well the us supreme court has decided to grant oral arguments on president trump's plan to end birthright citizenship which under the 14th amendment guarantees anyone born in the us is automatically made a citizen including children born to mothers in the country illegally the president's executive order would terminate that portion of the law and is being challenged in court through a multi-state lawsuit led by new jersey attorney general matt platkin who joins me now attorney general matt platkin good to talk to you i want to ask you first what signals if any does the supreme court uh send by agreeing to hear oral arguments on this birthright citizenship case well thanks for having me brianna and and look we know that this is a very important case the president on the first day of his administration at about 8:00 p.m tried to for the first time in 157 years since the 14th amendment was ratified to rewrite the constitution to say that babies born on us soil are not entitled to the rights and privileges of us citizenship and that's clearly wrong and every court that has looked at this issue since january 20th has sided with us and the separate issue that we're going to be dealing with on may 15th is whether or not this issue should be decided based on which state you live in which is obviously an absurd outcome it can't be the case that if a parent takes their child to children's hospital philadelphia but they live in south jersey that the citizenship of that child should be determined based on the hospital that they go to no one thinks the constitution works that way and that's why i'm confident we'll prevail so you mentioned that incident are there other or what do you see as the legal risks um if the supreme court rules in favor of the trump administration do you see this as a risk to other challenges or reinterpretations to the constitution well i think you've seen this administration show a hostility to the united states constitution and to the rule of law unlike uh any administration in american history frankly so i i do think there is a concern that if this administration continues to flout the rule of law if they continue to do things that hurt residents including in our state cutting critical programs violating their rights in ways that hurt them unlawfully then there are real problems that this country is going to face as a result and in this case you would see if the court did not sign with us did not take the obvious interpretation of the 14th amendment something we settled with a civil war that babies born on us soil are in fact citizens of this country then in new jersey you'd have thousands of children born every year who have some status that this administration hasn't even tried to articulate for the first time ever we'd have a secondass status of residents here it says just says that they're not citizens it doesn't say what they are they don't know any other country they only know the country they were born in and the consequences consequences to the state would be significant um this is not an official count but by my count this uh along with other lawsuits that you are either uh co-leading with multi-states um or amicus briefs that you have signed on to there's about a dozen or so again by my um unofficial count um are you hiring outside counsel to take on some of this work i know the governor's office budgeted an extra million dollars to help handle some of these lawsuits or how is your office tackling all of this extra demand by working literally around the clock we've had people sleeping in their offices we've had people work themselves sick because they care so deeply about the impact that is being had on our residents i said and i've said this to you and i've said it many times the president has powers he's entitled to pursue a policy agenda he has majorities in both chambers of congress he can pursue legal avenues to make changes in this nation but what he cannot do is violate the law and hurt the residents of our state and you mentioned the number of cases well we've been successful in 100% of them and so we're not filing cases simply because we disagree or because there's some fringe issue we're bringing lawsuits all inhouse because the president has violated the law and hurt the residents of new jersey and by my account we have saved the state just in the first two and a half months of the administration over 22 billion it's 22 billion with a b we have preserved in federal funding that this administration has unlawfully tried to freeze or cut in ways that would hurt our res residents in many cases in devastatingly painful ways let me shift away from the president for just a moment and bring it back here to the state um your office filed an appeal over the uh george norcross uh racketeering case essentially the filing said the judge didn't necessarily take into account the 341 pieces of evidence the thousands of documents that were provided to the grand jury over a fivemonth period um what's your hope here well look i'm going to let our filing speak for itself i think you you accurately summed up a a key point of it um we're we obviously i respect the judge we disagree with the decision and we're seeking a reversal and again i'll let the filing and our papers speak for itself can i ask you quickly are there any updates i know interim us attorney alina haba has said that she um is planning or is investigating uh governor murphy and yourself your office have they requested any documents have they made any inquiries within your office can you share anything about where that stands no my guess is they looked at west law and saw the numerous circuit cases that upheld the immigrant trust directive and decided that was all they needed to do look i'm not focused on baseless political threats made by anybody certainly not anybody on cable news i'm focused on keeping the residents of our state safe that's what we did yesterday when we brought one of the largest actions against uh landlord that was manipulating prices in the housing market it's what we did on monday when we took down a 26 member violent gang it's what we did last week when we took down uh a uh more than sorry 39 defended mob case we brought drug overdoses down by 30% gun crimes down to historically low levels autothefts burglaries all reaching low levels anybody who wants to help us in that effort i support it but what will not help it is what happened last night when the federal administration without any warning cut millions and millions of dollars for law enforcement services that are currently on the street right now keeping people safe from gun violence helping people suffering from opioid addiction helping us combat bias crimes yanked it without any warning not so much as a phone call you want to make people less safe that is the approach that's going to make people less safe attorney general matt platkin we thank you for your time thank you briana