to the extent that the politics would allow at that time, I guess. But just remind us of Dred Scott.

[Amanda Frost]

Yes. And I say, in addition to it being an important part of the book, you are not American. It's also the topic of my future book on birthright citizenship. So I'm steeped in Dred Scott. Dred and Harriet Scott were an enslaved couple. They had two young daughters and they Very much feared the family being sold apart and separated, which is why they filed a lawsuit. They claimed to be free, as in fact, the law supported that claim because they'd been brought into free territory by their enslaver. And they also had to, in order to get into court, assert that they were U.S. citizens. And that had been a deeply contested question. Who was a citizen? There's no definition in the US Constitution before we added birthright citizenship in the 14th Amendment in 1868. So they brought their case to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled against them on every front, said, you're not free and also you're not citizens. And they said, no black person, slave or free, could ever be a citizen. And then the Court went further. Well, Chief Justice Taney, writing for the Court, said, anyone who's of an inferior or subordinate class can't be a citizen. And I think that's been overlooked for too long. Who would be inferior and subordinate for him, we've seen in his jurisprudence, and others thought this way, anyone of any other race other than white, anyone who wasn't Christian, should not be an American in the view of people like Chief Justice Taney. And then, of course, we had the Civil War. War. The Reconstruction Amendments, the first sentence of the 14th Amendment rectified, overruled. Dred Scott rectified this error and said, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens. And it's clear from the debates in the Reconstruction Congress, it was intended to overrule Dred Scott. It was intended to give citizenship to the newly freed slaves, and it was intended to integrate the children of immigrants into the United States. Chinese immigrants have been arriving on the west coast in large numbers in the 40s and 50s. They were a group that was being vilified at the time and the Reconstruction Congress, there were debates, do we need to include the children of Chinese immigrants and those like them? And the answer was, yes, we did. Clearly stated out loud. So if you're an originalist, you should be comfortable with the idea that the birthright citizenship provision of the Constitution applies far beyond Dred Scott and overruling Dred Scott as it held for that slaves were not citizens. And I add that because the current position of the current administration, the Trump administration in court, is that the 14th Amendment citizenship clause applies only to give citizenship to the freed slaves and no one else.

[Sam Seder]

This is an odd, maybe a little off topic, but how does two slaves, or would be freed slaves bring a case at that time to the Supreme Court? Was this Like, I mean, were there abolitionists who were, you know, had found essentially the Dred Scott and said, you know, like, we're gonna, we're going to essentially marshal your case through the, the courts, or how did that work?

[Amanda Frost]

Yeah, I love that question because I am fascinated by the family, the Scott family. And while of course, we don't have quite, you know, we don't have as many records of them as I would, as any historian would like, I'll say we know enough to know they were the agents of their own story. They pursued this case, particularly Harriet Scott. She was the one who was more valuable to the family that enslaved her. And she was afraid for the children, their daughters, who could easily be sold away from them. So they instigated this lawsuit. Now they had to find a white establishment lawyer to bring the case, right? No, they couldn't. They themselves were not literate and not lawyers, obviously. So they did find someone to bring this case on their behalf, but they were one working to pay the fees. They didn't just get the help of pro bono lawyers. They actually paid for their lawsuit, at least in part themselves. They found allies who supported them along the way, and they knew their rights. It was actually very clear when they started the lawsuit that because they've been brought into free territory by their enslaver, they were free. And slaves did learn about their legal rights and did pursue them in courts and in this interesting legalistic culture, we had this evil thing of slavery, and yet there were lawyers and judges who would enforce the rules even in slave states, and they would declare that slaves were free. About 40% of the slaves who filed lawsuits eventually prevailed in the Missouri courts. And Missouri was a slave state. So they began this lawsuit very intentionally to protect their family. And they fought it for 11 years. And while they loft in the Supreme Court, I want to add the postscript that they eventually prevailed in the sense that the press and the outrage was so strong that they were then freed and their family lived in freedom for the last few years of Dred Scott's life in St. Louis.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, that's fascinating. I mean, that's the. To just bring a case that will go that far in general, rather challenging, nevermind being, you know, sort of like intentionally kept illiterate for that. Let's go. Let's jump forward to the Operation Wetback. This is just a couple of, I think, things that, you know, people aren't quite familiar with. And then maybe one other topic. But tell us about Operation Wetback.

