The no-kings campaign

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday, April 1st. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. 

Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. 

Time now for Washington Wednesday, and joining us is political scientist Hunter Baker.

Good morning, Hunter!

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning!

EICHER: Well Hunter, I’m glad we’ll be able to tap your legal education today—because there's quite a bit going on at the Supreme Court right now. 

There’s an oral argument just in a matter of hours this morning in a major immigration case … but first, a decision that the Court handed down yesterday—one that you would normally expect I think much later in the term… sometimes even the final day.

It is the case Chiles v. Salazar—Chiles, a licensed professional counselor… Salazar, the attorney general of Colorado. 

At issue in the case: a state law banning so-called “conversion therapy.”

And the law was really gaudy in its one-sidedness, it allowed counselors to push clients toward an LGBT identity… but specifically banned counselors—like Chiles—from helping clients to move away from one.

The Supreme Court really made quick work of the case, calling it a clear violation of the First Amendment. 

And remarkably—it ended just one vote away from unanimous. Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor joined Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas in the majority. Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented in the case—and she felt strongly enough about it to read that dissent from the bench yesterday. 

But let’s get to the analysis. 

Hunter, how broad of an impact do you think this ruling will have, and do you think it could lead to policy changes beyond Colorado—even from Washington?

BAKER: I'm really thrilled by this ruling. I'm—honestly, it should have been unanimous. Truly, it's this is a tremendous reaffirmation of free speech, free speech and freedom more generally, because this was pure viewpoint discrimination, that you simply are not allowed to give particular advice or say particular things because it's at odds with sort of the modern orthodoxy. 

It really made me think about Orwell in 1984 and Newspeak, you know, where they were slowly reducing the size of the dictionary so that certain thoughts would become impossible to have. That's what, that's how I view this law, that it was trying to make certain thoughts impossible to have or to share. So this ruling turns back a tremendous threat. 

They tried to enforce this regulation by aiming it at a specific profession, but it was really making certain ideas radioactive and forbidden, and specifically for our purposes, it was aimed at making Christian thought about human sexuality pathological and illegal.

EICHER: You know, Hunter, you said it took you back to 1984—it took me back to 2019 and 2020 around the time of COVID. And so I guess you're kind of agreeing with the idea that this is kind of a sign of the times, because it is frankly difficult to imagine the Supreme Court, or any court really, going against the LGBT movement like this. 

Again, Sotomayor and Kagan came out for the First Amendment rights of Christian counselors to help families with children who have unwanted same sex desires? I think it's pretty significant.

BAKER: Well, that period you mentioned was a very challenging period. It was sort of peak woke, not to kind of use the slang, but that's, that was what it was, it was sort of the height of the, of the woke movement. And I remember at the time how stunned I was at how casually the younger generation was sort of throwing away constitutional values. 

But I'm going to say this, I mean, people criticize the Supreme Court—this was a tremendous demonstration of the court's independence and of the court's value of protecting the U.S. Constitution.

EICHER: I want to move to the case at hand today now, Hunter. This centers on a practice grounded in the 14th Amendment, what we call birthright citizenship. 

Now, the 14th Amendment is not a neat, single purpose amendment like one you'd find in the Bill of Rights. This has five sections to it, it deals with insurrection, public debt, congressional representation, voting rights, due process, equal protection...there's a lot in that amendment. 

But our concern today is with the very first line of section one. It says "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States." That's the basis for this thing we call birthright citizenship. 

And here's where the dispute comes in—I recently interviewed investigative journalist Peter Schweizer, he also testified before Congress, and he argues that China is exploiting our current understanding of that clause. He estimates somewhere between 750,000 and a million and a half individuals born in the U.S., then returned to China in infancy, are now considered U.S. citizens, and his argument is they should not be. 

Now, we aired quite a bit of his testimony in a report recently here on the program, but there was another witness during this congressional testimony, constitutional Attorney Charles Cooper. He's a scholar of the Reconstruction Era, and he addressed the original understanding of that clause. Let's listen to how he put it:

COOPER: No one argued that foreign citizens temporarily visiting the United States are regarded as part of our people rather than part of the people of a foreign power. No one suggested that a child born to such foreigners while visiting here should be entitled to citizenship at birth.

So, not coincidentally, that's also the position of President Trump, who signed an executive order shortly after taking office aiming to limit birthright citizenship in those cases, and that's what's now under challenge before the Supreme Court.

So here's the question for you, this kind of begins, at least for me, to sound less like a technical legal dispute and more like a foreign policy or national security issue. Do you think, Hunter, that the justices may see it that way, particularly when the U.S. government comes in and argues that an adversary like China may be exploiting the current interpretation of birthright citizenship?

BAKER: I have to say that, first of all, I think that it has been sort of a common practice at least in the Western countries, to give citizenship to people who are born in the country, even even on a relatively short term basis. Very often that that citizenship might expire when the person reaches their age of maturity. 

Now, with regard to China, I'll tell you, so there's one way you could look at it. You could look at it and you could say they're getting U.S. citizenship for a lot of their young people and there's something bad they want to do with that. That's possible.

But there's another interpretation that I kind of have. I look at that and I say, "Okay, I am in China, I'm reasonably well off. I'm well enough off to travel to the United States, and I have a baby while I'm there, who's going to get citizenship." What I see is, you're living in a totalitarian country and this maybe presents the possibility of a better life for your child, or, if China really goes bad, you know, maybe this is an escape hatch. Maybe you can go to the United States which seems more stable and secure if you're seeking a life of freedom. 

