Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts called out Justice Samuel Alito’s nonsensical argument about birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that children born in the United States to parents who were undocumented or temporarily in the country are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause. In his separate dissent, Alito argued that immigrant parents, in order for their child to automatically be made an American citizen, could not be subject to any foreign power. But he contended that some people who had done “everything within their power to become United States citizens can be seen as no longer subject to any foreign power.”But Roberts argued that this kind of “ad hoc exemption” was plainly inconsistent with Alito’s own interpretation of the Civil Rights Act. “He does not explain how that exception can be squared with his view of the text, which (to repeat) is that anyone ‘automatically’ made a [‘national’] of his ‘parents’ native country’ was not entitled to citizenship,” Roberts wrote. That wasn’t the only reason Alito’s dissent was a mess. In closing, Alito argued that the majority’s interpretation “saddles this country with an ancient British rule that even the United Kingdom has abandoned,” referring to jus soli, or the right of soil. But the British government scrapped this law by passing the British Nationality Act of 1981—not by asking the courts to rewrite the nation’s founding documents.
On July 4, 2026, the United States of America turns 250 years old. Should the Left celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States with the signing of the Declaration of Independence? After all, this is a nation with a very dark and ugly past — with racism, genocide, and imperialism deeply embedded [...]
Michael Albert is interviewed here about his latest book, The Wind Cries Freedom, a fictional oral history set in the future. Bridget: What’s in your new book? Michael: The Wind Cries Freedom reports on a future movement that works to win a new world. The book’s imagined future interviewer, Miguel Guevara elicits tales of the interviewees’ [...]
“Communism is the greatest threat to our country since its founding 250 years ago”! Undoubtedly, this thunderous statement by U.S. President Donald Trump, issued in writing on June 26, is intended to sound the alarm and rally behind him all the conservatives, reactionaries, and anti-communists in the United States ahead of the midterm elections this [...]