New Jersey Attorney General Platkin Discusses Big SCOTUS Hearing

0:00We have a major oral argument coming up this week before the United States Supreme Court on Donald Trump's executive order trying to eliminate the constitutional right of birthright citizenship. you see right here from April 17, 2025, when the Supreme Court announced that it would be holding oral argument on May 15th. And sure enough, May 15th is here this week. Just take a look at this order. Consideration of the application for partial stay presented to the chief justice and by him referred to the court is deferred pending oral argument. Consideration of the application for partial stay presented to Justice Kagan and by her referred to the court is deferred pending oral argument consideration of the other application for partial stay presented to Justice Jackson and by her referred to the court is deferred pending oral argument.

0:48The applications are consolidated and a total of one hour is allotted for oral argument. The applications are set for oral argument at 10 a.m. on Thursday, May 15, 2025. You look at the three consolidated cases right there, and one of those cases involves the state of New Jersey in their lawsuit defending the constitutional right of birthright citizenship. Something that we should know about this case, though, is for what's happening before the Supreme Court. At this stage, the Justice Department from the Trump regime is not asking the court to weigh in on the legality of ending birthright citizenship just yet.

1:25Instead, the government wants the court to put an end once and for all to nationwide injunctions by district courts that have the effect of blocking presidential policies everywhere in the country is what the Trump regime is saying after they would just go to the Northern District of Texas when former President Biden was in office and get injunction after injunction to block things like student loan debt forgiveness and expansions of rights and freedoms that Biden was trying to do. Just take a look right here at what Donald Trump just recently said about birthright citizenship in the United States Constitution and his belief by executive order.

2:01He can just eliminate it, which he can't. He has no clue what birthright citizenship is, where it's found in the Constitution. But watch him just run his mouth for a little bit. And then I want to bring in the attorney general from the state of New Jersey, who is going to be leading the oral argument. The solicitor general from his office is going to be the person making the oral argument. Let's take a look at what Trump wrote in his mouth here quickly. A short time ago, the Supreme Court agreed to hear oral arguments in the case about ending birthright citizenship. How confident are you that the court will rule in your favor and allow that order to end birthright citizenship to go forward?

2:36Well, you're just telling me that for the first time. I am so happy. I think the case has been so misunderstood. That case, birthright citizenship, is about slavery. If you look at the details of it, the signings of it, everything else, that case is all about slavery. And if you view it from that standpoint, people understand it. Let's bring in New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, Attorney General Platkin. So we have something called the United States Constitution. institution, then Donald Trump by executive order, not even a law, an executive order. I don't like birthright citizens. It's about slavery or whatever he's saying right there.

3:22Your state kicked into high gear, filed one of the first lawsuits on this. Now you're in front of the Supreme Court. Tell us about the oral argument, what you expect and what this case is all about. Well, first, thanks for having me. And yeah, what the president said there and what he said, frankly, in his executive order at 8 p.m. on the first day in office, trying to be the first president in 157 years to take the interpretation that he just said, to rewrite the plain text of the 14th Amendment, that after a civil war, we came together as a nation and said, never again are we going to debate whether babies born on U.S.

3:56soil are, in fact, entitled to the rights and privileges of U.S. citizenship. We settled that with the civil war. And for a century and a half, the Supreme Court and basically everyone in the United States understood that that was the way citizenship worked. And now we'll be leading the argument at the Supreme Court on behalf of a coalition of states that sued immediately. We were in court the next morning after he filed that order because it affects us. It affects our residents and it affects us as states. And think about this. You know, they want to say that in this phase, they want to say that citizenship is decided based on whether or not your state attorney general joined our suit.

4:34So for New Jersey, if you're a parent giving birth in South Jersey, well, a lot of those parents go to Philadelphia hospitals. And so Pennsylvania is not in our suit. So they would say that your citizenship is decided based on which hospital you go to for residents in our state. No one seriously thinks the Constitution works that way. It hasn't worked that way since the Civil War, and I'm confident we're going to prevail next week. What do you think, though, about the procedural posture of this? Because the merits of the birthright citizenship issue, at least I think before the Supreme Court, is a little bit secondary to the nationwide injunction issue about whether a federal court sitting in one district can basically issue an overall injunction blocking actions throughout the nation.

5:28Now, the former President Biden was in office. We see the Trump administration use this over and over and over again. Tell us, though, procedurally, is this case focused on the merits? Is it going to get into the constitutional right of birthright citizenship? Or when we watch the oral argument, is it going to be a little bit, you know, focused on nationwide injunctions and the merit there? Well, again, I think you're right that there's been some hypocrisy in terms of when this administration does and doesn't like nationwide injunctions. But put aside that debate for a second. Our position here is clear.

