UNBIASED - UNBIASED Politics (1/27/25): 900+ ICE Arrests in ONE Day, the Birthright Citizenship Debate, Trump Weighs Eliminating FEMA, Colombia Allows Deportation Flights After Tariff Threat, and More.

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

Get the facts, without the spin. UNBIASED offers a clear, impartial recap of US news, including politics, elections, legal news, and more. Hosted by lawyer Jordan Berman, each episode provides a recap of current political events plus breakdowns of complex concepts—like constitutional rights, recent Supreme Court rulings, and new legislation—in an easy-to-understand way. No personal opinions, just the facts you need to stay informed on the daily news that matters. If you miss how journalism used to be, you're in the right place. In today's episode: The Birthright Citizenship Debate and Trump's Order (0:53) Trump Dismisses Inspectors General. Is He Allowed? (10:21) Colombia Allows Deportation Flights from US After Trump Threatens Tariffs (14:27) ICE Arrests 2,600+ in One Week (17:30) Border Agent Shot and Killed By Washington State Woman. Here's What the FBI Affidavit Says (20:27) Trump Creates FEMA Review Council; Weighs Eliminating It Completely... Can He? (23:23) DOJ's Civil Rights Division Announces Pause on All Pending Litigation Per Internal Memo (26:21) Quick Hitters: Chicago School Mistakes Secret Service for ICE, CIA Releases COVID Origins Report, Dept. of Education Dismisses All Book Ban Complaints, Senate Confirms Pete Hegseth (29:00) Critical Thinking Segment (32:15) Listen/Watch this episode AD-FREE on Patreon. Watch this episode on YouTube. Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok. All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And before we get into the news, I do just want to give you a few reminders related to the show. Number one, this show is available on YouTube in video format So if you're someone who prefers to watch rather than listen It is on YouTube for you and to the podcast is also available ad free on patreon So if you'd rather listen to the show without ads patreon may be the place for you It's 699 a month and you get access to all of the episodes completely ad free. So I just

wanted to note those couple of things. By the way, I will also say links to both the YouTube and the Patreon can always be found in each episode description. So with those things out of the way, let's talk about some news, shall we? I want to start off with an update to last week's birthright citizenship story because I think I need to clarify the issue a little bit. So as I've discussed, President Trump signed an order attempting to end birthright citizenship. Specifically, his order says that if the mother of a baby born on US soil is a permanent resident or US citizen, that baby can gain citizenship upon birth regardless of the father's legal status. But if the mother of a baby born on US soil is either here illegally or here legally but temporarily, like on a visa, then the father must be either a US citizen

or a lawful permanent resident for the baby to gain citizenship upon birth. So one parent has to either be a permanent resident or a US citizen. But at the end of last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked the order, calling it unconstitutional. Now this block is a temporary block. So the judge has not heard arguments in the case,

nor has he made a final decision, which will ultimately be appealable when he finally does. But in some cases like this one, a judge will enter what's called a temporary injunction, which blocks a party from doing something while the case is still pending. And to do that, to issue a temporary injunction, a judge has to find four things to be true. So number one, the party that brought the lawsuit has a likelihood of winning the case once arguments are heard. Two, if the judge doesn't issue the injunction,

there is a likelihood of irreparable harm. Three, the balance of equities tip in the favor of the party bringing the lawsuit. And four, an injunction would be in the public's interest. So the judge answered all of those questions in the affirmative and issued that temporary injunction for the next two weeks while the legal proceedings play out. Notably, Trump's order wasn't supposed to take effect until February 19th anyway, so there will have to be another injunction issued if the judge wants to continue blocking the order's

enforcement once the current injunction expires. Also worth noting, Trump's order does not have retroactive effect, so if it is enforced at some point, it would only apply to those babies born after the effective date of the order. What I want to clarify more so though is the arguments on both sides of birthright citizenship because last week I kind of made it sound as if this was just a blatantly unconstitutional order, which is actually what the judge called it, but as we know nothing is ever black and white in the law. So this entire issue boils down to the text of the 14th Amendment. What it says is that all people born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. Well, the question is, what does subject

to the jurisdiction thereof mean. Trump's administration argues that someone is only subject to the jurisdiction of the United States if one of their parents is either a permanent resident or US citizen themselves and that those here illegally are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States are instead subject to the jurisdiction of the foreign country in which they are from and therefore their babies are or should not be granted automatic citizenship upon birth. The plaintiffs on the other hand, so the ones challenging Trump's executive order, argue that as long as you are present on US soil, you are subject to the jurisdiction of the

