What happens if the U.S. pulls out of NATO?

0:00Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com. WBUR Podcasts. Boston. Allies are taking this comment quite seriously, although to be honest, it's not the first time that they've heard something like this. President Trump has threatened to leave NATO before. Question is, will he follow through this time?

0:43It's Wednesday, April 1st, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR Boston. I'm Shikha Teori. Today on the show, the Supreme Court heard arguments today in a landmark case that could redefine who gets to be an American citizen. And President Trump has signed an executive order that seeks to create a national list of citizens who are eligible to vote in each state. Election experts say it's unconstitutional. There's really nothing in the Constitution that gives the president the power over elections. And that's something that was recognized when Trump tried to do an earlier executive order about a year ago, trying to mess with how federal registration rules were going to work.

1:28But first, President Trump's latest threat to pull out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization may be his most serious. It comes at a time of great strain between the U.S. and its NATO allies, as most have refused to back the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. In an interview with the British news site The Telegraph. Trump called NATO a, quote, paper tiger and said he is strongly considering a U.S. exit from the near 80-year-old alliance. Whether Trump really means it is one thing, but Julianne Smith says the consequences of the war in Iran is another and could have dire consequences for the European allies.

2:06Smith served as permanent ambassador to NATO under the Biden administration. She's now president of Clarion Strategies, a geostrategic advisory firm. Here's her conversation with Scott Tong. What is the threat to our European allies? Do you have a for instance? Well, the president is obviously frustrated that the European allies are not running to assist with the war that the United States and Israel started in Iran. He's threatening possibly to pull the United States out of the NATO alliance. That's not something that any member of the alliance would like to see happen. The U.S. still is responsible for providing a considerable amount of Europe's security through its basing of U.S.

2:51troops and its strong participation and leadership role across the alliance. So allies are taking this comment quite seriously, although to be honest, it's not the first time that they've heard something like this. What is the balancing act here? Because this oil and gas crisis is really hitting European countries at heart? It is a balancing act, without a doubt. On the one hand, there's not a lot that Europeans have on offer. They could provide some assistance in opening up the strait. There's intelligence sharing. There's basing rights in Europe. There's mine clearance. But it's not a long list.

3:30So number one, there's that reality. Number two, they are a bit frustrated about the way in which this administration has approached its closest allies. They feel like they're frequently threatened, that they're accused of experiencing decline, and they're worried about the energy shocks that are coming to Europe probably quite soon. And as a matter of practice, can the U.S. unilaterally just pull out? So this is also a bit of a complicated question. So Congress did pass legislation about a year ago to prevent the president from unilaterally withdrawing from the alliance without Senate approval.

4:10However, this administration, this president has shown multiple times that he's willing to kind of exert what he calls kind of executive privilege that he can surpass or work around some of these congressionally mandated authorities. And so one has to ask the question, If the president really wanted to do this, could he do it? He could try. The real question is how would Congress respond to that and whether or not there'd be bipartisan pushback from the right and the left? Yeah. Just kind of stepping back, you have seen a lot in your career. How critical a moment is this right now in global affairs?

4:57It's extraordinarily critical, and it worries me a great deal, whether it's the tension over Iran or tariffs or the White House's declaration just a few months ago that it was going to take Greenland. And all of that could be addressed through traditional diplomacy. But instead, what we're seeing is just one threat after the next. And it's kind of wearing the European allies down, not so that they'll be more accommodating to the U.S., but many of them are starting to hedge and plan for alternative worlds where the U.S. isn't an engaged transatlantic partner. And that does not serve U.S. interests.

5:40We want partners that trust us, that are willing to work with us, that have open channels of communication with us, and where we can address shared challenges together. So in my mind, we're kind of moving in the opposite direction. We're not using the traditional tools of diplomacy in ways that we have in the past when we've had differences. You have said if the U.S. actually pulls out of NATO, it could be devastating for some European allies. Devastating how? Can you just give me a little picture of that? Well, in the worst case scenario, Russia could see an opportunity and decide to stretch its operation beyond Ukraine and possibly touch NATO territory.

6:23It could use gray zone tactics. It could have some sort of direct intervention. And in the worst case scenario, that happens in the United States isn't there to assist Europeans countering Russian aggression. And that would be horrible also not just for Europe, but for the United States, because it would potentially launch a conflict in Europe that would have an impact on global stability and no doubt impact things here at home in the United States as well. Julianne Smith served as permanent representative to NATO under President Biden. Ambassador, thanks for the time. Thank you so much.

7:06Coming up next, all eyes and ears were on the Supreme Court today as it heard arguments in a landmark birthright citizenship case. That's after the break.

