Birthright citizenship oral arguments: This morning, 7 a.m. Pacific Time.

Dred Scott

Wong Kim Arc

Let's pretend for a minute that President Trump operates with care and foresight. 
What is he thinking?

He insults the Supreme Court in a long Truth Social post, a portion of which reads:

The supreme court (will be using lower case letters for a while based on a complete lack of respect!) of the United States accidentally and unwittingly gave me, as President of the United States, far more powers and strength than I had prior to their ridiculous, dumb, and very internationally divisive ruling. . . . Our incompetent supreme court did a great job for the wrong people, and for that they should be ashamed of themselves (but not the Great Three!). The next thing you know they will rule in favor of China and others, who are making an absolute fortune on Birthright Citizenship, by saying the 14th Amendment was NOT written to take care of the “babies of slaves,” . . .

Feb 23, 2026, 4:06 AM

Trump is attending the oral argument to watch the oral argument and look the judges square in the eyes.  

If the Court sides with Trump and ends birthright citizenship, about 200,000 babies a year born in the U.S. would be be non-citizens. It would re-establish chronic second-class status for them. It would create complications and ambiguity for every baby born in the U.S. because every baby's status would be contingent on the parents' status, requiring proof of lawful citizenship by the mother or proof of both paternity and lawful citizenship by the father. As we saw in the Barack Obama "birther" controversy, even in a case where a baby is born in a U.S. hospital in Hawaii, with multiple witnesses to the birth and birth-notice announcements by two newspapers, a persistent troll with nefarious motives can make persistent accusations and put into question a person's status. 
Maybe there is method in Trump's behavior.
Trump is collecting on a favor. He has no respect for the Court as an impartial referee of the law. He presumes the Court is part of the network of crony corruption in which favors and debts are rewarded and paid, equivalent to the one billion dollar deal with campaign contributors in the oil industry. Everything is a deal. Friends help friends. Three justices owe him big time. 

Pressure might work. Trump may presume that high visibility cases like this, the results aren't about the law. They are entirely political decisions, with the six Republican-appointed justices making a decision weighing their partisan interest in helping the GOP and their own personal benefit or cost as they carry out that policy goal. They are politicians in robes. Trump is showing he can be naughty or nice, depending on what they do. Trump's performance is primarily directed at the three members of the court that he appointed.  He is showing the justices the sweet kiss of approval or the angry fist of disapproval.

Making a show for MAGA. Maybe this is the equivalent of a dramatic flop by a basketball player who wants to exaggerate a purported foul. Trump knows he is going to lose on the case's merits, so he is showing he did everything possible to try to win. MAGA voters care about this issue. They sincerely feel that Latin American, African, Asian, and Middle Eastern immigrants are profoundly "other" and should be excluded from citizenship. After all, "They eat our dogs, they eat our cats." Trump understands that his brand is to be a winner in negotiations. A loss needs an external explanation, and he provides one: betrayal by corrupt, stupid judges. 

Just careless 4 a.m. venting.  The premise of this blog's headline is that Trump knows what he is doing. But maybe the premise is profoundly wrong.  He was awake at 3 a.m. or earlier, stewing, and maybe he simply wrote a stream of consciousness post of resentment and rage, full of sound and fury signifying nothing, and impulsively pushed POST at 4:06 a.m. No need to overthink this. Trump certainly doesn't.

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The rich get richer.

Democratic candidates are raising the issue of income distribution. The richest are getting even richer. The rest are gettting left behind.

Wealth is going to capital, not humans doing the work.

All of the Democratic candidates for Congress in Oregon's bright-red 2nd District advocate for greater fairness in government. Two of them put income distribution and fair wages at the top of their lists.

Chris Beck, a former three-term state legislator who worked for former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber (D), and President Barack Obama, begins his website with these words:

It's no secret that we live in an era dominated by an extraordinary wealth gap separating a small group of American family dynasties and corporations from those of us who make up 99% of the U.S. population. It's the root cause of so many issues that plague our society. . . .

