ROOKE: Stop Pretending US Soil Is Magical

Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images/via Getty Images

Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I discuss American citizenship and whether that has any meaning.

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When I am writing my newsletter or my column for the website, I typically put on my headphones and listen to a podcast. I don’t know why it helps me formulate my thoughts into a coherent message, but it does. Last week, instead of a podcast, I listened to the oral arguments at the Supreme Court over the birthright citizenship case currently being decided. For the first time in a while, it did the opposite. In fact, the entire exercise was frustrating beyond belief.

I don’t want to be a doomsday pundit who claims that the case has already been decided. Still, it feels pretty clear to me that a majority of the justices seemed inclined to vote in favor of upholding the idea that anyone born in America, regardless of the circumstances, is an American citizen.

Justice Alito seemed to be one of the few Supreme Court justices who was worried about the ramifications of allowing such a broad interpretation of American citizenship. He asked the lawyer arguing for the challengers, Cecillia Wang, about the meaning of “not subject to any foreign power” and whether it could exclude children born in the U.S. to foreign nationals, including those whose parents entered illegally or whose home countries impose obligations like military service. Something........

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