United States. So it doesn't matter if you or your husband or whoever you're having this child with are lawful residents or not, permanent residents or not, US citizens or not. As long as you are on US soil, then you are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. And therefore, any child you have should automatically be granted citizenship upon birth per the birthright citizenship policy. Now if we look way back into the history of US law, we have one old law and one old case that we can look to. The case is from 1898. It's called Kim Wong Arc and it was a decision by the Supreme Court, which we

have talked about before, but I want to go a little bit more into the details of that case. In the case, Arc was born in San Francisco to parents that were Chinese citizens, but permanent residents of the United States. At some point, the parents moved back to China years after Arc was born and Arc went to visit them. When Arc tried to come back to the United States, he was denied entry because he allegedly wasn't a U.S. citizen. So Arc went to court. And ultimately, the question came down to whether a child born in the U.S. to parents of Chinese descent who at the time of his birth are still citizens of China but have a permanent residence in the United States and are not working for the Chinese government in any capacity becomes a U.S. citizen at the time

of birth. Now the justices in finding that Arc was entitled to citizenship relied on a law known as the Civil Rights Act of 1866 which says that all people born in the U.S. who are not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are citizens of the United States. And Justice Gray wrote in that opinion, in the ARC opinion, that the 14th Amendment, which came after the Civil Rights Act of 1866, two years after, in fact — that the 14th Amendment confirmed the rule of citizenship by birth within the U.S., including children born here to resident aliens. The decision then goes on to say that the 14th Amendment, in clear words, includes children

born in the U.S. regardless of race or color, so long as the parents are domiciled within the US. Continuing, it says every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection and, consequently, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. So the question then becomes, what did the court mean by domiciled? Because we know that Ark's parents had permanent residency at the time of Arc's birth in the United States. So does that mean that we should take domiciled to mean permanent residency?

The legal dictionary considers a domiciled to be a place where a person has been physically present and where that person considers home, or a person's true fixed principal and permanent home to which that person intends to return and remain even though currently living somewhere else. So those are kind of two different definitions, right? When you're a permanent resident here, that doesn't necessarily match up with the legal definition of domicile. So this will be one question for the courts to look at.

What is a domicile and are all people domiciled in the U.S. regardless of citizenship status subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and therefore their children are entitled to citizenship upon birth? Another issue the court might consider is immigration generally and how it's evolved over time, right? So what we think of today as illegal immigration didn't exist at the magnitude then that it exists today.

In fact, it wasn't until 1929, roughly 30 years after the Arc case, that it became a crime to cross the southern border illegally. However, at the time of the Arc case, Asian immigrants were the first group of people to be seen as illegal immigrants, so it is possible that the Supreme Court in issuing the Arc decision did have illegal immigration in mind and yet still ruled the way it did. But my point here is that the issue is not black and white. Nothing in the law ever is. So hopefully that gives you a little more insight as to what the current fight is about and what the arguments are on both sides. And then the final thing that I want to address is the idea that Trump cannot change the Constitution via executive order, right?

