Supreme Court, California Elections, The Missing in Mexico

[00:00] The U.S. Constitution says people born in the United States are citizens. [00:06] The Supreme Court will soon tell us if that right still stands. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I'm Ada Peralta, and this is Up First from NPR News. [00:16] Hundreds of thousands of children are born to non-citizen parents every year. Will the Supreme Court allow the president to revoke their birthright citizenship? Also, prediction markets are burning up with people claiming fraud as votes are being counted in the election for mayor of Los Angeles. They're all pro-Trump influencers. [00:36] Mexican families whose loved ones have disappeared hope the World Cup is a chance to have their stories heard. Stay with us. [00:44] Bye. [00:50] This message comes from Angie. If you're tackling a home project, check out Angie.com. From roofing to remodels and everything in between, Angie connects you with skilled pros who do such a good job, you might trust them to do other things, like pull out your tooth or be your kid's godfather. [01:07] Don't actually ask them to do those things. Just let them get the job done well. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find a pro for your projects at Angie.com. That's A-N-G-I dot com. [01:21] This message is from AT&T with your summer essential, the iPhone 17 Pro. Its center stage front camera auto-adjusts the frame to fit everyone into group selfies. Right now at AT&T, ask how you can get iPhone 17 Pro on them with eligible trade-in. Requires eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply subject to change. Visit att.com slash iPhone for details.

[01:47] Support for NPR comes from IBM. On Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell explores how organizations are using technology to solve complex challenges in partnership with IBM. I spoke with Alon Cohen, who heads research and development at UFC. Insights Engine is not here to feel technical. We are bringing it to a place where you feel like you could even have an opinion because you understand enough of what's going on. [02:15] Listen to Smart Talks with IBM wherever you get your podcasts. [02:21] The Supreme Court is entering the final weeks of this term with decisions likely before the end of the month in nearly two dozen cases, including some that may be blockbusters. NPR Supreme Court correspondent Kerry Johnson joins us to give us the rundown. Hey, Kerry. [02:37] Hey, how are you? Good. Carrie, the Supreme Court hasn't yet ruled on birthright citizenship. What's at stake here? [02:45] The biggest case of this term and the one that's most important to President Trump involves immigration, specifically that executive order he signed on day one after he returned to the White House. That order would strip the guarantee of birthright citizenship to babies born on American soil. For more than a century, people have understood the 14th Amendment to ensure all persons born here are Americans. At oral argument, the Trump administration had a rough [03:15] cast doubt on the administration's position. Most notably, Chief Justice John Roberts, who told the Solicitor General, it's a new world, but it's the same constitution. And the president has another immigration policy under review at the Supreme Court, temporary protected status for people who can't safely return to their home countries. What's happening with that case? This dispute involves the decision to revoke that temporary protected status for thousands

[03:45] designed for people from countries that have been torn apart by war or natural disasters, and they got protection from deportation and temporary work status here in the U.S. But the Homeland Security Department revoked that status, and the question is whether federal courts can review those decisions. Kerry, President Trump famously says he likes to fire people. Now the justices are reviewing his power to fire government officials, right? Right. [04:10] There are two outstanding cases about the president's removal power. One involves a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission that Trump fired last year without giving a good cause. A federal law says the White House would need to show inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance. 90 years ago, the Supreme Court backed that approach. It stood all this time. But there's now good reason to think the conservative majority on the court is likely to throw out that president [04:40] these kinds of federal officers. How far does that power extend? Tell us about the other case. [04:48] President Trump, of course, also tried to fire Lisa Cook, a governor on the Federal Reserve Board. The president cited some vague allegations related to mortgage loans before she got a job at the Fed. And during oral argument in the Lisa Cook case, several of the conservative justices seemed uneasy about whether Cook had a chance to contest those allegations, whether she had due process, and whether allowing Trump to fire her could really pierce the Fed's historic independence.

[05:18] One big ruling this week on some of the voting districts that are changing all over the country. Tell us what happened. [05:24] This week, the conservative majority sided with Republicans in Alabama to allow the state to use a map a lower court had found to discriminate on the basis of race against Black voters in that state. The decision came after voting had already begun in that midterm election, and it drew fierce criticism from civil rights groups and many election lawyers. They say the Supreme Court is putting a hand on the scale to favor the GOP and ignore damage to minority voters. Howard [05:54] Neifel wrote, the high court is marching this country's civil rights laws off a cliff. That's NPR's Kerry Johnson. Kerry, thanks for the update. [06:04] Thanks for having me. [06:13] Pro-Trump social media influencers are claiming that last Tuesday's mayoral election in Los Angeles was riddled with fraud. There's no evidence of wrongdoing in that race, just slow vote counting. But influencers have been citing odds on prediction markets such as Kaoshi and Polymarket to reinforce their claims. Some of those same influencers are also being paid by those companies for promotion and visibility. Now Kaoshi says it's asking some influencers to take their posts down. [06:43] Joining us to explain all this is NPR's Jew Jaffe Block. Welcome to the podcast.

