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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5597 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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The Supreme Court has issued a ruling on Trump v. Barbara (birthright citizenship). 6-3 striking down Trump's executive order. You can find the ruling here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-365_4hdj.pdf

I've only had enough time to skim the ruling thus far. Jackson wrote a concurrence which I won't bother to read because she's the second most retarded member of the court (Sotomayor still reigns supreme in retardation). Kavanaugh partially concurred on the basis that this needed to be done by act of congress as opposed to executive order, but otherwise generally agreed with the Trump admin's interpretation of the 14th amendment. Thomas and Gorsuch outright dissented. Alito had his own separate dissent. Thomas's opinion includes several historical examples of people born on US soil to people not lawfully in the US who were denied citizenship, and I was not aware of these examples previously, making his the most interesting. Well that and the fact that it agrees with my 100% objectively correct and indisputable view of the matter of course.

This is roughly how most court-watchers expected this decision to turn out, but it still doesn't change the immense disappointment I feel over this news. Someone here earlier this week or last week said that this decision will be our generation's Dred Scott regardless of how it is decided, and that it will tear the union apart in similar fashion. Demographic changes in the West generally are leading to ever increasing tension and dysfunction, and I fear this decision will ensure that a breaking point is reached soooner, rather than later.

I am glad for this ruling because it accelerates the demographic downfall of the United States. I say that not as a leftist but as someone who believes that Trump 1 was the absolute last call to do something about the demographic situation, and now the United States populace must face the natural consequences of their actions. The quicker, the better. Let it be a lesson for the history books.

I think at some point in the next 10 years, assuming a relatively normal timeline (no nuclear Armageddon, no singularity, etc), we will probably see either a grand bargain or a runaway convention resulting in some significant changes to the constitution. In this scenario, is Jus soli is one of the first things to go. People on the right hate it, and other than a few groups of ideologues (devout neoliberals, the everything-is-racist caucus, etc), the rank and file on the left don't seem to care about it that much. They seem much more concerned with full on economic Marxism at the moment.

It's hard to imagine any coherent conception of a nation with borders that can be infinitely exploited by any person who manages to give birth within them.

This being anything other than 9-0 is an ominous level of partisan hackery. Like it or not, the Constitution is unambiguous with respect to birthright citizenship.

Expect future decades of the big issues of our time being decided by judges because legislatures have abandoned their responsibilities, and declining civic participation and partisanship frustrates any attempts to amend constitutions.

It is unambiguous.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States

The inclusion of the clause is unambiguous that not all those born in the United States are subject to its jurisdiction. Its enshrinement in the Constitution is the US government defining a hard limit on its own sovereignty. The argument of Wong Kim Ark is that "People born here are under US jurisdiction" when, for the clause, that is explicitly denied by 14A. Its first test and major precedent was a complete inversion of the language.

It's somehow worse than that. We see with these rulings that successive courts read 14A as though it were written:

All persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States

That's not what it says, and to emphasize as it's beyond question, this is the obligate read of 14A by every court that has upheld categorical birthright citizenship. As their read necessarily omits the clause, they are tacitly admitting that with the clause their read is wrong.

And, qualitatively, Gorsuch consistently breaks ranks in preference to the text of laws as-written. If it were "unambiguous" in your sense, he would have joined the majority.

What's your opinion on Obergefell? Was that ominous?

Yes. I think that legalizing gay marriage is/was a good thing, but I am skeptical of doing it via tenuous legal mechanisms rather than via the elected representatives of the people or referendum. I don't think that ruling was as tortuously reasoned as Roe v Wade (or the dissenters in this judgment), but it took an issue that should've been decided by legislatures and instead hinged it on a 5-4 decision on shaky grounds. At this point it does not look like gay marriage is particularly at risk of being undone but we've been through this before and it's no guarantee of it surviving forever.

It is clear that in the aftermath of Obergefell both the left and right wings of American politics have decided to use the courts as their primary means of advancing their "big issues" rather than Congress, or god forbid, actually persuading the public.

It is clear that in the aftermath of Obergefell both the left and right wings of American politics have decided to use the courts as their primary means of advancing their "big issues" rather than Congress, or god forbid, actually persuading the public.

If the courts didn't want to be used as a backdoor to legislation by tenuous legal mechanism then the courts should not have seized the power of the legislature by backdooring legislation by tenuous legal mechanisms.

Certainly. No disagreements here. I have been very vocal about this in Canadian politics, which is all the worse given that we (ostensibly) have parliamentary supremacy and the means to enforce it.

I think the legislature has abdicated its power to the court (and the executive), much more than the court seizing it.