So this is something we've seen since this birthright citizenship order that he issued, and that is that he can't change the constitution unilaterally via executive order. So I want you to keep in mind that Trump's order isn't changing the constitution, right? The order doesn't say, I hereby amend the 14th Amendment to say blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Instead, what he's doing is he's instructing his executive branch to not recognize certain individuals as citizens if they don't meet certain criteria. So what will happen is it will be up to the courts to interpret the law, to interpret the 14th amendment, and determine which interpretation of the law is correct. Is the right interpretation that all individuals born on US soil are automatically entitled to citizenship, or is the right interpretation that only those born on US soil are automatically entitled to citizenship or is the right interpretation that only those born on US soil to a permanent resident or US citizen automatically entitled

to citizenship. So Trump's order isn't changing the constitution per se, but rather teeing up a constitutional interpretation by the courts. But that's what I'll say about the story for now. We will actually return to this issue in today's critical thinking segment. But for now, let's move on to our second story. Late Friday night, President Trump fired between 12 and 18 independent inspectors general

at various government agencies. So what does this mean and how is he allowed to do that? Let's talk about it. First, let's talk about what an inspector general is. So an inspector general is generally responsible for finding waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct in the federal agencies. Kind of what the Department of Government Efficiency is being set up to do, but inspectors general are actually appointed and confirmed to their role and work within the government,

right? So DOJ is an external, it's not a federal agency, it's an external agency, and DOJ is more so about government waste, fraud, and abuse, not as much misconduct like the inspector general role is. In fact, the role of the modern day inspector general dates back to post Watergate

when Congress set up offices inside agencies as an independent check against mismanagement and the abuse of power. But the thing with inspectors general is that even though they are technically independent, meaning the agencies that they work within can't prevent them from conducting an audit or an investigation of that agency, they're still under the general supervision of the agency. So the role is a bit tangled. For the most part though, IGs or Inspectors General will look at problems within agencies

and determine possible solutions and they'll issue reports that sort of lay out what they found and how they recommend fixing whatever issues they came across. So the dismissals that Trump made were on Friday night via emails from the White House presidential personnel office and included IGs at the departments of state, agriculture, interior, transportation, housing and urban development, education, labor and defense, the small business administration, the Department of Energy, and the EPA. It's being reported that the IGs at the DOJ Office of Personnel Management, the FCC, and

the Department of Homeland Security are some of those that are still in their positions. Now, legally, the issue is whether the dismissals are permissible or whether Congress was required to receive a 30-day notice prior to these dismissals are permissible or whether Congress was required to receive a 30-day notice prior to these dismissals taking effect. Specifically, the Inspector General Act of 1978, as it's amended, says that an inspector general may be removed from office by the president and if that happens, the president shall communicate in writing for the reason or should communicate in writing the reasons for the removal to both houses of Congress

not later than 30 days before the removal. With that in mind, I'm almost certain that the findings that the firings will be challenged by at least some of the IGs that were removed and we'll have to see whether those removals are permissible. But keep in mind too that Trump could, you know, IGs that were removed and we'll have to see whether those removals are permissible. But keep in mind too that Trump could, you know, today, tomorrow, whenever, provide notification to Congress and then the removals would take effect 30 days from whenever that notice was

given regardless of whether the firings are challenged in court. So we'll see, we'll have to see how this takes shape, but that's what it's looking like as of now. Let's take our first break here because we still have a we'll have to see how this takes shape, but that's what it's looking like as of now. Let's take our first break here because we still have a ton to get to. So when was the last time you really probably should have gone to a doctor, but for one reason or another, you just didn't go.

Maybe you were too busy, maybe you thought, eh, probably not a big deal. It'll resolve itself, no need. My personal go-to excuse is, ugh, I just don't even know how to go about finding a good doctor, let alone one that's in my network. And I'm confident many of you have even repeated those exact words at some point,

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a better investor. It's time to get the financial future you deserve. Get yours, Questrade. Okay, welcome back. And let me just say quickly, I know it's not ideal to interrupt the show like that, but the reality is I actually would not be able to do this if I didn't have those sponsors. So it's critical that we take those breaks. And I really do try my best to only allow sponsors that either I love or I think you'll

love. So just know whenever you hear my voice reading ads, I carefully selected those partners myself. My network actually jokes with me all the time about how picky I am, but I always just tell them I'd rather be picky than be one of those podcasts that just takes any sponsor that comes my way because I do care a lot about keeping things authentic and genuine and maintaining our trust. So thank you again for dealing with those ads. And with that, let's move on to the next story. The Colombian government has now said it will allow US military flights carrying deported migrants to land in Colombia after Colombia's President Petro and President

