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Immigration progressI Trump seeks ‘long shot’ 2nd try on birthright at SCOTUS; 5th Circuit rules cheap tuition for illegals is, well, illegal; historic H1-B criminal cases; and new deep state firings.
JUL 10READ IN APP
Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! Your roundup includes: the Trump Administration gets back in the birthright citizenship ring and takes on another round with the Supreme Court, after discovering billboards for birthrights; Fifth Circuit confirms lower ruling finding that Texas’s law giving illegal aliens in-state tuition is illegal; H1-Bs back on the menu, as feds launch historic criminal investigation into employment abuses; and in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Slaughter decision, President Trump fires another ‘independent’ Democrat board of commissioners— this time for the agency that helps states install electronic voting machines and ‘improve’ mail-in balloting.
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On Wednesday, CNBC reported, “Trump announces long-shot bid to get Supreme Court to rehear birthright citizenship case.” The President announced he will ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its June 30th birthright-citizenship decision, after spotting border-area advertisements selling American citizenship packages, apparently including the cheerful obstetrical slogan, “Deliveries starting at $4000.”
Fox’s Brooke Taylor reported that, for some reason, Mission Regional Medical Center, which put up these particular billboards in Mexico, took them back down faster than Speedy Gonzalez approaching a taco truck. Their ridiculous website, prominently listed on the billboards, havemybabyinTEXAS.com, is suddenly empty and for sale. Note the delivered price— $3,950. (C-sections are an affordable $5,525.)
Now, most Americans pay more than that in co-pays for a live birth, even for a normal delivery, and only the Great Stork knows how much hospitals bill the insurance companies for American births. Last year, Forbes estimated that it costs cash-paying American parents around $19,000. But non-citizens get the same service plus citizenship from the same American hospitals (with all the attendant benefits of citizenship, including welfare) for four grand. Seems fair.
Anyway, Mission Hospital issued a statement that explained the missing billboards and website. “The marketing materials regarding maternity services are no longer in use due to any unintended misunderstanding.” Oh, fear not. There was no misunderstanding, amigo. We understood it just fine. And we’d bet you intended it, too.
Meanwhile, Texas’s Health and Human Services Commission is now investigating Mission Hospital for legal violations, such as aiding and abetting immigration fraud, since visas for childbirth purposes are totally illegal. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said, “American citizenship is not for sale, and Texas will not permit our healthcare system to be used as a magnet for birth tourism.” Headline from Fox:
It isn’t clear exactly when Mission put up the billboards, but as the story went viral early this week, President Trump reacted. You might say he reacted strongly. First, on Thursday he unleashed a load of rhetorical buckshot on Truth Social:
Then he ordered the DOJ to appeal last week’s Supreme Court decision in the birthright case. Which sounds weird— besides prayer, how does one take an appeal from the nation’s highest court? The answer is that you appeal right back to the Supreme Court itself, which is just as silly as it sounds. It is like asking the traffic cop, “Are you sure I should get this ticket? What about all the other cars?”
On the plus side, the law says any court, from small-claims dog-bite cases to landmark SCOTUS decisions, may ‘reconsider’ its own orders. At the Supreme Court, losing parties have 25 days to file “motions for rehearing” of any final judgment. People almost never do it, though, for obvious reasons. Supreme Court litigation is fabulously expensive. Why flush money down the Supreme toilet?
Even if money is no object, and you go for it anyway, you really don’t get much for the investment. A rehearing petition lands in a black box. There’s no dramatic oral argument. No courtroom showdown. No surprise witness bursting through the doors holding a sonogram and a laminated billboard. The Court does not even require the other side to respond (unless the Justices want one). And, most importantly, to reach a rehearing, you need at least one new fact or evidence of fraud. Then you still have to convince a majority of the Court, with the gate being opened by a Justice who joined the original judgment and just ruled against you.
In plain English, it takes a series of minor miracles. There must be some meaningful change in circumstances. Then, one of the Justices in the original majority has to say, “Hang on, maybe we should look at this again.” Then five more Justices have to agree. President Trump has just enoughrunway, assuming either Roberts or Barrett flips.
Facially, the odds are, well, microscopic— a fact that corporate media is splashing across dozens of sneering headlines. CNBC wasn’t wrong to call it a “long shot.” Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck noted that the Court has not granted rehearing in an argued case since 1965, and the last full rehearing that actually reversed a decision was Reid v. Covert in 1956. Back when the Court last meaningfully changed its mind this way, Americans were still buying cars with fins, smoking in hospitals, and trusting news anchors because they had not yet invented Brian “Potato Head” Stelter.
⚖️ But there’s a silver lining. We must wait to see what DOJ comes up with for changed circumstances. But after that, President Trump will enjoy a status that no other litigant enjoys. He’s the President of the United States, and presidents get to step up to the velvet rope at the front of the Supreme Court’s queue. So, even though all the experts keep sniping about how ‘rare’ grants of rehearing are, it’s inaccurate to measure presidential odds across the entire rehearing pool. It’s like putting a SpaceX rocket and a bottle rocket on the same “list of rockets.”
