WHY IT MATTERS

The UK government’s decision to ban under-16s from social media platforms beginning in early 2027 reflects something many parents already know intuitively: childhood is in trouble. Rates of anxiety, loneliness, and excessive screen use have risen alongside the growth of social media. In his bestselling book The Anxious Generation, psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that the shift from a “play-based childhood” to a “phone-based childhood” has contributed to a significant decline in young people’s mental health. Against this backdrop, calls for stronger safeguards to protect children online are unsurprising.

Yet focusing solely on social media risks treating the symptom rather than the underlying condition. The most important question is not what children will do without social media, but what made it such a central part of their lives in the first place. For years, social media has been discussed primarily as a technological issue requiring technological solutions. But platforms did not simply become popular because they were available; they became attractive because they offered things young people increasingly struggled to find elsewhere: friendship, recognition, guidance, purpose, and community. The smartphone did not create the need for those things; it merely stepped into a vacuum that already existed.

For much of history, childhood was shaped by the relationships and communities that existed beyond the family and the state: churches, youth groups, sports clubs, neighborhoods, extended families, civic organizations, and local communities gave young people responsibility, identity and a sense of belonging. Healthy societies are not built only by limiting harmful influences; they are built by strengthening the institutions that cultivate virtue, friendship, and responsibility. A child who feels connected to family, school, church, sports, music, volunteering, or community life is far less likely to seek fulfillment exclusively through a screen. Many of those social ties have since weakened or disappeared altogether. As a result, increasing numbers of children now turn to algorithms for the connection and affirmation previous generations found in real life.

This is why it would be a mistake to assume that restricting access automatically restores what was lost. Even if the ban succeeds in reducing young people’s time on platforms, what will replace it? If we are serious about restoring childhood, children need more than restrictions; they need alternatives. They need places to go, people who know them, communities that welcome them, and adults willing to invest time in their formation. Governments’ parallel investment in youth services, sports, arts, and community infrastructure will ultimately prove just as important as the ban itself, particularly as ministers are considering further measures such as overnight curfews and limits on infinite scrolling for under-18s. Regulation can slow harmful habits, but it cannot create healthy alternatives.

To acknowledge this is not to deny the harms of social media. Platforms have profited from addictive design features, endless scrolling, algorithmic recommendation systems, and attention-maximizing business models that often place engagement ahead of our well-being. And a civilization that restricts gambling, alcohol, and other harmful influences should not hesitate to establish boundaries around products designed to monopolize children’s attention. But this all points to a deeper truth about cultural renewal. The impact of technology matters, but the culture we’re offering young people matters more.

THE BOTTOM LINE

A social media ban may help protect childhood, but it cannot restore it. The real test is not whether under-16s log off, but whether families, schools, and communities are ready to fill the space that opens up. The task before us, therefore, is not simply to disconnect children from algorithms, but to reconnect them with one another.

WHY IT MATTERS

In Warsaw in 2017 President Donald Trump posed the central question facing the transatlantic alliance: Does the West have “the will to survive….the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?” Trump’s point was that the West had become so submerged in postmodern confusion that we risked forgetting who we are: a successful—a blessed—civilization rooted in Judaism and Christianity, a precious heritage worth defending.

Nine years later, at the 2026 Munich Security Conference, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio attributed our transatlantic troubles to the same predicament: many Western elites harbor doubts whether the West is worth defending. As Rubio said, such uncertainty is fatal: at the outset, we must know “what exactly we are defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; …a way of life.” Rubio urged America’s allies to remember who they are: “we are defending a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history…Acting together….we will …deter the forces of civilizational erasure that menace America and Europe.”

Despite the West’s continuing identity crisis, solid first steps toward revival of the transatlantic alliance are underway. Harsh reality has forced a strategic rethink in the Western alliance. Trump’s rhetoric and policies—and much more so, Russia’s belligerence—have shocked European NATO members into radically upping their defense spending. The same two factors have helped European leaders that they can no longer rely on America while neglecting their own defense. Finland and Sweden have joined NATO, Germany is strengthening its military capabilities, and NATO’s northeastern flank—Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland—has taken “decisive, coordinated steps to reinforce border protection and defense.” The alliance is now working to turn higher spending into real, dramatically increased military capability.

On the ideological front, the steadily growing popularity of civilizational conservatism throughout Europe, in the form of the populist right wing, is perhaps the greatest sign of the continent’s resilience. For all their differences, what binds these forces together—Germany’s AfD, Britain’s Reform UK, France’s National Rally, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, and others- is, writ large, the desire to reassert national sovereignty and protect the various national manifestations of the Western way of life in Europe. These civilizational forces—for all their flaws—are countering the stubborn determination of establishment elites, including nearly all the established parties, to cling to the debilitating dream of advancing peace by relinquishing national sovereignty to the supranationalist EU.

To endure, the West needs two things: a domestic consensus in favor of its own civilization for political stability, and sufficient military strength to deter external enemies. As we pursue domestic policies that revive the West’s Judeo-Christian moral foundations, we must not forget the crucial importance of maintaining a strong defense. Both require clarity about what we are defending, and why. As Rubio argued, we must recover the resolve ,, to uphold the “memories, traditions and faith of our ancestors as a sacred inheritance” that binds Europe and North America together.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Risk of war, violence and decline are ineradicable constants of human history. In this civilizational moment, “peace through strength” is the only coherent response— requiring both military strength against threats without, and civilizational strength to counter threats within. Adherents of the Judeo-Christian West must engage on these fronts, and work hard to encourage the positive trends we are seeing.

