Dave Weigel

Do you think Native Americans today are birthright citizens under your test and under your friend's test?

I mean, obviously they've been granted citizenship by statute.

Put aside the statute.

Do you think they're birthright citizens?

No, I think the clear understanding that everybody agrees in the congressional debates is that the children of tribal Indians are not birthright citizens.

And that would be the test you'd have us apply today, right?

So if a tribal Indian, for example, gives up allegiance to... Born today, birthright citizens.

No, that's also, if you know Gorsuch, that is one of his pet issues.

He's from Colorado.

He's from part of the country where he's been a tribal sovereignty supporter, just generally tribal rights period his whole career.

So that was also one of the moments where people said that Sauer is not doing a very good job of this.

He should have had an answer in the pocket for Gorsuch.

But Barrett was very concerned with the practicality of what would change in the law, what would change people's lives if the administration was successful.

There would be people in limbo who think they're citizens and would be stateless.

And that's actually not that this administration cares a ton about international law.

It frowns on that, of making people not just deporting to another country, making stateless because you're deciding they weren't born here at all.

There are a lot of people caught in the corners of this.

Right now, if you're born in American Samoa, then you move to Hawaii and you try to vote for a candidate, you can't.

There's just a lot of messiness in immigration law, but there always has been.

And this is what the history they were talking about, the originalists, which in this case include a lot of liberals,