7:26For the first time in U.S. history, a sitting president attended oral arguments at the Supreme Court today. President Trump is especially interested in this case because it centers around one of the hallmarks of his presidency, knocking down birthright citizenship. Last year, Trump signed an executive order barring children of undocumented immigrants or temporary residents from automatic citizenship. If the court sides with the administration, it would overturn more than 120 years of settled legal precedent and impact hundreds of thousands of families each year. For more, let's bring in Kim Whaley, a professor of the University of Baltimore Law School, and Muzafir Chishti, a senior fellow at the Nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

8:10He's been listening to arguments at the Supreme Court. They joined Scott with the latest. Muzafra, you were at the court today. Were you able to observe the president and his actions? Yes, I was. Yes, I was literally seven feet away from the president. He was in the first row. I was in the third row. So it was quite a day. It's a story because no sitting president has ever attended the Supreme Court. So that made it special. Yeah, what you saw, like what did he look at, focus on? Did the justices kind of respond to him at all? No. No, I mean, in the great tradition of our country, his presence was not even recognized, not even noted.

8:49He came and sat quietly in the middle of the row, and then he was moved to the end of the row so that he would be more visible. And he left after the Solicitor General finished his argument. He said a little for about opening remarks of the council for the ACLU and then left. Yeah, I understand. OK, great. Right. His lawyer, of course, John Sauer, the Solicitor General. Kim Whaley, the 14th Amendment says all persons born natural or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. The administration's lawyer went first. What was his main argument?

9:29His argument was that subject to the jurisdiction thereof has been misinterpreted for 128 years, essentially. The way it's been interpreted is to mean that you're within U.S. territory when you're born, within the authority of the United States. He's arguing that jurisdiction doesn't mean that, but there's a few steps to his final conclusion. First, he says jurisdiction actually means allegiance, but allegiance doesn't mean loyalty. Allegiance means domicile. Domicile means lawful residence plus an intent to remain there, but we're not going to look into actual intent to remain. You're going to look to the lawfulness of the residence, and that gets to illegal immigration.

10:19Yeah, right. Essentially, it doesn't apply to people whose parents were not here lawfully. Yeah. Then the representative of the plaintiffs, Attorney Cecilia Wong of the ACLU, argued against the administration. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito posed a scenario to her. Let's take a listen to that. A boy is born here to an Iranian father who has entered the country illegally. That boy is automatically an Iranian national at birth, and he has a duty to provide military service to the Iranian government. Is he not subject to any foreign power? Not within the meaning of the 1866 Act, Justice Alito.

11:03So, Kim, is that the 1866 Civil Rights Act? What's going on here? Yeah, the 1866 Civil Rights Act was enacted around the same time as ratification of the 14th Amendment. So, remember, the majority of justices on this court purport to look at the plain language and then look at originalism. What was the intention behind the language at the time it was ratified? I think Justice Alito was trying to help General Sauer out here and essentially suggest this has to do with some kind of allegiance to the United States, a loyalty type concept, not just whether you're physically born here. Later, Justice Jackson pushed back and said, listen, there's all kinds of circumstances where people can have allegiances to more than one place.

11:54So I don't think that was the strongest argument. But General Sauer didn't have many cards to play in his hand, frankly. I understand. And can you tell us a little bit more about the argument that Cecilia Wong brought against the administration? Yeah, so she was arguing, first of all, that the way in this case from 1898, Wong Kim Mark, that is the leading precedent. the way that the Supreme Court interpreted the jurisdiction of the United States in 1898 was to look to common law. What's common law? It's when the country was first born. We didn't have a lot of laws, and so we looked to common law England, what happened under the monarch.

12:40And back then, birthright citizenship was the standard. And so she walks through the Wong Kim Ark case and says there are many, many times that the majority looked to the common law and then made other more pragmatic arguments later as to why that very clear test, listen, you're within the territory of the U.S., you're a citizen, why that makes a lot of sense in 2026 as well because of the chaos, mayhem, and potentiality to even render newborns in the U.S. stateless. which is inconsistent with international humanitarian law, which, ironically, Justice Alito brought up the humanitarian implications of that.

13:21Yeah, and Muzaffar, Shishti, just to bring you back in here, what struck you today from what you saw and heard? I think, you know, at some level, the simplicity of this case was brought forward. Look, we know it's five English words, subject to jurisdiction thereof. What do they mean? and can, if they're supposed to be defined or redefined or interpreted or reinterpreted, who can do it? The position of the Trump administration is the executive who can do it. ACLU's positions know only a constitutional amendment can do that, but you could potentially have a middle ground that the Congress could define that.

13:59But this is where the administration is on kind of thin ice because Congress did have the opportunity to do this in 1940 Nationality Act, and they decided to adopt completely the language of the 14th Amendment. Therefore, according to the ACLU, only an amendment to the amendment can alter the meaning. Yeah. All right. Well, good place to pause it for now. I'm Wazafra Chishti, Senior Fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, and Kim Whaley, Law Professor at the University of Baltimore. Thank you both. Thanks so much for having us.

14:37Coming up, President Trump is trying to reshape elections ahead of the midterms. Robin Young has details of his latest push to do so after the break.

