Narrowing Birthright Citizenship, Judicial Elections Defeated, and Todd Blanche’s Path to Attorney General
On this week’s episode, Trey Orndorff (Oklahoma Christian University) and law professor Ken Katkin (NNKU Chase College of Law) tackle as many major stories as possible for the first week of August, breaking down a pair of controversial new executive orders on citizenship, high-stakes primary results out of Kansas and Michigan, and the Senate Judiciary Committee’s vote to advance Todd Blanche for U.S. Attorney General.
Trey and Ken begin with the two executive orders signed on August 6, attempting to narrow birthright citizenship following earlier Supreme Court pushback. The first order directs the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to deny visas to pregnant non-citizens to curb “birth tourism”. The second order attempts to strip automatic citizenship from specific categories, including children of foreign government employees, those born in U.S. territories like Puerto Rico and Guam, and children born via commercial birth-tourism transactions. The guys unpack the legal hurdles facing both orders, comparing executive immigration authority against statutory protections like the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, analyzing the precedent of Geduldig v. Aiello (1974), and examining how the 14th Amendment’s “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause applies to territorial residents.
Next, they look to Tuesday’s primary results, especially in Kansas and Michigan. Kansas voters resoundingly rejected (61%–39%) a Republican-backed constitutional amendment that would have replaced the state’s merit-based judicial nominating commission with direct partisan elections for state Supreme Court justices. Ken and Trey debate whether the vote was driven by post-Dobbs voter mobilization to protect the court’s abortion rulings or a broader conservative skepticism toward the election of judges.
Affter that, the duo also discuss progressive Abdul El-Sayed ’s narrow victory (48.5% to 47.5%) over establishment favorite Rep. Haley Stevens despite being heavily outspent by outside groups. Trey and Ken discuss what this close result signals about intra-party friction, the debate over “abolishing ICE,” and how candidates navigate Middle East policy in Michigan. They also discuss one of the strangest primaries in the cycle: the victory of Thomas J. Smith, a candidate who raised just $1,850, filed his paperwork by hand, and formally suspended his campaign in Michigan’s 8th Congressional District. Smith trounced the Trump-endorsed candidate Amir Haneef Hassan.
Finally, Trey and Ken finish with a discussion of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s 12-10 vote to advance Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination to the full Senate floor. The vote came after Republican Senators Cornyn and Tillis secured written assurances from Blanche formally killing a controversial $1.8 billion executive “weaponization fund” intended for presidential payouts. With Senator Bill Cassidy announcing his floor support, Trey and Ken evaluate whether the Senate exercised meaningful oversight over the Justice Department or simply cleared a path for executive confirmation.
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