RTW’s read: The Supreme Court held that the federal election-day statutes govern when ballots must be cast, not when state election officials must receive them. By ruling on such narrow grounds, the Court may have set the stage for election season chaos.

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THE CASE AT A GLANCE

Case Name: Watson v. Republican National Committee

Docket No.: No. 24-1260

Status: Decided

Decision Date: June 29, 2026

Vote: 5–4, reversed

Author: Barrett, writing for the Court

Lower Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

Question Presented: “…whether counting ballots postmarked by election day, but received up to five days later, violates the federal election-day statutes.”

VOTE BREAKDOWN

MAJORITY: Roberts, Sotomayor; Kagan; Barrett; Jackson

CONCURRENCE

DISSENT: Aliton, joined by Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh (in part)

BACKGROUND

In 2024, the Mississippi Republican Party, the Republican National Committee, the Libertarian Party of Mississippi and others filed lawsuits challenging a state statute allowing absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if received within five days. The trial court upheld the state law, but the Fifth Circuit reversed, holding that federal election-day statutes require ballots to be submitted and received by Election Day. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed.

WHY THE COURT TOOK THIS CASE

The last several election cycles have been rife with controversy and claims of voter fraud and irregularities. In reality, this is nothing new. The 2026 midterm elections are already shaping up to be contentious and the Court has already ruled on several election-related issues as states navigate concerns over election integrity, procedures, and vulnerabilities to fraud. These questions could not remain unresolved heading into the election season.

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WHAT’S AT STAKE

The Constitution provides that state legislatures are free to prescribe “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections of Senators and Representatives.” The Supreme Court has held, however, that Congress may override most of those choices. As long as they comply with federal election-day laws and the Constitution’s scant requirements, each state is free to develop its own system for administering federal elections. In the 19th century, when Congress imposed few requirements, the result was chaos. Both the Court’s majority and dissenting opinions recount this history.

An unusual majority coalition of two conservative and and three progressive justices produced a narrowly drawn statutory ruling that “is not about the Constitution.” ” It does not address the general legality of absentee voting and leaves important questions about mailed ballots unresolved, providing little guidance on issues the dissenting justices raise.

THE DECISION

The Supreme Court ruled that “federal law dictates when ballots must be cast, [and] state law dictates when they must be received.” As a result, no federal law preempts Mississippi’s ballot receipt deadline, so the challenge to the law on federal statutory grounds fails. Therefore, ballots postmarked by Election Day and received within five days are valid and may be counted.

CONCURENCE AND DISSENT

Dissent: Justice Alito argued that the majority opinion is “inconsistent with the terms of the election-day statutes, contemporary election-law principles, two centuries of historical practice, and the case law on the question presented.” In his view, a vote is not cast until a ballot is completed and delivered to the appropriate official. Because a late-arriving ballot has not been delivered on Election Day, it should not be counted.

THE PRECEDENT

Even if the majority opinion correctly interprets and applies federal law, it provides no guidance for states and courts on whether a deadline exists for late-arriving ballots. The dissent warns that allowing ballots to arrive days or weeks after Election Day could leave elections perpetually open, prolonging uncertainty over the results. The majority is right that Congress could resolve many of these questions. But the dissent argues that Congress has already settled these issues through the election-day statutes when properly interpreted and applied.

WHAT COMES NEXT

The coming months will likely see even more litigation over state election procedures. These lawsuits will come from both the right and the left. But Congress will need to settle quite a few of these issues in the future because litigation cannot not and should not settle all of them.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The number of Americans losing confidence in elections is growing, in part because they recognize what a bipartisan group of experts led by President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker is true: mail in ballots pose the greatest threat of voter fraud in modern elections. The Court had more other paths to a just result without destabilizing the electoral process. Congress must act to restore confidence among the American people that our elections are free, fair, and secure.

Why this conversation matters: Public universities have a responsibility not only to seek the truth, but to prepare students to flourish in their careers and assume the responsibilities of citizenship. Too often, they failed to do so. New model legislation from the Manhattan Institute would create checks and balances in university governance so that the representatives of the public can ensure that universities fulfill their obligations.

RtW: MI’s model legislation would give governing boards a much larger role in decisions about curriculum and hiring. How did boards become so removed from these decisions in the first place, and what has been lost as a result?

Sailer: In general, the responsibilities our legislation gives governing boards don’t represent some huge aberration. Boards have always had a mandate to conduct real oversight. Some boards have the power to oversee administrator hiring. Many have to vote to approve the curricula for new majors. The problem has been that they tend not to use this power. That’s in part because many board members are outsiders, which means they’re all too ready to give outsized deference to scholars and administrators even when that’s not called for. In part, it’s simply because a rubber-stamping board seat is an attractive honor. Our legislation clarifies their responsibilities.

RtW: For years, you’ve investigated ideological capture and a lack of accountability in higher education. How does governance reform address these problems?

Sailer: Some of our universities’ biggest problems are caused by mid-level administrators or obscure faculty committees. One thing I’ve learned from reporting on higher education—especially from examining, for instance, the distortion in faculty hiring—is that it wasn’t top-down legislation that brought us to this point. And legislation alone certainly won’t fix the problem. Often, reform is about personnel, and it’s about good personnel getting in the weeds. Our legislation requires board members to get in the weeds, but it also requires them to think more deeply about these enormously important personnel decisions in the first place.

RtW: Critics will say that by altering shared governance, your proposal undermines academic freedom. Are you concerned that MI’s model bill will inappropriately circumscribe faculty research or teaching?

