Life comes at you fast. Most of it is just smoke and mirrors. We're here to clear the air. Whether
it's the can't make this up moments or the hard truths hitting our streets in our state,
we're finding the signal in all that noise. No spin, no nonsense, just the facts, the fallout,
and the truth, and the truth. And a little bit of humor. And a little bit of humor. Grab your coffee. It's time for the morning drip on WRTO.FM, Radio Free Georgia. Hey, good morning, everybody. Welcome to the morning drip. It's me, Grady D here with you. If I could speak. Oh, I speak pretty today, don't I? It is Wednesday, July 1st, 2026.
We made it through June, everybody. We made it through June. And onward to July. Of course, coming up this Saturday is July 4th, the 250th anniversary, or birthday, however you want to say it,
of the fantastic United States of America. And I say fantastic because with all of the bullshit nonsense we have going on in this country, I still feel like we are one.
I used to say we were the best country on the planet. Well, we're in the top five now, but we're still, I don't think there's any place else that I would rather have been born into, other than the United States. Maybe New Zealand. I don't know. Never been to New Zealand.
But yeah, it is 1st of July, everybody. And the temperatures are still oppressive. So take care of yourselves. If you're having to work outside, make sure that you take adequate breaks.
Get in some shade. Make sure you stay hydrated because hydration is important. And if your boss gives you a hard time about taking the breaks and drinking, just tell them that Grady D said, shut the hell up.
Your health is more important than whatever it is they got going on. You know, I'd also like to remind you that this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we will be broadcasting America 250, the soundtrack of us right here on wrto.fm at 2 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
It's a four hour extravaganza of some of the some of the music that a lot of people relate to as far as being an American.
And I think it'll be a great time. It's hosted by Steven Edward. He put it together.
And there's a lot of us out there streaming radio stations, tradition, terrestrial, terrestrial radio stations.
I'm getting a little tongue tied this morning. I don't know what's going on here.
Are broadcasting this. But again, yeah, right here on wrto.fm, America 250, the soundtrack of us.
Our call in number is 229-520-5957. Again, that's 229-520-5957.
Phone lines are open. You could also text to that same number 24 7 229-520-5957 or shoot us an email morning drip at wrto.fm.
All right. Let's get started, shall we?
Okay. Yesterday, you know, this is the week of Supreme Court verdicts.
We've already had the one on Monday, the big one on Monday about mail-in voting in the states that allow mail-in ballots to be counted, even if they are received after Election Day.
But as long as they are postmarked before that. And all I can say is that, well, the Republicans started having meltdowns.
All right. Well, they also started having a meltdown on this other big ruling yesterday, the Supreme Court.
And this one, everybody has been really, to me, I think this one was more important or let's just say the mail-in voting and the birthright citizenship question right there in the number one spots.
And we're going to get into a deeper dive of birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment, as we get through this morning's broadcast, because the one thing that I think as Americans, where we fail personally, is our pseudo understanding of the Constitution of the United States.
I do not claim to be a constitutionalist, but I have decided years ago that it was important for me to be able to speak about these issues intelligently.
I know the jury's still out on that, right? But I needed to actually know what's in the Constitution.
Now, I cannot quote the Constitution verbatim. I wouldn't expect anybody to.
But you need to read it from cover to cover at least once or twice to get a good sense of the brilliance of the founding fathers of this great nation.
So, of course, we're talking about the fact that Donald Trump, as soon as he got in to office the second time around, he had a crap ton of executive orders.
And one of them was essentially challenging birthright citizenship.
What he wanted was, if you were here illegally and you gave birth on U.S. soil, you should not, that child should not be considered a citizen.
The interpretation of the 14th Amendment has always been, regardless of the parent's citizenship status,
that if the child was born on U.S. soil, they were considered a United States citizen.
Now, there's certain carve-outs, diplomats, you know, if you are a diplomat and your wife is pregnant and she's here and she gives birth,
they are not considered a United States citizen, even if they're, I mean, she's given birth in an American hospital.
Because, you know, in all their embassies, if you walk into, if you walk into, say, Great Britain's embassy here in the United States,
then that is sovereign soil for Great Britain, you know?
But, I mean, they wouldn't deliver there in the embassy, you wouldn't think.
They would take her to a local hospital, which is U.S. soil, but because she's the wife of a diplomat
and she's considered diplomatic immunity and all this other kind of stuff,
that's the other carve-out that the child would not be considered a U.S. citizen.