Trump threatened tariffs against one another. So this was a big back and forth. Let's take it one step at a time. On Sunday, two US military planes carrying illegal immigrants were sent to Columbia where the immigrants are originally from. The planes reportedly had authorization to land in Columbia, but that authorization was revoked mid-flight with Petro saying that the deportees must be treated with dignity and respect, that the US can't treat Colombian migrants like criminals, and that he was ready

to send the presidential plane to transport them. Now his main issue was with the way they were being deported. So keep in mind, these deportation flights are not new. Colombia has accepted these kinds of flights in the past. Last year, Colombia accepted 124 deportation flights. The difference this time was that they were being sent back to Colombia on military flights and not civilian flights and that when

Brazilian deportees were sent back to Brazil from the US on military planes they were handcuffed and so Petra was just saying he wouldn't allow that for his people. But regardless the revocation of authorization led Trump to announce a travel ban and immediate visa revocations on Colombian government officials and their supporters, visa sanctions on all party members, family members, and supporters of the Colombian government, enhanced customs and border protection inspections of all Colombian nationals and cargo, treasury banking and financial sanctions, and a 25% tariff on all goods entering the

US from Colombia, which would rise to 50% after one week. Petro then responded in his own social media post that he would match any US imposed tariffs. Then, in the middle of the night, Colombia's foreign minister announced that the two countries had overcome the impasse and that Colombia would accept the returned citizens. The foreign minister also said that the country agreed to all of President Trump's terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of immigrants who entered the US illegally. The White House said in its own statement, quote, today's events make clear to the world that America is respected again. President Trump will

continue to fiercely protect our nation's sovereignty, and he expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting the deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States." End quote. And by the way, in addition to Colombia, China has also agreed to accept deportation flights of Chinese citizens from the US and El Salvador is currently in talks with the US to allow deportation flights as well. The plan between El Salvador and the United States is called the Safe Third Country Agreement and it would allow migrants not just from El Salvador but also other countries like Venezuela to be flown there.

Okay, let's now move on to the next story, which is another immigration related story, and that is the ICE arrests that have been happening throughout the last week or so. As we know, immigration enforcement has been underway in many major cities like Miami, Boston, New York City, Chicago, and others. Yesterday, ICE announced that they made 956 arrests

in one day, the most single day arrests in one day since Trump took office last week. To put that number into perspective, under the Biden administration, ICE reports show the average number of daily arrests last year of non-citizens with criminal convictions or pending charges was about 311. Now whether all 956 arrests made yesterday were of illegal immigrants with criminal convictions

or pending charges remains to be seen. That's just the total number of arrests being reported. Something to keep in mind before we talk more numbers is that there is a difference between arrests and what are called detainers lodged. So as you'll see in a minute when I break down these numbers, some of the numbers will be arrests, others will be detainers lodged. Arrests are made on the streets, whereas detainers lodged are requests that ICE submits to jails, prisons, or other confinement facilities for those facilities to release individuals in custody for the purpose of removing them from the

country. The agents first have to establish probable cause that a person is removable before a confinement facility will release the person. And ICE typically issues detainers against people who have been convicted of crimes like burglary and robbery, kidnapping, homicide, sexual assault, weapons offenses, drug trafficking, and human trafficking. So since the 20th, when Trump took office through yesterday, there have been more than 2,600 arrests and more than 1,700 detainers lodged. Most of those individuals had criminal records, but some did not. We do not know exact numbers for those that have criminal records and those

that did not. And I do just want to say just for clarity's sake, when I say criminal records, I mean they've been arrested for something and have charges on their record. So yes, entering the country without legal authorization is in itself a crime in the United States and therefore makes anyone who entered the country without legal authorization a criminal by law because they broke the law. But when I say criminal record when I reference these numbers, I'm talking about those that have a record with charges outside of just entering the country unlawfully. Keep in mind though, official government data reports have not yet been released, so these