14:59Well, let's take up that executive order that President Trump signed yesterday that would create a national list of citizens who are eligible to vote in every state, and then direct the U.S. Postal Service to send mail-in ballots only to verified voters. Now, the president has long claimed that mail-in ballots lead to fraud, even though every examination of that claim has found it false. In fact, mail-in ballots increase legitimate voting. The president uses mail-in ballots, but Trump said his order would be foolproof. Election experts say it's likely unconstitutional. Arizona and Oregon have already pledged to fight the order in court.

15:35Rick Hassan is director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law. He also writes the Election Law blog. Rick, welcome back. Good to be back with you. So again, the Brookings Institution, the Brennan Center, all have found minuscule fraud through mail-in ballots. That's a fact. But let's take up the use of an executive order. You say it directs the Postal Service to interfere with a state's lawful transmission of ballots. remind us. Well, so what this executive order would do, among other things, is say that the USPS will not deliver a mail ballot that a voter has deposited in the US mail unless the state has jumped through certain hoops, including providing a list of eligible voters to the USPS, which presumably would be checked against a separate list that the Department of Homeland Security has to create, although the executive order is unclear on that.

16:25But what it basically does is it takes the power of the states to run elections and takes a piece of that power away and puts it in the hands of the Postal Service. Well, but President Trump is citing two federal voting statutes and a part of the Constitution that says the U.S. shall guarantee to each state a Republican form of government. So explain what that means and why in your mind it's wrong. So the idea of Republican government here, small r Republican, is that it is government through representatives. Now, how are those representatives chosen? They're chosen through democratic elections.

17:00So it's kind of a non sequitur. When people say we're not a democracy, we're a republic, that really doesn't prove anything. Are you saying that people shouldn't have the right to vote or some people shouldn't have the right to vote? That's really the question. The Supreme Court has long held that the guarantee clause is not really something that courts can adjudicate. And we don't really know what it means. It's something that gets decided in the political branch that certainly does not say anything in the Constitution about the president having the power to administer elections. Instead, in Article I, Section 4, it says that states, through their legislature, set the rules for conducting congressional elections subject to congressional override, and the president is neither Congress nor a state.

17:37So there's really nothing in the Constitution that gives the president the power over elections, and that's something that was recognized when Trump tried to do an earlier executive order about a year ago, trying to mess with how federal registration rules were going to work. Well, Arizona and Oregon have already pledged to fight this executive order in court. But as it goes through these legal challenges, which it will, what happens? Are states required to comply with the order until the next step? What does it mean? Well, first of all, the order doesn't require states to do anything until a period before election day.

18:10So there's a little bit of time. But what's going to happen is states and others are going to go to the federal courts. They're going to ask for a preliminary injunction. That is an order that would stay in effect until there could be a final judgment on the merits about the case. So that's what's going to happen. And even if that didn't happen, I think it's really important to recognize this order provides for an extensive rulemaking process at both the Department of Homeland Security and at the USPS. That is going to take time. It requires states to use certain kinds of envelopes and ballot tracking.

18:41That takes time. There's no way, even if the courts didn't stop this, that this could be administered in time for the 2026 elections. The midterm elections in November. And this comes as the Trump administration is also trying pretty unsuccessfully, though, to create a national voter database. Twenty nine states have refused to hand over their voter rolls to the federal government. But, you know, it would seem as if the states are having to fight on a lot of fronts and be prepared to hold an election. Look, Arizona's Secretary of State said in an interview, the greatest threat to an American election is Donald Trump lying about them.

19:17Our elections are in good shape. But all this morning we heard, you know, parroted on cable shows his falsehoods, you know, about mail-in ballots in particular allowing illegal immigrants to vote. Can you just reinforce, we're talking about the legality of the order, but can you just underscore how that is a false claim? Well, I think the first point is I don't think this executive order is really meant to be implemented in time for 2026 or even 2028. It's meant to keep in the news Trump's claims. He said it yesterday at his press conference. Democrats are cheating. And why would he care about that?

19:56It's because at the end of the day, if Democrats retake control of one or both houses of Congress, they're going to make his life very difficult. They're going to investigate. Maybe there's going to be impeachment. So he knows what this is. This is what I call election denialism theater. This is not really about changing election rules. It's about undermining everyone's confidence in the fairness and integrity of the process and maybe deterring people from voting because who knows if their mail-in ballot will be delivered. Rick Hassan, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law, and he also writes the Election Law blog.

20:29Rick, thank you so much. My pleasure.

20:36Here and Now, Any Time comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Jill Ryan, Wilder Fleming, and Sam Riefelson. Today's editors were Micaela Rodriguez, Michael Scotto, and Kat Welch. technical direction from Caleb Green and Matt Reed. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin, and the executive producer of Here and Now is Ellen Price. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next year. Just kidding. Happy April Fool's Day. The news is no joke, and there will be more of it tomorrow.

21:20Thank you.