The Born Identity

The Constitution Wins One

Call it a judicial man bites dog story. A 6-3 decision actually went the right way. Even though it should have been 9-0, we’ll take what we can get from this Court. The Fourteenth Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” And this time around, six judges agreed that the Constitution means what the Constitution says. “The ACLU’s Cecillia Wang, herself a birthright citizen born to Chinese parents, argued the birthright case in April before the Supreme Court. As she put it, the men who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment deliberately chose to confer automatic citizenship on the child, not the parent, the idea being that ‘in America we do not punish children for the sins of their fathers, but instead we wipe the slate clean. When you’re born in this country, we’re all American, all the same.’” NPR: Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship on constitutional grounds. It’s nice to know some of those grounds are still above ground.

+ WSJ (Gift Article): “The decision rebuffs Trump’s bid to upend the deep-rooted understanding that virtually everyone born on American soil is automatically a U.S. citizen. That understanding, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, was enshrined in the Constitution in 1868.”

+ Back to our regularly scheduled 6-3 decisions: “The Supreme Court yet again loosened campaign finance restrictions on Tuesday by striking down limits on how much political parties may raise and spend on candidates. By a 6-to-3 vote along ideological lines, the court ruled the law, which had been enacted in 1974, violates political parties’ First Amendment rights. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion.”

+ SCOTUS “upheld state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams, in another setback for transgender people. The court’s six-justice conservative majority, which has repeatedly ruled against transgender Americans in the past year, ruled that state bans in Idaho and West Virginia don’t violate the Constitution. The court unanimously agreed that barring transgender girls and women also doesn’t run afoul of the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.”

+ NYT (Gift Article): The Major Supreme Court Decisions in 2026.

2

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

“During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised again and again that he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Of course he didn’t. We are now more than 1,580 days into this war and it still rages. But here is the irony. Trump’s own actions, none of them meant to help Ukraine, may have brought the end of this war closer than anything that came before ... One of his first moves was to choke off American money and weapons. He demanded that Ukraine pay America back for Biden’s aid through a one-sided minerals deal. And he humiliated Volodymyr Zelensky in front of the world in that Oval Office meeting, telling him, ‘You don’t have any cards.’” It looked like a disaster at the time. But it turns out that not having Trump on his side may have been just the card Zelensky needed. Bill Browder: Despite his best efforts, Trump may just have won the war for Kyiv. “Once Washington no longer bankrolled Ukraine, Washington could no longer give Ukraine orders. The leash was off. The United States could no longer demand that Ukraine spare targets inside Russia. That single change has altered the course of the war.”

+ For example: Putin Faces Increased Pressure as Moscow Is Again Attacked by Drones.

3

Antisocial Climbers

“Two climbers—an experienced mountaineer and his girlfriend, a novice—set out to take on Austria’s tallest peak in the dead of winter. After the woman was found frozen to death near the summit, a court in Innsbruck had to decide whether the hike was merely a tragedy, or a case of homicide by neglect.” The always excellent William Finnegan in The New Yorker: No Return: “Did an experienced alpinist leave his girlfriend to die at the top of a mountain?” (Alt link.)

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The Best Things Since (and Before) Sliced Bread

Let’s focus on something about America we can all celebrate. Our food history. “When Thomas Jefferson travels to Paris in 1784, he brings along James Hemings, an enslaved man who has worked at Monticello since childhood. Hemings studies French cooking, and when they return, he cooks at formal events hosted by Jefferson.” What came out of that trip? Mac and Cheese. (Yup, thank you, France!) In the 1810s, we got canned food. In the 1840s, the gold rush brought us something even more valuable: Chinese restaurants. 1880s: Coca-Cola. The 1920s brought us a great invention and equally great “American linguistic yardstick for innovation:” Sliced Bread. Then came Cheetos and McDonald’s. All that said, our winning streak may be over. In 2026, we’re all about suppressing appetites and looksmaxxing. But before you go from hungry to hangry, let’s celebrate. NYT (Gift Article): The Pursuit of Hungriness: 250 Years of American Food Innovation.

5

Extra, Extra

Sliding Into Your DMs: Early on, one of my biggest worries about AI was that evil politicians would use it to identify what people wanted to hear, tweak the truth to match those desires, and then deliver targeted, personal messages to manipulate the public. I was a little off the mark. It’s not just the evil ones who are doing it. NYT (Gift Article): How A.I. Is Changing the Way Politicians Run for Office. “Behind the scenes, campaigns are using the technology to analyze voter data, craft campaign materials and write custom messages.”

+ Ooh, Aah, Ooh, Awful: “It is general knowledge in our practice that for $2 million, you can have a pardon.” The White House Considers Granting 250 Pardons for the Nation’s Birthday. (Sometimes, it’s unclear if we’re marking a birthday or a funeral.) Meanwhile, Trump’s July 4 fireworks to start much later and last much longer. And they’ll follow a Trump speech. He can’t even take the Fifth on the Fourth.

+ More Signal Noise: “The identities of nearly all of the group members are visible, revealing even broader use of Signal by top Trump-administration officials than was previously known. The names of the groups are also telling, including one called ‘Iran/Ukraine Planning’ and another labeled ‘State USAID.’ The records raise the possibility that top administration officials failed to follow federal laws that require the preservation of government records.” Hegseth, Rubio, and Caine Had an Auto-Deleting Signal Chat.

+ Assistant (to the) General Manager: “Congress passed the consumer protection law, the No Surprises Act, with wide bipartisan support in 2020. It aimed to prevent unexpected charges for patients treated in the emergency room by a doctor who didn’t take their insurance.” Well, it didn’t quite work out as planned. $22,000 Per Hour: Assistants Use a Legislative Loophole to Outearn Surgeons. (Seems like good news for Dwight Schrute.)

+ Millionaire Apparent: The world added nearly a million new millionaires in 2025 — but most people got poorer.

+ Search for Rescues: “Jennifer Raymond waited until the dead of night to make her move. On April 12, the animal welfare advocate pushed through thick brush and cut a hole in her Fortuna neighbor’s fence, trespassing with one goal: to uncover the truth about the animal rescue next door.” It didn’t take much digging. She bought a NorCal Victorian, and then found a mass dog grave next door.

+ Put Some Pep in Your Step: FDA panel on peptides will include experts who promote the unproven chemicals favored by RFK Jr.

+ Gray Area: “Ford executives said they have hired 350 veteran engineers — some of them were former employees, while others had been working at suppliers — after artificial intelligence and automated systems failed to deliver the desired quality level ... To be clear, this doesn’t mean Ford is abandoning its AI plans entirely. Instead, it’s using the rehired employees — referred to as ‘gray beard’ engineers — to train younger staff and reprogram AI tools.”

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Bottom of the News

Penalty kicks are stressful, stupid, genius, luck, skill, joyous, painful, ridiculous, and ridiculously awesome. They are the human condition. And we’ve already had some crazy ones in the World Cup knockout rounds. So you may be wondering how goalkeepers win penalty shootouts. “It’s not like you’re going, ‘Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.’” (It actually looks like they’re going eeny meeny at most...)

+ The World Cup is getting amazing. The World Cup After Hours with James Corden is a fun watch and makes many of the storylines more accessible for part-time football fans.