6:04I don't see how you could consider whether this order should apply to every state without considering the merits of what we're talking about. I gave you the example earlier about the child being born in Philadelphia who lives in South Jersey. But just think about it for a second. I mean, we were talking earlier, you and I both lived in different states, most Americans have lived in different states throughout their lives. And people move in this country. So what this court would be saying, if in fact, it's saying no, it only applies, this injunction right now only applies to the states that are in this suit, meaning the states that have brought suit against the administration, then effectively each state would be in a position and the residents of our state would be parsing through who's a citizen and who isn't based on which state they live in at the time of their birth and potentially where they move to.

6:50No one seriously thinks the 14th Amendment or the constitutional rights of this nation apply to you based on which state you live in, but that's effectively the argument that the administration, the Trump administration, is making to the court. I want to switch topics and talk about these big law firms that have been capitulating. You know, I had Dean Chemerinsky right now. He's the dean of UC Berkeley on, and he's started UC Irvine, a legend. He said, you know, that the profession in general should be ashamed of itself, I think was the words that he used for how some of these lawyers have been behaving in capitulating for Donald Trump.

7:34We saw Justice Sotomayor come out and speak publicly, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson saying, look, if you're not equipped to defend the Constitution and be courageous, then just don't be a lawyer. Don't come into this profession. And to see Supreme Court justices outspoken like that is something I think worth noting as well. But what's going on? What do you see here? What's your views of it all? Yeah, I think this is a look yourself in the mirror moment as an attorney. Do you stand for the things that we've said we stand for? Are you willing to uphold the oath that you took to uphold the Constitution and zealously advocate for your client, something that we are all obligated to do?

8:19And I've been very disappointed in what we as attorneys general have collectively called a capitulation by some of the most powerful law firms to what are clearly, clearly illegal and unconstitutional orders issued by the president, targeting lawyers for doing their job, targeting lawyers for taking cases and bringing their clients' interest to court. And look, I'm the attorney general in my state. I represent nine and a half million people. I am routinely on the other side of the table with lawyers, including some of the very law firms that I'm in court now standing up for and saying their right to zealously advocate for their clients cannot be then flipped on its head and have them targeted and have their business model targeted by an administration who doesn't like it.

9:02I would never even contemplate doing that as the attorney general, much less actually implement it. And so this is bigger than just any one firm. This is about whether the attacks on the press, the attacks on the universities, the attacks on people's right, their First Amendment right to go to court and advocate for their interests, whether those rights are going to stand. And if they don't, then we are clearly on the path to authoritarianism in this country. And so this is a really big fight. And I've very much been disappointed in some of my colleagues in the profession who have not recognized the significance of this moment and have instead put their own personal self-interest ahead of the interest of this nation.

9:42You know, you mentioned universities as well. I mean, and you've seen different universities respond differently as well. We've seen some universities step up. We've seen some universities sign these ridiculous contracts in principle, giving the Trump regime who knows what they think they're they're giving them. But, you know, with Trump, if you give him an inch, he takes much more than that. Talk to us about the efforts from your office also, though, just in general with education. Trump's attack on education, everything from trying to rip school lunches out of the mouths of of children, you know, to gutting funding at universities.

10:20It's systemic at every level, a dismantling of education. Yeah, this has been the most anti-education, anti-public education administration, maybe in the history of this nation. Certainly incredibly hostile to what every American relies on. Eighty five percent of Americans send their kids to K through 12 public schools. And yet on Valentine's Day, literally, as I'm having dinner with my wife, we get a letter from the Federal Department of Education saying, if your school had a Black History Month event or a Lunar New Year event or honored Martin Luther King Day, you can lose the entirety of your federal funding.

10:56So just think about that. You have parents of kids with special needs. If you're a parent of a kid with autism, this administration has said if you have one of those events, which, by the way, the president had a Black History Month event in the Oval Office. And by the own terms of his own orders, he would lose federal funding for doing that. That parent of that kid with autism might lose the aid that they rely upon every day who takes care of their child. And at the university level, they have threatened to cripple institutions of higher education strictly for unrelated political purposes. I mean, threatening to revoke the entirety of NIH funding, which, by the way, ensures that people on clinical trials for cancer and Alzheimer's can get their treatments.

11:41I mean, raise your hand if you think the American public went to the polls last November to cap administrative fees for NIH grants. Nobody knows what that is. But the upshot is every university in America, in red states and in blue states, would be shut down overnight if the order that we blocked was allowed to go into effect. So this is extreme. And again, it's part of a pattern of attacking critics of his universities, the press, lawyers, people who do their job, myself and other my colleagues in our coalition. But I know that there are a number of people who have stood up like us and are not going to back down in the face of what are really authoritarian threats on our rights in this country.