Rebecca Mueller, a Medford pediatrician, begins by saying her campaign is focusing on the issues of health care and fair wages. 

The income and wealth gap is a top one for Democrats. Something is wrong with the way our economy is working. People who own investment assets are doing very well. People who are living off earned income are not.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich writes about the problem repeatedly in his Substack newsletter:

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) made the argument with uncommon eloquence in a campaign speech in August, 2011:

I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.' No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

When Obama echoed the comment, Republicans mocked him and had a full day of speeches at the Republican National Convention on the theme of "Yes, you did build it," all by yourself.

My cohort of Baby Boomers grew up in a special moment: postwar America. The ethos of the time was recognition of shared effort and shared sacrifice. Pitching in and doing one's part wasn't being a sucker; it was doing the right thing. 

Movies of the postwar era describe it. The narrative takes a turn in the movie The Best Years of Our Lives, when a banker appeals to a loan board ,saying that a veteran without financial collateral had something better, proven character. We saw an actor with missing arms. That is sacrifice. The Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed characters in It's a Wonderful Life tried to compensate for being unable to serve in the military with service to their community. 

The movies seem sappy and sentimental now because the zeitgeist has changed from "commonwealth" to zero-sum, dog-eat-dog competition, and me-first. Trump exemplifies and amplifies our era.

The strongest argument for a rebalance of national incomes, is that it is fair: Everyone contributes in one way or another. Perhaps as a solder, as a neighbor, as a fellow-citizen, as part of the workforce,  as a consumer, or as a person whose work product was swept up for free and became part of the data that informs artificial intelligence. Andrew Yang, briefly a candidate for president in 2020, made that argument in proposing a universal basic income. He said that every American, without compensation, provided the data and network-effect that makes our technology companies trillion-dollar enterprises. Citizens should be compensated for that, with the income spread equally and circulated. It would replace poverty programs.

That would be the carrot. 

There is a stick, too. Left-wing, redistributionist revolutions happen when societies hit a breaking point, when wealth is concentrated among too few oligarchs, aristocrats, and cronies. Desperate people take action if they feel they haven't got a shot at the life they want. Before Alexander Hamilton helped create a new country, he participated in a revolution.

I am not throwin' away my shot
I am not throwin' away my shot
I'm just like my country
I'm young, scrappy and hungry
And I'm not throwin' away my shot

The 2nd District's incumbent U.S. Representative, Republican Cliff Bentz, voted for the "Big Beautiful Bill." It perpetuated tax cuts for billionaires. About 70 percent of Americans tell pollsters that they support higher taxes on billionaires, and about 85 percent of Americans tell pollsters they have contempt for Congress. Possibly no Democrat can win in this district, but this is an opportunity. Frustrated voters may not feel that postwar common interest with fellow citizens, but this you're-on-your-own sentiment feeds an opposite emotion, resentment within the polity. 

Trump exploits that, pointing to immigrants and the poor, and calls them leeches. Democrats can return the favor by pointing to the crony capitalism of exploitive billionaires. The billionaires are flagrant about it their new wealth and influence. The huge judgment against Facebook shows that juries are ready to punish them. Democrats can use a proven slogan: Drain the swamp.

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This isn't a holy war.

The U.S. war with Iran has strong defenders. 

They say we need to destroy Iran because they are Muslim and trying to conquer the world for Allah. The war is self-defense for Jews and Christians.

Morning, January 6, 2021

One commenter to this blog made that case, quoting the founder of the Iranian regime:

“We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”
― Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

The commenter said that a statement like that justifies treating Iran as a life-or-death threat: 

These are the words of a jihadist Islamic death cult that thinks it will ultimately triumph because it loves death more than we love life. An ideology like that in possession of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, capable of carrying them is an unacceptable threat to the entire world.

There are good reasons for Iranians to be profoundly angry with the USA. Claiming a religious purpose is standard operating procedure. More plausible to me is lingering anger for the coup we arranged in 1953. We made an enemy. We removed a government that intended to use Iranian oil resources for the benefit of the Iranian people. We installed instead a government of our choice that offered their oil to the West on the cheap.

