- Just ahead on Black Issues Forum, birthright citizenship, tariffs, federal funding cuts.

They're not just headlines.

They're impacting lives across the nation, including families here in North Carolina.

What does it mean for us and who really is looking out for our future?

We break it all down, coming up next, stay with us.

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[upbeat music] ♪ - Welcome to Black Issues Forum.

I'm your host, Kenia Thompson.

Well the steady stream of headlines tied to Trump era policies continues and their ripple effects are being felt all across North Carolina, from birthright citizenship to new tariffs and federal budget cuts, the impact on our communities is real.

And today, we are breaking it down with our analysts to understand what exactly is at stake and what it could mean for you.

I'm joined by two sharp minds who are no strangers to unpacking tough political questions.

I want to welcome Jesse McCoy.

He is the director of the Duke Civil Justice Clinic at Duke University School of Law, and our returning political analyst, Steve Rao, welcome.

- Good morning, pleasure to be here.

- Yeah, there's a lot to break down as I said earlier, Jesse, I wanna start by the 14th Amendment has been pulled up in one of those top headlines that we've been talking about, and I wanna talk about that constitutional right.

Give us a little bit of a background on the 14th Amendment, why it was created and kind of what's at stake today.

- So the 14th Amendment was initially added to the Constitution in 1868 for the purpose of providing citizenship to people who had formerly been enslaved.

This was part of that reconstruction and radical Republican movement.

And in so doing, it created this precedent that anytime someone is born in the United States, they're automatically deemed to be a citizen, not just of the United States, but also a resident of the state that they are in.

- This has now come under attack by some who want to remove birthright citizenship based on one clause of section one of the 14th amendment, which says that the person has to be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

- What does that mean?

- Well, it depends on who you ask.

So based on court precedent to this point, it means that you have to follow the 14th Amendment exactly as it says.

If you're born in the United States, you are automatically a citizen of the United States and a resident of the state.

However, they believe that this also means that if you're not subject to the jurisdiction, which means if you were born in another place, I mean, no, I'm sorry, I messed up.

If you were born here, but you are from or claim another place.

So if you are a native of let's say parents from Mexico.

- Right?

- And you come here, that you cannot then try to claim birthright citizenship, and they're doing this for the purpose of trying to eliminate or reduce the number of people who will have the federal protections, because this is stemming from the anchor baby movement, if you will.

- Okay.

- Of yesteryear.

- Okay, Steve, I want you to go ahead and add any thoughts you have on that threat to removal of the birthright citizenship.

- Well, I think that it's not good for our country.

It's a very divisive issue.

I think the three things I'll say, number one, it creates a lot of fear in our communities.

I'm hearing this as an elected official as well.

You know, folks worried about uncertainty of children, the 150,000 of children of illegal immigrants in this country that now don't know how they're gonna get healthcare, how they're gonna get education.

There's also an economic factor.

Immigrations and immigrants in North Carolina produce a lot for farming, agriculture, across all sectors, so it's gonna hurt our economy.

And the third thing is innovation.

I'm the son of immigrants from India.

There are many Indian Americans in The Triangle, whose children were born here, but they were naturalized citizens.

And these go on to start big companies.

We often forget that Satya Nadella runs Microsoft.

Sundar Pichai runs Google.

Mr. Krishna runs IBM, so many leaders.

And so these children of these immigrants, let's say they were born here, but their parents were from India.

Do we want them going to Canada or other place?

So I think, I'll end with this.

I think that this is an issue that's detracting our Congress and Senate and the president from doing what they should be doing, which is streamlining our education system, advancing immigration so we can have people here legally who wanna be here, start their companies, bring their ideas, and address border and security 'cause we do have an illegal immigration issue.

But just saying birthright citizenship, and it's gonna get held up in the courts.

It's gonna go to the Supreme Court, a lot of uncertainty, so this is bad for our image in the world.

I think there's a way of solving it rather than just doing an executive order.

- Yeah, Jesse, as a birthright citizen, that is me, and as a Black woman, does that threaten more Black citizens than we realize?

I mean, when we think about our Black communities and how many of us are first American generation, what does that look like for our landscape?

- Well, I think on a couple levels, yes, it does.

First, if there's any kind of executive order that is instituted to try to disrupt the 14th amendment to the Constitution, then the 14th Amendment doesn't just apply to birthright citizenship.