[06:48] Hi, good morning. So what's in these posts that Kalshi is asking influencers to take down? Well, one of the influencers involved in this is a prominent Trump-aligned commentator named David Freeman. He posts under the handle Gunther Eagleman. And here's a recent video of his. Let's talk about California for a second. You know they're cheating. I know they're cheating. You know they're cheating. We all know they're cheating. Now, the thing is, Freeman also has a paid partnership with Kalshi. [07:18] audience of over a million followers. And those posts are basically intended to draw people to bet on the site. Freeman is rooting for former reality TV star Spencer Pratt in the LA mayor's race. And he shared a Calci post that showed Pratt's odds of making it to the runoff election have been falling on the betting site. Freeman added commentary that said, is California cheating to get Spencer Pratt out? And that post had a paid partnership logo on it, [07:48] paid for it by Kalshi. My colleague, Bobby Allen, asked Kalshi about that post and others like it from other influencers they have partnerships with. [07:58] Kalshi got back to us on Friday afternoon and told us they were asking Freeman and other influencers who have made similar posts to take them down because they violated their policies. Kalshi's rival site is Polymarket. What do we know about how they are handling posts like these? [08:15] We never heard back from Polymarket, which operates mostly offshore and is less regulated. But there are a number of influencers with Polymarket partnerships who are also sowing doubt about the L.A. mayoral election while promoting Polymarket. And those posts are still up.

[08:45] Those graphs are some kind of evidence of something suspicious when they just reflect betting behavior. [09:02] Why is the vote count so slow in California? Well, yeah, here in California, everyone gets a mailed ballot. And this election, a lot of people held on to their ballots until the last day. And the process for verifying those vote-by-mail ballots take longer than those cast in person. Also, historically, the ballots that get counted later in the process skew more Democratic. And that's been a source for conspiracy theories for years now. [09:32] online as allegations of fraud. You know, and there's also an extra layer of potential confusion when it comes to posts about races on prediction markets, because these posts announce that a candidate's odds have fallen to 8% or surged to 72%. And they're talking about the betting market odds of whether someone will win or lose, not what the actual ballot count says, but not everyone is understanding that. [09:56] Obviously, we have midterm elections where control of Congress is coming up in a few months. What does this tell us about how those elections might be contested? [10:07] It's not looking great. I spoke with Stephen Richer, who was the Maricopa County recorder in Arizona in the aftermath of the 2020 election and dealt with a lot of false claims about election fraud that cycle. He's very worried about what the L.A. election means for the rest of the year. I think we're going to get punched in the face so badly on election denialism in November.

[10:37] are so far happy to partner with influencers whose brands have been tied to trying to delegitimize elections that were not favorable to Trump. [10:46] That's NPR's Jude Jaffe Block. Jude, thank you so much for joining us. [10:50] Thank you. [10:58] The city of Guadalajara in Mexico will soon host four of the World Cup games. And Ada, you report from Mexico, so tell us all about it. You know, this is a country that loves its football. So hosting the World Cup is cause for celebration, but it also comes at a complicated moment. Mexico is in the middle of a vicious drug war that's left tens of thousands of people disappeared. [11:28] would probably hope that people would just focus on sports. But what about the people who are living through this drug war? NPR producer Fernando Narro and I went to Guadalajara, which is the capital of one of the most violent states, to talk to them. [11:46] The families of the missing gather in the shadow of the golden spires of Guadalajara's Metropolitan Cathedral. On one side, workers put the finishing touches on a massive TV screen in the middle of FIFA's fan zone. [11:58] Thank you. [11:59] On the other, the bells announce a mass. [12:02] And in the middle of the square, the families begin their ritual. [12:05] "The most important thing is that their faces are visible," Ruth Alejandrina says,

[12:13] The families shuffle hundreds of posters with pictures mostly of young men, but also women and kids, who are among the more than 130,000 Mexicans who are reported missing. [12:25] Alejandrina warned: [12:26] paste the pictures only on the bollards. [12:29] If someone tells us something, [12:31] or they say something, then don't do the case. If someone screams at you, don't pay attention. [12:36] It's people without a conscience. They grab paint brushes and buckets full of glue, and they fan out onto the street. [12:43] They do this every week because the government removes the posters, sometimes the day after they put them up. Héctor Flores moves with intensity. [12:55] Visibility bothers governments, he says. Five years ago, his son Dani was picked up by local authorities, and he hasn't heard from him since. [13:06] The people who are going to buy their purchases [13:09] to look at the reality of the state. [13:11] The government doesn't want tourists or people out shopping to see the reality. The reality is that Flores never stops thinking about his son, who was 19 the day he disappeared. Every week he puts up posters. Nearly every week he picks up a shovel and digs through fields trying to find him. [13:34] We say the families of the disappeared die every night only to be reborn every morning.