So, the Supreme Court yesterday did reaffirm that birthright citizenship is protected by the 14th Amendment,
thus rejecting Trump's executive order that sought to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the U.S.
to parents who are in the country illegally or even temporarily.
Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the 5-4 majority.
And this is, you'll see some reporting on this that it was a 6-3 or a 5-4.
That had to do with Brett Kavanaugh.
He kind of pseudo-agreed, but also didn't agree.
It's weird.
So, whether you say 6-3 or 5-4, honestly, it should have been 9-0.
That's the take that anybody with half a brain looks at this and goes,
this should have been, there was no question here.
And as we get into it later in the broadcast, you'll understand why, because words matter.
But it was a 5-4 majority and said the Constitution has long been understood
to guarantee citizenship to nearly everyone born on U.S. soil.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed the order was invalid under existing federal law.
And this ruling leaves the executive order permanently blocked
and preserves more than a century of legal precedent,
which I'm pleasantly surprised because this,
unfortunately, this Supreme Court has been turning precedent on its frickin' head.
Trump criticized the decision as, quote,
too bad for the country,
and urged Congress to pass legislation ending birthright citizenship,
which is so funny.
It's so funny.
The president doesn't understand the Constitution.
The president of the United States, Donald J. Trump,
has never read the Constitution.
And quite honestly,
I don't even think he gives a shit about the Constitution.
He pushes and he pushes and he pushes,
and he gets pushback, and they're like,
dude, this is not constitutional.
Well, you know, you had to give it a try.
If he can get it past the Supreme Court,
then, hey, there you go.
Which, you know, that has its own problems of what we need to deal with as far as the Supreme Court.
There's a lot of changes that need to happen there.
As a tangent, the thing about lifetime appointments that you need to understand,
as it was the founders of the Constitution had in mind,
a lifetime appointment at the time,
most people didn't live past 50.
All right?
So a lifetime appointment for a Supreme Court judge wasn't like it is today,
where unless they decide that they want to retire and get out of the rat race,
or they come down with some ailment or what have you,
and they pass away,
they could be there until they're like 80, 85, 90 years old.
That was not the intention of the founding fathers.
As I've said before, you know, the idea of a lifetime appointment is
that way they can't be, the idea is they can't be coerced.
You know, oh, well, you need to do this so I can help you get elected next time,
and that kind of stuff.
So anyway, that was a side tangent.
Of course, the court's ruling indicates
that because the right is rooted in the Constitution,
Congress cannot eliminate it through ordinary legislation.
Most constitutional scholars say any change would require a constitutional amendment.
That's the way it works.
It's a process requiring approval by two-thirds of both houses of Congress,
which you probably wouldn't get,
and ratification by three-fourths of the states,
which I'm damn near, 99% sure you would not get that.
So that would make a change politically and procedurally kind of unlikely.
The administration says it's going to continue targeting illegal, quote,
birth tourism schemes.
Now, this broader constitutional question seems to have been settled for now.
And the reason why I say for now is because past actions are future predictions.
And if anything, with this administration, they don't give up.
If they can't win one way, they'll back up.
They'll attack it from a different angle.
That's like I've already started seeing that because of the mail-in ballot decision on Monday.
There's some folks out there now saying,
well, this just opened it up so that we can get rid of early voting.
I don't know what it is about the right that hates voters so damn much.
And you may be going, well, Grady D, they love the country.
They don't hate voters.
They just want to make sure that citizens can have faith that the elections are safe and secure.
Citizens already do have faith that the elections are safe and secure.
The only ones that are out there touting that they're not safe and secure
are the damn Republicans, the MAGA crowd.
And they're doing that simply because dear leader, Trump, said so.
As I said before, if he can sow dissent, then he can question everything, right?
So anyway, this narrow 5-4 votes also fueled debate about the future direction of the Supreme Court,
as we just talked about.
Some legal analysts view the closed margin as evidence that a single justice
could significantly influence future constitutional rulings involving executive authority
and immigration and civil rights.
There's also others that argue the decision demonstrates the court's willingness to enforce
constitutional limits on presidential power.
It's hard to say.
They surprise you.
They either positively surprise you or they negatively surprise you with this court.
It's mind-boggling.
The 2026 midterm elections are approaching, of course.
