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Good morning,

I was going to lead us off with some corny April Fool's joke but there's just too much news and not enough time in the day to get to it all. First, something to get excited about: the launch window for the Artemis II moon flyby officially opens tonight at 6:42 p.m. ET. Godspeed to those astronauts for a safe and successful mission as they go further into space than any human since the Apollo days. Don’t write me about how much money it costs. Who cares. We’re blowing through how many billions a day in Iran? The NASA budget is a pittance in the scheme of things. Space is cool. We should spend more money on space exploration.

President Trump will also address the nation tonight about the war, finally. Nice of him to make the time for us, five weeks into this. Trump told reporters last night he expects the conflict to continue for "two or three" more weeks, which is his go-to timeframe/deadline on all matters of geopolitics. Before that, though, Trump will head to the Supreme Court this morning for the oral arguments in the big birthright citizenship case before the Court, arguably the most consequential immigration case that has reached the SCOTUS in my lifetime. No sitting POTUS has ever attended arguments in person, so that tells you how important this is to both the president and his base.

The case in front of the justices is both straightforward and extremely nuanced, if that's possible. Trump signed a blatantly unconstitutional E.O. on his first day denying citizenship if neither parent is a citizen or lawful permanent resident (green card holder). The point was to get this question in front of the high court, and a year later... it is. That alone is a huge success for the immigration-restrictionist right. This was considered fringe, wacko stuff pretty recently, and now the Supreme Court is taking it up. Even though the administration is very likely to lose the case, they've successfully moved the Overton Window on a question that most of us thought had been settled precedent since Reconstruction: if you're born on US soil, you're an American. Simple as that. (Nothing is ever simple as that, though. The precedent has always had carve-outs for the kids of foreign diplomats and babies born to members of a hostile occupation, exceptions that will play a big part in the arguments today. But you get the idea).

The constitutional precedent at hand here is the 14th Amendment, which states “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The clause "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is what this all hangs on. Ever since the 14A was ratified in response to the dreadful Dred Scott decision, which ruled that Blacks could not be citizens and  set us on the path to the Civil War, the courts have agreed that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was meant to include everyone born on American soil with the narrow exceptions listed above (kids of foreign diplos, kids of occupying soldiers, some Indians).

But the Trump administration is arguing that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" should be interpreted to mean "not subject to a foreign power." Or put another way, babies born to non-citizens can't automatically be US citizens because their parents are "subjects" or hold allegiances to other countries. It's a novel interpretation, and it's probably not going to work even with the 6-3 conservative court we have now. If, and when, the decision comes down against the admin, it will be interpreted by the media as another loss for Trump at the Supreme Court. But it's actually a win either way because it shifts the bounds of the debate and sets up a future president and Congress to pass legislation around this issue that the courts could then take up at some future point. The point is, this ain't over when the justices rule against it in June. It's just beginning.

We discussed the birthright question a while back, and my views on this have always been that birthright citizenship is one of those things that makes America truly exceptional. Most countries establish citizenship via jus sanguinis, or "right of blood." Meaning you're a citizen if your parents are, and their parents were, etc. This is how I was able to get my Italian citizenship even though I am three generations removed. But jus solí, or "right of soil", is a very American concept. If you're born here, you're one of us. Land of immigrants. Welcoming to all, so long as you're willing to put down roots, bust your butt, and live by our rules. We're not an ethnostate, but a big, beautiful mess of mutts all striving for a better life.

That being said.

I was turned onto the work of Peter Schweizer by a reader a while back. Schweizer is a conservative journalist and scholar who wrote the recent bestseller The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon. He puts forth a provocative argument that settled immigration doctrine, including but not limited to the birthright question, needs to be re-assessed because our welcoming immigration policies are being exploited by some combination of domestic elites and leftwing NGOs, the Catholic church, Mexican drug cartels, the CCP and radical leftist movements in Latin America... all working to undermine American sovereignty. 

Some of his stuff is a bit kooky, but Schweizer's most compelling argument is about how China has weaponized US birthright citizenship to create a demographic "time bomb," or what he calls a "Manchurian Generation." Basically, that Chinese elites use a combination of birth tourism and surrogacy pipelines to ensure their babies are born on US soil, granted US citizenship, then are taken back to China where they are raised as Chinese nationals...only to return to the US as adults with full legal rights, including the right to vote.

