DOJ Lawyer Face-Plants on Native Americans and Birthright Citizenship

The Trump administration’s lawyer, Solicitor General John Sauer, admitted before the Supreme Court Wednesday that he hadn’t thought too much about one of the big questions in President Donald Trump’s attempt to repeal birthright citizenship: What happens to Native Americans?

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who has carved out a niche for himself by carefully considering Indian law, asked Sauer if Native Americans today would be considered birthright citizens under the Trump administration’s test.

“I think so?” Sauer replied, clearly unsure. “I mean, obviously they’ve been granted citizenship by statute.”

“Put aside the statute; do you think they’re birthright citizens?” Gorsuch said again.

“No, I think the clear understanding that everybody agrees in the congressional debates is that the children of tribal Indians are not birthright.”

“I understand that’s what they said,” Gorsuch said. “But your test is the domicile of the parents, and that would be the test you’d have us apply today, right?”

“Yes, yes,” Sauer said.

“Are tribal Indians born today birthright citizens?” Gorsuch asked yet again.

“Ah, I think so, if they were lawfully domiciled here,” Sauer replied. “I’m not sure—I have to think that through.”

“I’ll take the yes,” Gorsuch said.

The Trump administration clearly hasn’t considered the implications of the executive order Trump signed on his first day in office repealing birthright citizenship. That a DOJ lawyer can’t explain whether Native Americans would be U.S. citizens in Trump’s vision is certainly unsettling.

Donald Trump’s threat to leave NATO has one very big hurdle: approval from Congress.

The president told The Telegraph Wednesday that he is weighing an exit from the 1949 compact, saying it is “beyond reconsideration.” He later clarified to Reuters that he planned to mention his dissatisfaction with NATO countries such as France, Poland, the U.K., and others refusing to join the war in Iran during a live address to the country Wednesday night.

“I’ll be discussing my disgust with NATO,” Trump said. When Reuters asked him if he was considering withdrawing from the organization, he said: “Oh, absolutely, without question. Wouldn’t you do that if you were me?”

“They haven’t been friends when we needed them,” Trump added. “We’ve never asked them for much … it’s a one-way street.”

The U.S. joined NATO in 1949 after the Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty, and is considered a core founding member of the organization. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2024 made it harder for a future president to leave NATO, requiring a two-thirds Senate majority or a bill passed by both houses of Congress.

The only way Trump could unilaterally leave NATO is to invoke presidential authority over foreign policy. Republicans in Congress would then probably refrain from challenging Trump’s decision in court, possibly leading to NATO’s downfall without its most powerful member.

“I hope that amid the emotions surrounding the president of ​the United States today, a moment of calm will come,” Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said Wednesday. “And why? Because there is no NATO without the United States, and it is in our interest that this calm comes. But there is ‌also no ⁠American power without NATO.”

On Thursday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declined to commit to NATO’s collective defense provision, refusing to say whether the U.S. would defend its allies if they were attacked by another country, such as Russia.

“As far ​as NATO is concerned, that’s a decision that will be left to the president. But I’ll just say a lot has been laid bare,” Hegseth said at a press conference Tuesday. “You don’t have much of an alliance if you have countries that are not willing to stand with you when you need them.”

That would seem to foreshadow doom for NATO, and further unravel America’s long-standing alliances with European countries. Trump may not realize it, but that would make the U.S. a much weaker country.

Donald Trump’s plan for Iran is changing by the minute.

Iran’s newly installed leadership immediately refuted Trump’s claims that the country was open to a ceasefire, informing state media Wednesday morning that the idea was “false and baseless.”

Iran’s revolutionary guard issued a separate statement with regard to the Strait of Hormuz, writing that the oil passageway “is firmly and decisively under the control” of Iranian forces.

“This strait will not be opened to the enemies of this nation through the ridiculous spectacle by the president of the United States,” the revolutionary guard wrote.

The notice came moments after Trump boasted online that Iran had requested a ceasefire, which the U.S. leader insisted would not happen unless the strait opened up to trade.

“Iran’s New Regime President, much less Radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors, has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE!” Trump wrote Wednesday morning. “We will consider when Hormuz Strait is open, free, and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!”

It is possible that Trump’s morning remarks were in response to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who suggested Tuesday that his country had the “necessary will” to end the war but would first need guarantees that the conflict would not repeat itself. Pezeshkian is not new to his presidential role, nor is he the new Supreme Leader of Iran—that would be Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of previous Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated in February by a U.S.-Israeli joint operation. The junior Khamenei is considered even more extreme, and has been described as his father “on steroids.”

