The trio of PBS News Hour anchor Amna Nawaz, The Atlantic staff writer David Brooks, and MS NOW host Jonathan Capehart appeared ready to pronounce defeat on Friday as they juxtaposed President Trump’s Iran speech earlier in the week to the day’s news that saw an American F-15 and Black Hawk helicopter go down in Iran. Nawaz began with Brooks and suggested there was a contradiction between Friday’s news and Trump’s speech, “David, all of this is just two days after the president said in an address to the nation that the U.S. had crippled the Iranian military and the war was nearly over. What's your reaction to all of this?”   PBS is ready to declare defeat in Iran with host Amna Nawaz asking David Brooks about Friday's F-15 and Black Hawk shoot downs "All of this is just two days after the president said in an address to the nation that the U.S. had crippled the Iranian military and the war was nearly… pic.twitter.com/SNtPomWlpa — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) April 4, 2026   The correct answer for the conservative half of this segment would have been to point out that the reason why this is such a big news story is because it is so rare. It took Iran over a month to get its first confirmed shoot down, but instead, Brooks took Nawaz’s framing and ran with it, “Yeah, that's one of the disadvantages of having a huckster for president, that he does just—he can't tell the American people that, when you're going to war, it's horrible, and that Iran is a serious country that's been preparing for this for nearly half-a-century.” Brooks claimed that while he was initially somewhat supportive of the decision to attack, the benefits no longer outweigh the costs, “To me, what happened—I have been somewhat, moderately hoping there'd be some positive outcome. And I think there has been some. We have had to go to the Middle East for almost every decade for the last 50 years because of radical Islam, which the Iranian regime typifies. But this is clearly the week when the costs of the war are so exponentially larger than the benefits of what we're getting in these marginal weeks.” With references to how high oil prices enrich Iran and Russia, the state of the world economy, and of NATO, Brooks concluded, “The costs are just exorbitant now, not to mention the human suffering. And so, if Trump doesn't see that we're losing every day he continues this thing, he's going to just face more and more political problems, military problems, and all sorts of problems. And so he just needs to admit that—what's going on. And I doubt he has the mental ability to do that.” As for Capehart, he pulled out an interesting analogy to try to paint a dire picture, “I mean, this is a war of choice. We didn't need to do—take this action now. What's funny, but not funny, playing on cable right now on a loop is Top Gun: Maverick. And if anyone has seen that movie, the whole plot is about a U.S. military operation deep inside Iran, and two fighter pilots have to eject out of their planes.” According to Capehart, “There was more of a plan in the fictional plot of Top Gun: Maverick than there appears to be in this very real, very live situation in the United States' war with Iran.”   Jonathan Capehart then claimed "There was more of a plan in the fictional plot of Top Gun: Maverick then there appears to be in this very real, very live situation in the United States' war with Iran." As for Trump's speech, "What he should have done was told the American… pic.twitter.com/Xyuq1pDFc9 — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) April 4, 2026   The plot of that movie revolved around an unnamed country—which was clearly meant to be Iran—and its nuclear program. It was more analogous to the single mission in June’s Operation Midnight Hammer than the wider campaign of Epic Fury. The U.S. lost no aircraft in Midnight Hammer because while Top Gun: Maverick was a good and entertaining movie, the point of the climatic bombing run was meant to develop characters and themes, not to show realistic combat tactics. Nevertheless, Capehart returned to Trump’s speech, “Look, I applaud the president for finally addressing the American people, but he is a month too late, and told us nothing we had not already heard from him, from his administration through—in various ways. What he should have done was told the American people really why we went, how we're getting out, and then spend more than half-a-phrase on the 13 service members who lost their lives in this war of choice, his choice.” Friday featured tragic events and reminded the country why we admire those who serve, but we should also keep things in perspective and be appreciative that these events have been so rare. Brooks and Capehart can have their own opinions about the costs and benefits of this war, but they can’t apply a standard to Trump that has never been applied to previous wartime presidents.  Here is a transcript for the April 3 show: PBS News Hour 4/3/2026 7:36 PM ET AMNA NAWAZ: So, as we sit here and speak now, as we reported at the top of the show, there's still a U.S. crew member from that downed fighter jet missing, a search-and-rescue operation under way. We know Iranians were also able to shoot down another aircraft over the Gulf, shot at a Black Hawk helicopter that returned to base safely. Iranian leaders are looking for that missing crew member on the ground. David, all of this is just two days after the president said in an address to the nation that the U.S. had crippled the Iranian military and the war was nearly over. What's your reaction to all of this? DAVID BROOKS: Yeah, that's one of the disadvantages of having a huckster for president, that he does just—he can't tell the American people that, when you're going to war, it's horrible, and that Iran is a serious country that's been preparing for this for nearly half-a-century. And they're going to fight back and they're going to make countermoves like this or like the Straits of Hormuz. To me, what happened—I have been somewhat, moderately hoping there'd be some positive outcome. And I think there has been some. We have had to go to the Middle East for almost every decade for the last 50 years because of radical Islam, which the Iranian regime typifies. But this is clearly the week when the costs of the war are so exponentially larger than the benefits of what we're getting in these marginal weeks. The cost to Russia is now getting all this revenue. Iran is getting all this revenue. The European economy and the world economies are in crisis. NATO is in shreds. And so the costs are just exorbitant now, not to mention the human suffering. And so, if Trump doesn't see that we're losing every day he continues this thing, he's going to just face more and more political problems, military problems, and all sorts of problems. And so he just needs to admit that—what's going on. And I doubt he has the mental ability to do that. NAWAZ: Jonathan? JONATHAN CAPEHART: I mean, this is a war of choice. We didn't need to do—take this action now. What's funny, but not funny, playing on cable right now on a loop is Top Gun: Maverick. And if anyone has seen that movie, the whole plot is about a U.S. military operation deep inside Iran, and two fighter pilots have to eject out of their planes. I bring that up because there was more of a plan in the fictional plot of Top Gun: Maverick than there appears to be in this very real, very live situation in the United States' war with Iran. Look, I applaud the president for finally addressing the American people, but he is a month too late, and told us nothing we had not already heard from him, from his administration through—in various ways. What he should have done was told the American people really why we went, how we're getting out, and then spend more than half-a-phrase on the 13 service members who lost their lives in this war of choice, his choice.