Schweizer cites evidence there have been roughly 100K babies born this way every year for the last 13 years, totaling more than 1M future US voters who will have been raised in China. Given that our elections are often decided by fewer than a million votes, he presents this as a threat to electoral integrity. His broader point, though, is that this is one way China has been waging a kind of asymmetric, low-grade, "non-kinetic" warfare against the US, using our own generous laws on "who gets to be an American" against us. If you buy into this argument, and you take it as a given that we could very well be fighting a kinetic war with China this century, then we could have a situation where our enemy's leadership class is made up largely of American citizens.

We'd have to spend much more time digging into his specific claims and thinking about whether we can address the China issue without blowing up constitutional precedent. One way I would do it would be to pass legislation severely limiting surrogacy, which is a fraught topic for another day. But this is just meant to provide a counterpoint to the establishment liberal doctrine — which will be all over the media today — that the birthright citizenship debate is a simple fight between racists who want to exclude immigrants from the grand American experiment, and constitutional originalists. It's not that simple. Nothing ever is.

PS: New pod up this morning featuring the economist Justin Wolfers. We talk about the war’s impact on your pocketbook, one year of Trump tariffs and more. Check it out below.

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Carlo Versano is Newsweek's Director of Politics and Culture. He has in-depth knowledge and experience covering a range of topics and stories over a 20-year career in the news business. Carlo joined Newsweek in 2024 after a stint at The Messenger. Before that, he was an Emmy-winning producer at NBC News. He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and the New School. You can get in touch with Carlo by emailing [email protected].

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Economist Justin Wolfer joins Carlo to take the economy's temperature as Trump's war in Iran shakes markets and hits Americans' wallets.

Watch the newest episode here. ⬅

By Hugh Cameron

President Donald Trump, in substance as much as style, has long been viewed as a rupture in the Republican presidential lineage.

Until recently, the brash persona and policies—both domestic and foreign—that seemed to conflict with GOP norms set the president apart from his party predecessors. But with prevalent economic unease, a costly conflict in the Middle East and approval ratings now in the 30s, the contours of his second term appear to be resembling a presidency from which he once cast himself as a departure: that of George W. Bush.

Florida continues to cement itself as Trump Country. 

The Palm Beach International Airport will officially be renamed as President Donald J. Trump International Airport. Not too far away in Miami, we now have renderings of what his presidential library will look like. 

And it won’t look much like a library at all. In Trumpian fashion, the building is set to be a skyscraper that will tower over downtown Miami. POTUS said it’ll include a hotel, natch, as well as a decommissioned AF1 in the lobby.

Rep. Jimmy Patronis, who reps Florida’s First District, told me the library will “honor his legacy while bringing jobs, tourism, and pride to an already thriving state.”

GOP René Garcia, Miami-Dade Commissioner from District 13, told me, “many residents identify with the values and strong sense of patriotism” Trump represents.

Watch my story here. 

The Trump administration is now facing legal and diplomatic pressure from Mexico over mounting deaths in U.S. immigration detention. Mexico announced this week it will file an amicus brief in a federal lawsuit against ICE's Adelanto facility in California, where José Guadalupe Ramos-Solano, a 52-year-old from Guanajuato, died last month.

His death is the fourth at that facility. It marks the fourteenth Mexican national to die under ICE custody since Trump took office in January.

The lawsuit alleges systematic medical negligence, including ignored health requests, delayed responses, and inadequate conditions. ICE is named as legally responsible for custody conditions, though GEO Group operates the facility.

The numbers have climbed sharply. Thirty-three people died in ICE custody in all of 2025. With detention populations now at record highs of 68,000 immigrants, deaths continue. U.S. officials say mortality rates remain low and conditions are adequate.

At the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles, Ramos-Solano's widow, Antonia Tovar, asked for justice. "I want my husband's case to be the last," she said. Mexico is escalating the matter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The government says it will exhaust all legal, diplomatic, and multilateral avenues to ensure the cases do not go unpunished and do not repeat.

“I know people are going to think I’m crazy. This is going to be the headline, and people are going to laugh about it. I think I could be president of the United States. I could definitely run this country better than Donald Trump.”

— Don Lemon, when asked whether he had ever considered running for president.

Newsweek is part of the Trust Project, which focuses on honesty, accuracy and fairness in journalism. Read more about our best practices. To get in touch with our newsroom with suggestions on how to point out possible errors, please contact us at [email protected].