It also contains your Equal Protections under the Law clause and your Privileges and Immunities clause.

So if it becomes that simple to undo what is supposed to be kind of an arduous process of constitutional ratification, then that should disturb everyone.

Secondarily, I also believe that people come here and they present jobs, they create jobs, they provide employment for people who are in the community as well, and so if we are talkin' about essentially destabilizin' a population of people, who are adding value to the community, then that will have ripple effects throughout the population.

- Now, would that impact students?

You mentioned education, right, would that impact students who are here learning potentially on a student visa?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, your separation of families, right.

If you're no longer a citizen, what if they deport you to go back?

There's a lot of uncertainty there.

We see this issue all the time.

- If I get deported to go back, what am I going back to?

- Yes.

- I don't have a family life established.

- And we've told a story about the documented dreamers, and there's over hundreds of thousands in the US, millions in the US, and I think a lot in North Carolina.

And they produce 484 million to our economy.

Some of them are starting companies, running companies, and now we're saying, "You have to go back."

And what do they go back to, if the only country they knew was here.

- Never created anything anywhere else.

- And so I think this is a real issue in the Latin American community I forgot to say.

There's a lot of Latino Americans concerned about this, so I think there's a way of solving the problem, but this isn't solving the problem.

It's just creating a wedge issue.

It does play to the Trump base because it's playing in this thing of us versus them, nationalism.

And we're seeing this theme across the world in other countries, right, so.

- And this is feeding into the deeper, or the underlying issue of DEI, because what is the true motivation behind this decision?

- I mean, I think it's just, the true motivation is you galvanize the base, and you say, "We're gonna return this country "to just be us versus them, immigrants."

And immigrants, it's not a dirty word.

Immigrants is like Alexander Hamilton, they were.

- Harder and smarter.

- [Host] Yeah.

- Like the $10 founding father, there's a lot of immigrants that have produced to this country, and that's what's made America great.

I was thinking about that.

I went to Japan just recently, and I was on vacation there, but one thing I realized is how grateful we should be in a country where we have all walks of life from all nationalities.

- Yeah.

- That's the American secret sauce.

- Yeah.

- That's what makes us unique and special.

And we've forgotten that.

- [Host] Yeah.

- And I believe that this presidency has essentially weaponized a lot of the old tropes of the United States that we had hoped had been in our past.

Things like racism, xenophobia have galvanized the base and have allowed him to enact certain things that we wouldn't have anticipated would come.

- During this time.

Yeah, so let's move on.

[chuckles] And let's talk about tariffs.

There's been a lot that's happened.

I mean, literally in the last six hours with tariffs.

Initially when I had first pulled this together, we had seen that the Court of International Trade had blocked President Trump from imposing these sweeping tariffs that he's been imposing.

However, literally we woke up this morning and things may change by the time you watch this episode, but a Federal appeals Court is delaying that court order, saying that they cannot impose him from making these decisions or prevent him from making these decisions.

What are your thoughts on that, Steve?

Where do we stand with tariffs right now?

- Well, I mean now we're back to where we were before.

- Yeah.

- 30% tariffs on imports from China, 25% from Mexico, Canada, 10% on all tariffs.

So tariffs in my opinion, it's a regressive tax.

I mean, the first thing it's gonna do, it's gonna hurt our economy.

You look at black-owned businesses that are already facing razor thin profit margins.

Well, their costs are gonna go up.

I'm seeing this even from Indian American businesses whose costs in Morrisville have gone up by 25% because their import costs are going up to get their supplies.

It does affect supply chains, right, in terms of just the cost of goods, basic things, logistics costs, transportation costs, right.

Even in resiliency, I've been hearing Governor Stein talk a lot about recovery efforts, but when the cost of logistics goes up, even the cost of recovery goes up, right?

So all of these things, right, I think what the President's trying to do is increase the revenue, but the bottom line is that I don't think that's gonna really, that the economic impact on our economy, it's inflationary effect already with inflation, even though inflation's come down.

And so I think this is a not a good thing for our economy.

I think we've gotta, you look at the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that happened and that was in the 1930s.

- [Host] Yeah.

- Led to a Great Depression, a recession.

- Yeah.