How seriously should Westerners take the Ayatollah's language? Isn't he justifying holy war? Surely that is reason to fear and hate them.

Maybe not. I dismiss that kind of talk, just as I would hope Muslims dismiss it when coming from the West. There is no difficulty finding Jews and Christians with words of murderous intent.

The words aren't by a former political leader. These are a command from God Himself in a sacred text that Americans hold when taking the oath of office. Deuteronomy 20 reads:

However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.

Pretty rough stuff. A Muslim might read this and believe genocide is central to Judeo-Christian belief. 

A person who discounts scripture as out of date might look at this month's statements by the U.S. secretary of defense at a prayer service at the Pentagon. Pete Hegseth weaved in and out of scripture references as he prayed:

Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle, you who stirred the nations from the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell, behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous. Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the wicked plans, and break the teeth of the ungodly. By the blast of your anger, let the evil perish. Let their bulls go down to slaughter for their day has come, the time of their punishment. Pour out your wrath upon those who plot vain things and blow them away like chaff before the wind.

I consider language like this in a public building to be unconstitutional and blasphemous. I wish Christians would condemn linking U.S. warmaking and Christ, but I have not seen much of it from American Jews and Christians. The Pope condemned it from Rome, saying that "God cannot be enlisted in darkness."

Americans should not over-react to language coming out of Iran that calls for "Death to America." Nor should we treat seriously as holy war Hegseth's prayer. It is political claptrap.

The war won't end when the "evil perish" and Iranian "teeth are broken," nor will it end when Iran imposes Sharia Law on Americans. It will end with a negotiated peace in which Iran's interest in believing its boundaries and sovereignty are protected. It will end when the Trump succeeds in giving Bibi Netanyahu whatever foreign policy victory he needs to keep Israel's justice system from putting him in prison, in which case in gratitude to the U.S. he will praise Trump effusively for his "heroic actions." Hail Trump!

The seeds to end of the war are planted. Iran showed they have a weapon that survives a first strike. They can put bombs on oil infrastructure and close the Strait of Hormuz, throwing regional and Western rivals into an economic chaos. It is a security backstop they possess as a future threat and warning against American and regional rivals. It is a threat they can keep in the background, but not use, rather like our nuclear weapons. Iran doesn't need a nuclear weapon. They have mines, drones, and bombs that can reach vulnerable targets. Israel has nuclear weapons that can hit Tehran. It is the stability of the modern world: mutually assured destruction.

Citizens should pay attention to what each side needs for peace, not the holy war comments of an Ayatollah or secretary of defense. The war will end when Netanyahu and Trump can bask in glory over something. 

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Easy Sunday: A feel-good Saturday protest.

"Slow down, you move too fast
You got to make the morning last
Just kicking down the cobblestones
Looking for fun and feeling groovy
Ba da-da da-da da-da, feeling groovy"
        Paul Simon, "59th Street Bridge Song," 1966

It was a lovely spring day. People made signs and stood on the sidewalk. We mingled and smiled and encouraged one another. It had a party atmosphere, a mix of Halloween and a high school sock-hop, people having fun.

I overthink things. Later, in the quiet after the event, I got nagging worries. Who was there? Or, more important, who wasn't there?

Young people.

The attendees skewed old, toward boomers. There was a mix, with the occasional young family, but I saw very few teens, college students or even people in their 30s and 40s and (young to me) 50s. 

That's a worry. Is it possible that people who have come of age in the Trump era see today's politics as so hopeless and disgusting and crass and corrupt that nothing does any good, and they should just ignore the whole thing and get back to their jobs or their phone screens? 

I took photos mostly of signs, but also captured who held them.

 

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Goal: "Telling Democrats what they need to do to win elections."

We hear it all the time: 

Insanity is doing the same thing but expecting a different result.

 A news and opinion organization with a Substack audience just shut down. The Liberal Patriot described a direction for Democratic policies, ones that would let them win elections again. How? By advocating policies that a vast majority of Americans agreed with. 