So I would, I would see it as possibly something aspirational that's going on there among the Chinese.

Now, the other thing is, is that when we look at this, a lot of it just really depends on what your philosophy of citizenship is. And there have been all kinds of different ways of thinking about that throughout history. You know, if we went back to Venice centuries ago, the requirement to be a citizen would be that there had to be at least three generations of your family in Venice before you could even consider being a citizen. So obviously, they're protecting a certain kind of culture, a certain sort of set of traditions.

Now the U.S. has typically been a little bit different, right? We have been sort of a propositional nation with the idea that if you're ready to come to the United States and to embrace our values and our appreciation for freedom, then you can become a citizen. 

Now, we are becoming more concerned, right, with mass immigration, especially mass illegal immigration, with the idea that maybe that culture and those ideas are under threat, and so we're kind of tightening down. 

I still think that the odds are heavily in favor that birthright citizenship will continue, but we'll see what the court chooses to do.

MAST: Well, Hunter, moving away from the judiciary. Last weekend at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, there was the famous CPAC straw poll. Now, a word about the poll’s strength--it isn’t great, it’s been waved away as simply a beauty contest of ideological purity and it’s got anywhere from 33% to 40% accuracy. 

But that said, it’s not a terrible indicator. CPAC picked George W. Bush in 2000, Mitt Romney in 2012 (he won four straw polls), and Donald Trump all the way through the 2020s.

This year’s results had Vice President J.D. Vance winning with 53% of the vote… Now that is a smaller margin than last year… and comes as Secretary of State Marco Rubio takes on a larger public role in the administration; he got 35% of the vote.

Now that’s a race with more time to simmer… unlike the midterms. That same straw poll had the Texas Senate runoff between Attorney General Ken Paxton and Senator John Cornyn going to Paxton–67% to 21%. 

Now, Cornyn didn’t attend CPAC, but here’s Paxton on stage:

PAXTON: As I move forward in the next two months, I'm very optimistic. In Texas, runoffs tend to favor the most conservative person—if you'll remember, Ted Cruz won a runoff against David Dewhurst and he had finished pretty far back, like 20 points back in the first round, ended up winning uh handily in a runoff. It's because more conservative voters vote in the runoff than they do in the primary.

So Hunter, what do you make of those straw poll results…and Paxton’s confidence in the conservative vote in Texas?

BAKER: I don’t have a lot of confidence in straw polls, people definitely manipulate them. I can remember, you know, there were years where I used to go to the Values Voters Summit in Washington, D.C., and I remember one year Mitt Romney set out to win it and paid for several of the students from my university to go on the condition that they would vote for him in the straw poll. I think a lot of that kind of thing goes on, people just paying for people to show up and vote in these straw polls. 

So it's not, it's not very impressive, but Rubio's star is rising. And you know, if you pay much attention to social media, he has better memes than JD Vance does. I'm not surprised that that he's becoming more prominent. 

But Paxton, Paxton is very much about Trump loyalty. You know, John Cornyn has occasionally been critical of Donald Trump, you know, has said things like he thought that Donald Trump was finished, you know, or probably supported a different candidate. And so in the past, I think it would be a lock that Donald Trump would support the other candidate, but I think that he has become a little bit more savvy about that kind of thing.

The thing about John Cornyn is, he's a lock. John Cornyn has proved time and again that he wins statewide in Texas. So do you want to risk that? Do you want to risk the guy who's a dead lock to win that Senate seat, or do you want to go with somebody else? I mean, Paxton has some drawbacks, he's going through a very messy, public divorce where his wife says she has biblical grounds for divorce. So that's the candidate you're talking about. 

But then again, whether it's Cornyn or Paxton, they're up against Talarico. And I've expressed my opinion here that I think Talarico is a lot less promising than the Democrats think he is.

MAST: Well, speaking of the midterms–let’s talk about the No Kings protests that took place over the weekend. Organizers estimate some 8 million people came out to protest against President Trump and, if you look at to the signs, virtually everything related to the administration. Times, they say, are very bad indeed.

Here’s Senator Bernie Sanders at the flagship rally in Minneapolis:

SANDERS: The future of our country and in fact the entire world is hanging in the balance.

Hunter, you’ve said before that you see these protests as being less about the turnout on the streets and more about the turnout for the midterms. So if that’s true and the protests have grown, what does that tell you?

BAKER: Yeah, I mean, I'm very clear eyed about this, and my cold analysis is that it's just this is pure voter mobilization. I am confident that we would be able to find big money being spent here, lots of money on consultants and organizers and comms folks. 

And that's not to say that people don't have real feelings that they want to go out and express on the streets. I mean, that's always there, right? But this is, this is definitely something that is done as a prelude to the midterms, because if you get people to leave their house to go out, to spend a day protesting in the streets when you know there's all kinds of other things they could do with their time, well that's an awesome indicator that they're going to go out and vote in those midterms and encourage other people to do the same. So that's what's going on. 

I mean, you can idealize it any way you want to, but what it really is is genius voter mobilization.

MAST: Well, Hunter Baker is a WORLD Opinions Contributor and provost at North Greenville University. 

Thank you so much, Hunter.

BAKER: Thank you.

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