[Amanda Frost]

Yes. In addition to these other examples of citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to Ethel McKenzie, the suffragist who lost her citizenship for marrying a non citizen. And that was one interlude we then saw in the 1930s and then again in the 1950s, Mass, they called them repatriations of Mexican families. But I'm putting the word repatriation in scare quotes because many of the people that were sent to Mexico from the United States had never actually lived in Mexico. So they weren't being repatriated anywhere. They were being relocated. The 1930s, it was, of course, a reaction to the Great Depression. The idea was they're taking our jobs, they being Mexican immigrants and their children and grandchildren. Of course, the view of some of these people were, you know, the border moved, we didn't move. And also they'd come legally and been embraced initially. So this was extraordinarily coercive at times, violent at times, where families in the midst of this Great Depression were pushed out of the United States. And then it happened again in the 1950s. That's Operation Wetback is the, you know, the slur used to describe it by the government. In these mass roundups, they would gather people in parks and load them onto buses and put them in camps and then on depends, deport them. There were many people, US Born who were included mistakenly, some of them as children of parents who were being deported, some mistakenly included. There wasn't really any kind of due process. This is not an example we want to repeat, of course, today, although President Trump has said at times that he thought this was a good move that President Eisenhower made. So that's the story I tell. I tell the story of two people that actually made their way back into the US Both born who were wrongly deported and made their way back, which was difficult to do, and then made lives in the United States and then testified about their experience before the California State Senate.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, it definitely feels like we're reliving that. You know, there are reports that dozens of people have been basically disappeared out of Alagate or Alcatraz. And we. I mean, we know this is ongoing. All right, lastly, I'm. I'm curious about Fritz Julius Kuhn and the German American Bund, because we're also seeing the use of this construct of the enemy within as a fig leaf to try and depose people. We had, you know, Secretary of State basically saying, like, if you criticize our policy towards Israel or really for any other reason, we can deport you, just recount for us that era.

[Amanda Frost]

Yeah, so that era was fascinating because again, this reason I wrote the book is that I think stories of the individuals involved are fascinating and they, they give a bigger picture what was going on in the United States. So Fritz Julius Kuhn was known as the American Fuhrer. He led the German American Bund, which was not always initially pro Nazi and pro Hitler, but was under Kuhn's leadership. And I pair his story with that of an incarcerated Japanese American born in the U.S. a U.S. citizen but of Japanese descent, man who was incarcerated in one of those, they called them at the time, concentration camps that the US set up for Japanese immigrants and US citizens of Japanese descent. And then he voluntarily left the US at the end of the war. He was done with the nation that had decided to incarcerate him and not treat him as a loyal American. So I pair those two stories and Kuhn is interesting because he led the German American Bund. He was virulently anti Semitic, virulently pro Hitler. He held a rally in Madison Square Garden attended by tens of thousands of people. There were plenty of people who supported him, but of course we went to war with Germany. And so he was a naturalized US citizen. He lied about his history. He'd committed crimes in Germany he lied about. And he was uncomfortable person for the US government to have around. So they held a trial. He lost his citizenship. He was deported to Germany. But after a trial, unlike the, you know, everyone, all the Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants in concentration camps at the time. And interestingly enough, he begged to get his U.S. citizenship back while he was in the U.S. he said, I'm a German and Germans are German no matter, you know, what citizenship they have. And that's my first allegiance. But he regretted taking that position and tried to come back to the US unsuccessfully.

[Emma Vigland]

They're cowards all back then too.

[Amanda Frost]

Yeah, his, his take on it was I'm all pro Hitler and I'm German to the core until, wait, Germany lost the war. I'm American.

[Emma Vigland]

Some things, some things never change.

[Sam Seder]

But even in that context, we were, we were far harsher based upon racial lines as opposed to the, I don't know, some other assessment of how much of an enemy theoretically these people were relative to like, you know, their nationality.

[Amanda Frost]

Yeah. So I mean, the story of this book is this story of citizenship stripping. And 90% of the stories, the citizenship stripping is based on race. There is some ideological examples. Emma Goldman, who was an anarchist, lost her citizenship. She was white. We saw some labor leaders who were white in the Cold War era lose their citizenship for their speech. So that certainly happened. And something to Always keep an eye on because that's also antithetical to our values. But Kuhn's a good example. He lost his citizenship, but he did so after a full hearing before a federal judge. He didn't get this treatment that the Japanese Americans en masse got, as we just assume you're disloyal because of your blood was what the government said and incarcerated them. So I paired the two groups differently and I think rightly so. The treatment that Julius Kuhn got was correct. He needed a trial before he could be deported. But I also think he was both supporting Hitler and had lied about his past and had committed crimes that justified his denaturalization after a full hearing to establish that before court.

