Congressman Brandon Gill - Should birthright citizenship be changed?

Every year, thousands of children born to people in the country illegally automatically receive U.S. citizenship. Is that what the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to do, or is it time for Congress to redefine birthright citizenship?

Congressman Brandon Gill joins the show to discuss his proposed Citizenship Act, why he believes birthright citizenship should not apply to the children of illegal entrants, and the constitutional debate surrounding the issue. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hey, welcome back to the Lawrence Larson Show, and it's a pleasure to be with you. I'll get back to your phone calls and emails shortly. A real pleasure to welcome to the program the guy who seems to get an awful lot of social media virality, and that is Congressman Brandon Gill, representing Texas 26th Congressional District. Congressman, good to have you back on the program.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

I love some of these QA's you do with some people in hearings because they seem they seem to hit the points that people really want addressed. And you you've really got things nailed down on that.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Well, I I appreciate it. You know what we try to do in these hearings, whether it's with the Smithsonian Institution, which is one we had this week, or whether it's with the president of the American Bar Association, is really drilled down onto what are the core issues? Um in one instance, uh just yesterday with the ABA president, uh, it was on DEI, or in other words, it's uh uh diversity in law school admissions. That really amounts to racial quotas. And what my goal is to uh ask questions that that highlight the the crux of political issues that we're getting at.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Well, and one of the things, just say in case people haven't seen it, when you said, oh, you you want the courts to represent the w the composition of America, does that mean that you don't want a third black justice nominated to the United States Supreme Court? Because that would be overrepresentation. I mean, and I know you were you you were being sarcastic, but I read that right, but I thought it got the point across better than almost anything else.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Yeah, it you know, i exactly. I mean, by the way, I mean, for what it's worth, my ideal Supreme Court would be cloning Clarence Thomas and putting him on there nine times. That's not because of his race, that's because I think he's a brilliant judge. Um, but the the question was the American Bar Association um promotes this ideology, that diversity, that that diversity should be paramount in deciding uh the the makeup of the Supreme Court or the makeup of a law school admissions class, that those groups should look roughly like what the broader American public does. So if you take their own logic and you say, well, this the Supreme Court should look like the rest of America, that would suggest very clearly that this that the Senate should refuse to confirm a third black Supreme Court justice because if they did, black people would be overrepresented on the United States Supreme Court relative to their population uh in the United States. Now, again, I don't agree with that logic. I think that's insane. I actually think it's incredibly uh racist and and is not the we should we should judge somebody by the the content of their character and their qualifications, obviously not based on the color of their skin. That is the logic of the American Bar Association. Um and uh, you know, I think it's worth asking them about that.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Hey, by the way, I want to ask you about a piece of legislation that you've introduced called the Citizenship Act that might address what I think the United States Supreme Court got it wrong when they looked at the 14th Amendment and decided on birthright citizenship. Am I on the right track?

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Yeah, that that that's right. Um what we're trying to do is is find a legislate a fix for the birthright citizenship issue, which we know you know, whenever you have 15 million, 20 million illegal aliens have come into the country and are having children, or whenever you have people coming into the country via birth tourism for the purpose of having children, we've got an issue here. So what this bill seeks to do is it it classifies both illegal aliens and birth tourism, uh birth tourists as invaders. And then what it also does is it amends uh federal law just to confirm that the children of illegal aliens and the children of birth tourists are not entitled to American citizenship. Um I think that that's one way that we could um sort of fix this problem. This is something that uh I don't believe would be subject to judicial review. The question of whether somebody is an invader or not is a political question. That's one that's for the political branches of government uh to adjudicate, not to the courts. Um but this is this is the issue that that we're trying to solve here.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

I'm talking to Congressman Brandon Gill from Texas, the uh 26th congressional district is the area he represents. And yet you can't even get your your fellow uh Democrat or the Democrat members of of the House of Representatives to vote in favor of banning insider trading of stock. Are is there any prayer of getting them to support something like the Citizenship Act?

SPEAKER_01 4:44

You know, I I just uh I think every Republican uh should get on board with the Citizenship Act. You know, candidly, I I never have very high hopes for the Democrat Party anymore. Um, this is a party that is run by radical socialists, they're the ones setting the ideological agenda of the Democrat Party. So I would love to see uh them get on this on this bill, but um, you know, we'll see if any of them do.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Do you have any f any any idea of where is this all going to go this year in an election year when you've got the DSA, as you just suggested, seems to have taken over the party. And and yet, from the point of view of a lot of people, and and I would include myself in that group, we think this is one of the best things that's ever happened for Republicans, because we don't have to persuade Americans that that the Democrats are wrong. We just have to let them run off the edge of the cliff the way they seem to be doing. Or am I overstating that?

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Well, I I I I agree with you in many respects. I think that the Democrat Party is right now running off of a cliff in a way that is transparent to most Americans. In other words, you know, Democratic socialists can get elected uh in left-wing parts of California or maybe in in left-wing parts of New York. Um, I think they're gonna have a lot harder time getting elected in Texas and in Middle America. I think our job should be to show how crazy these people are, to show that these are the people that are in control of the Democrat Party and setting the tone for the entire Democratic Party and showing how much it will harm the American people, how much this will tangibly impact your life. That these are the people who are not only adhere to ideologies like communism, for instance, um, that have failed multiple times and created more misery in history than probably any other ideology, but these are the people whose political prescription for America is to sell your birthright away, to flood our country with illegal aliens, to spend money that drives up inflation, um, to do things that that really um turn America as we know it inside out. That I think is the case we need to be making to the American people, and and I think that they're they're gonna see that pretty plainly.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Well, I hope that you continue to push that because I'd love to see the Citizenship Act passed. I'd love to see some limits on on what happens when people come into this country illegally. Congressman Gill, thank you very much. We appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

You bet. That's Congressman Brandon Gill from Texas, the 26th uh congressional district in Texas. Glad to have you with me. If you want to join the best conversation in talk journalism, it's here every day at 866-A Lars. And you know, everybody is talking about those weight loss injections, the GLP ones, and I will admit the results are dramatic. They work by lowering blood sugar, cutting your appetite. But what if you want to lose weight, but you don't want to have those painful weekly injections, especially when you hear about some of the crazy side effects of the GLP ones? That's why doctors created a weight loss supplement called lean, and the results are remarkable. I've used it myself. The studied ingredients in lean have been shown to lower your blood sugar. They burn up fat by converting it to energy and they curb your appetite and your cravings. That means you're not as hungry. But lean is not for the casual dieter. You know, the one who only has a few pounds to lose. The doctors at Brickhouse Nutrition created lean for frustrated dieters with 10 or more pounds to lose. I want to start you off with 20% off the regular price and free rush shipping. So you can add lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Visit takelean.com. That's one word, takelean.com, and enter Lars for your discount. That's L-A-R-S. Promo code Lars at takelean.com. Try to get your phone calls and your emails 866-439-5277. Send your emails to talk at LarsLarson.com and check out our feed on Instagram as well.