This reminds me of Obamacare. Everyone was told “not a real issue” as the received wisdom was “clear” but when you actually look at the received wisdom it just isn’t clear.

I don't think Thomas is a partisan hack. He has a clear and intellectually coherent theory of what the Constitution in his head says, and rules accordingly. It's just that the Constitution that was agreed at Philadelphia, ratified by the States, and rededicated to the proposition that all men are created equal by the blood of the Union dead in which the Reconstruction Amendments are written, says something else.

Alito, on the other hand...

Goresuch, I am genuinely surprised by on this one.

And kavanaugh? Maybe that should make you pause and think perhaps your position isn’t air tight.

I think that literal interpretations of the Constitution don't work in practice though, because it almost unambiguously says that the government can't stop me from having nuclear weapons. I'm pretty sure that "arms" back then just referred to weapons in general. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

And if that's the case, we have had a very weird situation for a long time now where the 2nd Amendment has been interpreted in a very limited way even though the clear reading allows all weapons.

It could be argued that this is what the amendment procedure is for, though. I wonder if it would actually be possible for an amendment that limits the 2nd Amendment to certain types of weapons to be ratified in today's political climate. There would be obvious slippery slope concerns from many people.

I imagine that if the current regime of stretchy interpretations fell (i.e. the SC really came out and said that sorry, but the law as written says yes to personal nukes, deal with it), it would take between nothing and a single tiny backyard plutonium spill for bipartisan momentum for a constitutional amendment to circumscribe the 2nd to materialise.

But it would be really really hard for them to agree on an actual amendment. Somehow you would need to get 3/4 of congress to agree to one specifically worded amendment when all of them are going to have very strong opinions in opposite directions. I suppose the threat of random people having nukes would motivate people to compromise, but it still wouldn't be easy, and whoever was the most radical and stubborn about refusing to budge would get more of their way by making others compromise towards them.

think that literal interpretations of the Constitution don't work in practice though, because it almost unambiguously says that the government can't stop me from having nuclear weapons

I'm still not convinced that this is a problem

Anyone who is has the resources and know-how required to procure and operate an F-35 or Nuclear Weapon is going to be a lot more than just some "fringe whacko" in a compound somewhere.

You don't personally need the resources or know-how for most of this (besides operating but even that can be simplified by bad actors) so long as people can sell you or gift you one. Decentralized terrorist groups like 764 already grooms random local depressed nutjob kids to shoot up schools among many other types of crime, imagine what damage coordinated rival nations could deal if these nutjobs could have access to major weaponry.

And if we ban selling or gifting major weapons but not guns, then we have already established there is a distinction and they do not count as "arms" in the same way.

imagine what damage coordinated rival nations could deal if these nutjobs could have access to major weaponry.

Then this is no longer a legal matter but rather one of foriegn policy.

We make it known that if material furnished by your nation is used in such an attack that attack will be treated as having come from your nation and let the rivals police themselves.

This has multiple flaws.

  1. What does "material furnished" mean? Do all guns and bullets have to be exclusively made from minerals mined and put together in the US or else it counts as a shooting by a foreign power? If the gun is stored in a Russian made holster, is that a Russian attack? If we don't make it extremely strict, then there's lots of inevitable workarounds created to provide the "pieces" of advanced weaponry to be easily constructed and used.

  2. What about proxy groups? Private organizations that go through deniability chains from those nations can furnish weapons for nutjobs. There will be sophisticated plans where building a convincing casus belli will be difficult. They won't be like al-queda taking credit for 9/11.

  3. It doesn't even take rival nations, just sophisticated networks like the aforementioned 764. They spend some of their child porn money on materials and supply it to a crazed member. Gonna be hard to charge most of them. If giving someone a gun as a gift who just totally coincidentally proceeds to use it in crime can't be charged, then the same would apply to a missile or drone or anything else. "Oh we didn't know he would blow up that building with the rockets we provided him for his birthday". They can produce a lot for their own legal deniability, just like they already do. If we can't get them for shootings, why should I expect we can do it for anything else?

In modern America you amend the Constitution thru the Supreme Court. I guess you could call that a common law system. And it’s still a hard thing to do.

@The_Nybbler last week.

Birthright citizenship is obviously supported by both Constitution and statute, but I imagine there's a lot of wrangling over the wording of the opinion of the court (which may be unanimous, maybe 8-1 if Alito is as much of a hack as one ex-poster claims).

Looks like your departed poster (darwin?) didn't go far enough and there's three partisan hacks on the court.