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One of the legacies of Keynesian thought is the belief that war is “good for the economy.” While war may help enable employment, nonetheless, its overall legacy is destructive, and even the jobs war “creates” are economically undesirable.

WE REALLY DON’T MOCK BILL GATES ENOUGH:

Now with Artemis font pic.twitter.com/Wy2UJFfNyt

— Space Koala (@SpaceKoala) April 3, 2026

Artemis II crew is thousands of miles away from Earth

And they’re asking ground crew for help because they have two versions of Microsoft Outlook open and neither is working

This scene is now canon 😭 https://t.co/oP0uLCnIWa pic.twitter.com/AiXNnIVTA7

— Shishir (@ShishirShelke1) April 2, 2026

For a variety of reasons, I oppose Donald Trump's efforts to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants and those in the US on temporary visas. And I have argued he deserves to lose the Supreme Court case on this issue. But unlike many other opponents of Trump's policy and of his constitutional arguments, I am not convinced birthright citizenship is the ideal  system. It is, at most, only a second-best option, in the sense that it's better than the currently likely alternative.

Under current political conditions, that likely alternative is subjecting hundreds of thousands of children to deportation, and many adults, as well. Even though Trump's executive order is limited to children born at least 30 days after it was issued, the logic of his legal arguments would deprive millions of adults and older children of their right to live in the United States, as well. If the Fourteenth Amendment denies birthright citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants and temporary visa-holders, that fact did not begin suddenly in 2025, but must have been true all along. Thus, the likely consequence of a legal victory for Trump would be grave harm to millions of children and descendants of immigrants, plus severe damage to the American economy and society from the resulting deportations and legal uncertainty. In addition, millions of other Americans would find it difficult to prove citizenship status if it can no longer be done on the basis of a birth certificate.