Birthright citizenship is expected to remain a major political issue,
but any immediate change appears unlikely, given the court's interpretation of the 14th Amendment.
Now, I would love to be able to sit here and say, this is a done deal.
The court has spoken.
But you and I both know that's not true.
That's not true at all.
As I said, they're going to do whatever they can to come at this from a different angle.
I'm fairly certain.
But we'll see.
We'll see.
I'd love to hear from you.
You don't feel like calling and lending your voice to the conversation.
That's fine.
But if you do, the number is 229-520-5957.
Send me a text 24-7.
Same number or email.
Morningdrip at wrto.fm.
We're going to take a short break.
When we come back, we're going to do a deep dive into the history of the 14th Amendment.
You know, why did it come about?
What is the language in there?
And even still, there's four sections to it.
There are amendments later on that actually changed some of what was in the 14th Amendment,
but not the section that we're talking about.
That one has never been changed or updated.
Anyway, stick around.
We'll come back.
We're going to have that deep dive discussion.
See you on the other side.
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Stop the snooze.
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Weekdays, only on Radio Free Georgia.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to The Morning Drip for Wednesday, July 1st, 2026.
It's me, Grady D., your humble host.
We're going to do a deep dive into the history of the 14th Amendment.
I know it's riveting stuff, right?
Well, it's important.
Our history is important.
Contrary to popular belief, where a lot of school curriculums, I'm looking at you, Texas,
are trying to implement revisionist history to make our country's black marks go away.
No, we need those.
We need those black marks to see where we came from and see the mistakes that we made so that
we can learn from them.
I think we can all agree that slavery was a bad idea.
No human being should ever own another human being.
I mean, that's just asinine.
And don't come at me with, you know, verses from the Bible, because that doesn't hold any
water with me.
That's all in the Old Testament.
And there's a lot of you Christians out there who will go, well, the Old Testament, that's
just historical reference.
But everything we live by is in the New Testament, because that's when Jesus was here and all
of that.
So anyway, the 14th Amendment, it is considered one of the most consequential pieces of the
U.S. Constitution.
Some historians have called it America's, quote, second founding, because this was after the
Civil War.
So following the end of the Civil War in 1865, we had the 13th Amendment, which officially
abolished slavery.
And you would think, OK, that's great, right?
Slavery has now been abolished throughout the Union.
Unfortunately, dumbasses are going to be dumbasses.
And the southern states, which, you know, I'm in one, enacted what they called the Black Codes.
These were laws designed to restrict the freedom of African-Americans, to compel them to work
in a labor economy that was based on low wages or debt.
They restricted Black Americans from owning property, from voting.
They couldn't sue in court.
And their movements were tracked.
They could not move freely.
President Andrew Johnson, who took over office after Lincoln was assassinated, he favored the
a lenient approach to the defeated South.
So he allowed the southern states to reintegrate into the Union without guaranteeing civil rights
to the formerly enslaved.
Issue number one, right?
So then you had, and I love this, radical and moderate Republicans.
Radical and moderate Republicans.
They realized the 13th Amendment alone wasn't enough to guarantee true freedom to former slaves.
So led by figures such as Representative John Bingham of Ohio and Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan,
they formed the Joint Committee on Reconstruction.
So they initially passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to overturn the Black Codes.
But they were worried that a future Congress could easily repeal that law or that the Supreme Court
might declare it unconstitutional.
So they decided, of course, there needed to be a permanent amendment to the Constitution.
John Bingham became the primary author of the amendment's first section,
which contains the most famous clause we know today.
You have the Citizenship Clause, overturned the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision,
which had ruled that Black people could not be citizens.
Then you had the Due Process Clause, prevented states from denying life, liberty, or property
without fair legal procedures.
And thirdly, the Equal Protection Clause.
It prohibited states from denying any person equal protection under the law.
Now, as you can imagine, the southern states, not very happy about this.
Even though they lost, they were still hell-bent on the fact that Black people just weren't humans
for some reason.
I don't understand it.
I can sit here in 2026 and look back on that and go,
you were some dumbass people, you know?
So, of course, passing this amendment through Congress was only the first step.
So, in June of 1866, Congress approved the amendment.
You had the midterm elections of 1866, pretty much became a referendum on the 14th Amendment.
You had radical Republicans.
I love that again, radical Republicans, because all the Republicans today in the MAGA crowd
call all of the Democrats, radical Democrats, radical progressives, radical leftists.