Surprised me in both directions, actually; I figured Roberts, like Kavanaugh, would also lean on statutory rather than constitutional claims, and I didn't expect Gorsuch or Thomas to go that way. Although MadMonzer is right here -- Thomas isn't a partisan hack, he has a very solid idea of what the Constitution says even if it ain't right. For instance in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado: "[A]ny statute that forced the President to allow aliens to cross the border against his will would appear to exceed Congress’s enumerated powers, and a court could not enforce it against the President." -- he gets this from the Article II vesting clause, which is a pretty severe stretch. I would expect that Congress gets to decide which aliens get to cross the border, and certainly the law has always worked that way.

Like it or not, the Constitution is unambiguous with respect to birthright citizenship.

No, it really isn't: "Every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons." - Jacob Howard, drafter of the 14th Amendment

Children of foreigners, aliens, and diplomats were not intended to be covered by the 14th by the very author of the amendment.

Children of foreigners, aliens, and diplomats were not intended to be covered by the 14th by the very author of the amendment.

Is that how you parse that quote? It seems to me he is referring exclusively to the children of foreign diplomats. Not three different categories of people (i.e., foreigners AND aliens AND those who belong to families of ambassadors...).

Howard in other instances seemed to very clearly anticipate that the 14th would apply to the children of people from other countries who were not (yet) American citizens. In any case, the amendment as written very obviously does not make the distinction you are purporting Howard to have made.

"This will not include persons born in the United States who are foreigners."

"This will not include persons born in the United States who are aliens."

"This will not include persons born in the United States who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States."

I'm struggling to find any other way to parse it.

Because it's not a list of three categories. It's a description of one category, of which all three are needed to qualify. I.e. that citizenship is not withheld from aliens AND foreigners AND children of foreign diplomats, but rather children of foreign diplomats who are also aliens and foreigners. (Otherwise, for example, someone who had say, a foreign diplomat father and an American mother, born in America, would not receive birthright citizenship.)

I think semantically it is meant to be understand this way for a number of reasons: the alternative explanation is not consistent with Howard's purposes otherwise OR the final wording of the amendment, it doesn't make sense to describe newborn children being born as foreigners or aliens within the context of the rest of the amendment, and if it was a list it would certainly be more clear if there were ors/ands in between the items.

If I were to say to say, for example, to a car dealer that I only liked cars that were "red, fast, fuel-efficient"; I would expect him to understand that I want a car that is all three, rather than one car of each.

Other parse: this will not include person born in the United state who are foreigners AND aliens AND belong to (the families of ambassdors OR foreign ministers). So to be exempt you'd have to be a foreigner and an alien and be born to an ambassador or minister accredited to the USA.

That's an incredibly motivated reading which would not be used in the vast majority of other contexts. If someone wants a vegetable soup but asks you to exclude red, orange, purple vegetables, you're not going to toss in some carrots and tell them that they weren't crazy stripey polka-dotted carrots with red and purple on them. It's clear what they meant.

The text does not use the word AND, it's just a list of three things and then says "all other classes are included", meaning that these three classes are not. There are not logical operators being applied here. I suppose an OR could be implied, but I don't think mathematical logic was developed or widespread enough for them to speak that way (since there's often ambiguity between OR and XOR). Just listing the three traits which are excluded, and then saying "all other classes are included" is pretty clear.

Your construction makes no sense. First, the punctuation would be wrong. Second, describing diplomats as foreigners and aliens would be surplusage on top of surplusage.

Diplomats could be married to US citizens, or possibly be a US citizen themselves. Apparently there's been quite a few Canadian diplomats who are also American. There's also one of an American ambassador to France who had French citizenship through their marriage.

If the argument that using foreigners and aliens is to clarify that children borne of diplomats who happen to be U.S. citizens as well, then that moves me not at all.

Not quite, it's possible to be a foreigner but not an alien, e.g. a US citizen who also has German citizenship. It's also possible to be an alien but not a foreigner, e.g. a native American back before they were all given citizenship; and it's definitely possible to be an ambassador/foreign minister without being either a foreigner or an alien and you use this language specifically to ensure that it doesn't apply to US ambassadors or foreign ministers who are also US citizens for instance in their own right separately.

The UK actually does something like this. If you're just a random migrant spending time on almost any "residnence" visa category in the UK after 10 years you'll be eligible for ILR (permanent residence basically). However if you're specifically in the UK as an exercise of being part of a foreign nation's retinue to it's mission in the UK there are additional issues and you can't just apply for ILR or naturalisation until you are no longer not subject to immigration control (basically not until your formal status as a diplomat has ended).

It would make perfect sense for children of ambassadors and foreign ministers while they are serving in their capacity as an ambassador/foreign minister to be carved out of US citizenship as a way to not create direct US ties and jurisdiction (like e.g. family law jurisdiction) over a family member of a serving diplomat of the other country, which the other country almost certainly would not be happy about.

