Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, Episode 70.

I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this episode on April 26, 2022, in Austin, Texas.

We are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States from the beginning without presentism.

This episode is a sidebar, which is our term for an episode that is off the timeline of the history of the Americans.

The term sidebar is my way of signaling that the episode

need not be listened to in sequence. I often say that I am following my muse, by which I mean

that I don't really have a plan. Or more accurately, I am willing to ignore my plan when I

see something that interests me. So it was this week with a

decision handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States only five days ago on April 21st,

2022. In the case of the United States versus Vallejo Madero, the decision itself is not terribly

interesting. By an eight to one vote with

Justice Sotomayor dissenting, the court held that the United States Constitution does not

require Congress to extend supplementary security income benefits to residents of Puerto Rico. To the same extent it makes those

benefits available to residents of the states. The court's result was pretty predictable,

and so far as it followed longstanding law, holding that because Congress chose to treat

residents of Puerto Rico differently from residents of the states for

purposes of taxation, it could do the same for benefits. It's the concurring opinion of Justice

Neil Gorsuch that interests me. It is essentially a history of the judicial decisions that govern the

extent to which the United States

Constitution and the rights thereunder apply to territories of the United States that are not

states. I thought it was so good that I would read it as its own episode. Before we get to Justice

Gorsuch, a little background as an order. In 1898, the United States and

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