Snapshot · Pod Save the World
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to allow DHS to remove Temporary Protected Status from 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, upending the lives of hundreds of thousands.
Where this was said
At 36:15 · chapter starts 34:57
Tommy frames the birthright ruling as good news that shouldn't require celebration — the plain text of the 14th Amendment is not ambiguous — but notes the effective margin was 5-4 because Kavanaugh agreed with the outcome while declining to join the majority opinion, signaling a future path to reversal. The TPS ruling is less ambiguous as good news: 350,000 Haitians are being sent back to a country the State Department rates 'do not travel,' where gangs control major territory and half the population faces acute hunger, while white South Afrikaners receive welcome bags full of revisionist history books. Ben Rhodes invokes Frederick Douglass to skewer conservative originalists for ignoring the 14th Amendment's actual authors, who clearly intended universal birthright citizenship. He and Tommy both call the TPS ruling what it is: straightforwardly racist, constitutionally rationalized. Rhodes adds that Venezuelan TPS holders who supported Republican policies because of Maduro opposition have now been told exactly what the party thinks of them.
The Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship — but barely. The 6-3 ruling is more like 5-4 because Kavanaugh agreed with the outcome but not the majority opinion and has signaled a path to eliminating it later. Tommy and Ben note the absurdity of celebrating a ruling that simply upheld the plain text of the 14th Amendment.
The Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship 6-3, though effectively 5-4 since Kavanaugh agreed with the result but not the majority opinion, with Trump having tried to end it via executive order.
The Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling stripping Temporary Protected Status from 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians — while white South Africans get refugee welcome bags — is not a close legal question. Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vietor argue the racial double standard is self-evident and that the Court's blessing of Stephen Miller's immigration agenda is a lasting stain.
A pair of catastrophic earthquakes in Venezuela produced at least 1,700 known casualties and left 50,000 people missing, severely testing the interim government.
Venezuela's catastrophic earthquakes — 1,700+ dead, 50,000 missing — are testing Delcy Rodriguez's interim government in ways that expose how little changed when Maduro was ousted. The military sat by while citizens dug through rubble with their hands. Ben Rhodes argues the Trump administration's 'success' in Venezuela was always just tribute extraction, not real political change.
A total of 8 states have filed lawsuits against social media platforms, including an ongoing case in Tennessee, using product liability and public nuisance theories to seek accountability.
France built 56 nuclear plants in the 1970s and now has the cheapest energy in Europe, making it independent of Russian or Middle Eastern energy geopolitics.
Estonia has a single tax form, a law preventing the government from asking citizens for the same information twice, and a flat rate of tax — enabling competitive taxation.
Portugal's Lisbon, once a city with a major heroin problem, legalised drugs and redirected enforcement spending into rehabilitation and housing, dramatically reducing crime.
The first Boland Amendment banning CIA and Defense Department funds for the Contras passed the House unanimously — yet the Reagan administration ignored it.
Over just two years, Saudi Arabia alone donated $32 million to the Contra rebels, giving loosely affiliated factions millions they had no way to spend on arms.
The National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty raised $6.3 million for the Contras but only $3.3 million reached them — a shockingly low 52% program expense rate.
Richard Secord and Albert Hakim marked up their arms shipments to the Contras by as much as 300%, making enormous personal profits from the covert operation.
Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, tapped to run the entire covert Contra support operation, had no prior experience in covert operations whatsoever — he was learning as he went.
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