Sailer: It’s important to be very clear here: our legislation does not do away with shared governance. If anything, it makes governance truly shared, adding the board to the list of checks and balances. It has no bearing on what research can be performed. It will, of course, have a kind of effect on teaching, because it gives boards more involvement in the core curriculum. That doesn’t mean boards will have a say in what goes into classes; they have no business dictating that. But the question of what should and shouldn’t be in a core isn’t a matter of disciplinary expertise. It’s about a university’s vision, its understanding of what a well-educated person looks like.

RtW: Suppose a state adopted your model bill tomorrow. What are the first changes that students, faculty, trustees, or taxpayers would actually notice? In other words, what does a more accountable university look like in practice?

Sailer: The legislation will almost certainly result in fewer core classes to choose from. That doesn’t mean a small number of core classes. Most universities offer literally thousands of core classes. Frankly, a closer look has been a long time coming. Perhaps less noticeably, there will be more scrutiny of upper-level administrators. That’s something that will only be felt over time, but the result will be that fewer deans and associate provosts will see themselves as the internal resistance. These are the ones responsible for allocating faculty lines and overseeing hundreds of curricular decisions. It’s hard to perceive from the outside, but it makes a huge difference when administrators are on board for reform.

RtW: Many Americans have lost confidence in higher education, but universities remain some of the most important institutions in society. If states do not pursue governance reforms like the ones you’re proposing, what do you think higher education looks like ten years from now?

Sailer: Less confidence, more alienation, and eventually, less funding. For their own sake, universities should take seriously the concern that higher education has become detached from the public it’s supposed to serve. If they want to survive, they have to start listening. This is one way to listen.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Too many universities have abandoned their commitments to truth-seeking and citizenship. This model legislation from the Manhattan Institute would ensure that the university governance structures recognize and address their public obligations, providing much-needed checks and balances to organizations that have lost the public trust.

WHY IT MATTERS

The release of Pastor Ezra Jin is news worthy of great celebration, but it is also a powerful reminder of what millions of Christians still endure around the world. While Jin has been reunited with his family after months behind bars , many of his fellow believers remain in prison simply for practising their faith. Their courage should strengthen our resolve never to take religious liberty for granted.

Pastor Jin founded Beijing’s Zion Church in 2007 with just twenty members. Before the Chinese Communist Party shut it down in 2018 for refusing state surveillance and control, the church had grown into one of China’s largest underground churches, reaching around 10,000 believers across forty cities.. Coordinated raids in late 2025 led to Jin and dozens of other church leaders being imprisoned in one of the most significant crackdowns on Christianity in modern China. His eventual release, following international pressure and diplomatic intervention, does not change the reality that countless Christians still worship under constant threat.

The remarkable story is not simply that Christians survive persecution, but how they respond to it. Across China, believers continue gathering in homes, discipling new Christians, baptizing converts, and raising faithful families despite knowing that every meeting could cost them their freedom, or even their lives. Churches continue to grow not because they enjoy legal protection, but because ordinary men and women believe Christ is worth every sacrifice. Their witness echoes the earliest Christians, who endured persecution under Rome rather than abandon their faith. History has repeatedly shown that governments may demolish church buildings, but they cannot extinguish a Church rooted in conviction.

Some will argue that this is China’s problem, not ours. After all, Christians in the West are not imprisoned simply for attending church. But the persecution of believers should concern every Christian because we are one Body in Christ; when one part suffers, all suffer. It should also remind us how easily religious freedom can be eroded if it is no longer valued or defended. Across the West, pressures are emerging in more subtle/less overt forms: prosecutions for silent prayer outside abortion clinics, growing concerns over laws affecting Christian teaching on sexuality, and increasing regulation of home education that many religious families fear could limit their freedom. Liberty is rarely lost overnight. It is usually surrendered gradually, one compromise at a time.

The courage of China’s underground Church reminds us that Christianity has never depended primarily on political power. It has advanced through faithful witness. Restoring the West requires more than defending Christian heritage in theory; it requires Christians who actively live, practice, and protect their faith in public. We should pray for persecuted believers, speak up whenever religious liberty is threatened, and make full use of the freedoms we still possess to worship, evangelize, serve our communities, and raise the next generation in the faith. A civilization confident enough to defend religious freedom is one far more capable of defending every other freedom that depends upon it.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Pastor Ezra Jin’s release is a cause for thanksgiving, but the story does not end with one man’s freedom. It is a testimony to the resilience of Christians who continue to proclaim Christ despite immense personal cost. Their witness should inspire us to cherish and defend the freedoms we still possess before they are quietly lost.

This lawlessness was not isolated to the United Kingdom. In Brussels, Moroccan mobs clashed violently with police, unleashing a barrage of fireworks while chanting, “Free Palestine.” The situation in the Netherlands escalated further with Moroccan rioters chanting antisemitic slurs in many cities. What initially looked like a raucous, unruly gathering of football fans instead revealed deep anti-Western and antisemitic attitudes proving that the sport was merely a pretext for venting unfiltered, ideological hostility.

While all examples of this unrest are horrifying, the situation in the Netherlands is perhaps the most disturbing. That is because Thursday night’s scenes came just days after previous outbreaks of violence.

On July 5, after Morocco’s World Cup victory over Canada, parts of the Netherlands were consumed by outright anarchy. What began as celebrations quickly escalated into widespread disorder across The Hague, Rotterdam, and Leiden, prompting emergency police deployments.

The trouble flared up in the immediate aftermath of the Dutch team’s loss to Morocco, a match also marred by violence. In the Schilderswijk district of The Hague, hundreds of young men of Moroccan descent gathered along the Vaillantlaan. They carried the flags of their ancestral homeland. They hurled bottles and chunks of concrete directly at police lines.

