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Supreme Court Hears Arguments On Birthright Citizenship; Conservative Justices Seemed Open To Siding With Trump; Trump Trip Comes Amid Critical Diplomacy With Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Israel & Gaza. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired May 15, 2025 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:30:00]

STEVE VLADECK, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: ?ou know, maybe a couple hundred thousand people, but that's not going to cover anywhere close to all of the people who could be affected by this policy. Are they going to now have to go bring their own lawsuits? And so the implications here are not substantive. The court is not about to say this policy is OK, but the ruling might have the same effect for so many people.

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Let me just stick with you for one second, because as we were listening we were talking about the patchwork, and 22 states sued. I believe we have a map showing this. So if you could explain if the court goes the way it sounds, just from the way the Conservative justices are asking their questions, we don't know how it ultimately would go.

But if they say no to a nationwide injunction --

VLADECK: Yes.

BASH: -- and we end up with a patchwork just on this issue --

VLADECK: Yes.

BASH: -- alone, on whether or not if an undocumented immigrant has a baby --

VLADECK: Say in Texas.

BASH: -- say in Texas, which is obviously you see not colored in there. It's a red state, they don't want to have anything to do with this lawsuit. What happens? What's the difference between the baby born in Texas versus right next door in New Mexico?

VLADECK: So the baby born in Texas, unless their parents are part of one of those lawsuits in one of those other states, and maybe they could be, but unless they are, the baby born in Texas is not a citizen. The baby born in Texas is subject to removal under our immigration laws.

The baby born in Texas is not eligible for an array of medical benefits that any citizen would be, and that's going to vary, Dana, not just state-by-state, it's going to vary based on are you a member of the particular immigrant rights group that brought one of these lawsuits, CASA, or are you not?

Are you going to require the parents in the hospital to produce their CASA membership card? So, you know, there are good arguments for why lower courts have gotten too happy, too sort of aggressive in issuing nationwide injunctions in the last few presidencies.

But there's also something unique on the other side of the equation, which is a president who, whether you think what he's doing is lawful or not, is doing more than any of his predecessors. When, as in this case, there are serious arguments that it's patently unlawful, undersettled precedent, and when you have the very real concern that that's not going to matter because in the short term you're going to have hundreds of thousands, millions of Americans, or non-citizens whose kids should be Americans, who aren't allowed to benefit from these other more specific court rulings.

BASH: And I want you to come in, but I just want to also tell our viewers that the hearing is over. They've adjourned, and so now we're just going to wait to see what the Supreme Court decides.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We already have a bit of an example as to what it would look like if there weren't these nationwide injunctions, and I'll tell you what that is. With the Alien Enemies Act, that sweeping wartime authority that the President has wanted to use to swiftly remove undocumented immigrants, we are seeing a patchwork of cases across the country because those judges have not been issuing nationwide injunctions.

So I have been following multiple cases on multiple dockets, and this has become a tricky issue for all of these groups because, for example, there was a judge in one district of Texas that said no one in my district can be removed under this authority, except for in another district there wasn't that ruling.

So detainees were moved to that district, and then there was another emergency filing and another evening that said no, now we need to address this. So we've already started to see what a world like this could look like on this very particular issue because these multiple districts are ruling only for their districts.

So if that individual's moved somewhere else, then in that area they could be removed. And it has been really confusing for a lot of attorneys, it's been confusing for the detainees, and it has led to a lot of late nights talks (ph).

VLADECK: I mean, it required the Supreme Court to step back in.

BASH: Yes.

ALVAREZ: Right.

VLADECK: So the reason why you couldn't have had a nationwide -- the plaintiffs tried a nationwide challenge to the Alien Enemy Act proclamation. That was the case that was before Chief Judge Boasberg here in D.C. The Supreme Court on April 7th says, no, you can't do this as a nationwide suit, you got to go through district-by-district litigation.

In any other administration, that would not have been that huge of a difference because the Justice Department, the Department Homeland Security would have said, OK, but you know, we see the writing on the wall, we understand that we have to follow due process.

Priscilla's exactly right. What the Trump administration did is say, OK, let's play a shell game. Let's move people into the districts where we haven't lost yet.

BASH: Yes.

VLADECK: And the problem is that, that experience should give us pause.

BASH: And that's -- and the key here is the shell -- well, one of the many keys here is the shell game. And Jamie, just on the politics of this, this isn't haphazard inside the Trump Justice Department, inside the White House. This is the kind of strategy that Trump world spent four years, when Biden was in the White House, mapping out.

[12:35:00]

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. You stole my word. It is the strategy and beyond the confusion and the chaos. I think we also have to take a look at this with the words judicial power. So, in so many of these cases, President Trump has used, very effectively, speed as a weapon. And numbers, 200 executive orders, all of these actions.