The White House’s stance Wednesday was even more bewildering in light of comments that Trump had made the night before. He claimed he was entirely uninterested in the strait and was considering backing out of Iran even while the waterway remains closed, effectively delaying the conflict for a future administration.

“We will be leaving very soon, and if France or some other country wants to get oil or gas, they will go up through the strait, the Hormuz Strait, and will be able to fend for themselves,” Trump said. “But we have nothing to do with that. What happens in the strait—we aren’t going to have anything to do with it.

“There is no reason for us to do it,” he said.

Situated between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, the Strait of Hormuz is the single most important energy transit point in the world, funneling approximately one-fifth of all crude oil shipments. In 2024, the U.S. imported roughly 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day through the strait, accounting for about 7 percent of total U.S. crude imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The price of oil and gas has skyrocketed in the weeks since the war began. On Tuesday, gas prices eclipsed $4 a gallon across the nation, hitting Americans in their wallets.

While the United States inflicts death on Iranian civilians and devastates Cubans with its oil blockade, President Trump is busy trying to classify antifa—a leaderless group that has become an umbrella term for any kind of anti-fascist resistance—as a counterterrorism threat. 

Puck News reported Tuesday that the administration is pushing to add the group to the National Intelligence Priorities Framework, which the intelligence community has used to prioritize its targets—and determine who to spy on—since 9/11. That framework is traditionally made up of groups like Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS. Now a vague group that even law enforcement and counterterrorism “experts” have struggled to define may share equal status to them. “They’re putting antifa on the list and bumping them up in the queue in a way that doesn’t correspond to threats,” a national security official told Puck.

The vagueness seems to be the point. By painting this broad brush, they can cast anyone in their way—regardless of any kind of connection to “antifa”—as a literal domestic terrorist, opening the door to repression of the highest order.  

A “trigger happy” Pete Hegseth has used the conflict in Iran to boost his own position in the Trump administration, CNN reported Tuesday. 

After the Signalgate scandal, Hegseth found himself in the doghouse of Donald Trump’s Cabinet, spiraling about leaks and scrambling to justify missile strikes on foreign boats. But in recent weeks, the secretary has been able to reestablish himself by becoming the number one cheerleader for Trump’s plan to join Israel in launching a military campaign against Iran. 

“Once the president made the decision, [Hegseth] was the no. 1 supporter of it, as he should be,” one senior White House official told CNN. “He’s still responsible for making sure it’s a success.”

Not only did Hegseth validate the president’s idea to strike, he also downplayed the risks of the conflict spiraling out of control, three sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Weeks later, and the world has watched as Iran has launched a barrage of retaliatory strikes that have shuttered the Strait of Hormuz and upended global trade.

Now Hegseth is the star of press briefings where he waxes poetic about the lethality of warfighters and the fate of the free world. 

“He’s very trigger happy,” one source familiar with Hegseth’s current mindset told CNN. The defense secretary believes that “blowing shit up” is the best way for him to keep his job, the source added.

This sounds like a pretty good strategy for keeping up with a president obsessed with spectacle. Earlier this month, Trump suggested that Hegseth wants to keep the fighting going.  

“You know, the only two people that were quite disappointed, I don’t want to say this, but I have to,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Pete and Gen. Razin’ Caine, I think this thing’s going to be settled very soon.’ They go, ‘Oh, that’s too bad, right?’ Pete didn’t want it to be settled.”

A White House source pushed back on the implication that Hegseth needed to be worried about his job. “The president is very pleased with him, and was before the Iran situation,” the source said.

A Trump administration official continues to insist that he once teleported to a Waffle House, despite being mocked. 

As CNN reported in late March, Phillips has spoken on multiple podcasts about his teleportation activities, which include having gone to a church and to the breakfast restaurant chain. On one of the podcasts, Phillips, who serves as associate administrator for the Office of Response and Recovery at the Federal Emergency Management Association, said, “Teleporting is no fun. It was real.” But a follow-up CNN report reveals that Phillips has since doubled down, posting repeatedly on social media that the experience is real and connected to his religious beliefs. 

On Truth Social late last month, Phillips wrote, “I know what I’ve experienced, I know Who I serve.” Replying to another detractor, Phillips posted, “I have no regrets for my words nor my faith in my Savior, Jesus Christ. The Bible has many examples of the power of God.” In still another post, Phillips cited a passage from the New Testament’s Book of Acts where the Holy Spirit “snatched” away the apostle Philip after a baptism on a road between Jerusalem and Gaza, and Philip is then described as showing up in the city of Azotus, miles away. 