In short, the President has his very own SCOTUS category. He is not standing in line with “Gary from Topeka v. My Condo Association.” He walks right through the Court’s deluxe presidential line, which is much shorter, better furnished, and has its own snack bar.
So, while in general it is true that few rehearing petitions are filed, and that in general 99% of filed petitions are summarily rejected, those figures simply do not apply to presidential petitions. Any expert saying otherwise is lying or unqualified. The fact is, there are too few presidential rehearing requests to calculate meaningful odds. It might even be more accurate to say oddswouldn’t be useful even if we did have the data, since every presidential case is a legal and historical unicorn.
⚖️ Finally, there is an even more basic legal lesson here: you only win shots on goal that you take.
Rehearing might be a long shot. But if the Administration thinks the Court misunderstood the scale, the consequences, or the black-market border-baby business model hawking American citizenship like Mexican street corn, then asking for reconsideration is not crazy. That’s just what smart litigants do when the stakes are sufficiently high, and when the rules still allow one more filing.
⚖️ For the sake of argument, let’s allow that it probably won’t work. But “probably won’t work” is not a legal argument. It is as accurate as a weather forecast. Sometimes you still carry an umbrella. Sometimes a goalie slips on a patch of slick constitutional ice. Sometimes you chuck a basketball cross-court right before the buzzer. You just never know. Probably won’t work is not the same as won’t work.
Nor should we underestimate Trump’s marketing genius. The drama of rehearing recaptures another news cycle, even if the petition ultimately goes nowhere. Trump’s dogged persistence achieves a separate, equally important objective: engagement. The coverage forces the country to continue arguing over the core question: Is American citizenship a constitutional birthright attached to magic dirt, or is it a political inheritance attached to an allegiance? Is it something a nation controls, or is it something a clever rural hospital can package, market, and sell along the Tijuana causeway?
However it turns out, Trump is either giving them one last chance or making the Supremes double down. They’d be smart to take the off-ramp before they reach the border.
⚖️ I found the timing of this next story to be deliciously suggestive. Maybe it’s momentum. Yesterday, KERA News reported, “Federal appeals court rejects bid to revive in-state tuition for Texas students without legal status.” Like the billboards, it came from Texas, involved an appeal, and related to the ‘rights’ of illegal immigrants— and the court ruled well.
Last spring, Trump’s DOJ sued the State of Texas over its decades-old “Dream Act,” which granted cheap in-state tuition to border jumpers. So that’s two: cheap deliveries and cheap college. Then, in June 2025, a federal judge ended the dream and struck down the Act. Activists appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. This week, the 3-judge panel sided with the original judge (2-1): the Dream Act violates federal law.
Ironically, the federal law that broke the Dream Act is actually pretty generous. It even says states can give illegal immigrants college education benefits. There’s just one catch— those benefits must be offered to all Americans. It can’t just be for illegals. So Texas has to give everyone in-state tuition— or else it can’t be offered to illegal aliens. It’s like second-grade Valentine’s cards: All or none.
Texas’s generous Dream Act tried to end-run around federal law by tying in-state tuition to completing three years of high school in Texas, rather than to residency. So activists argued that since citizens from any other state could also attend high school in Texas, the Dream Act didn’t give illegals any benefit that other citizens couldn’t also enjoy. The Fifth Circuit said, nah, we see through that. Three years of high school in Texas is residence, just using a different name.
Meanwhile, last week, Florida outright banned illegals from attending Florida’s public colleges at all, regardless of tuition level, sparking outrage. Headline from the UK Guardian, last week:
Isn’t it nice that the British are so interested in tuition rates for illegal aliens in Florida? They called it outrage! Cruelty! Or … is it common sense? Should public colleges, funded by taxpayers, provide discounted prices to people who are breaking the law? I guess it depends on your point of view. It’s so… complicated.
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That wasn’t all this week’s ‘outrages.’ Two days ago, Fox reported, “Trump admin launches its first major H-1B visa fraud investigation.” Ruh roh! The subheadline added, “Labor Department Inspector General says investigators have already begun issuing dozens of subpoenas.”
The OIG is now collaborating with federal law enforcement and the Trump-Vance Fraud Task Force. It has begun issuing dozens of subpoenas, and is encouraging whistleblower reports via its hotline.
As a reminder, imagine a U.S. tech company that needs a very specific type of AI engineer. If they can’t find an American to do the job after really looking, then they can sponsor an H-1B visa to bring in a ‘qualified person’ from India, Canada, or elsewhere— but they must follow strict rules about pay and the job requirements, and there is a limit to the number of spots available each year.
For instance, the law forbids charging H-1B applicants for placement —i.e., selling visas— or paying kickbacks to anybody. But the rules are only as good as what the government will enforce. For a long time, the government has not enforced the rules, and companies took advantage.