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What I’m Thinking About

Last Saturday, the French novelist Michel Houellebecq published a devastating lament in UnHerd, arguing that the push to legalize assisted suicide across the West is the ultimate symptom of our civilizational malaise. I’ve been thinking about it all week. Setting aside religious arguments against voluntary euthanasia, there is no denying that a civilization that embraces it—a civilization that legitimizes, sanitizes, and enables suicide, even reclassifying it as “healthcare”—cannot survive. Despite what advocates say, legalizing voluntary euthanasia has nothing to do with “allowing” people to die with “dignity.” Death is an inevitability, and suicide a tragic commonplace. Rather, legalizing assisted suicide means codifying into law the idea that human life itself is value-neutral, and that the value of any individual life is to be assessed by its utility. Once a person ceases to be useful, or ceases to take pleasure in the experience of being alive, they might as well not be.

You need not be a person of faith—Houellebecq is not—to recognize what a disaster this is. Every one of us will eventually fail the test of utility, whether as a result of age, illness, unhappiness, poverty, or some other misfortune. Predictably, in every country that has legalized assisted suicide, access to it has expanded well beyond the original eligibility criteria. In Belgium and the Netherlands, it’s now available to minors. I’m more hopeful than Houellebecq is that the West might be restored. But he is not wrong to question whether a civilization that helps its own children commit suicide even deserves to endure. Our goal at Restoring the West is to try, in our own small way, to help right the ship.

What I’m Reading

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WHY THIS FILM MATTERS

Few films this year have generated as much controversy as Citizen Vigilante. Reports that Germany has considered banning the film, combined with Elon Musk temporarily making it freely available on X to his millions of followers, have propelled what would otherwise have been a niche action film into an international political conversation. It arrives at a time when debates over migration, crime, policing, and trust in government institutions dominate headlines across Europe.

THE STORY

The film opens with a shocking murder: a white mother is randomly stabbed to death in broad daylight by a black man after grocery shopping with her young son. As public confidence in the police and courts crumbles, a mysterious vigilante begins systematically killing criminals he believes the justice system has failed to punish, earning public admiration. Armie Hammer plays the wealthy American businessman behind the mask, whose military background and philosophical monologues drive the film’s message: “You think the government have failed you but they haven’t. They’re here to control you.”

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

At its core, Citizen Vigilante is less interested in revenge than in institutional collapse. It argues that governments no longer protect ordinary citizens, that judicial systems increasingly prioritize offenders over victims, and that Western society has lost its moral compass. Its critique extends beyond crime to immigration, welfare, property rights, fatherlessness, and political elites. Biden and Trump are both namechecked alongside Russia, China, and Islamist extremism, broadening the film’s worldview into one of geopolitical and ideological conflict. It raises questions many people are asking about public safety, delayed justice, and eroding trust in institutions. Hammer’s character ultimately declares: “These people never voted for what’s happening. This is an unfriendly takeover by the Islamic extremists and blindsided woke left.”

WHAT WORKS

A standout scene sees Hammer confront teenagers abusing a bus driver and refusing to pay, using basic economics to explain how fare evasion ultimately costs everyone. Equally effective is his conversation with a rape victim, as he explains the difficulty of achieving justice under the current legal system.

A confrontation with a judge who showed leniency towards six teenage boys convicted of the gang rape of a fourteen-year-old girl, echoing real-life European grooming gang controversies, becomes the film’s most forceful critique of a judicial system it believes protects perpetrators over victims. The sequence intensifies when a member of the offenders’ Muslim family blames the victim’s clothing for the assault. Even its criticism of eviction laws preventing landlords from removing non-paying tenants for months taps into frustrations rarely explored in mainstream cinema.

WHAT DOESN’T

The production feels cheap, with wooden dialogue and relentless violence often set to upbeat music, reducing horrific acts to spectacle. More fundamentally, it mistakes vengeance for justice, offering violence where restoration is needed. Its portrayal of women is similarly conflicted: while the vigilante protects victims of sexual violence, he is also shown in an entirely unnecessary, pornographic brothel scene that objectifies women and adds nothing to the story. The film diagnoses social decline, but offers no path to renewal. It leaves fearful and frustrated audiences with anger rather than hope, vengeance rather than justice, and destruction rather than restoration.

THE CULTURAL MOMENT

Citizen Vigilante’s storyline isn’t the only aspect that makes it culturally significant; the public reaction to the film is equally telling. Across Europe and beyond, many increasingly express concerns about crime, inconsistent sentencing, anti-social behavior, civic decline, and whether governments are fulfilling their most basic responsibility: protecting law-abiding, tax-paying people. The film gives voice to those anxieties, albeit in the most hyperbolic way imaginable. Society today can seem more disrespectful, violent, hypersexualized, and less rooted in any shared code of honor than previous generations. But that does not make vigilantism the answer; rather, it exposes a dangerous vacuum of confidence in institutions.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Citizen Vigilante is cinematically weak and morally limited. It articulates frustration effectively but cannot imagine justice beyond violence. In doing so, it highlights a cultural mood of anger—but not a way forward. If you can stomach the violence and gratuitous sexual content, watch it only to understand the anxieties driving today’s cultural debates, not because it offers convincing answers or any sign of renewal or resolution.

Since its founding in 1994, ECT has helped Christians better understand that harmony among believers is intrinsic to the faith. Displaying love for one another, with all our unlovable flaws and failures, also illustrates a double-edged truth that is fundamental to democracy: as God’s image-bearers, we possess unalienable rights that government must protect. Yet our sinfulness entails checks, balances, and separated powers to limit abuses.

