Trump’s A.G. Pick Adds Huge Asterisk to Birthright Citizenship

Pam Bondi, Donald Trump’s nominee for the next U.S. attorney general, refused to give a basic yes or no answer, during her confirmation hearing Wednesday, regarding her views on birthright citizenship, which is etched into the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.

“You’ve testified repeatedly to this committee that you will uphold the laws of this country and defend the Constitution of the United States,” said Democratic Senator Alex Padilla. “Do you believe birthright citizenship is the law of the land, and will you defend it regardless—a child born of the United States—regardless of their parents’ immigration status?”

Bondi refused to answer the question. “Senator, I will study birthright citizenship, I would love to meet with you regarding birthright citizenship—”

“Ma’am, you’re asking to be considered to serve as the attorney general of the United States, and you still need to study the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution?” Padilla retorted. “That is not helping me have more confidence in your ability to do this job.”

Bondi’s nonanswer is deference to President-elect Trump, who said he’d end birthright citizenship via executive order on Meet the Press in December.

The Fourteenth Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Senators on both sides of the aisle took issue Wednesday with Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget, noting that Russell Vought’s evasive and bureaucratic nonanswers as to whether he’d obey the law while serving the country were alarming.

When pressed on whether he would obey the Impoundment Control Act—in which Congress reexamines executive branch withholdings from the budget—and break away from Trump on his plans to withhold congressionally approved funds, Vought deferred and said that he would obey the law.

“I’m not going to continue to break the law,” Vought said. “I’m giving you my commitment to uphold the laws of this land.”

But the nominee then followed up by claiming that the law is unconstitutional and suggested that Trump’s incoming administration would have to consider on their own whether or not they would follow it.

Vought also refused to pledge that he wouldn’t deny grants based on the requester’s political alignment.

“I’m astonished and aghast that someone in this responsible a position would, in effect, say that the president is above the law and that the United States Supreme Court is entitled to their opinion, but mine should supersede it,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal during the hearing.

Vought ran Trump’s Office of Management and Budget from July 2020 to January 2021, during which time he froze military aid for Ukraine, claimed that foreign aid expenditures were “wasteful spending,” and worked to expand the number of federal employees required to work during a government shutdown.

He scooped up another supporting role in Trumpworld during the incoming executive’s presidential campaign: developing a 180-day “transition playbook” to expedite Project 2025’s implementation in the federal government. But his appointment to run the nation’s budget office could see him enter a critical role in shrinking the federal government and advancing Trump’s agenda.

The 920-page Christian nationalist manifesto advanced outwardly outrageous policy positions, including dismantling wholesale staples of the executive branch such as the Department of Education. But as time has marched on, those outlandish policies have morphed from a fascistic pipe dream to a forthcoming reality among the far right in Congress: On Monday, North Carolina Representative David Rouzer introduced legislation in the House formally filing to eradicate the public education agency.

Other portions of Vought’s Project 2025 proposed revisiting federal approval of the abortion pill, a national ban on pornography, placing the Justice Department under the control of the president, slashing federal funds for climate change research in an effort to sideline mitigation efforts, and increasing funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Vought was also the architect of Trump’s “Schedule F” proposal, which plans to fire thousands of civil servants and replace them with as many as 54,000 pre-vetted Trump loyalists to the executive branch via executive order.

In oral arguments for a First Amendment case before the Supreme Court Wednesday, Justice Samuel Alito pursued an odd line of questioning regarding free speech and pornography.

The case, Free Speech Coalition et al. v. Paxton, concerns a Texas law that requires adult users of pornographic websites to verify their ages before they can view content. The law is opposed by free speech advocates, including the ACLU, which is representing a coalition of organizations, including some adult websites, in the lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

During Wednesday’s arguments, Alito brought up the pornographic website Pornhub, one of the members of the coalition, and asked the lawyer representing the coalition how much of Pornhub’s content is “obscene” to children. The attorney, Derek Shaffer, couldn’t provide exact numbers, but ultimately Alito and Shaffer arrived at an estimate of 70 percent. Then Alito revealed his ignorance about the topic.

“Is it like the old Playboy magazine; you have essays there by the modern-day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.?” Alito asked, drawing an audible laugh from Shaffer.

“Not in that sense, but in the sense you have wellness posts about women recovering from hysterectomies and how they can enjoy sex,” Shaffer replied. “That’s on there, discussions about age verification proposals and where the industry lines up, as far as what they think should be legislated and what should not.”

While Alito’s question might seem funny, it also creates the impression that only serious essays merit free speech protection, and nothing else, which doesn’t seem to be in line with what the First Amendment actually says.