12:19You know, I try to focus our audience here. There's so much going on. It's sometimes like whack-a-mole, right? We talked about executive orders on birthright citizenship. We talked about him gutting universities. We talked about him disappearing human beings to, you know, Seacock in El Salvador. When I spoke to Attorney General Bonta of California, we talked about Trump attacking things like the Japanese American Museum in Los Angeles to other museums throughout this, going after funding of museums. I've talked to lawyers about Trump gutting Smithsonian museums and taking artifacts out of the African-American history.

12:59I mean, the libraries in New Jersey are one of his targets. I mean, he's gone for the libraries. You know, I mean, I just remember growing up in the library, not to mention separately, you know, Trump fired the librarian of Congress, which he doesn't have the ability to do. But talk to us about that. You had to get an injunction for him to stop gutting New Jersey libraries where people just want to read. Yeah, the libraries, NPR, PBS, again, K-12 schools, universities. And for me as the chief law enforcement officer, let's not forget that he has also gone after law enforcement. A couple weeks ago, I came back from an interfaith event to a notice that millions of dollars of funding that puts cops on the streets were being illegally and immediately cut.

13:51So this has been an across the board. attempt to use the federal government to weaponize the federal government against people, places, states, entities that he doesn't like based on however he decides to wake up that morning and whatever he decides to sign with that Sharpie. And the constitution of this nation was put in place for a reason. They did not want a king. And this president, all of the things you're talking about has been him acting like a king. And it started on day one with birthright citizenship and it has continued through the first 100 plus days of his administration. And so your point is right, though.

14:30It's hard for the public to keep up. Sometimes it's hard for us. But he is making a bet that people won't care. He is making a bet that, yes, we're going to lose some in court, and he has lost in court. We have been successful in almost all of our cases, if not all of them. But he's making a bet that the public won't care, that their rights are being threatened, and that the principles enshrined in our nation's foundational document, whether it be the 14th Amendment or any other issue we've taken up, that they don't care enough about it. And I think he's going to be wrong about that. I've seen it out there.

15:02And it's important that the public keeps following podcasts like yours and places that are reporting on this and giving them information in real time so they can be aware of what's happening because it's unprecedented, it's alarming, and it is not consistent with how this nation is supposed to function. Final question for you. You're the attorney general of New Jersey. We've been hearing a lot about Newark Airport. You posted about this as well. These doge cuts to the FAA have resulted in kind of massive delays there. And I know a lot of that's federal jurisdiction. You're the state attorney general.

15:39But I don't know what it is you can do or what knowledge that you've been given, because it seems every time you have the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, on, he's lying and claiming, oh, former President Biden did not give any infrastructure money, you know, for FAA safety. When you just look at it, I mean, you go to FAA.gov, you literally see what money was going for, for the use, you know, here. And he's always just blaming, blaming. It's like, look, we're well over 100 days into this administration. You need leaders to be leaders. And I think people are just worried with what they're hearing.

16:15So what can you tell us about what's going on in Newark Airport? And what should we know? Yeah, you're right. Newark Airport is an incredibly important airport, not just for New Jersey, but for the entire nation. It's one of the busiest airports in the world. And I just wish this administration would start doing their jobs. Stop pointing fingers, stop doing things for political purposes that are illegal and do your jobs. And this is a great example of it. Now, I have no idea all of the people that they've cut through Doge and the FAA because they won't tell us, but we've taken Elon Musk to court.

16:48We were successful in getting him to stop stealing our personal data, our most sensitive data, which was, I think, the purpose of his whole exercise. And this is a great example. You cut people from the FAA. You don't know what the impact is. We saw them cut nuclear regulators. We saw them cut people who make sure our planes land on time. And sure enough, they're not. And so I do hope that they start just doing their job, not doing what DOT is actually doing right now, which is illegal, which is trying to mandate immigration enforcement policies through coercive grant conditions that I'm sure we'll be seeing them in court on not too distant future.

17:25But let's be clear, the Department of Transportation is responsible and the FAA is responsible for making sure that our airports run on time. Stop pointing fingers. Stop focusing on things that are outside of your mandate and get New Jerseyans and everybody else who flies through our airport to and from where they want to go on time and safely. That is what they expect when they go to the airport, not all this other nonsense. Attorney General Matt Placken, thank you for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. And come back after the oral argument. I want that post-game recap, if you can. I will, and we can talk about a Knicks win then, too.

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