On a podcast in January 2025, Phillips said of the Waffle House experience, “I was with my boys one time, and I was telling them I was gonna go to Waffle House and get Waffle House. And I ended up at a Waffle House—this was in Georgia, and I end up at a Waffle House like 50 miles away from where I was.” 

Phillips’s job at FEMA has a lot of responsibility, dealing with emergency aid, restoring infrastructure, search and rescue operations, and distributing disaster assistance amounting to billions of dollars. At least one high-ranking official at the agency has praised his efforts, calling him “FEMA’s best hope at this moment” when he was hired back in December. 

But Phillips’s past—aside from his teleportation fixation—is controversial. As a major proponent of the “Big Lie,” the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump only lost the 2020 election because it was rigged against him, he had a prominent role in Dinesh D’Souza’s election-denial flop film 2000 Mules. And in January 2025, he said on a podcast regarding President Biden, “I would like to punch that b*tch in the mouth right now. He is a nasty, shitty, crappy human being, and he deserves to die. And I hope he does.”  

Last week, Phillips was supposed to testify at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing, but after CNN’s initial report, he was taken off of the schedule. Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson said at the hearing that Phillips’s “violent rhetoric and wild conspiracy theories are troubling for someone who holds a leadership position at DHS.” 

Thompson was joined by Democratic Representative Tim Kennedy, who said Phillips was “wildly unfit for his role as head of FEMA response and recovery” because of “his violent statements about former President Biden” and “deeply troubling bigoted comments about immigrants.” 

“All of which, to me, makes him wholly disqualified to hold his position on its own—but only to be outdone by his claims of being teleported to a Waffle House,” Kennedy added.

There will be zero consequences for the Army pilots that decided to fly their helicopters around Kid Rock’s house during a No Kings protest on Saturday.

Two Apache attack helicopters first flew over a protest in Nashville, Tennessee. They then hovered outside the MAGA musician’s nearby 27,000-square-foot mansion, a replica of the executive estate that Rock has dubbed the “Southern White House.” The incident was caught on tape by someone at the house, who also filmed Kid Rock saluting the choppers.

The crew of the aircraft was suspended Tuesday as a result. An Army spokesperson said that the incident was under administrative review, and “appropriate action” would be taken if any violations are discovered.

That review has since been thrown out the window at the behest of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“​​Thank you @KidRock,” Hegseth wrote on X Tuesday evening, sharing the country rapper’s video. “@USArmy pilots suspension LIFTED.”

“No punishment. No investigation,” Hegseth added, along with an American flag emoji. “Carry on, patriots.”

The Army identified the aircraft as AH-64 Apache helicopters that were operating around Nashville. A military spokesperson told NBC News Monday that the aircraft flew from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to the Nashville area, and that the flyby and showboating over the musician’s house was entirely coincidental.

Donald Trump weighed in on the vehicles’ odd flight path Tuesday, telling Fox News’s Peter Doocy that “they probably shouldn’t have been doing it” and that the Army is “not supposed to be playing games.” But, in an apparent defense of their behavior, Trump suggested that “they like Kid Rock. I like Kid Rock. Maybe they were trying to defend him. I don’t know.”

“I’m sure they had a good time,” Trump said.

Rock, a country rapper from Detroit, has become an increasingly prominent figure in the MAGA scene in recent years. He played at the Republican National Convention in 2024, was present in the White House as Donald Trump signed an executive order to curb ticket scalping in March 2025, and headlined Turning Point USA’s counterprogramming to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show in February.

He’s also gotten close with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., playing a prominent role in a series of agency-sponsored “Make America Healthy Again” adverts that featured Kennedy and Rock chugging milk and swimming in a pool with pants on.

President Trump has been dealt his fourth legal loss in less than 24 hours, as the federal judiciary rebukes his various abuses of presidential powers.

On Tuesday evening, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta rejected Trump’s claim of presidential immunity regarding his actions on January 6, ruling that he can be held liable for the violence that day. Mehta decided that Trump’s speech to his supporters at the Ellipse and his communications with other officials can all be considered campaign activity. The ruling allows a lawsuit from police officers and Democratic politicians to continue—and opens the door to other similar lawsuits.

It’s a brutal blow for the president, who suffered three other losses just hours earlier. Also on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly allowed a lawsuit to continue against Health and Human Services, which is alleged to have illegally closed its Freedom of Information Act offices. And U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss ruled that President Trump’s executive order last May ending federal funding for NPR and PBS was illegal, writing that the First Amendment “does not tolerate viewpoint discrimination and retaliation of this type.”