So if you talk to, you know, legal scholars or political people who are concerned about what he's doing, this is a time, they will say, the red light is blinking, you know, five alarm fire. What is an effective check and balance on President Trump? The Republican Congress is not going to stop him.

So the fact that this goes to the point of judicial power and these courts, people have been looking at the courts and judges and saying, it's on you. And now, depending on how the Supreme Court rules --

BASH: It's going to be on all of them.

GANGEL: Yes.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: But I think that, seeing in the context of the amassing of power by the President here, by President Trump specifically, right, what he has been looking to do, how he's been governing, not by legislation, but by executive order, by going in this big way, knowing that Congress won't check him because of the Republican majorities that have over and over said, I'm with him, or I guess he's doing the right thing.

It's not -- you've had previous cases from the Supreme Court that have given him more power from this same group of justices. It seems like if the Conservative justices rule with him this time, that'll give him even more power. And that is, beyond any of these cases, it's a continuing change in what the presidency is and how it will function beyond.

BASH: Yes. And on that note, well, I'm telling everybody the secrets of what we talk about while we listen, but you were talking about -- we were all talking about the volume. I mean, you just mentioned it again, Jamie, but let's put some specifics on this, and I'll bring you in on this, Steve.

The idea that, what, over 200 lawsuits on the executive orders, 250 lawsuits on the hundreds of executive orders, we're not just talking about birthright citizenship, which was an executive order on day one, one of many. It's -- there are challenges to him on the way that he has told law firms to do pro bono work for him. The transgender issue, particularly in the military, spending freezes, DOGE cuts.

VLADECK: Firing provisionary employees within the executive branch.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right, yes.

VLADECK: I mean, the -- what's striking about this is that, you know, no one's ever going to fully agree on which of these policies are more legally sound and less legally sound. That's obviously for the courts to decide. But the volume itself is, Dana, a part of the story, because so many folks are affected by so many of these policies.

And so, you know, yes, we're focused on birthright citizenship. Let's just take one other immigration case. The Supreme Court has before it, right now, another emergency application from the Trump administration about something called temporary protected status.

That's a case that affects upwards of 600,000 Venezuelan nationals in the United States, where the plaintiffs who have brought that lawsuit don't actually represent all 600,000 Venezuelan nationals. They represent maybe about 14 percent of that group.

Is the Supreme Court really going to say the other 86 percent of Venezuelan nationals need to bring their own lawsuits? I mean, these are not exactly folks who are in a position to bring these kinds of lawsuits. They may not want to identify themselves, given the repercussions they face.

BASH: Yes.

VLADECK: And so, you can tell this story, Dana, over and over again, in every single one of these different contexts, where if the Supreme Court were to take away nationwide relief, the undeniable effect would be for the administration to be able to carry out much more of its policies, even in contexts in which the courts believe today, believe tomorrow, and believe always that they're unlawful.

BASH: And just --

ALVAREZ: And it's not just -- sorry, Dana.

BASH: Go ahead. No, you go.

ALVAREZ: To Paula's smart point, this isn't just about the Trump administration. Like, yes, he is trying to amass power, but I have covered multiple administrations, especially, particularly on immigration. And the Biden administration also had to wrestle with these nationwide injunctions, not only, by the way, on immigration, but also on student loans and all the rest.

And so, it also is so difficult for the many people in the federal government who I talked to, who -- it became a running joke that there would be a policy that would come down from the White House, the Trump White House or the Biden White House, and maybe a week from now, probably wouldn't hold.

BASH: So as much as we're talking about the process and the implications of the process argument that the justices heard today, the Solicitor General wants this to be about the underlying executive order and the underlying change that the Trump administration wants to make to the 14th Amendment, which is the right to birthright citizenship.

I want you to listen to the Solicitor General at the end of the arguments today.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

[12:40:07]

JOHN SAUER, SOLICITOR GENERAL: The original meaning of the citizenship clause extended citizenship to the children of former slaves not to people who are unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: So, that's -- I mean, the President himself put a very long post on Truth Social today to this effect. We don't know, or I don't think that we believe, that the Supreme Court will take him up on his offer, Jamie, to actually make a ruling about the underlying question of whether changing birthright citizenship in the way that the President wants is constitutional. But it is interesting that that's what the Trump administration is asking for.

GANGEL: I think that was for an audience of one, Donald Trump.

VLADECK: And it -- I mean, it came up a couple times in the argument. I mean, Justice Kagan brought up in a series of exchanges the fact that the Trump administration actually did not, specifically did not, ask the court to take up the merits. That the only thing the Trump administration asked the court to do today was to freeze these three different injunctions as applied to anyone other than the plaintiffs.

And what's striking about that is the court has the power to decide this merits question now. It could do something called granting certiorari, how it usually hears a case, before judgment, leapfrogging over the Court of Appeals. The Trump administration hasn't asked it to.