Simple: yes. Easy: no. 

Key Democratic policy groups have a religious-like faith that they are on the "right side of history" and that it is virtuous to ignore electoral signals sent by voters. 

The Liberal Patriot ceased publication with this:

This is The Liberal Patriot’s final post. We tried our best to make a non-profit media model work with entirely free analysis and commentary published throughout our existence. But it turns out upsetting the partisan applecart on multiple issues is not a particularly good fundraising or business model.

I share the policy direction and goal of The Liberal Patriot writers. A friend and reader, Herb Rothschild, suggested a description of this blog to use in a banner ad: "Telling Democrats what they need to do to win elections." That is what The Liberal Patriot people did. Unlike them, I am not going away. I do this for free and have no expenses and no expectations. People who solicit large contributions -- the people who win statewide and congressional offices in Oregon -- sometimes tell me they read me. Maybe they do.

The Liberal Patriot shared four policy directions where Democrats needed to change course. I agree with these and have mentioned them repeatedly in my posts:

--  The cultural problem. The archetypal Democrat now has the instincts and values of an educated, prosperous, urban, non-religious office-worker in a college town. Their sensibilities, language, values, and political instincts are off-putting to working Americans. Democrats have drifted too far to the left on cultural issues. The problem shows up in the loss of votes of people whose interests on health care, taxes, education, and public benefits that Democrats support -- they should vote for Democrats! -- but they vote Republican anyway. 

--  The trans issue. Democrats try to minimize the issue as a Republican talking point, and it is -- for a reason. It resonates with voters and probably swung the election to Trump. The issue exemplified Democrats demanding belief in an idea that seems utterly false to most Americans, that biological sex isn't real. Most people feel gendered as part of their lived experience. Trans athletes competing as women offend a moral instinct of fair play. Trans women in bathrooms feels like an invasion into a vulnerable space. Democrats ignore those feelings at their political peril. 

--  The immigration problem. Democrats encouraged mass immigration through lax border and interior enforcement and an asylum claim that effectively legalized illegal immigration. It made a mockery of controlled legal immigration. Democrats cannot stop with complaints about brutal ICE enforcement. They need to acknowledge that as a rich country we will draw immigrants, and if there is to be a limit on immigration then some "good" law-abiding people must be denied entry and deported if they are already here. Otherwise it is a free-for-all, and potential migrants will see that and come at rates that stress communities. There is a reason Democrats lost to Trump in border towns. Democrats must get the courage to say "No." 

--  Economics and climate.  Democratic messaging on climate emphasizes the sensibility of the already-comfortable people who can afford to hear messages of conservation and restraint. Poor and working people want policies of can-do abundance. Regulations, environmental lawsuits, and pipeline and drilling bans all send a message that Democrats are withholding prosperity to protect the wealthy.  Zero-emission and carbon goals are unrealistic in their timing and burdensome to working people. Technological advances in wind, solar, nuclear energy may allow Democrats to move toward climate goals in a some-of-everything policy, but Democrats need to get real on the pace of abandoning fossil fuel.

This all makes sense to me. It reflects the interests and values of people whose votes Democrats seek. Can a Democratic candidate for Congress or the White House say things like this and win nomination in a competitive primary? 

Possibly, but the indications are not good. We see the problem when Democrats including Gavin Newsom and Seth Moulton explore a presidential bid and say something heterodox. Liberal progressive enforcers jump on them and call them dangerous heretics and sellouts.

Policy leadership in the Democratic Party comes from officeholders and thought leaders who represent bright blue urban coastal polities. They set the tone for engaged Democrats who show up at candidate events and vote in the Democratic primary. The result is a party that can never win the U.S. Senate and can only win the White House when a Republican incumbent president totally runs the country into a ditch. That is not a description of a party with a durable majority. It is a description of a party that elects Donald Trump.

Democrats need to get real.