They hate America.
All that nonsense.
But these radical Republicans won a sweeping supermajority, which gave them a mandate to push
for the adoption of this amendment.
Then we had March of 1867, the Reconstruction Acts.
And again, as I said, most southern states flatly rejected this amendment.
So, Congress said, okay, bet, pass the Reconstruction Act and place the South under military rule.
Thus, to reenter the Union and regain representation in Congress, the southern states were explicitly
required to ratify the 14th Amendment.
So, it's like, you can be part of the United States, but you're just not going to be represented.
None of your interests are going to be represented unless you pass this amendment.
This is good for the entire country.
July 9th of 1868, we had the official ratification.
The newly established Reconstructed Governments in the South voted to ratify Louisiana and
South Carolina put the amendment over the required three-fourths threshold.
And then July 28th, 1868, Secretary of State William Seward officially certified that the 14th
Amendment was now part of the United States Constitution.
Now, while the 14th Amendment was originally intended to protect the rights of newly freed
enslaved people, it's the phrasing.
And I have to wonder, I don't wonder, this was done on purpose.
And because I like to think that people at this time, by and large, were smarter than a lot
of folks are today.
But it has to do with the term person.
They didn't specify a race.
They just said person.
So, of course, this interpretation opened up the door for some very, some massive shifts
in constitutional law over the next century.
And also through a process called incorporation, the Supreme Court eventually used the 14th Amendment
to apply the Bill of Rights, which originally only limited the federal government.
They were able to apply it to state governments as well.
So today it forms the legal backbone for major civil rights rulings and privacy protections
and equal rights cases.
So, let's take a look.
What is Section 1 of the 14th Amendment?
And I'm going to read it verbatim.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are
citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens
of the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without
due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The other thing that you can extrapolate or pull out of this Section 1 is subject to the jurisdiction thereof.
There has been an argument that when this whole, quote, illegal immigration purge started with Trump's second reign was that immigrants had no rights.
You're not a citizen.
Therefore, you don't have any rights.
However, that's not true.
Even if you are visiting this country legally and you have, let's say you have a work visa or an education visa, whatever.
If you are here legally, you're visiting the country, you are subject to the jurisdiction of the state that you happen to be currently residing in.
So let's say you're, you're on some type of work visa or whatever.
You're here in the state of Georgia.
You commit a crime.
You're still going to be held liable for the crime.
You can still be arrested.
You can be brought up on charges.
You can be prosecuted and you can be sentenced and put in jail.
Now, there's some other nuances with that where, you know, you may get your ass shipped back to the country you came from.
But that was always an argument, too.
It's like these illegal immigrants, they got no rights.
Yes, they do.
They have the same damn rights as you and I as citizens of the United States have subject to the jurisdiction thereof.
All persons born are naturalized.
It does not matter the impetus, the foundation of where Section 1 and the overall 14th Amendment came from.
We can agree that its original intent was to ensure that the newly freed slaves, the African-Americans, could have rights, could be seen as people, could move freely among the states in the United States.
They weren't treated or they were not supposed to be treated less than.
We still have that issue today.
Anybody that tells you that racism is not alive and well in the United States has not been paying attention.
I'm a white guy.
I'm a middle-aged getting up there.
Like I said, I'm 56.
I'm a Gen Xer.
But I'm a cis, I'm a straight white guy.
And as a cis straight white guy, I can tell you, even though it doesn't affect me directly, racism is still alive and percolating here in the United States.
And if you don't believe it, you have not been paying attention or you're just stupid.
And the reason why I say stupid and not ignorant, ignorance can be fixed.
Ignorance can be educated.
An ignorant person is someone who can accept the fact that they may be ignorant because they don't know something but are willing to learn.
A stupid person is just convinced that they know what is right and refuse any other information.
So, quite honestly, if you're someone who can sit there and go, there ain't no racism in the U.S. anymore, you're stupid.
Plain and simple.
I'm not going to argue about it.
Now, there's four sections, as I said, of the 14th Amendment.
The second section, which I find is interesting.
The third section is also very interesting.
The second section, and as I was reading this one, I was like, wow, this definitely had to be superseded at some point.
And it was.
Section 2 reads,
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers,
counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians, not taxed.