numbers that we're talking about are all from government officials, ICE agents, and they are subject to change once the official government data is released. Moving on, speaking of borders, last week I talked about a Border Patrol agent who was fatally shot near the US-Canada border, but at the time we didn't have many details. Now we do, so here is what we know. A 21-year-old woman from Washington State has now been charged with fatally shooting Border Patrol agent David Milland. Authorities had apparently been keeping an eye on this woman and her male companion in the days leading up to the shooting after an employee at a hotel where the two were staying reported concerns after seeing the woman openly carrying a gun

and both the woman and man wearing black tactical gear. Investigators with BSP and Homeland Security Investigations attempted to initiate a consensual conversation with the couple, but after saying they were in the area to look at buying property, they declined to have an extended conversation. They then checked out of the hotel that they were staying in. According to an FBI affidavit, five days after that initial report from the hotel employee and one day before the shooting at the border, the couple was spotted in downtown Newport, Vermont, wearing similar tactical attire and again carrying a handgun, which is legal in Vermont. The next day, investigators watched the man exit a Walmart with two packages of aluminum foil

and then proceed to wrap unidentifiable objects while seated in the passenger seat of the car. Two hours after that, Border Patrol agents pulled the couple over to conduct an immigration inspection on I-91 in Vermont, and the woman who had been driving the car got out and opened fire on Maland and the other officers. The man who was seated in the passenger seat also tried to draw a gun, but he was shot and killed by officers on scene. At least one border agent fired on the woman, but she did survive and she is currently in a hospital receiving treatment. During a search of the car after the shootout, authorities found cell phones

wrapped in foil, a ballistic helmet, night vision goggles, respirators, ammunition, a package of shooting range targets including some that had already been used, two-way radios, travel and lodging information for multiple states, an apparent journal, and about a dozen electronic devices. So the male suspect is dead but the woman is facing two charges currently, one for using a deadly weapon while forcibly resisting or interfering with Border Patrol agents and using and discharging the firearm in relation to the assault with a deadly weapon. According to the Seattle Times, the woman's parents had called the cops back in May to report her missing. They apparently feared that she was in a controlling relationship

and not allowed to contact friends or family. The newspaper also reported that she had packed her belongings, including her passport and medical records, and sent a goodbye email to her loved ones claiming she had moved in with a friend and changed her phone number. Keep in mind though that all of that information is reported and not confirmed, so take that with a grain of salt for now. Switching gears a bit, let's now talk about Trump's comments about eliminating FEMA because many of you actually reached out about this one. You wanted me to provide some context and clarity, so let's do it.

Over the weekend, Trump was in Asheville, which is one of the towns that got hit hard by Hurricane Helene, and he said, quote, we're going to be doing something on FEMA that I think most people agree. I'd like to see the states take care of disasters. Let the state take care of the tornadoes and the hurricanes and all of the other things that happen." Later at that same event, he said, I'll also be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA. He also said, I think we're going to recommend that FEMA go away and we pay directly a percentage to the state. Now, these statements come after FEMA has

received a ton of criticism in the wake of Hurricane Helene's damage. FEMA had run out of money and there was a lot of controversy over whether FEMA paid money to support illegal immigrants, which I cleared up back when all of that was happening. But this to say that FEMA's been under fire. So FEMA, which stands for Federal Emergency Management Agency, is part of the Department of Homeland Security, and they're given an operating budget and disaster relief fund by Congress every year. Under federal law, though, Trump cannot unilaterally eliminate FEMA via an executive order. To do so, Congress would need to grant him the authority under what's called the Presidential Reorganization Act.

However, it's also worth mentioning that after Trump's visit to Asheville, he did sign an executive order as he said he was going to do and that executive order creates or created a FEMA review council. So at least as of now, it doesn't seem like he's planning on eliminating FEMA, but perhaps that changes once the council conducts the review. What Friday's executive order did specifically is it established this council, which consists of a maximum of 20 members,

and it is co-chaired by the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Defense. And the role of the council is to look into FEMA's operations and assess whether FEMA is capable of impartially addressing disasters that occur within the United States and then subsequently advise the president on all recommended changes to FEMA to best serve the national interest. So perhaps once this council looks into FEMA further, depending on what they advise the president, that's when we would know whether Trump actually wants to move forward with eliminating FEMA or whether he'll just push instead for some reforms.