[Sam Seder]

Lastly, when you say antithetical to our values. Yeah. How, how do we know? You know, I mean, I like. Because I think this is an important thing for I think people to engage with, with at this point because so much of the, what, what, five years ago or 10 years ago or 15 years ago was supposedly understood. We could say this is antithetical to our American values and that, you know, that would suffice. But we're in an era where I think those underlying values are in dispute. So what is? I mean, I suspect you and I agree, but I'm curious as like, what are the basis of those values?

[Amanda Frost]

Yeah, so. So first of all, I hear you that I think we're currently in a period of contesting what our values are. But I feel very confident in the rock solid foundations of the values that I'm citing. So they come from the Declaration of Independence. They come from the language of the Constitution as amended by the Reconstruction Amendments, which brought it in line with the Declaration of Independence. And here's those values that I see. First of all, of course we have the First Amendment which claims freedom of speech, where the government can't penalize speech. So to the degree that people are being deported, losing citizenship based on speech that's antithetical to that First Amendment in our Constitution as initially enshrined there a value we've cared about throughout our nation's history. Second, of course, the very idea of declaring independence from Great Britain, from claiming we are our own country, that we the people lead the government is chosen by the people with the consent of the people. We do not pick people based on their hereditary status. And we are all equal, all men are created equal. And of course our Constitution prohibits things like titles of nobility or penalties based on corruption of blood. We don't punish the child for the sins of the father. These are all enshrined in our Constitution. As a constitutional lawyer and law professor, I teach these, I litigate about these. These are not contested that those are the founding values. And to say to somebody, well, you're not a citizen because your parent did something that we think was illegal, or your grandparent or your great grandparent, we're going to remove you from the US because your speech criticizes our government. That is, I think, very clearly antithetical to those founding values. And, and yeah, we're fighting, we're fighting about them now, but I hope we'll get back there. And I rest on my view that those are the founding values of our nation and we have to keep fighting for them.

[Sam Seder]

Amanda Frost, professor of Immigration and Citizenship Law at the University of Virginia, author of you Are Not American Citizenship, Stripping From Dred Scott to Dreamers and the forthcoming book on naturalized citizen or denaturalized. I guess it's in flux perhaps. Thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.

[Amanda Frost]

Thank you.

[Emma Vigland]

Thank you.

[Sam Seder]

All right, folks, that is the end of our free half of our program today and we will move into the fun half. Although someone suggested, what was it on Friday? The done half because we're cooked.

[Emma Vigland]

It's a little fatalist.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, that's. We are not. I'm not ready for that. So we'll still continue with the fun half and in the fun half, we're going to examine the political leadership at this time that represents the opposition party.

[Emma Vigland]

Also, we might get into the, the, the big wrestling event that happened in Arizona. Oh, you mean actually. Sorry, it was a funeral.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah. Okay. I'm in the. Where is the, Are we still talking about that? I don't have my. It was. Yes, I have to say Donald Trump's performance, and I do mean performance, was fantastic. He really, really can dance.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, yeah.

[Sam Seder]

We will talk about that. The spectacle. The in Arizona will also. I got, we got a lot of stories. Oh, Trump wants to. I mentioned this on Friday, but it seems to be getting like they're pretty serious about going in and, and reoccupying Afghanistan.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, the anti war ticket.

[Sam Seder]

We left a bunch of beautiful tanks. Too many tanks. Beautiful tanks. I dropped a contact lens in Bagram and really wanted to get there.

[Emma Vigland]

You know, we just don't have enough tanks in America, so we have to recycle them.

[Sam Seder]

Somebody told me there was a P tape flying buried in Bagram. So we're going to retake that base. We will maybe show a couple of hits from the, the TPUSA event. In Arizona. I mean, we've got a lot of stuff. I don't know what to tell you. And we're only six days away now, eight days away from a government shutdown. And be rest assured, Chuck Schumer, desperate to avoid a government shutdown, willing to do anything. We will talk about that and more. Just a reminder, it's your support that makes this show possible. You can help this show survive and thrive by becoming a [e-mail] when you do, you not only get the free show, but you also get the fun half. You get the free show free of commercials. I want to thank our members. It is very helpful and comforting at a time like this where, you know, you get a little. Yeah, there's a little bit of anxiety associated with doing this.

[Emma Vigland]

Tick Tock was just bought up by a bunch of pro Trump oligarchs. Like, we don't know what the future is. I think for online media, they're already.

