S2 Ep166: MAGA is Furious at Amy Coney Barrett (w/ Steve Vladeck)
The Illegal News with Sarah Longwell
The Bulwark
4.9 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 July 2026
⏱️ 59 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sarah Longwell and Georgetown University Law Center's Steve Vladek discuss the Supreme Court's final day of the term—a narrow 5-4 ruling upholding birthright citizenship, the court gutting independent agency protections (while carving out a suspicious exception for the Fed), and a rapid-fire tour through rulings on mail-in ballots, trans athletes, campaign finance, TPS for Haitians, and asylum seekers at the border. Plus: why Amy Coney Barrett has become the MAGA right's newest target, and what Steve thinks Alito is waiting for before he retires.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are so sort of bound up in the present, but like 20 years ago, you might have one or two of |
| 0:05.9 | these decisions per year. And now, you know, we didn't even have time to talk about all of them |
| 0:10.1 | in an hour. So, you know, I think that the point is not about any one particular case. It's about |
| 0:15.6 | a court that has been completely emboldened to do whatever it wants whenever it wants. |
| 0:21.2 | And separate from the actual bottom lines that will produce, |
| 0:24.3 | I'm not sure in the long term, |
| 0:25.6 | that's an especially stable or healthy place for us to be in. |
| 0:32.9 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to the illegal news. |
| 0:36.3 | I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the bulwark, |
| 0:38.6 | and it's Tuesday, June 30th, and the Supreme Court handed down its last decision of the term. |
| 0:43.7 | So joining me today is Supreme Court expert, Steve Vladick. Steve, you are professor at Georgetown Law, |
| 0:50.5 | the author of one first, a weekly or more, substack, all about the Supreme Court. We're so |
| 0:55.8 | glad you're here because we got a lot of stuff to talk about. Thanks for Brian here. Thanks for having |
| 1:00.5 | me. Okay, let's jump right in. So as I mentioned, we're recording this on the very last day of June, |
| 1:05.9 | and the Supreme Court wrapped up its term this morning, just in time for their summer vacation. |
| 1:13.3 | And they issued some bangers today. So it upheld the birthright citizenship for children born here to undocumented |
| 1:18.9 | parents or parents in the country temporarily. Just to start, can you remind me of the background? |
| 1:27.4 | Like, how did the question of birthright citizenship |
| 1:30.0 | get to the Supreme Court? Sure. So one of President Trump's, you know, first day executive |
| 1:35.0 | orders was an effort simply by executive order to rewrite the rules for which kinds of individuals |
| 1:41.5 | born in the United States would be automatically entitled to citizenship. |
| 1:44.7 | And, you know, the president's executive order would have denied automatic citizenship to children |
... |
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