1. The Church is One

Despite profound ecclesiastical, theological, and cultural differences among Christians, Christian unity is an overriding metaphysical fact. Pointing to Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17, the ECT statement aptly concludes that “those who believe in Christ abide in him, and thus they are united in his love.” While upholding truth and acknowledging the danger of heresy, we must be humble and slow to condemn others. Such love of neighbor is vital for peace and stability in free societies.

2. The Church is Holy

The Church is “set apart, sanctified as the body of Christ.” Moreover, “God’s summons has the power of righteousness.” Despite the sinfulness and hypocrisy of so many Christians—including Christian leaders—Evangelicals and Catholics agree that “a Church of sinners does not efface the holiness of the body of Christ. God’s grace is greater than our sin.” Similarly, we can rely on God’s providence as we seek to bless Western society despite all our flaws and limitations.

3. The Church is Catholic

In the Nicene Creed, “catholic” means “universal.” Because Christ’s authority is universal, his church is also. As the Dutch Reformed theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper said, Christ claims ownership of every “square inch” of human existence. That includes the church: the one body of believers and only bride of Christ. In this context, as ECT affirms, “diversity does not necessarily entail division, and unity does not require uniformity.” This is a central truth of pluralistic democracy as well.

4. The Church is Apostolic

“The Church is apostolic because it confesses the faith of the apostles and sustains the common life established by Christ.” True Christianity is an ancient faith. “Progressive religion”—watering down venerable truths in an attempt to accommodate modernity—”poses a grave threat to the apostolicity of our churches.” Seeking an easy compromise with modernity will backfire. It is in countering the default relativism of today’s lazy agnosticism that Christians can bless Western society.

THE BOTTOM LINE

United in Christ’s love, Christians must not only collaborate selflessly with all who desire civilizational renewal, but we must also seek the good of our political enemies. Christians will always fall short in this, but our hope is in Christ, not politics. As the ECT statement concludes, “Christ has promised to build his Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

RTW’s read: Justice Roberts and a majority of the Court have redefined American citizenship as “the right to have rights.” The American Founders, who recognized that rights precede any political arrangement, would vehemently disagree.

THE CASE AT A GLANCE

Case Name: Trump v. Barbara

Docket No.: No. 25-365

Status: Decided

Decision Date: June 30, 2026

Vote: 6–3, judgment affirmed (5-4, constitutional question)

Author: Roberts, writing for the Court

Lower Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit

VOTE BREAKDOWN

MAJORITY: Roberts, C.J.; Sotomayor; Kagan; Barrett; Jackson

CONCURRENCE(S): Kavanaugh, concurring in part; Jackson, joined by Sotomayor in part

DISSENT(S): Thomas, joined by Gorsuch; Alito; Gorsuch

BACKGROUND

The United States has long granted automatic citizenship to nearly everyone born on its soil on the basis of a particular reading of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens. As unlawful immigration increased, birthright citizenship became a major political issue and a central issue of President Trump’s 2024 campaign. On January 20, 2025, the first day of his second administration, he issued an executive order seeking to end the practice. Multiple lawsuits followed, producing nationwide injunctions. In Trump v. CASA, the Supreme Court limited those injunctions but left the constitutional question unresolved, setting the stage for this case.

WHY THE COURT TOOK THIS CASE

The Court took the unusual step of agreeing to hear this case even before litigation in the lower courts had concluded. The outcome of this case impacts nearly 250,000 people each year who would not be eligible for birthright citizenship under the executive order. Federal agencies required definitive guidance, and there was significant risk that much of the litigation working its way through the judicial system would reach inconsistent resolutions, which would demand Supreme Court review to settle the underlying issues.

WHAT’S AT STAKE

Birthright citizenship has primarily been a matter of academic debate since the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. America’s immigration and naturalization laws have been constructed largely assuming birthright citizenship for nearly all persons born in the United States. Had the Supreme Court found that the Constitution does not require this, the entire American immigration scheme would have required reexamination.

There are larger issues, however, than the central legal question of birthright citizenship. The majority has introduced or reinforced several problematic principles when it comes to interpreting and applying the Constitution. First, the majority summarily rejects the dissenter’s legitimate arguments that situate the concept of American citizenship as contrasted with the status of “subject” under the British monarch in the Founding era. Second, Chief Justice Roberts writes that citizenship is “the right to have rights,” which undermines the Declaration of Independence’s implicit recognition that every person is a rights-bearer by virtue of his or her humanity rather than status as it relates to any nation. Finally, the Court undermines the idea that the Constitution has a unified moral architecture by myopically relying on the Reconstruction era to understand the Fourteenth Amendment.

THE DECISION

The Supreme Court affirmed the District Court’s judgment ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment affirmatively entitles those born to parents illegally present in the United States to citizenship merely by accident of birth.

CONCURRENCES & DISSENTS

Concurrence: Justice Jackson, joined in part by Justice Sotomayor, writes separately in order to respond directly to Justice Thomas’s assertion that the Fourteenth Amendment was a remedial measure that made provision for those born as slaves, but after having been freed, could claim no specific status under the law. She reenforces the majority’s assumption that the Constitution lacks historical coherence by referencing the Reconstruction era as America’s “Second Founding.”

Dissent: Justices Kavanaugh, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissented from the majority for reasons slightly different from one another. Kavanaugh concurred with the majority’s conclusion that the executive order at the heart of the litigation is invalid, but on statutory grounds. Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch advanced historical and jurisprudential arguments that reject a simplified rendering of the constitutional text and history.

