*By Conor White*
Donald Trump may be looking to score points with his base ahead of midterm elections by turning the conversation back to immigration.
With one week to go before Election Day, Trump proposed ending birthright immigration with an executive order during an interview for "Axios on HBO" [released Tuesday morning](https://www.axios.com/trump-birthright-citizenship-executive-order-0cf4285a-16c6-48f2-a933-bd71fd72ea82.html).
"It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don't," the president claimed in the video.
Birthright citizenship is protected under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and any effort to end it would come under immediate legal challenge. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan broke with Trump to make a firm statement against his proposal shortly after the interview was released.
"You cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order," he said in an interview with Kentucky radio station WVLK.
Trump's birthright proposal came one day after the Pentagon said it would send more than 5,000 U.S. troops to the southern border to prepare for what Trump has called an "invasion" of asylum-seeking migrants slowly making their way through Mexico.
Some observers see the focus on immigration as politically-motivated.
"One gets the sense that he hasn't thought through the details very strongly," David Graham, staff writer at The Atlantic, said about Trump's birthright proposal in an interview Tuesday on Cheddar. "What he's really concerned with is the rhetoric and how it plays politically."
"He's remembering 2016 and seeing the magic he got talking about immigration," Graham continued, "Hoping he can recreate that and pull a win out."
However, Shannon Vavra, a political reporter at Axios, noted that Trump has long railed against so-called "anchor babies" and other longstanding immigration policies such a "chain migration," which refers to immigrants sponsoring family members to come to the U.S. She said the timing may just be Trump being Trump.
"The timing of it is definitely questionable at this point," she said, "but President Trump tends to do what he wants to do."
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/trump-says-hell-end-birthright-citizenship).
The two companies tout their deal as necessary for innovation and claim that it doesn't decrease competition in the field. Those arguments will be difficult to prove, says Eleanor Fox, an antitrust expert at NYU Law School. The third and fourth largest mobile networks in the U.S. announced a $26.5 billion merger Sunday that they claim will help develop a 5G network and create jobs. The deal still needs approval from regulators, who have expressed antitrust concerns in the past.
Rather than exiting the political fray, the former Secretary of State is campaigning for Democrats in this year's midterm elections and reaching out to women's groups. "I think she's earned the right to do whatever the hell she wants," says Amy Chozick, a writer-at-large for The New York Times and author of "Chasing Hillary."
New Jersey could become home to more innovation with hands-on support from lawmakers, says Aaron Price, founder and CEO of Propelify, an innovation festival in Hoboken, NJ.
The White House Correspondents' Association responded to the annual event saying, "the entertainer's monologue was not in the spirit" of the group's mission. However, it's actually the journalists insulted by her jokes who are "not doing their jobs," says Emma Vigeland, a host and producer of the TYT Politics Show on The Young Turks.
The agreed merger of T-Mobile and Sprint aligns with President Trump's policy priorities, the T-Mobile CEO John Legere says in an interview with Cheddar's Hope King. He says the president's tax policies have "added a great amount of value in this deal," and the merged company can help create a fast 5G network vital to the country's digital infrastructure, another priority for Trump.
The congressman said that, though the historic summit between the two Koreas was a positive, the U.S. should take North Korea's denuclearization promises with a grain of salt. "As President Reagan used to say, trust, but we need to verify," he told Cheddar.
The comedian, who plays a right-wing commentator on his Comedy Central show "The Opposition," has high hopes for this year's "Nerd Prom" thanks to host Michelle Wolf. "I'm just excited to sit back and watch her kill it," Klepper told Cheddar. The White House Correspondent's Dinner takes place on Saturday, and President Trump has decided to skip the event for the second year in a row.
Maintaining diplomatic momentum after the historic meeting Friday between the North Korean leader Kim Jung-un and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea will likely fall on the shoulders of President Trump, who will have his own summit with Kim next month.
Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci tells Cheddar that, since he was fired last year, he has spoken to President Trump about a dozen times to talk about both political and personal issues.
Anthony Scaramucci, who only lasted 11 days as the White House Communications Director, tells Cheddar one of his biggest accomplishments last year was letting cameras back into White House briefings. That, and hiring a hair and makeup artist.