But again, the president cannot unilaterally eliminate FEMA without Congress granting him the authority to do so, and if FEMA was eventually eliminated, the disaster relief funding would instead just go directly to the states. Okay, so let's take our second and final break here. When we come back, we will talk about the pause on civil rights litigation. We'll do some quick hitters and critical thinking. Moving on, the DOJ has apparently ordered its civil rights division to pause ongoing litigation left over from the Biden administration

and to not pursue any new cases. Why do I say apparently? Because this is from a report of this internal memo which has not been released to the public, so I have not personally reviewed it. That's not to say it's not true, it's just to say that what I'm about to tell you is based off of reports and nothing that I have been able to personally confirm through reading it myself.

So here's what I can say. The Civil Rights Division is an office within the DOJ that's responsible for enforcing federal laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, disability, religion, etc. Reportedly, the memo said that this pause is necessary to ensure that the federal government speaks with one voice in its view of the law and to ensure that the president's appointees or designees have the opportunity to decide whether to initiate new cases. In other words, President Trump wants his administration to handle these cases in the

way that his administration sees fit and not in the way the Biden administration would have. Since that presidential transition is still ongoing and Trump doesn't have all of his picks in place yet, he essentially wants to pause litigation until his administration can fully take over. He did something similar with the Department of Health and Human Services, which we talked about last week. And I'm not, you know, I don't say that to jump to conclusions about what the administration is trying to do here. It's just based on what the reports are saying about the language contained in the memo. That's, you know, that's what one would believe. So reports on the memo are also saying that it said the new administration may wish to reconsider settlements or agreements to reform police agencies, which were finalized by the Biden administration within the last 90 days. Those settlements include

the agreement reached with the Minneapolis City Council earlier this month to overhaul the city's police training and use of force policies after the 2020 death of George Floyd, the agreement with Louisville to reform the city's police force following investigations after the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor in 2020 and police treatment of protesters. However, I will say if those settlements have already been finalized, it's unclear whether the administration would actually be able to reconsider even if they wish to do so, because usually once settlements are finalized, they're final, there's no going back. We don't know how long this litigation freeze will last, but most likely it'll

last until at least Trump's pick to lead the Civil Rights Division is confirmed by the Senate. So that is what we know there. And now we can finish with some quick hitters. Starting with some confusion at a Chicago public school on Friday at a press conference on Friday, and in light of the increased immigration enforcement, Chicago public schools said ICE agents showed up at an elementary school in the city but were denied entry due to school protocol that does not allow ICE agents in the buildings unless a warrant is present. However, later that day, the Secret Service said that its agents were the ones that visited the school, but didn't give much detail other than that the visit

was regarding a threat to an individual it protects in relation to the recent TikTok ban. A spokesperson for ICE similarly said that the encounter at the school was not a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement encounter, like Chicago Public Schools had stated. As of now, there have been no other reports of ICE agents showing up at schools. And a new CIA analysis released over the weekend says that the COVID pandemic more likely started with a lab leak rather than from animals.

This assessment was made with low confidence, and the agency said that it continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios remain plausible. The CIA had been saying for years that it could not conclude the origins of the pandemic, but in the final weeks of Biden's presidency, former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan ordered a new review. The decision to release the new review was made by the new Trump-appointed CIA director John Ratcliffe. And with this new report, the CIA now joins other agencies like the FBI and Energy Department

in believing that the pandemic likely came from a lab leak and not an animal. However, one thing the FBI and Energy Department disagree on is which labs they think started the leak. A Chinese official says the CIA's new assessment is extremely unlikely and that it has been widely recognized by the international community that the virus originated naturally. The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights dismissed 11 complaints related to book bans on Friday. The department wrote in a press release that the Office for Civil Rights has rescinded all department guidance issued under the theory that a school district's removal of age-inappropriate

books from its libraries may violate civil rights laws. The release also said that the OCR is dismissing six additional pending allegations of book banning and will no longer employ a book ban coordinator, which was a position created by the Biden administration in 2023 to investigate local school districts and parents working to protect students from obscene content. And finally, on Friday, the Senate confirmed Trump's pick for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