But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for president and vice president of the United States,
representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state,
or the members of the legislature thereof is denied to any of the male inhabitants,
of such state being 21 years of age and citizens of the United States are in any way abridged except for participation in rebellion or other crime,
the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens 21 years of age in such state.
Essentially, it's saying if a state prevents any white male 21 years or older from voting, then the representation of that state will be reduced.
And you may be thinking, wow.
This section right here, I think, is used by a lot of.
I don't know what you call them, but basically it's the it's the people that that think and a lot of it comes from the Christian right.
And look, I'm not hating on the Christian right in totality, but the segment of the Christian right that's like women shouldn't vote.
The man is the head of the household and he speaks for the entire household and he's the only one that should be voting.
I think those people need to be taken out behind the old woodshed and given a good talking to, if you know what I mean.
And so I'm looking at this and I'm like, surely, surely this has been superseded because we have women have voting rights.
And yes, parts of this were replaced by the 24th Amendment, 1964, the 19th Amendment by in 1920, which is which gave females, women.
I sound like a Ferengi females anyway, gives women the right to vote and the 26th Amendment in 1971.
So you had what's called the Native American exception.
The original 14th Amendment text, of course, said counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians, not text, not text.
Here's how it changed.
This was effectively superseded by the 24th Amendment, 1964 and federal statute.
Originally, Native Americans living on reservations were considered were considered citizens of their own tribes and not subject to U.S. taxes.
So they were not counted for congressional seats.
In 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act granted full U.S. citizenship to all indigenous peoples born in the country.
And by the mid 20th century, the legal category of Indians not taxed ceased to exist, meaning all Native Americans are now fully counted.
The original 14th Amendment text of talking about male inhabitants being 21 years of age were changed by two amendments.
Again, the 19th Amendment, 1920, officially prohibited states from denying the right to vote based on sex, which overrode Section 2's explicit protection of only male voting rights.
Then we had the 26th Amendment, 1971, that lowered the national voting age from 21 to 18, which overrode Section 2's specific reference to citizens of 21 years of age.
So that's how Section 2 has been altered.
We also have what's called the dead letter clause, because Section 2 also contains a penalty clause stating that if a state denies the right to vote to eligible citizens, its seats in the House of Representatives would be reduced.
And while southern states routinely disenfranchised black voters for a century through literacy tests and poll taxes, Congress never actually enforced this penalty.
Instead, the country eventually passed the 15th Amendment, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to directly protect voting access rather than just reducing a state's political power.
And of course, what was it, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was pretty much just gutted by the Supreme Court in the last couple of weeks.
That's the reason why we've got so much freaking, well, part of the reason why we've got so much gerrymandering happening in, even in, especially here in southern states, where it's like, well, we've got this minority.
The minority is the majority in this district right here.
So the carve-out being this area predominantly have black citizens in it, and so therefore they're not getting a fair shake at representation if it's diluted.
And so the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has always been used to make sure that fair representation of all citizens of the United States.
The Supreme Court neutered that section pretty much, and so then a lot of southern states have started rewriting, redrawing their maps, and a lot of representation is being lost.
You'll hear terms like Jim Crow and how we're going back to that, and honestly, it does seem that way.
It really does.
Interestingly enough, Section 3, Section 3, no person shall be a senator or representative in Congress or elector of president and vice president or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States or under any state,
who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress or as an officer of the United States or as a member of any state legislature or as an executive or judicial officer of any state to support the Constitution of the United States,
shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each house, remove such disability.
This right here was brought up, I believe, after January 6th, and especially when it looked like, for all practical purposes,
that the sitting president at the time, the outgoing president at the time, encouraged all of his followers to ransack the Capitol.
Now, there are going to be folks out there that are like, well, this was not an insurrection.
It was just a protest.
It wasn't even a riot.
Look with your own eyes.
Look at all of the video footage that is there.
No intelligent, respectable individual can look at all of that footage and come away with going,
oh, they were just protesting.
No, they were literally crawling up the walls, attacking police officers, breaking windows, ransacking offices.
You can call it a riot if you want, if you don't want to go the step and call it an insurrection.
But I'm calling it an insurrection because you have an individual who is the most powerful person in the United States,
nay, the most powerful person in the world, telling rabid supporters of his, the election was stolen, fight like hell, march to the Capitol, and I'll join you.
And he didn't.