THE PRECEDENT

Trump v. Barbara has redefined American citizenship, even though it left in place a policy that has largely been in place for more than 150 years. This leaves most of the immigration and naturalization regime undisturbed.

In the process, the Court has set or reinforced precedent that could have significant consequences in the future. The Founders’ conception of citizenship as a formal political recognition of preexisting rights was days away from being 250 years old, when the Court replaced it with a concept that grounds rights in a political decree. Further, the Court has freed other interpreters of the Constitution of the responsibility to understand the Constitution as a unified whole. Instead, the Court adopts the view that each amendment exists inside of its own moral and historical vacuum.

WHAT COMES NEXT

Immigration reform activists will almost certainly focus their efforts on border security since the question of birthright citizenship has been settled by the Court. The issue is likely only to become more fraught in the months leading up to the 2026 midterm elections and beyond. The larger issue is whether and how the shift in constitutional interpretation represented by Trump v. Barbara will impact other areas of constitutional law.

THE BOTTOM LINE

As Justice Alito pointed out, this resolution of this case did not demand an inhumane result that ignored the innocence of those born to parents illegally present in the United States. And the Court’s holding does not do much to change more than a century’s worth of American immigration policy. It does, however, shift several important principles of constitutional interpretation that may have much more expansive effects on the American constitutional system.

WHY IT MATTERS

Biblical principles and Christian ideas shaped Western culture in critical ways. Many of our laws, moral assumptions, ethical commitments, and social practices trace their origins to biblical teachings and the Christian tradition. The resulting civilization has been remarkably successful. Well-educated citizens should understand the ideas, stories, and teachings that shaped the civilization in which they live.

Sadly, few Americans read or understand the Bible and its cultural significance. According to the American Bible Society’s 2026 State of the Bible survey, only 17 percent of Americans are “Scripture Engaged.” The same survey reported that 62 percent of Americans read the Bible only “once or twice a year” or “never.” Those with more education are less likely to be frequent Bible readers. This biblical illiteracy has serious consequences. A society increasingly disconnected from the sources of its own moral and political assumptions risks losing sight of the foundations on which it rests.

As Tom Holland explains in Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, “Assumptions bred of Europe’s ancestral faith continue to structure the way the world organizes itself.” Holland enumerates many examples. Among them, he notes that the ideas of freedom of conscience and that conscience should dictate law come from the Bible, and that even our generally accepted ideas of right and wrong derive from Christian teachings. America’s founding documents explicitly state that rights come from God, not government. E.D. Hirsh’s New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know states unequivocally that, “The Bible is…essential for understanding many of the moral and spiritual values of our culture,” regardless of current religious belief. The Bible, Hirsh says, is “embedded in our thought and language.”

Contrary to modern assumptions, teaching about the Bible in public schools does not violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause. The Supreme Court has repeatedly condoned—and even praised—academic study of religion. In School District of Abington Township v. Schempp (1963), Justice Tom C. Clark famously stated that although using the Bible for worship or religious indoctrination in schools is unconstitutional, “the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.” The Bible can and should be incorporated into courses on history, philosophy, and government.

The Bible remains the most influential book ever written. With its teachings on human dignity, equality, individual moral responsibility, universalism, and limits on power, the Bible profoundly shaped Western culture, politics, and institutions. Today, we benefit from the legacy of Christian values embedded in our laws and jurisprudence. But deference to tradition and the echoes of our Christian past are inadequate to sustain this system. To do so, it is essential to revive knowledge of the Bible and the moral vision it helped create.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Schools should ensure that students understand the Bible and Christianity as major historical forces. At a minimum, school curricula should include the Bible’s central teachings, Christianity’s influence on the Roman Empire, the Church’s role in medieval education and science, the impact of the Protestant Reformation, and Christianity’s role in the American Founding. The American Birthright K-12 Social Studies Standards, created by the Civics Alliance, are a good place to start.

WHY IT MATTERS

Many Christians dismiss Pride events as another expression of a secular culture increasingly detached from biblical morality. But there is something far more serious than a Pride parade: a Mass that leaves people believing the Church affirms what Christ calls them to turn away from. The greatest danger to Christianity is not hostility from without, but confusion from within. When error is clothed in the language of compassion, it becomes far harder to recognize.

The recent Pride Mass at the Stonewall National Monument in New York illustrates this danger. Surrounded by rainbow flags, organized by an LGBTQ ministry, and celebrated just steps from the Stonewall Inn, the liturgy intentionally connected the Eucharistic celebration with the symbolism and narrative of the Pride movement. The organizers described the event as celebrating spirituality, community, and service. Supporters saw it as an act of welcome. The problem is that many attending could reasonably conclude that the Church now sees Pride identity and Catholic discipleship as fundamentally compatible.

Christ certainly met people where they were. He ate with tax collectors, spoke with prostitutes, and touched lepers. But he never left them where they were. His encounters always contained an invitation to conversion: “Go, and sin no more.” Authentic Christian love never ends with affirmation; it always points towards transformation. A ministry that centers homosexual or transgender identity rather than baptismal identity risks communicating the opposite message: that these identities should be embraced, rather than subordinated to our identity as adopted sons and daughters. Scripture bluntly warns believers to be aware of false “false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing” (Matthew 7:15). The greatest deception is often not an outright rejection of truth, but a disturbing distortion of what appears compassionate.