The vote was a narrow one, with Vice President Vance having to fly in for the tiebreaker as president of the Senate. One thing to keep in mind here is that the vice president is the president of the Senate by virtue of their office, which means that the vice president can cast a tie-breaking vote if the Senate is equally divided. So the Senate has a hundred members, two for each state, but that means sometimes the Senate vote can end up being 50-50. That's when the vice president, acting as the president of the Senate, would come in and 50-50. That's when the Vice President, acting as the President of the Senate, would come in and cast the tie-breaking vote like Vance did here.

Okay, let's now finish with some critical thinking. For those that might be new here, these critical thinking segments are just meant to jog our brains a bit in a world where we're constantly, you know, being told what and how to think, this segment is just meant to present you with some questions that allow you to tap into your own thought process, reflect on some of your own beliefs, and challenge yourself to think in new ways as well. So for today's segment let's revisit that birthright citizenship debate. As we know the big debate is the meaning of the phrase subject to the jurisdiction thereof. On one hand you have the argument phrase subject to the jurisdiction thereof. On one hand,

you have the argument that subject to the jurisdiction thereof refers to those with complete allegiance to the United States, so this would not include people that are subject to foreign governments. And on the other hand, you have the argument that the phrase applies more broadly to anyone subject to US laws, which would include almost everyone on US soil, except in narrow circumstances like foreign diplomats. Opponents of the birthright citizenship policy as it exists today argue that it incentivizes illegal immigration, some even refer to it as birth-tourism, and opponents believe that

ending this birthright citizenship policy would strengthen border security, reduce misuse of social services, and ensure that citizenship is connected with deeper ties to the country like legal residence. On the other side, supporters of birthright citizenship believe it is a constitutional right which reflects American values of inclusivity and equality. Supporters argue that removing it would lead to a rise in stateless children, increase inequality, and further marginalize immigrant families.

So with all of this in mind, give some thought to the following questions. First, this is my usual first question, what is your initial thought process when it comes to birthright citizenship? Are you quicker to align with one side over the other, and which side is it and why? It's always important to check in on those initial thoughts, but then go a little deeper. quicker to align with one side over the other and which side is it and why.

It's always important to check in on those initial thoughts, but then go a little deeper. So now ask yourself about the following hypotheticals. In the first hypothetical, a man and a woman have a baby. They met in the United States while attending the same graduate school on student visas. They're both still in graduate school when they have their child, but both have plans to eventually gain citizenship in the United States and start their lives here together. Should their child be granted citizenship upon birth? Why or why not? And don't just settle on an easy answer, really think about it. In the second hypothetical, a couple crossed over the southern border

between lawful ports of entry, so they did not come in legally. They think that they'll have a better life in the United States. Four months after entering the United States, the woman gives birth. Should that child be granted citizenship upon birth? Why or why not? Now, regardless of whether your answers are the same or different, depending on the hypothetical, I want you to ask yourself why your answers are what they are. Why do you have the same answer regardless of circumstance or why do you have different answers depending on the circumstance? Does your thought process tie back to the subject, to the jurisdiction thereof debate

or are you focusing on something else? And then as always, try to challenge yourself a little bit, right? Try to formulate arguments for the other side as well. So if you think those children should not gain citizenship upon birth, try to come up with an argument as to why they should and vice versa. I know that that was a lot,

but feel free to rewind and play again. This is what the podcast is here for. You can listen at any time, literally anytime you want. So just give it some thoughts, see what listen at any time, literally anytime you want. So just, you know, give it some thoughts, see what you come up with, get creative, and that's what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. As always, have a fantastic next couple of days and I will talk to you again on Thursday.