[13:46] And we suffer the worst kind of torture [13:49] which is hope. [13:50] It's not wrong to celebrate the World Cup, he says. It's not wrong to cheer on your national team. [13:58] What is wrong, he says. [13:59] is to forget. [14:05] What's wrong is to stop searching, to stop naming the people we miss. [14:10] But as he moves from bollard to bollard, papering the city with the faces of the disappeared, the world around him keeps spinning. [14:19] The Mrs. Irma, take care of her brotherhood, she says: "This is not happening here!" [14:25] The construction crew puts up a bright pink stage, a group of young women practice Shakira's latest dance moves, and as the street musicians begin their set, [14:34] The families of the missing play a pick-up game of football. [14:44] For as long as anyone remembers, [14:46] Football in Mexico has had mystical powers. The great Mexican soccer scribe Juan Villoro [14:53] once wrote that football is a profession that authorizes the use of magic. [15:09] Andres Favregas, an anthropologist who studies football, says football can do great things. He remembers when the southern state of Chiapas got a football team.

[15:23] a moment when that part of the country felt left behind. Their first game was against the Chivas of Guadalajara, Mexico's de facto national team. People faced a major dilemma and they solved it by cheering for both teams. As soccer gods would have it, the match ended up [15:43] tied. [15:44] People were so happy. [15:49] He had won the identity of national and local identity. [15:52] laughter [15:53] Both the national and the local identity had won, and the local soccer team took on a greater meaning. [16:03] as a symbol of reunification. [16:06] Like others, Darwin Franco, a journalist in Guadalajara, says he also believes in the magic of football. But things have changed. With prices so high, FIFA has made tickets to the stadium unaffordable. A tight security perimeter keeps most people away. [16:24] The FanFest the government built in downtown Guadalajara, he says, has used up nine times more money than what they spend yearly looking for the disappeared. [16:36] instead of reality. [16:38] And the biggest affront, he says, is that the government has never acknowledged there's a crisis. [16:50] I meet Leticia Ramirez at a neighborhood a stone's throw from Guadalajara's international airport. Leticia is part of a collective of mothers who searches for their missing children.

[17:08] house, less than two miles from the airport where most soccer fans will fly into. They dug and found human remains, and that's when they turned the scene over to authorities. So far, she explains, they have found 60 bags full of remains, mostly extremities. This is remarkably common in Mexico. [17:38] in graves found in the state of Jalisco alone. Human bodies are dismembered and then buried in graves as deep as 10 feet. This grave was in the middle of a residential neighborhood with lots of traffic, with lots of life. This happens because people don't say anything and because the police [18:08] of cadaver dogs arrives, and Leticia says goodbye. She crosses the police line to supervise to make sure authorities count all of the dead. We walk down a hill across a ravine to a little farm just below the mass grave. From there, we can see investigators working the scene.

[18:38] drink made with raw milk and moonshine. You want to try it? Reyes asks. He pours a little agave honey, a little instant coffee, into a mug. He reaches under a goat and squeezes its milk right into the mug. I take a drink. It's warm and sweet and a little bitter. I ask him, [19:08] He bought this place 15 years ago, but he would come and go. Then... [19:15] A memory surfaces. [19:23] Two and a half years ago, he said, [19:25] They found a head. They reported it, but that was that. Sometimes, he says, you think about what's happening, and you can't explain why or how. [19:40] It's like we have a veil over our eyes, he says. [19:45] and we don't realize what's right in front of us. [19:48] We're full of distractions, he says. [19:50] And this week, there's one more, FIFA's World Cup. [19:58] We've been listening to Ada Peralta's reporting from Guadalajara, the state of Mexico that will soon host four games of the World Cup. You visited there, Ada, earlier this week with NPR producer Fernando Naro. Yep, and that's up first for Saturday, June 6, 2026. I'm Ada Peralta.

[20:20] Today's podcast with help from Gabe O'Connor. Our editor is Diana Douglas, assisted by Anna Yukonanoff, Brett Neely, and Tara Neel. In the control room today is our director, Andy Craig, and our technical director, David Greenberg, with engineering support from Zoe Vangenhoven, Jay Sizz, and Simon Laszlo Jansen. Shannon Rhodes is our senior supervising editor. Our executive producer is Evie Stone. Jim Cain is our deputy managing editor. Jim, we were so lucky to have you. [20:50] already, but on to the next big adventure. Jim, you have been a steady hand for us on the weekend, and we're just gonna miss you so much. You know, best of luck to you, but it's a big loss for us. Tomorrow on the Sunday Story, teams and fans hoping to attend the World Cup are getting dragged into the geopolitics of Trump's America. Thanks for joining us in the podcast feed. We've [21:20] go to stations.npr.org. [21:32] This message comes from Indiana University, strengthening tomorrow's workforce. IU grads make a difference in your community, serving as teachers, nurses, and engineers who rise to tomorrow's challenges and meet them. [21:45] More at iu.edu slash impact. [21:49] This message comes from Integrative Therapeutics, makers of Cortisol Manager, named Best Overall Ashwagandha Supplement by Vogue. Use code STRESS2026 for 20% off of Cortisol Manager on Amazon.com.

[22:03] Support for NPR comes from IBM. On Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell explores how organizations are using technology to solve complex challenges. I spoke with Sergi Ghosh, Heineken's chief AI officer. If you can connect all the different applications, all the platforms, remove fragmentation, scale very quick, that's what we call the best connected drawer. That's where IBM is really partnering with us. [22:33] podcasts.