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Replace Cliff Bentz? Possible if the time is right

Too Trump-y and out of touch with his District, but re-elected anyway.

Oregon Second District U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz

Most voters say they hate the polarization.

Most voters say they want to elect moderates. But they don't.

They nominate an extremist from their favored party.

Georgetown University political scientist Michael Bailey described it this way:

Polarization is more likely when control of the legislature is closely contested and the policy impact of a single legislator is modest because party nominators know that the district median will prefer electing an extremist from a favored party than a moderate from a disfavored party. 

For example, a moderately conservative district median voter will prefer the policy outcomes under Republican control, even if their individual legislator is very conservative, over the policy outcomes under Democratic control, with a moderate Democrat representing their district.

Oregon Second District U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz is a good example of what Professor Bailey described. He is far more conservative and Trump-compliant than the median voter in the district, but he has been re-elected anyway. Democratic candidates see the disconnect with the median voter and it gives them hope. After all, Bentz lets Trump impose district-damaging tariffs that hurt Oregon's grain and wine industries. He voted to make health insurance unaffordable under the ACA exchanges, a program in widespread use in this district. He tolerates Trump's brutal ICE policing, which damages the district's farmers. He consents to Trump trying to stop Oregon's popular vote-by-mail system. Bentz is a classic yes-man enabler of Trump. Bentz is far more Trump-devoted than the median district voter. 

The Democratic opportunity is a mirage most years. A majority of the voters in the district are Republican and, as Bailey wrote, Republicans would rather have a too-conservative, too-Trump-y Republican than a Democrat.

Each Democratic candidate hoping to replace Bentz asserts moderation, reasonableness, and fit with the district. Each will listen. Each is in touch. Each is the median voter.

-- Patty Snow introduces herself by saying she is from the small, rural Idaho town of Burley, and was brought up by "generational Republicans who taught me the importance of fiscal responsibility." 

--  Rebecca Mueller's presentation at the event at my house last weekend began by describing her reasonable sensitivity to divergent points of view.  

--  Chris Beck headlines "Coming of age east of the Cascades" and his family's deep roots in the district. 

--  Dawn Rasmussen headlines "People first, politics last," and down-to-earth leadership that listens to the district. 

--  Mary Doyle headlines "Leadership that listens" saying she is "grounded, accessable, and accountable."  

--  Peter Quince's opening page has four words, "Because your voice matters."

They all listen, listen, listen.

My own sense is that the path to electing a Democrat does not come from a Democrat's assurances of moderation, even if that is absolutely true and even if the candidate is closer to the median voter than is Bentz. Republicans vote for Republicans.  A very electable, credible candidate, Joe Yetter, a retired military physician, proved that by losing with the usual 60-40 margin.

A different approach might be to attempt to exploit the crack within the GOP, which has a regular wing and a MAGA wing. The MAGA wing is 100 percent Trump-y. They believe Trump, whatever he says. They love his lies and his grift. They are in the cult. But there is another group of Republicans who are more or less disgusted with Trump, but tolerate him because he is their team captain. They think he has done some things right, e.g., reduced illegal immigration, got Europe to take more responsibility for its own defence, and reversed the excessive "woke" symbolism of the left including pronoun announcements, use of "Latinx," identity-based hiring quotas, and trans inclusion in women's spaces. They like all that but they don't like Trump. They see the lies, grift, crassness, and unapologetic cronyism. 

By this fall's election, events might well have spun further out of control based on some combination of war in Iran, gasoline prices, stagflation, unemployment, troop deaths, trade chaos, and a bad stock market.  Stuff happens, and Trump is accident-prone. 

1968

2008

At times of great distress for Lyndon Johnson in 1968, Carter in 1980, Reagan in 1982, and Bush in 2008, voters wanted to cast a "NO" vote on the president. Perhaps 2026 will offer a similar opportunity.

Bentz's current political strength is his fawning obedience to Trump. That protects his right flank. That would also be his weakness if the moment is right, and bad moments happen every decade. Trump is Bentz's life preserver until he is Bentz's anchor. 

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