Also - I dislike the framing by @johnfabian where everyone who disagrees with him is a partisan hack. He thinks it's clear - fine. I, like you, don't think that it is clear, and I think we need to recognize that reasonable people can in fact disagree on this stuff, and not just throw out insults.

But why should the author's opinion matter, if the opinion is not explicitly written into the text of the actual Amendment? That would open a whole can of worms. If that is what the author meant, why did he not write it into the Amendment? After all, it seems to have not been completely obvious, since he felt the need to comment on it.

It isn’t dispositive but it is instructive. That is, if the answer is “obvious” then how did the drafter understand it to mean something else? That is at least a clue that it isn’t obvious.

The ambiguous word in the text on which everything hinges is “jurisdiction”. The author explained how the word “jurisdiction” is to be interpreted, with examples. How are his comments not relevant?

This is far outside of my domain of expertise, maybe there were other relevant considerations (e.g. historical precedent) that force a different interpretation of “jurisdiction”, I don’t know. But if the author’s comments on his own amendment are being reported accurately, then “he should have been more explicit” seems like an incredibly weak rebuttal.

Because when trying to understand what someone wrote into law it's useful to read what they themselves believed was the meaning of the words they wrote. This is totally uncontroversial legal practice.

Important thing is that 5 justices agreed to the main majority ruling which means this issue is hopefully settled and dead for another 130 years. The right is free to try to change the constitution if they don't like the consequences.

I'm halfway through Alito's dissent and man is that dude a hack. Same level of bad as Sotomayor.

Roe v. Wade was overturned only 50 years later, Brown v. Board of Education overturned Plessy v. Ferguson only 60 years later.

50 years/60 years are also good enough for me. By then the makeup of the US will be so different to right now it'll be effectively a different country regardless!

Why would you be happy about this ruling and then say the US would essentially be a different country. The US or Rome is the great country the world has ever seen - why would you want that dead? There is nothing more important than preserving the US.

He genuinely hates the US and the West and would like to see it collapse.

It's because this is good for him and his likes, and not for the likes of me.

Wrong. I think there's a lot good about western countries and their history and everything. It's the people I mostly have an issue with, not the countries themselves. The USA for example I think has it in it to become the shining city on a hill it aspires to be, the geographic expanse, the natural beauty, the resources, it's the people and more specifically the mindset of these people that irks me.

Because the people of Pakistan totally would have built something so much better if they were simply on the magic soil of America, obviously.

The country IS the people, not the land. Land is a resource. You're essentially saying that you want to destroy me, my people, and my culture so that someone else can have my stuff. That is pretty antagonistic and make you unambiguously my enemy.

If someone says you hate "the US and West" they don't mean you hate the geography or natural resources. It is the people, culture or institutions that would be the objects of hatred.

In fifty years the Latinos, Indians, East Asians and Muslims will have Irishified and the United States will be back to being 85 percent white.

I know I might be feeding a troll, but are you aware of the evidence that European ethnicities don't fully assimilate, as well as the fact that the genetic distances between white Americans and the races you listed are more than 5 times as large as those between European ethnicities? If you're not trolling, I don't understand how in 2026 such naive blank slatism feels plausible to you.

Oh, you mean like how Boston is an Irish city, not an American one, and now places like Houston and Los Angeles are going to be Mexican cities, and Dearborn will become Muslim?

Yes, the replacement will continue apace. The slope is still slippery, and we are still sliding.

With how "melting pot" has been deemed Nazi-adjacent in the past decade, in favor of "salad bowl" or "mosaic," I'm skeptical that repeating history in this way is likely. With immigrants and their children being actively discouraged against assimilating, it's going to be hard for them to "Irishify," even before you get to the superficial differences. Arguably we're seeing some of the fruits of that change in attitude towards immigrant assimilation today, with the strong anti-Jewish push happening on the left.

Latinos are pretty likely to just be tan white people in another generation or two, they’re already assimilating and they want to be white.

No they will not be tan white people. They will either be nearly identical to native Europeans or be servant class. That is how it works in Mexico. So the most likely path is they will be tan people who clean your table and home.

They’re already majority euro by ancestry, and are intermarrying at high rates- it’s unlikely that ‘Mexican Americans’ will be genetically distinctive in 100 years.

Bell Curve 2 with a lower mean merging into Bell Curve 1 with a higher mean, thus creating a merged Bell Curve whose mean is the weighted average of its two constituents, is still a bad outcome when we could have just stuck with Bell Curve 1 and prevented Bell Curve 2 from coming into the picture in the first place.