Again on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon temporarily blocked President Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom construction after a lawsuit from the National Trust for Historic Preservation—which argues that Trump acted beyond his authority when he demolished the East Wing to build said ballroom.

March was a rough month for President Trump, as his plummeting approval rating caused by his war on Iran and immigration crackdown show. These consecutive legal losses won’t help either. While the judiciary has certainly been pushed around by the Trump administration for years, small district-level victories like these remind us of the power in basic checks and balances.

Donald Trump’s executive order targeting mail-in voting is already being challenged by states, while election experts say it’s dead on arrival.

Trump signed an executive order Tuesday requiring the Department of Homeland Security to partner with the Social Security Administration to assemble a list of verified U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote. The order also directs the U.S. Postal Service to bar anyone not included on these lists from receiving a mail-in or absentee ballot. Mail ballots are required to be packaged in special envelopes with trackable barcodes.

The order also empowered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate states and localities that give ballots to ineligible voters.

Trump called the order “foolproof” while signing it Tuesday evening, but states are already fighting back, Time reported Wednesday.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows called the order “laughably unconstitutional,” and promised there was no way her state would “obey in advance.” Despite Trump’s calls for Republicans to nationalize elections, the U.S. Constitution empowers states to run their own elections.

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar also condemned the order, claiming it was just another attempt by Trump to undermine free and fair elections. “The President has spent years attempting to manufacture a crisis around mail voting when there is none. Any claims that there is widespread fraud in our elections are false and create chaos and confusion for voters in the middle of an election year,” he said in a statement.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes released a statement calling the order a “disgusting overreach” to “weaponize the sensitive information of voters in this country.”

Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read called the order a “desperate, illegal power grab,” adding, “My message to the president: We’ll see you in court.”

Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket, also announced his intention to challenge the order. “We know where this will go—the targeting of Democrats for mass disenfranchisement. We will sue and we will win,” he wrote on X.

Others election experts had a more laissez-faire attitude. David Becker, executive director for the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said that Trump’s order was a total nonstarter. “Some may freak out about this, but honestly, this is hilarious,” Becker told MS NOW. “He might as well sign an EO banning gravity.”

It’s worth noting that Trump recently voted by mail in a Palm Beach election won by a Democrat. Trump’s executive order comes as Republicans are attempting to pass the SAVE America Act, which would prohibit universal mail-in voting. Under the new legislation, voters would have to submit an application to receive a mail-in ballot.

Donald Trump’s presidential library will probably have very little to do with books and reading.

Trump shared a mock-up of the facility to his Truth Social account Sunday night, teasing a new glass skyscraper on the Miami skyline labeled “Donald J. Trump Presidential Library.” Renderings of the building included a red, white, and blue needle on top, a U.S. flag hanging down the side, and a gargantuan plane on the first floor that resembles the super luxury jumbo jet Qatar gifted him last year.

Speaking with reporters at the White House Tuesday, Trump directly addressed the proposed development, flatly admitting that his presidential library will probably not be a library at all.

“It’s a huge skyscraper—is that all a library?” asked a journalist.

“Well, it’s a library. It’s a museum, a library, it’s presidential,” Trump said. “But I wouldn’t start until I’m out of office. I don’t believe in building libraries or museums.”

Trump then went on to insult Barack Obama’s presidential library in Chicago, calling it “a very unattractive building” that’s in a “bad location.”

“I think you’re going to see a great one here,” Trump said, adding that he believes it will be built in the “best block in Miami.”

“Will people live on the floors?” asked another reporter.

“No, it’s going to most likely be a hotel, you know this concept could be an office but it’s most likely going to be a hotel with a beautiful building underneath and a 747 Airforce One in the lobby. It’ll be a trick,” Trump said.

Presidential libraries are typically built with private donations and managed by the National Archives and Records Administration. No such library ever erected in honor of a former president has featured a hotel.

It’s far from the first time that Trump has attempted to use his power and political prestige as a get-rich-quick scheme. Trump’s long list of election-year hustles included launching a remarkably ugly sneaker and a limited-edition, $60 God Bless the USA Bible co-promoted by “God Bless the USA” singer Lee Greenwood, which was ultimately forced on Oklahoma public schools by their MAGA superintendent.

And last month—just two weeks into the Iran war—Trump issued a fundraising email to his supporters that promised a “National Security Briefing Membership” in exchange for their cash.