And when we look at agriculture being such a big part of our North Carolina fabric, Jesse, what does that mean for our black farm owners, for those that are still trying to come up in those industries?

- Well, anytime that anyone starts a business, the goal typically is for profit.

When you can't rely on cheap capital, cheap goods, and you can't resell at a cheap value, then that means that those costs will have to be passed along, essentially to the consumer.

- [Host] Yeah.

- And if the consumer has options and has to now pay a higher price, the likelihood is that they're not going to pay for the things that our community is providing.

- Yeah.

You have something to add?

- No, absolutely.

And what we often forget is, the irony is that we've been able to wield such a strong stick on this issue, President Trump, because the US economy still today is the strongest economy in the world.

- [Host] Right.

- I mean, the dollar still has a lot of value, - [Host] But it's losing value too, though.

- It's losing value.

But here's where I'm going with this.

The problem is now we are taking a strong economy and we're telling people we're gonna have trade wars, right?

We're gonna hurt farmers, we're gonna hurt industry, and people are gonna start trading around us.

They're gonna start saying, "You know what?

It's so difficult to trade with the United States.

Let's just bypass them."

- [Host] Right.

- So what if India does deals with China and doesn't do deals with US?

So, I think we wanna address trade deficits, trade surpluses these countries have had, this is an America First Trump policy.

He's trying to save American jobs, but I think we're going about it all a wrong way.

- Well, and you mentioned, right, so they're gonna do this around us.

- [Expert] Around us.

Trading around us.

- It's gonna happen regardless.

- Right.

- And so now we get left out of the conversation.

- That's what exactly right.

- Now we're not considered in foreign affairs, right?

And so when we look at foreign policy, and that's another area of concern, and Trump is essentially, you know, he's not too concerned about, like you said, America First mindset.

- Yeah, America First mindset.

And, you know, for me, like, you know, America has always, especially after World War II, been the leader of the Free World.

We brought the allies together to win the World War II, we just celebrated Memorial Day, great Americans who gave their lives so this nation could long endure.

And so I think with this, what's made Trump do this, is he's like, well, you know, we've been paying for NATO, we've been doing all these things, so we want to be isolationists now, right?

But I don't think that's good.

Number one because it just doesn't send a good message to the world.

You know, we're gonna allow dictators to invade Ukraine.

We're going to, you know, allow these things to happen around the world.

Still, you have the United States.

I think when you break NATO alliances, from a foreign policy perspective, you do hurt North Carolina because of our defense sector, you know?

- Okay, yeah.

- We get a lot of supplies, and defense, and, you know, Cherry Point, Fort Bragg, our Resource Triangle Park.

So by not having procurement and missions with NATO and Europe, it's gonna hurt our economy.

- Right.

- And so, I just feel like, I know what's driving this, but I think that we're still the United States of America, and I think we have a role to play.

But this is a theme that he is just saying, "I want to think of America first."

From an economy, from a foreign policy perspective, I don't think it's good for the world.

We went into World War II when we were isolationist and protectionist.

Don't wanna scare anybody, but, you know, I think we've gotta.

- It's gotta be.

- These are patterns, right?

History kind of tells us what will happen in the future if we don't learn from it.

- Right.

- And so, when we think about the limits of presidential power when it comes to foreign trade, what is there that the Courts or Congress can do to kind of limit some of that that's happening, Jesse?

- Well, I think Congress has power to be able to limit, because Congress controls the purse, right?

- Yeah.

- So Congress has the power to financially limit what the President's policies can be, but there also needs to be a political will to do so.

And I think that's what the community oftentimes is going to question.

We haven't seen here recently a lot of congressional oversight, or congressional stoppage, when it comes to things like, you know, people losing jobs, when it comes to the President doing, essentially, anything that he wants to do.

And the primary stop gap in the checks and balances system has been the lower level federal courts.

But even with that, I think community has grown kind of impatient with that, knowing that if it gets appealed to the Supreme Court, the composition right now seems to favor the position of the President.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

But is it really up to the Courts though?

I mean, is the system set up that way to where the President can't overrule those decisions?

- Well, it really depends, right?

So the Courts, and Congress, and the President all provide checks and balances for each other in our Constitution.

But if you have a situation where Congress won't do it.

- Right.

- Then it ultimately is gonna end up with the Courts.

And if the Courts don't do it then.

- The President will just, yeah.

