Podbit · The Rest Is Politics: US
The Dred Scott decision declared Black Americans could never be citizens. The 14th Amendment was the direct response, codifying citizenship to repair that wound. Attacking birthright citizenship isn't originalism — it's undoing one of the Constitution's most important acts of moral repair.
Where this was said
At 31:50 · chapter starts 27:40
The conversation pivots to the week's other major legal story: the Supreme Court's decision on birthright citizenship [1] — Anthony Scaramucci "The Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship, but the vote was closer than expected. Had it gone the other way, 255,000 children a year …" 27:45 . Swisher's first reaction is that she expected a cleaner result — the constitutional text is not ambiguous — and the closeness of the vote was disturbing. Kavanaugh voted with the majority but wrote separately to suggest Congress could simply seek a constitutional amendment to change the result, which both hosts find troubling as a roadmap for future attacks. Swisher takes a historical sweep: America has always cycled through immigrant hatred, from the anti-Italian sentiment that greeted her grandparents' generation to the current moment. She notes the World Cup goal-scorer whose mother couldn't fly back to London while pregnant — the quintessential example of how birthright citizenship works in practice, not as a conspiracy but as a fact of life. Swisher singles out Stephen Miller as the ideological engine of the anti-immigration push, comparing him to the bureaucrat who engineered Japanese-American internment — one person's hatred, she argues, can ruin millions of lives.
The Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship, but the vote was closer than expected. Had it gone the other way, 255,000 children a year would have been stateless — and Trump's own children would have lost their citizenship too.
Factories that replaced coal engines with electric ones in the early 1900s got only 6% efficiency gains. Those that redesigned their entire factory around electricity got a 3x productivity improvement. Swapping AI tools into your existing structure will give you 6%. Rebuilding around AI will give you 10x.
Lebanese terrorists backed by Iran were holding American hostages throughout the Reagan presidency. Reagan had loudly campaigned against negotiating with terrorists — putting him in an impossible position that his team quietly decided to ignore.
During the Iran-Iraq War, the US openly supplied Iraq with weapons, training, and intelligence. At the same time, Oliver North was secretly funneling missiles to Iran. The US was playing both sides of a shooting war.
Oliver North traveled to Iran under the alias 'William P. Goode' with a fake passport. CIA Director William Casey allegedly gave him cyanide pills so he could kill himself rather than be tortured if captured. He returned safely and the deal moved forward.
The Pentagon sold missiles to the CIA for $3,700 each. The CIA sold them to Richard Secord at cost. Secord sold them to Iranian middleman Ghorbanifar for $10,000 each. Ghorbanifar charged Iran even more. The profit — including $3 million in interest in one Swiss account — was diverted directly to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.
America secretly transferred 2,000 missiles and missile parts to Iran in 8 shipments over more than a year. Only 3 of 7 hostages were released. Three more were taken. The net result was zero freed hostages and a full-blown constitutional scandal.
On October 5, 1986, a CIA Contra supply plane flew a weapons drop at 2,500 feet in broad daylight. A Sandinista soldier shot it down. The only survivor, Eugene Hasenfuss, had borrowed a parachute from his skydiving brother. He was captured, paraded in front of cameras, and told the Sandinistas everything he knew.
The CIA supply operation used a front company called Southern Air Transport, widely known to be a CIA cover. Crew members of the downed plane carried their Southern Air Transport employee IDs in their wallets. One also had a business card directly linking him to Oliver North's office in Washington.
When the scandal broke, Oliver North and his secretary Fawn Hall conducted what became known as a 'shredding party,' destroying a day's worth of documents. The full truth of Iran-Contra may never be known because of what was fed through that shredder.
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