But while birthright citizenship is better than the likely alternative at this point in history, I do not believe it is the ideal policy. I explained some of the reasons why in a 2018 post:

Unlike most other advocates of immigration and immigrant rights, I have significant reservations about birthright citizenship. In my view, important human rights should not be so heavily dependent on parentage and place of birth. Our current citizenship system has all too much in common with medieval hereditary aristocracy, under which freedom of movement and other crucial rights were largely dependent on ancestry. I cannot outline anything like a comprehensive alternative here. But, as a general rule, I would prefer a system under which some rights now largely determined by citizenship (particularly freedom of movement, residency, and employment) were delinked from citizenship and made presumptively available to everyone, and citizenship itself were made easier to acquire through pathways that do not require the applicant to be a relative of a current citizen.

More generally, one of my (and many others') main objections to immigration restrictions is that they restrict people's liberty and opportunity based on arbitrary circumstances of ancestry and place of birth.  If you were born to the right parents or in the right place, you get to live and work in the US; if not, you can only do so if the government gives you permission, which in the vast majority of cases is likely to be denied. In that respect, they are very similar to racial segregation and South African apartheid. In both cases, liberty is gravely restricted and many are consigned to a lifetime of poverty and oppression because of morally arbitrary circumstances of birth over which they have no control.

Birthright citizenship is an improvement, in this respect, over a policy based on ancestry and parentage. For many children, it creates an alternative pathway to get around unjust restrictions. But it still restricts liberty and opportunity based on circumstances of birth, in this case based on place of birth, as well as parentage. And people have no more control over the location of their birth than over the identity of their parents. Neither determines your moral worth or how much liberty you are entitled to.

Thus, the far superior policy is simply to let people live and work where they want, regardless of who their parents are or where they were born. If that liberty is to be restricted, it should be only if the people in question pose some grave danger that cannot be addressed in other ways. And, in such extreme situations, native-born people's liberty could potentially be restricted, as well. I develop these points in greater detail in Chapters 5 and 6 of my book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom.

Obviously, under current circumstances, citizenship includes not only the right to live and work in the US, but also rights to vote, hold public office, and receive various welfare benefits. In an ideal system, restrictions on voting and office-holding would be based on competence and (in some cases) there might be exclusions based on a demonstrated danger to liberal democratic institutions (as with Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which the Supreme Court wrongly gutted, to a large extent). We already have some competence-based constraints on the franchise, such as excluding children, some convicts, and immigrants who cannot pass a civics test most native-born Americans would fail if they had to take it without studying.

Access to welfare benefits should, I believe, be much more severely limited than is currently the case for both immigrants and natives. But even now the vast majority of immigrants contribute more to the public fisc than they take out, and limiting the welfare state is a bad argument for immigration restrictions that - if applied consistently - would also justify severely restricting many other liberties.

Thus, the ideal political system would have a strong presumption against restrictions on migration, while also imposing competence-based constraints on voting rights and office-holding, and limiting welfare benefits in various ways. We need some combination of decoupling citizenship from freedom of movement, constraints on access to government power, and limiting welfare benefits to a class of people who genuinely cannot avoid severe privation without them. And none of these rights and privileges should be, to any great extent, based on parentage or place of birth.

But, obviously, there are serious questions about whether governments can draw these lines in the right places and be trusted not to abuse their powers. Elsewhere, I have argued that we probably cannot rely too much on competence-based restrictions on the franchise, because real-world governments generally cannot be trusted in this field. We should instead address the problem of voter ignorance and bias by other means. It is also obvious that we are not going to get anywhere close to full freedom of movement for migrants anytime soon.

For these kinds of reasons, I think birthright citizenship for all people born in the United States is the best available option at this time. That's especially true because it does not preclude creating and expanding other pathways to residency, work rights, and citizenship. But we should  be under no illusion that it is anywhere close to ideal, and we should remember that it includes an important element of unjust discrimination based on arbitrary circumstances of birth.

In this case, as with other situations involving unjust discriminatory immigration restrictions, the right approach to arbitrary discrimination is to "level up" rather than "level down." We should not deny birthright citizenship to those who currently enjoy its benefits. But we should also do all we can to expand these opportunities to others.

The post Birth-Right Citizenship as a Second-Best Policy appeared first on Reason.com.