Supporters will rightly argue that the Church is open to everyone. That is absolutely true, and it must remain so. Every person, including those experiencing same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, should find belonging within the Church. But belonging has never meant affirming every desire, identity, or life choice. Every Christian is called to deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Christ. The confusion becomes even more serious when events like these receive support from senior Church leaders. Earlier this month, Cardinal Robert McElroy celebrated Mass at Georgetown University for a gathering hosted by the LGBTQ Catholic organization Outreach. Whether intended or not, such public gestures inevitably lead many Catholics to conclude that longstanding Church teaching has effectively changed or is a thing of the past, creating chaos and confusion among believers.

Western civilization was built on the conviction that truth liberates because it comes from God, not because it reflects the prevailing culture. The Church has never been called to mirror society’s moral fashions but to stand apart from them. A lighthouse does not guide ships by drifting with the current; it remains fixed against the storm. Likewise, the Church serves the world by faithfully proclaiming Christ, even when his teaching is unpopular. If it begins adapting eternal truths to each cultural moment, it ceases to illuminate the path home and instead becomes another voice echoing the confusion of the age.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The Church, like Christ, should open its doors to every sinner. But it must never leave anyone believing that repentance is optional or that salvation requires no conversion. Compassion divorced from truth is not mercy, but one of the most dangerous forms of spiritual confusion imaginable.

What I’m Thinking About

I wish I could cheer this week’s SCOTUS decision upholding birthright citizenship. The principle at the core of the majority opinion in Trump v. Barbara is a noble one: that those born in the United States have the right to call this land home, and live in it as full participants in the country’s political life.

But the problem is that the doctrine of birthright citizenship presupposes a number of conditions that aren’t true today. Birthright citizenship only works in a system in which legal immigration is kept at a manageable level, and illegal immigration is prevented. It only works when immigrants assimilate: when they become Americans in the fullest sense, integrating into our culture and civic life. And it only works when they become productive members of society, as opposed to dependents on the state. The 14th Amendment was crafted before the creation of the modern welfare state and the advent of the commercial jet age. Its drafters could not have imagined the situation we face today: unprecedented and unsustainable levels of immigration, often from hostile cultures, by people who have no intention of integrating into American society, and who are more likely than not to rely on welfare.

As Justice Thomas wrote in his dissent, the citizenship clause was never meant to include the children of temporary residents with no loyalty to the United States. As it is, the Court has given the green light to bad actors around the world who see American prosperity as a resource to exploit, not a project to which they will contribute.

What I’m Reading

True Americanism

Teddy Roosevelt insisted that citizenship was earned through allegiance and assimilation. It was never meant to be conferred by accident of birth. His essay reads almost as a rebuke to today’s Court: it’s a bracing reminder that citizenship is a privilege that belongs only to those who are “in very truth Americans, [working together] for the honor and greatness of our common country.”

“The Boys of Pointe du Hoc”

President Reagan delivered this speech in Normandy on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. It’s a powerful recounting of the courage of the American Rangers who scaled the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc under heavy fire to begin the liberation of Europe. It’s also a reminder of the faith that underwrote that courage: the faith in God, and in the country, that it took to win the war.

What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind

Jennifer Senior’s Pulitzer-winning 2021 feature in The Atlantic is one of the most moving pieces of journalism I’ve read in my life. Nearly a quarter century after the attacks on September 11th, 2001, it’s easy to remember the events of that day in the abstract: the ideological forces behind the attacks, the thousands of lives lost, the wars that followed. Senior’s portrait of the legacy of one young man who was killed at the World Trade Center is a devastating reminder of the true scale of the loss, and how much is represented by each and every name on the list of the dead.

What Caught My Eye This Week

In better court news, SCOTUS ruled on June 25th that the government can turn back migrants at the border without entertaining asylum claims. It’s a step in the right direction. Asylum was never meant to be a loophole around the normal immigration process, but it has been exploited as such for years.

The California Faculty Association, the California State University’s 29,000-member teacher’s union, is trying to repeal rules that restricted anti-Israel encampments and antisemitic harassment on campuses. Even if the CFA fails, it’s hard to imagine being a Jewish student on a California campus, knowing that your teachers are trying to roll back rules that protect you.

What Concerns Me

The recent primary results out of New York are alarming. Three far-left candidates, backed by Mayor Mamdani, are now all but certain to head to Congress after the general election in November. All three are vocally anti-Israel. The red-green alliance is becoming more visible and outspoken in American politics, at a time when patriotism is at a record low. Increasingly, in major cities across the country, being anti-American is a politically successful strategy. Among the celebrations this weekend, we mustn’t lose sight of our nation’s vulnerability, or forget our responsibility to defend it.

WHY IT MATTERS

As politics becomes more polarized and entertainment more self-referential, the question of what we are collectively encouraged to admire has become increasingly difficult to ignore. With the United States celebrating its 250th anniversary, questions of national identity have become increasingly difficult to answer. Political divisions dominate public life, institutions face declining trust, and much of the culture appears uncertain about traditions that once shaped it. Yet before a nation loses confidence politically, it often loses confidence culturally.

For much of the twentieth century, America exported far more than products, technology, or military power; it exported an imagination. Through Hollywood films, fashion, music, architecture, and advertising, it projected a recognizable vision of freedom, prosperity, beauty, and possibility that captivated people far beyond its borders.

As someone who grew up in Britain, I encountered America long before I ever visited. Like millions around the world, my understanding of the country was shaped through Westerns, New York romantic comedies, Ralph Lauren campaigns, country music, Route 66 road trips, baseball caps, diners, ranches, and small-town Main Streets. Whether entirely accurate or not, they communicated something coherent: America knew what it was.