And it's only because of people on the right in the House of Representatives and in the Senate and governors of states,
their desire to either please dear leader or they're afraid of getting on his bad side.
That's the only reason why nothing went further on trying to point out that this man is guilty of basically treason.
If you look at Section 3, he held office, he took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States,
and the argument can be made that he engaged either in insurrection or rebellion against the federal government,
or he gave aid or comfort to the enemies.
That stupid-ass fund that they tried to basically create to pay out all the January Sixers in a weird way could be looked at as giving aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
But then you run up against what the Supreme Court has already done about saying,
well, there's this thing called presidential immunity that if he's doing official acts for the office of the President of the United States,
he cannot be brought up on charges, which is one of the dumbest, along with Citizens United, rulings this Supreme Court has ever done, ever.
Now, granted, it's not this particular makeup of the Supreme Court that ruled in favor of Citizens United.
And if you don't know what Citizens United is, it's this dumb-ass take on the fact that corporations are people,
and so that a corporation can give money to PACs and candidates and things like that.
And, of course, that goes with the whole lobbying aspect of it, and it's so that they can show favor toward certain candidates
that they feel like will probably be in their corner, vote in their own interest type of thing.
So, that and the presidential immunity thing is, to me, one of the worst.
So far, you can argue about Roe v. Wade, but that's a separate discussion.
But those two rulings are the worst rulings in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States, in my opinion.
But, yeah, there's your breakdown dealing with the 14th Amendment.
There is a Section 4.
I'll read it real quickly, but it really doesn't have anything to do with anything that we're talking about.
Section 4 reads, and I was wrong.
There's actually Section 5, but Section 5 is basically just a single sentence.
Section 4 says,
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services
in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.
But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States,
or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave.
But all such dates, obligations, debts rather, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
That right there could connect to that fund that they were trying to do.
And finally, Section 5, the Congress shall have power to enforce by appropriate legislation the provisions of this article.
It basically just says, hey, Congress can pass laws where this amendment can be enforced.
That's your breakdown of the 14th Amendment.
And so ultimately, it came down to where the Supreme Court did the right thing because it's hard to argue with.
I mean, when you look at persons, if you don't deem, even an illegal immigrant, someone who is in this country and did not come into this country legally,
they jumped the border, they jumped the fence, whatever, coyotes brought them over, doesn't matter.
They're not citizens, but they're still people.
They're persons.
And if you don't believe that they are persons, then we got a whole nother bout of you being on the couch that needs to happen.
So, in my opinion, and I think in the opinion of any intelligent being on this planet, especially here in the United States,
the Supreme Court did the right thing.
They did the right thing.
This entire administration is trying to treat entire swaths of people, groups of people, as less than people.
And I personally don't like it.
I don't think it's right.
And all we can do is show how disappointed we are in our leaders by voting.
And we have to continue to fight against any and all efforts that make voting more difficult.
It's not legal to have a poll tax.
I don't have a problem necessarily of proving identity when you go to vote.
I mean, I vote by mail, again, safe and secure, very convenient.
But I have to prove with my driver's license.
I have to every time I send in an application because we're in a state where they don't just mail it out to you.
And again, I'm OK with that.
I do think it would be easier if they would just mail it out.
But, you know, the right wing has a heart on about that, saying, well, you're just sending out willy nilly and anybody can vote, right?
No.
Even here in the state of Georgia where I have to submit an application to get an absentee ballot, I have to provide.
I have to take the form, fill it out, sign it, scan it back in, apply my.
I have a scan of my driver's license, attach it into the appropriate location.
And I'm technically savvy.
It's what I do for a living.
So it's not difficult for me to do this.
But this is actually an additional stumbling block.
But I'm OK with having to prove that I am a citizen in the United States.
I live in the state of Georgia and even in Tifton.
So I have no problem with that requirement.
However, if you're going to require identification for the sole purpose of being able to vote, you cannot require the person to have to pay to get that identification.
That is considered a poll tax.
And you may be thinking, well, how is that considered a poll tax?
Well, if you are forcing me to obtain a document documentation that proves that I'm a citizen of the United States, that I'm a citizen of the state of Georgia and that I have the right to vote, but it's going to cost me five, 10, 15 or 20 dollars.
That's a poll tax.
We can we can require it, but it needs to be funded.
Pull some of the money out of the damn lottery if you need to.
I don't care, but you cannot force people to pay for it.