Texas’s law, as well as similar laws in Republican-led states across the country, are part of a greater right-wing effort, as spelled out in the Project 2025 manifesto, to target not just pornography but also drag queens, trans people, LGBTQ library books, and more. By placing such a high standard for free speech, the right would be able to criminalize what it previously could only demonize.

Donald Trump is moving his pawns around the board.

The incoming forty-seventh president has reportedly encouraged Vivek Ramaswamy to take the Ohio Senate seat vacated by Vice President–elect JD Vance, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

Vance officially resigned from the post Friday. The next senator will be chosen by Republican Governor Mike DeWine, who under Ohio law will be tasked with appointing a replacement until 2026, when a special election will determine who will serve in the role until the term expires in 2029.

Two anonymous sources with knowledge of the matter told the Post that Trump had personally appealed to Ramswamy to take the high-powered position if offered.

DeWine has been tight-lipped during the months-long process to fill Vance’s vacancy, but potential candidates have included Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague, former state Senator Matt Dolan, Ohio Secretary of State Frank Larose, Columbus-area Congressman Mike Carey, former Ohio Republican Party Chair Jane Timken, and Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted, the last of whom has emerged as a clear front-runner.

But a visit to Mar-A-Lago on Thursday could have planted another suggestion.

“I’ll have an announcement probably next week,” DeWine told reporters in Florida that day.

Blade Columbus Bureau chief Jim Provance had the inside details on DeWine’s process.

“He has said that, number one, he wants somebody who can legislate and have Ohio in mind for any progress that would be made. He’s also said that he wants somebody who can raise money,” Provance told WTVG on Monday. “You have to remember that the Moreno–Sherrod Brown race set records.”

Ramaswamy publicly backed out of the race to replace Vance in November after Trump announced him as a potential co-chair for the not-yet-real Department of Government Efficiency alongside world’s-richest-man Elon Musk. The bold new agency was tasked with identifying what they determined to be wasteful government spending to help the Republican trifecta make sweeping spending cuts. Ramaswamy’s exit could call the project’s future into question, especially as Musk’s presence (and his opposing views on immigration) face heightened scrutiny in Trumpworld.

“Trump’s decisive victory on Tuesday opens up a lot of possibilities to change the country,” Ramaswamy told ABC affiliate News 5 Cleveland in the wake of the election. “We’re obviously having discussions, and they’re not going to be sorted out in the press.”

It doesn’t seem like Greenlanders are warming up to Donald Trump’s pitch to take over their territory.

Fox News’s London-based correspondent Alex Hogan traveled to Nuuk, Greenland’s frigid capital, where she reported Tuesday that there had been a “lot of mixed reaction” to Trump’s threat to acquire the island. But she quickly revealed that they spoke to only one native Greenlander who seemed interested in the idea. 

“Most other Greenlanders we spoke with bashed Trump’s comments, calling them offensive,” Hogan explained.

She spoke to one resident, Jørgen Boassen, whom she described as an “avid Trump supporter.” The man, who was decked out in MAGA merch, had been “trying to convince others that a partnership between Greenland and the U.S. just makes sense,” Hogan explained. 

Boassen told Hogan that the U.S. could potentially protect Greenland from aggression from China and Russia.

Meanwhile, three other Greenlanders said they weren’t the slightest bit interested in becoming U.S. citizens. One man said he would like to “stick with” the current Danish government. Another noted that he would “prefer to be with Denmark than with the U.S.”

“The United States used to be a place that was sort of admired here, and basically all the goodwill that they used to have is almost gone now,” said a third man. 

This is consistent with other reports indicating that there isn’t much enthusiasm for a Trump takeover. Earlier this month, Trump sent his idiot son on a futile mission to the world’s largest island to drum up hype for his bad idea. However, the event they held with supposed MAGA fans was completely staged, according to local reports. Instead of finding actual supporters, staffers reportedly just rounded up a group of “homeless and socially disadvantaged” people who are often outside the supermarket directly across from the hotel where the event took place, put them in some merch, and filmed them.

In the last month, Trump has been outspoken about his pipe dream to acquire the Danish-controlled territory, for its value as a geopolitical asset and mineral and oil resources. After Danish officials made clear that Greenland wasn’t for sale, Trump refused to rule out the prospect of taking it by force.

Of his outlandish imperialist claims (he’s also made threats against Canada and the Panama Canal), this is decidedly the most unserious, but it does reveal a startling obsession with size and a penchant for picking on countries he knows won’t fight back.