[Sam Seder]

Purging a lot of pro Palestinian, anti genocide voices from. From TikTok. And not to mention, like, you know, the. There's a lot of talk out there about, you know, lunatics who are interested in, you know, trying to silence various people in various ways. So it is with much appreciation that we have for, for our members who make this show possible every day and, you know, our viewers and listeners. I met somebody at a rest stop in Massachusetts, right. Listener to the show. And that was nice. It was. I mean, I wasn't. I was headed to a funeral, but it was. It was still nice, but much appreciated. Also just coffee, co op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate, Use the coupon code majority get 10 off. Matt left Renekoning.

[Guest or Contributor]

Yeah, left Reckoning. I did a short read series on Tony Jet's review of the Mearsheimer Walt essay on the Israel lobby that came out in the mid 2000s. So people can.

[Sam Seder]

What did he say about that?

[Guest or Contributor]

He basically said that people that were calling it, dismissing it as anti Semitic were obscuring an important conversation on policy in America and it might have bad consequences down the line. And, you know, lo and behold, who knew? It's crazy. Also, Devin o', Shea, we're talking about Vineland, everybody. Really great Thomas Pynchon novel which is in. Which apparently inspired a new.

[Emma Vigland]

I'm seeing it on a 70 millimeter on Saturday.

[Guest or Contributor]

Yeah. Upcoming movie. What's it.

[Sam Seder]

What's it called?

[Emma Vigland]

Actually, the One Battle After Another. I hear it's. It's very loose.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah.

[Guest or Contributor]

The character names aren't the same, so I'M curious to see how close it follows a plot. But the Pynchon novel that came out in 1990 and talks about sort of the right wing reaction to the 60s and 70s couldn't be a. It couldn't be a better time to come out with a movie based on that book. One of the more accessible pension novels. So that tomorrow at 7:00 Eastern, subscribe to us on YouTube. We're like a thousand short of 50,000, so subscribe to us.

[Sam Seder]

Quick break. Fun half, three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's gonna be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily gonna be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're gonna look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on. Hold on for a second. The majority report. Emma. Welcome to the program. Fun. Matt. Fun. What is up, everyone? Fun pack. No. Me.

[Emma Vigland]

You did it.

[Sam Seder]

Fun Pack.

[Emma Vigland]

Let's go, Brandon.

[Amanda Frost]

Let's go, Brandon.

[Sam Seder]

Fun pack. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint everyone. I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today.

[Amanda Frost]

Fundamentally false.

[Emma Vigland]

No, I'm sorry.

[Sam Seder]

Women talking for a second.

[Amanda Frost]

Let me finish. Where is this coming from? Dude?

[Sam Seder]

But. Dude, you Want to smoke this? 7A. Yes. Yes. Is this me? Is it me? It is you. Is this me? Oh, I'm just me. I think it is new. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm gonna go snow white. Libertarians. They're so stupid. Though common sense says of course.

[Amanda Frost]

Gobbledygook.

[Sam Seder]

We nailed him.

[Emma Vigland]

So what's 79 plus 21?

[Sam Seder]

Challenge. Man. I'm positively quivering. I believe 96. I want to say. 857-210-355, 011 half. 3, 8, 9, 11. For instance.

[Amanda Frost]

$3,400.

[Emma Vigland]

$1,900.

[Amanda Frost]

54.

[Sam Seder]

$3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game.

[Amanda Frost]

Actually. You're making me think less.

[Sam Seder]

But. But let me say this poop, you can call it satire.

[Amanda Frost]

Sam goes satire on top of it all. My favorite part about you is just like every day, all day.

[Sam Seder]

Like it. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We see you. All right, folks, folks, folks.

[Emma Vigland]

It's just the week being weeded out.

[Amanda Frost]

Obviously.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah. Sun's out, guns out. I. I don't know.

[Amanda Frost]

But you should know.

[Sam Seder]

People just don't.

[Guest or Contributor]

Like to entertain ideas.

[Sam Seder]

And I have a question. Who cares?

[Guest or Contributor]

Our chat is enabled, folks.

[Sam Seder]

I love it.

[Emma Vigland]

I do love that.

[Sam Seder]

Gotta jump. Gotta be quick. I gotta jump. I'm losing it, bro. Two o', clock, we're already late and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulag.

[Emma Vigland]

Outrageous.

[Sam Seder]

Like, what is wrong with you? Love you.

[Amanda Frost]

Bye.

[Sam Seder]

Love you. Bye. Bye.