Fair point. But it'll be a more inclusive "white" which I'll take.

The East Asians are pretty much already there, and Latinos can probably make it, too. But Indians and Muslims? I don't see it. They will remain distinct, unassimilable groups, like blacks.

The East Asians are pretty much already there

Not even close, in any way. Happas are very acutely aware of their own non-whiteness.

in a contrast to other groups historically, this seems more far more imposed from within the minority than from the majority.

Second or third generation Indians have mostly already assimilated in my neck of the woods.

What does that even mean? Are they only 25% or 12.5% Indian on average? Because otherwise I can point out an important way in which they failed to assimilate.

I’ve found upper caste Indias (and Pakis etc) as probably the group that easiest assimilates to the US. Especially in the upper class. We have right-wing Indian politicians in the west.

There’s basically zero East Asian or non-European Latinos in power in the west. Caste probably significantly matters for Indians and Muslims. And a wider variety of outcomes.

Norman Mineta (Japanese) was in the cabinet when Gary Locke (Chinese) and Ben Cayetano (Filipino) were Governor. Mazie Hirono (Japanese) is in the Senate, Hung Cao (Viet) is acting secretary of the Navy, Elaine Chao (Chinese) is Secretary of Transportation.

So, Hawaii and Washington governors, Senator from Hawaii, and a smattering of cabinet roles.

Not a lot of non-European Latinos in power in Latin America either.

Everything that has been said about Mamdani was said word-for-word about Kennedy.

They accused Kennedy of being a communist? Because that's what I hear about Mamdani when I turn on the radio.

Yes, Kennedy being soft on Communism to the point of being a secret or not-so-secret red was a constant rhetorical drum beat on the right, like it has been about every single democratic politician since FDR. Look at the “Wanted For Treason” flyers that were being passed around Dallas the day he was murdered.

Nobody ever called Kennedy a Ugandan Muslim.

I think it would be fair to just call this 5-4 so I guess this is still in play. This is probably 9-0 or 8-1 in 2018.

This might be worth Trump ignoring the court and challenging their authority which has always been an important balance of power. He could just lose the citizenship paperwork.

The question now comes down to how long does Sotomayors health hold up. Birthright is dead if anything happens to her and the GOP holds the Presidency.

Believing that it’s actually 5-4 requires believing that either Kavanaugh will fold or that Congress (to satisfy him) passes the requisite law with a 60 seat senate majority which the GOP is not going to have, and even if it did have it you’d need in the region of 65-70 GOP senators because the liberals will vote against it just like Roberts and ACB did.

You only need 50 Senate votes. And yes it’s time to get rid of the filibuster. The legislature should doing more legislating and the courts less.

Someone here earlier this week or last week said that this decision will be our generation's Dred Scott regardless of how it is decided, and that it will tear the union apart in similar fashion. Demographic changes in the West generally are leading to ever increasing tension and dysfunction, and I fear this decision will ensure that a breaking point is reached soooner, rather than later.

Sounds to me like the there will be increasing tension and dysfunction regardless of whether your stated position was affirmed or struck down. The decision is just another signal/marker of the continuing trend that you're describing. Dredd Scott can be viewed as a bad decision that made things worse, but one can also see that even if Dredd Scott ruling was reversed (that Dredd Scott became a free man by staying in the free Missouri territory), there would still have been a Secession. Congress (and by extension the People) punt on something long enough then yeah it will come crashing down on them. This is exactly what the People deserve.

Leaving it as a statutory question would have given an out that did not demand taking the amendment process or ramming the hardest-right justices through the courts as the least escalatory answer.

Dred Scott, once issued, couldn't be reversed: even were Scott freed, he couldn't become a citizen. Indeed, under Dred Scott, Scott couldn't even sue anyone over anything in federal courts in the future. That's why Dred Scott made non-legal avenues the only available ones, either direct defiance of the holding (eg the Territorial Slave Act of 1862) or the eventual war.

This isn't quite that bad, but the calculus for immigration restrictionists is still far uglier than Roberts had to make it.

agreed. I personally don't think this is Dredd Scott level of bad, I don't think people will secede. I also haven't read the thing yet but Kavanaugh left it open for Congress to make some laws.

Sure but Roberts for unknown reasons reached the constitutional issue when he needed just statutory.

I think Robert killed any chance the texturalism will be a future legal theory. Robert’s declared birthright isn’t texturally therefore unless GOP drops birthright (I believe it’s doubtful) then we will likely see a litmus test on Birthright for future GOP judges and it’s tough to swap a recent precedence so they will be likely adopting new legal theories to justify their views.

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