Otherwise, it's illegal.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that deep dive into the 14th Amendment.
Maybe you learned something.
We're going to take a quick break.
I've got one more story that I want to cover before we get out of here and let you get on with your Wednesday.
Again, the number is 229-520-5957.
Phone lines are open probably for about another 10 minutes or so.
You can text that same number 24-7.
Again, 229-520-5957.
Or you can shoot me an email.
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I'm going to take a short break and we'll be back.
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Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to the Morning Drip.
It's me, Grady D, with you in our last segment for Wednesday, July 1st, 2026.
July 4th is this Saturday.
I hope everybody is safe.
I hope you have a good time Saturday.
The weather is not going to be pleasant as far as the heat.
And though we no longer have any pets, it's something to be concerned about and make sure,
especially dogs.
Cats, I don't think, are bothered by this too much.
But when the fireworks start going off, and if they're going off in your neighborhood like
they have a tendency to do here in our neighborhood, you might want to bring your animals inside
because that can get a little upsetting to them.
All right.
Last thing we want to talk about this morning before I let you get out of here.
And this is something that I've talked about.
It affects me and my family.
About 3 million fewer Americans are enrolled in Affordable Care Act health insurance plans than
at the same point last year.
This is according to new federal data.
Enrollment fell from 22.1 million in February of 2025 to 19.2 million in February of 2026,
which is a 13 percent decline.
The latest numbers I've actually seen is we're up to about 5 million people are now off those that roster.
And I want to say about 18 million have been dropped from Medicare and Medicaid.
Federal officials said the drop may partly reflect efforts to eliminate fraudulent or duplicate enrollments.
That is bullshit.
Health policy experts say the biggest factor was the expiration of the enhanced ACA premium subsidies on January 1,
which caused insurance costs to rise sharply for many families.
I saw some reporting yesterday that said, you know, those premiums went up two to three times.
Ours went up 14 times.
All right.
Roughly.
We went from paying.
I went from paying about $175 for two policies, one for my wife and myself and one for my daughter who still lives at home,
so if I wanted to keep it, it was going to be somewhere between $1,500 and $1,700 a month.
The answer was no.
I could not do that.
And this was a crappy policy, too.
It had like a $16,000 to $17,000 deductible.
Yeah.
No.
Not at all.
Researchers at KFF said many consumers saw monthly premiums double or even increase by triple-digit percentages.
Yep.
Exactly.
Making coverage unaffordable and leading them to drop their plan.
We had no choice.
I've told you.
I've said this before.
If I was diagnosed with cancer, it's been nice knowing you.
Party on, dude.
Because I'm not bankrupting this family just so that I can eke out another 10 to 20 years of life.
To hell with that.
February figures represent the first official snapshot after insurers had time to remove people who failed to pay their first premiums of the year.
I mean, that was pretty much me.
I paid my last premium for December of last year because I owed it.
I paid it and they kept billing me to the point where I think the last invoice I got from them was like $5,000 or $6,000.
And I kept, right, I kept, I put notes on the damn thing and kept sending it in and saying, look, cancel this.
I'm not paying it.
I didn't renew this.
You auto renewed it.
The enrollment decline comes as health care affordability, of course, remains a major political issue of these November midterms.
The ACA marketplace has become an important source of coverage for self-employed workers, me, gig workers, farmers, and others who do not have employer-sponsored insurance.
I haven't had employer-sponsored insurance since 2015.
And of course, the loss of these enhanced subsidies has renewed debate over how to keep private health coverage affordable for middle-income Americans.
You may not like the concept, you may think it's always socialism or communism or whatever, about single-payer, Medicare for all.
Is it a perfect system?
No.
You can look at Canada.
You can look at England.
It's not perfect.
But it's a lot better than the system that we currently have right now.
The system we have is pay to live.
That's exactly what we have.
It's pay to live.
If you can't afford to pay, you don't live, which is denying a lot of people life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Honestly, I think there should be some form of lawsuit that we can do based on the Constitution.
I don't know.
I'm just saying.
Anyway, that's going to wrap up today's broadcast.
I want to thank you for joining me.
If you had the opportunity to join me live this morning for this Wednesday, July 1st edition of The Morning Drip.
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Have a wonderful Wednesday.
Let's get this July started.
And I'll see you in the morning.
Right here.
MorningDrip on WRTO.FM.
Good morning, everybody.