- Right.

- So we're hoping that Congress, and the Courts, see the alignment of where things need to go.

But if they don't, then we are still left kind of with these same decisions.

- Yep, executive orders, declarations, and, you know, we have constitutional amendments, right?

You know, for any of these things, even with the 14th amendment, other things.

But it takes the system.

It's hard to amend the Constitution.

It takes two thirds of the US Congress and Senate, and then three fourths of the State.

So it's hard, it's not easy to amend the Constitution.

- What power do people have?

Because we sit back and we watch this unfold and we watch it happen, and we're asking the question, why doesn't Congress do this?

Why don't the courts do this?

But is there anything we can do?

- Vote.

- Vote.

Yeah.

But, yeah, we can call our congressmen for sure.

But in the interim, yes, we know we gotta go out and vote, but people voted and here we are today dealing with all this.

- There are consequences for elections.

And I mean, we knew we shouldn't be surprised of the things that are happening because Donald J. Trump did say that he was gonna do all these things.

And I thought that he was gonna use it as negotiating chip with tariffs.

But I think he's in this state on the ground and it's gonna provide opportunity for Democrats in 2026, we got a US Senate race in North Carolina, and I think in 2027, as early as that, we're gonna be looking at the Democrats looking at a candidate for president.

They gotta win back the White House if they're gonna stop this or it's gonna be Vice President JD Vance, probably going for the nomination and I'm hearing other rumors out there.

But, you know, we'll see.

- Well, I would just add to that, I think we have to remember that we still live in a democracy.

Voting is important, but it's also important to be educated and informed about the issues.

It's also important to hold your lawmakers accountable.

There are a lot of people who are striking back at town halls around the nation.

Who are letting their representatives know, I don't approve of the way that you've been, you know, co-signing everything that the president wants to do.

The other thing is we also have a lot of displaced federal employees.

And so these are people who are intricately involved in carrying out the things that protect us, that protect our environment, protect the water.

And so we can't afford to simply sit out and not do anything.

- Yeah, well, let's talk federal budget, because money has been a huge topic of conversations, especially here in North Carolina.

We've seen many agencies.

We just had the Pauli Murray Center here, and they had funding pulled.

I wrote, well, we got some facts here.

SNAP is federally funded.

This is the food assistance program.

Always been a hundred percent federally funded.

There's a proposed 25% state match for SNAP funding, which would cost North Carolina $725 million.

Medicaid cuts.

We had seen under, oh goodness, Cooper, - Governor Cooper.

- Governor Cooper.

- Medicaid expansion achievement.

- Medicaid expansion over 600,000 North Carolinians.

And now we are looking at over 6% of the state's population potentially now receiving another hit of no Medicaid coverage.

So when we look at federal funding cuts and how this is trickling down stateside, what's the impact really gonna be if we're not careful with how much the state now has to step in?

- Well, and I'll start with this.

I mean, I think when you look at these federal cuts across the board, we have to remember that these are not just budget line items, that they are the first thing we have to think about its effect on people, right?

And this is affecting the people in North Carolina, whether it's, you know, people that are losing their Medicaid, you know, illegal immigrants, you know, gender transition services, those kinds of things.

Healthcare on the table, SNAP 1.5 million North Carolinians get that program, Head Start, all these programs, it's affecting people, farmers, you know, we've talked about small businesses, all these federal cuts.

The other thing I'll say is jobs.

As I'm getting a lot of calls about people losing their jobs because of RTI and FHI 360 who receive federal contracts, DHHS, having to cut employees, secretary standby told me a few weeks ago that they're, you know, having to cut public health funding and COVID vaccinations and things like that.

These are all things, and then the final thing is, you know, losing workforce training and those kinds of things.

I mean, and economic development.

You know, we got a lot of green energy jobs under Governor Cooper.

Electric vehicle manufacturing and I'm hearing from leaders in the state that we're gonna lose a lot of those companies coming in.

And those were jobs that were promised to our governor.

And now Governor Stein is gonna have to deal with dealing with these companies pulling out.

So people, people, people, people, we're affecting people.

- And some of those people, I'm being told federally, federal employees, Black women that have been losing a lot of- - Right, absolutely.

- Black people lose- - So where does that leave us?

You know, when we look at federal employees who are losing their jobs, there aren't that many options here right?

