New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie says White House advisor Stephen Miller is cruising to create “subordinate class” by ending public education funding for undocumented children in red states. But this is about more than keeping some kids less learned than others.

Miller spirited Texas lawmakers away to a closed-door meeting in Washington last week, according to two sources in the meeting, where he commenced to challenge a decades-old U.S. Supreme Court precedent. That case, Plyler v. Doe, holds that it was a violation of the equal protection clause for states to deny undocumented children the same free public education state leaders provide to legal immigrants’ children — who are themselves citizens.

According to the Times, Miller wants to take advantage of partisan gridlock in Congress to encourage state lawmakers to pass the attacks on Plyler. But why is Miller so determined to “whittle down the 14th Amendment to essentially nothing,” asked Bouie.

In Bouie’s argument the 14th Amendment is “tied directly to the 13th.”

“The 13th Amendment states that ‘Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.’ It then adds, in section 2, that ‘Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.’”

But the 13^th Amendment was about more than just slavery, said Bouie. To the authors, it was “the foundation for the society they hoped to build” by outlawing “hereditary caste as much as” the end of chattel slavery.” Immediately after ratifying it, anti-slavery forces in Congress used it as an open door to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which established birthright citizenship and nullified the “Black Codes.”

The racist Supreme Court at the time neutered much of that good intent “as part of a larger political project to reconcile the white citizens of the United States” and give the white South the power to manage its own ‘affairs,’ and impose “imperial domination,” Bouie argued.

“Both Miller and the MAGA right are engaged in the same kind of work as their political forebears,” added Bouie. “It is no wonder, then, that they want to gut the 14th Amendment, which was revitalized by the struggles of Black Americans and other groups throughout the 20th century. Theirs is a project of subordination at home and abroad; of the re-inscription of caste and the recreation of tiered citizenship based on race and nationality. And now, as then, the 14th Amendment stands in the way.”

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“People should care because this could be you,” White said. “This is something that police agencies are now using to document and watch what you’re doing, where you’re going, without your consent.”

Haters cross political divides to fight Flock

Currently, Flock’s reach is broad, “providing services to 5,000 police departments, 1,000 businesses, and numerous homeowners associations across 49 states,” lawmakers noted. Additionally, in October, Flock partnered with Amazon, which allows police to request Ring camera footage that widens Flock’s lens further.

However, Flock’s reach notably doesn’t extend into certain cities and towns in Arizona, Colorado, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, following successful local bids to end Flock contracts. These local fights have only just started as groups learn from each other, Sarah Hamid, EFF’s director of strategic campaigns, told Ars.

“Several cities have active campaigns underway right now across the country—urban and rural, in blue states and red states,” Hamid said.

A Flock spokesperson told Ars that the growing effort to remove cameras “remains an extremely small percentage of communities that consider deploying Flock technology (low single digital percentages).” To keep Flock’s cameras on city streets, Flock attends “hundreds of local community meetings and City Council sessions each month, and the vast majority of those contracts are accepted,” Flock’s spokesperson said.

Hamid challenged Flock’s “characterization of camera removals as isolated incidents,” though, noting “that doesn’t reflect what we’re seeing.”

“The removals span multiple states and represent different organizing strategies—some community-led, some council-initiated, some driven by budget constraints,” Hamid said.

Most recently, city officials voted to remove Flock cameras this fall in Sedona, Arizona.

A 72-year-old retiree, Sandy Boyce, helped fuel the local movement there after learning that Sedona had “quietly” renewed its Flock contract, NBC News reported. She felt enraged as she imagined her tax dollars continuing to support a camera system tracking her movements without her consent, she told NBC News.

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H.R. 1, President Donald Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” contains one provision that may prove to be both financially and politically costly for Republicans — particularly those from the reddest states in the U.S.

Politico reported Friday that the legislation contains a provision that would end up forcing all states to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which is something Republican-run states have been hesitant to do since the ACA became law in 2010. South Carolina Hospital Association chief executive Thornton Kirby warned that the legislation “affects the viability of the whole [healthcare] system” in the Palmetto State.

Under H.R. 1, states that haven’t yet expanded Medicaid would take a significant financial hit, as they would reduce what health insurance companies pay states who contract with them to provide Medicaid coverage in order to pay for the 10-year extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts (which are overwhelmingly skewed in favor of the wealthiest Americans). Kirby said in South Carolina alone, the legislation could cost $2.3 billion per year.

READ MORE: Supreme Court justice suggests her colleagues have been taken in by ‘moneyed interests’

“If you take away this alternative way to balance the budget, you leave us with only one path … Medicaid expansion,” he said.

However, under the ACA, significant federal subsidies are provided to all states that expand Medicaid, meaning red states like South Carolina would need those federal subsidies to shore up their finances. Kirby told Politico he’s been pushing Rep. Russell Fry (R-S-C.), Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Governor Henry McMaster (R) to push for the final bill to exclude the restrictions on state-directed payments to insurers.

“I don’t want to put him in the hot seat,” Kirby said of the governor. “He doesn’t want to see [Medicaid] upended.”

H.R. 1 has already underwent significant changes in the Senate since passing the House in May. Even though Republicans enjoy a 53-47 majority in the upper chamber of Congress, the bill’s passage is far from assured, with senators with a high concentration of Medicaid beneficiaries like Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) communicating that they’re unlikely to vote for any bill that would significantly cut the heath insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans.

READ MORE: ‘Narcissistic man-child’: Trump ripped for demanding the Nobel Peace Prize

Click here to read Politico’s full article.

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