That confidence was reflected in the culture itself. Mid-century America produced architecture, fashion, film, and music carrying a distinct national character. The rugged individualism of the Western, optimism of post-war design, craftsmanship of heritage brands, and aspirational vision of family life presented in popular entertainment all pointed toward a broader civilizational story. America was not merely a place; it was an idea expressed through the visual language of Americana.

Interestingly, some of the strongest cultural successes of recent years suggest that appetite has not disappeared. Entire online communities are devoted to recreating the understated elegance of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and the minimalist Calvin Klein era she embodied. The enduring fascination with John F. Kennedy Jr. is not merely biographical, either but reflects a longing for an America associated with confidence and aspiration.

Likewise, Ralph Lauren remains one of the most successful interpreters of the American imagination, selling not merely clothing but a vision built around family, tradition, craftsmanship, Western landscapes, and belonging. The extraordinary success of Top Gun: Maverick and the popularity of Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone universe reveal a similar instinct. These stories resonate because they celebrate competence, sacrifice, excellence, inheritance, and duty—qualities that modern culture often struggles to portray with confidence.

Of course, cultures evolve, and I am not arguing that America should be frozen in the 1950s, nor that every aspect of its past is worthy of celebration. Yet a nation still requires common symbols, stories, and ideals capable of binding people together across class, ethnicity, geography, and politics. Especially as globalization and digital culture continues to flatten regional distinctiveness with a visual language that increasingly feels interchangeable: the same minimalist coffee shops, the same influencer aesthetics and the same luxury brands. What was once distinctly American now risks becoming merely global.

Perhaps that is precisely why Americana continues to resonate. The renewed fascination with older American aesthetics suggests that beneath the noise of contemporary politics, many people are still searching for continuity, meaning, and permanence in an age increasingly defined by transience. We are looking for symbols of continuity, places that feel rooted, stories that connect generations, and ideals that point beyond individual self-expression–because every civilization requires something it is willing to admire, preserve, and pass on.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The renewed fascination with Americana is not simply nostalgia. It is evidence that people are searching for coherence and belonging in a culture increasingly defined by fragmentation. For decades, the world looked to the United States not merely for entertainment, but a vision of life. If it hopes to remain culturally influential, America must rediscover the confidence to define what it stands for and what kind of culture it wishes to cultivate.

The heart of the matter: The Declaration of Independence inaugurated the American experiment in ordered liberty, and failure to uphold its original meaning would endanger history's most durable and successful example of self-government.

WHAT THE DECLARATION GOT RIGHT

Two-and-a-half centuries ago, the founders based the American experiment on the self-evident truth of five key propositions: (1) all men are created equal; (2) they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, such as Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness; (3) the purpose of government is to secure these rights; (4) governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and (5) citizens have the right to abolish a government if it is “destructive of these ends.”

WHERE WE’VE GONE WRONG

In our postmodern age, we question the very idea of truth. For many, the highest value—the central unalienable right—is now each person’s right to disregard objective truth and decide for himself what he accepts as true for himself. An emblematic example of this is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s “mystery passage” in Planned Parenthood v. Casey: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” This sentiment sounds sugary sweet, but it reveals relativism’s inherent viciousness: Casey upheld the constitutional right to abortion—somehow, the “right to define one’s own concept of existence” authorizes the killing of innocent human beings.

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At 250 years old, America is still a young nation in comparison to many others around the world. But making it to a 250^th birthday is remarkable given just how unique the American founding is.

One of the incredible features of the American Republic is that it has the oldest written constitution in the world. While the U.S. Constitution is a bit younger than the United States, it has provided the blueprint for the American government and a roadmap for recognizing and respecting the rights of American citizens for most of the last two and a half centuries.

As a part of Restoring the West’s special series, Senior Editor for Law & Liberty Trey Dimsdale was joined by Dr. Hadley Arkes, the Edward N. Ney Professor of Jurisprudence and American Institutions Emeritus at Amherst College and the founder and co-director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding, to discuss the moral architecture of the Constitution and the unique features that have allowed it—and the nation that it has shaped—to endure for all these years.

WHY IT MATTERS

We did not arrive at the 250^th anniversary of the American Republic by accident. The values that have informed America’s imperfect pursuit of liberty and justice for all are not unique to the still relatively young nation, but they were necessary prerequisites for America’s economic and political success. The Judeo-Christian tradition’s most innovative contribution to political philosophy is the inherent dignity of each individual, which is the fundamental concept that informs any nation governed by the consent of the governed.

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By Lorraine Smith Pangle and Thomas L. Pangle

University Press of Kansas, 1993 • 350 pages

The verdict: For education reformers seeking to restore moral and civic education to American schools, the Learning of Liberty can serve as both a road map and a North Star.

WHY THIS BOOK MATTERS

Benjamin Franklin once quipped, perhaps apocryphally, that the Founders gave us “A republic, if you can keep it.” The Learning of Liberty articulates the Founders’ ideas on how emerging schools could contribute to that difficult task. As we celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, revisiting the Founding Fathers’ thoughts on education can help renew civic education across the nation.

THE ARGUMENT

Thomas and Lorraine Pangle’s The Learning of Liberty is an in-depth analysis of the American Founders’ ideas about education in an emerging nation, including their thoughts on republicanism, religion, and human nature, and how they were applied. In it, the Pangles assert that knowing the history of this “new American ideal of public education that puts civic instruction at its core” can help schools rediscover their civic purpose. They argue that doing so would help to “sustain a high quality of leadership and produce resourceful, self-reliant citizens.”

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