Stateside that they may, they're competing with that they may not have the opportunity to be able to fit in somewhere else at the same level of funding, money, opportunity.

And so where is that now putting our Black employees in workforce?

- Well, I mean, I think that one, there's still a robust market of folks who are looking for work and a robust market of places that are trying to find people with this experience.

- Right.

- But I share your concern.

I think that there is a lot of oversight that we no longer have because those federal employees are not in place.

We still have this bill that is going through Congress right now that people can call their senators to try to fight against some of these cuts that have been proposed, particularly with Medicaid and number- - Are you referring to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act?

- Allegedly.

- Allegedly.

- Yeah, exactly, which could add 5 trillion to our deficit and make, you know, our debt.

And the other thing I forgot to mention is that education right, I just heard Chris Heagarty, the school board chair, say just yesterday at the state of city address that, and the county address that the schools of Wake County were told, you know, if you don't cash your check in by Friday of certain week, you're gonna lose all your program.

I mean, that's not a good strategic way to run your school systems.

So, I mean- - That are already suffering.

- I mean, I think there's inefficiencies, but you just don't do a blanket approach like this 'cause then you put everyone in a defensive mode where they're scrambling around and I think that- - Let's go back and kind of define this One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and what does that look like?

So you can expound on it more.

But essentially it's a bill that's aimed to extend expand upon the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act, while implementing substantial changes to federal spending and social programs.

What does that mean?

What was the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act?

- Well, I think that the 2017 Jobs Act gave just like, you know, reduced the corporate income tax rate.

I'm blanking out on what the percentage was, but it basically focused on the wealthier individual.

That's my concern.

So wealthier Americans got the tax break.

And so he's extending that from the first Trump term right?

I have a problem with that because I think that it's hurting working class families.

We ought to give middle class families than working class families a tax break.

So they have more money, especially during inflationary times to buy more goods, to save money, to educate their children, their healthcare.

It adds 5 trillion to the debt.

When you reduce revenue and you increase deficit in government spending, you have a problem right?

Our federal deficit is already at 1 trillion.

So this bill would add another 5 trillion.

And then the cuts to Medicaid and healthcare and all of these programs are gonna be affected by this bill and North Carolina.

We're gonna bear a big brunt of that.

We're the eighth largest state in the union, and we're gonna see a lot of this impact our state.

- And Jesse, your students, this impacts loan, student loan programs, Pell Grants.

What does that look like from an educational standpoint, how that can impact our institutions?

- Well, I mean, of course students are already struggling with trying to figure out how do I finance an education to be what it is that I want to be.

And I believe that in so doing and in having these cuts, there's gonna be less money that's available.

It's definitely going to mean that they're gonna have to go to outside private sources that aren't gonna be backed by the government in order to get it.

And those private resources are typically gonna be out for profit.

- Exactly.

- On top of that I also believe that with the people who have already been through education, you know, trying to seek things like public service loan forgiveness, trying to seek things like any sort of loan repayment program that was traditionally acceptable has now become questionable.

And so there's a lot of uncertainty about whether the cost of college and higher education is even worth it.

- It's worth it.

I mean, I'm scared that we're gonna start to see a decline in our Black and brown folks in particular with college degrees or advanced degrees at this point.

- Right, and the challenge is that the world of work is changing so fast with AI and technology innovation, entry-level positions basically being eliminated, call center jobs.

So now is the time when we need to invest more in education with minority communities as well, of course, to help them give the skills they need to work and how are they gonna do this without an education.

Now, fortunately we've got community colleges, we've got HBCUs, but even their funding is being cut.

- Losing funding as well.

- Right.

- So this is, we gotta get the conversation about the education.

I think Democrats had to get back on message, on building out infrastructure, providing education, and tying their policies to economic growth of the United States.

- Absolutely.

- Well, we have come to the end of our conversation.

We ended up packing everything in there that we wanted to, so I appreciate both of you, Jesse McCoy, Steve Rao.

- Pleasure.

Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

- Have a great week, summer, everybody.

- Indeed.

And I thank you for watching.

If you want more content like this, we invite you to engage with us on Instagram using the hashtag #BlackIssuesForum.

You can also find our full episodes on pbsnc.org/blackissuesforum and on the PBS video app.

I'm Kenia Thompson.

I'll see you next time.

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