legal and poliitical background are suzanna sherry, professor of law at vanderbilt university, and alan gomez, who covers immigration for "usa today." professor sherry, i want to ask you this and alan as well, is this a constitutional argument or a political one? i think it's a constitutional argument because the 14th amendment guarantees birthright citizenship and, so, it has to be amended if anybody wants to change that. >> ifill: alan gomez, a political argument? >> of course, there is part of that as well. there are some in congress who feel they don't need an entire new amendment to repeal this, they just need to rework the law, interpret it a little bit differently, but, obviously, as we're seeing on the campaign trail, there is a heavy political component to this. >> ifill: professor sherry, give us a history lesson, the genesis of this debate. >> the 14th amendment was passed in 1868, and the primary purpose of the sentence was to reverse the 1857 case of dred scott which held blacks could not be citizens. so this made everybody who was born here, black or white, a citizen of the unit

. >> joining me now is alan gomez who covers immigration for "usa today." an, thanks so much for joinings us. if you look at the polling we have, donald trump 75% negative number with latinos. he seems to be leading the gop field right now. i mean, how much damage does this have overall for the party? >> well, that's the interesting th thing about donald trump's immigration plan, the vast majority is pretty much a republican playbook on immigration right now. he talks quite a bit about adding more border security, adding more immigration enforcement agents, more worksite raids. these are things you will find in jeb bush's plan, ted cruz, just about every gop hopeful. where he really goes extreme is how he would treat undocumented youth. kids brought here by their parents or people that are born here to undocumented immigrants. and that's, i think, where he goes really, a ellie far right and it's going to give the party the most trouble. that's what's going to be the biggest, i think, the part that rue yous and the bushes are not going to really want to get i

our thanks to chris cillizza and jean cummings and, of course alan gomez.hank you all very much. >>> now to california where 21 massive and fast-moving wildfires are continuing to grow today. tripling in size over the weekend. this the so-called rocky fire in northern california. already scorched an area larger than the city of st. louis. veteran firefighters say they have never seen anything like it. as the blaze threatens thousands of homes today after already destroying two dozen, forcing thousands to be evacuated. nbc's joe fryer joining me now in california with the latest. you've seen a lot of wildfires in all of your reporting but this is extraordinary. >> yeah time and time again, andrea, we're talking to firefighters, people who have 10 20 30 years experience. and they keep saying they haven't seen a fire like this one, the way it is behaving. they say it's unprecedented, especially alarming was over the weekend. it certainly tripled in size. the good news is that in the last 24 hours they have slowed it down a bit. the fire is still growing. it ha