The OIG’s report cited a long list of examples, including employers submitting false documentation for nonexistent jobs; “benching” workers (leaving them unpaid/idle while on H-1B status); staffing companies recruiting foreign workers (e.g., nurses from the Philippines) for nonexistent U.S. positions, charging them $8,000–$10,000 in illegal fees plus ongoing deductions, and backdating paychecks to fake compliance.
Between 2015 and 2018, 825 H-1B investigations found violations in an eye-watering 649 cases (78.7%), but only 38 led to consequences (~6%). Investigations were mostly complaint-driven; the Secretary has rarely (or possibly never) used its authority to probe proactively.
In a Fox Business interview, OIG Attorney General Anthony D’Esposito described the effort as potentially “the biggest investigation into foreign labor by an inspector general in this administration yet.”
This record-setting probe targets employers, labor brokers, staffing firms, and schemes involving fraudulent applications, below-wage labor, benching, kickbacks, and most importantly, the displacement of U.S. workers. Media has described it as one of the most aggressive enforcement efforts yet. Wolfsdorf Immigration Law advised its corporate clients to tread carefully: “Any employer that sponsors H-1B workers should expect increased scrutiny… Rather than waiting for a government inquiry, employers should consider proactively reviewing their immigration compliance programs.”
This is just the latest move in a long series of cruel and outrageous H-1B reforms undertaken during Trump 2.0.
Trump 2.0 has pursued several significant H-1B reforms, focused on raising application fees for employers, shifting visas toward higher-skilled and higher-paid workers, strengthening enforcement against fraud and abuse, and prioritizing American workers. For instance, in September, President Trump issued an executive order raising the traditional employer fee of around $4,000 to a whopping $100,000 per sponsored H-1B application. The fee has been relentlessly battered by lawfare, but has held for the most part and remained in effect till this week.
Doomscrollers should be pleased. But they can’t be pleased, so never mind. This criminal investigation of H-1Bs —again, the first of its kind— should be plunked into the broader landscape of border shutdowns, birthright challenges, deportations, and criminal ICE enforcement. Doomscrollers seem to think that all these changes can be magically accomplished without winning any legal fights, negotiating with entrenched stakeholders, voting blocs, and foreign allies, just by waving around a presidential pen like it is a Harry Potter wand. Allakazam!
The reason this particular Administration is the first to tackle most of these problems is because they are hard. They are politically radioactive. They encounter hostile liberal judges at every single step. For example, two days ago, Reuters reported:
That lawsuit was jointly filed in Boston by twenty Democrat attorneys general. Despite the temporary win, it was yet more evidence of the Democrat polycrisis. The lawsuit pits blue labor activists against blue immigration activists. The immigration activists won. The Donkey Party is no longer the party of the working man. It’s the immigration party. The progressives are eating each other. (The DOJ’s lawyers intend to appeal.)
The stark reality is: this is a game of inches. And the Trump Administration keeps gaining yards.
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In our final encouraging development, yesterday NPR reported, “President Trump cleans house at the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission.” It was more delicious fruit from the Supreme Court’s Slaughter decision, which ruled that President Trump can fire so-called “independent” commissioners who oversee federal agencies. Bye, Felecia.
The Election Assistance Commission was created by Congress in 2002 in the wake of the Bush v. Gore disaster. Its mission is to “help” states implement electronic voting machines and mail-in balloting. Last year, President Trump sent the commission a raft of ordered reforms— a list that will be familiar to anyone paying attention. The commissioners promptly ignored Trump’s orders as if they were a particularly grotesque roadside armadillo corpse.
Fine! So Trump let the commission languish, leaving two seats on the five-member board unfilled. Two Democrats and one squishy Republican remained— barely a quorum. Then, this week, with the assist from SCOTUS, Trump terminated the Democrats —you’re fired!— and the lone Republican was “allowed to resign.”
Which, for all practical purposes, blankedthe commission. If you can even call a no-member group a “commission,” that is. It’s a dead letter.
Michael Waldman, president and CEO of an election NGO, the Brennan Center for Justice, whined, “These removals leave the agency without leadership and unable to carry out its major responsibilities.” (According to the NGO’s 990 disclosure form for 2025, Mr. Waldman makes $700,616 in salary and benefits each year to perform his selfless, charitable works for America’s elections. A princely sum that NPR diligently failed to mention.)
“President Trump is trying to dismantle yet another independent guardrail of our democracy designed to keep elections fair and secure,” complained Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) and Representative Joe Morelle (D-NY), the ranking Democrats on congressional elections committees. “Purging commissioners just months before the midterm elections and further gutting support for our state and local elections officials is a blatant part of his plan to politicize our elections and enable more unlawful and dangerous election interference.”
The reason for progressive outrage is that President Trump can now work around the leaderless EAC. And, as Democrats were quick to point out, it arrives just as midterm season gets enthusiastically underway. I guess it’s more ‘lucky’ timing.
Have a fantastic Friday! Swing back here tomorrow, for the Weekend Edition’s essential news and caffeinated commentary.
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Rose Rambles... 