And so that's -- Justice Kagan says, well, how are we going to get to the merits? When are we going to get to the merits? And what's going to happen until then?

BASH: And can we put back up the state's map? Because even though, as you very smartly explained, this won't -- if the Conservative justices do side with the administration and they say this injunction will not hold, that it's got to be state by state. It won't just be state by state, it's going to be the actual people who sign on to the lawsuits.

However, Isaac, just looking at that map, what I am struck by just on the politics of this is, let's just say that on this issue and then perhaps some of the other issues that we've been talking about, it's done effectively state by state. The divide, the political divide that we already see and feel in this country will get even deeper.

DOVERE: Yes, I mean, that's the electoral map, basically, that you're showing, right?

BASH: Yes, exactly.

DOVERE: With the exception of Pennsylvania as, I guess, the swing state here. Like -- we are polarized more than ever. We are pulling ourselves apart as a country in so many ways. This seems like it would lead to more of that, right? And these questions -- even district by district, but state by state, that it matters.

You think about what Steve was laying out, that you could have someone born in New Mexico versus born in Texas and is a citizen born in New Mexico --

BASH: Yes.

DOVERE: -- but not in Texas. A citizen not of New Mexico or Texas, a citizen of the United States.

BASH: Exactly.

DOVERE: That's a really -- I think for people to start to internalize what this is talking about, it changes so much and tears us even more apart. I think the other thing here is that you have a situation where we are 120 days into the Trump administration at this point.

What -- we don't have the Trump administration asking for birthright citizenship ruling now, but there's a lot of time here to go. You can see that part of the strategy from the Trump administration, from Trump himself, is move a lot, move quickly. And we've got three years and nine months more of the Trump presidency.

VLADECK: And, you know, one of the sort of quirky but important things to point out is the government these days pays very little price for losing these cases in court, right? It pays almost no political price. Trump says, listen, I fought. You know, I tried to get it. I was blocked by the courts.

The worst thing that happened is a policy that was unlawful is stopped. We don't have, as we had in times past, a robust ability to sue the government for money damages, for example, when they break the law. And so every incentive, whether you're a Democratic President or Republican President, is to try to get your agenda out there and to push the courts to block you.

And if you take away the power of courts to block you on a nationwide basis, you're going to push that window even further.

DOVERE: And I got as far as taking the LSAT, so --

BASH: Oh, you did?

DOVERE: I did. I did. And I disappointed some people that I didn't go all the way. But --

BASH: Some people, meaning your mother?

DOVERE: You said it, not I. What happens if there is someone -- if we go forward in this, and there is someone who is a citizen born in New Mexico and wants to have the rights of citizenship in Texas? Would there be a court challenge that way? I mean, is it terribly?

BASH: Before you answer that question, I'm sorry, I'm going to put a pause on this because I do want to get to CNN Chief Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic, who is now outside the court. Joan, you were inside for the arguments. What stood out most to you?

[12:45:08]

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SENIOR SUPREME COURT ANALYST: It's as if neither side has something that's really a winner right here right now, Dana. You know, you have a Supreme Court that's been extremely frustrated by lower court judges in applying these universal injunctions so that they -- I mean, these universal orders that would block a President's agenda.

In this case, of course, blocking President Trump's effort to lift birthright citizenship. But as much as they're not crazy about that, I felt that Solicitor General John Sauer's argument really met a lot of resistance in terms of what he was trying to do, saying, we want to come and challenge these injunctions.

We want to be able to put part, at least part, if not most of the policy in place to lift birthright citizenship throughout the country without having you really consider the merits. And several of the justices raised questions about how you necessarily have to think about the constitutionality of birthright citizenship.

You know, it was not lost on them that what the Trump administration is challenging here is something that has been embedded in the national consciousness that, you know, is part of the 14th Amendment that was reaffirmed in the 1898 case of Wong Kim Ark.

So, you know, I could feel that there were several cross currents there. Yes, they seem to be open to saying that anyone who's going to challenge a policy has to bring it in some sort of class action. But they also seemed not quite receptive to do what the Trump administration wants to do at this point, whether they ask for more briefing on the merits question or they issue the most minimal order ruling possible. I'm not sure which way they're going to go. Thanks, Dana.

BASH: Joan, thank you so much. Always great to have you. You understand all the quirks and the facial expressions and the tone of voice and everything better than anyone.

Everybody stand by. We are also following breaking news overseas where President Trump is in Abu Dhabi meeting with the President of the UAE. We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:51:57]

BASH: Right now, you're looking at live pictures of President Trump and the President of the United Arab Emirates meeting at the Presidential Palace in Abu Dhabi. It's the third day and third country President Trump visited on this Mideast tour.

And the President has reveled in the pomp and circumstance. You're seeing some of it right there. Red carpet welcome in Abu Dhabi. But the President is also facing questions about where he wasn't in Turkey for the Russia-Ukraine peace talks.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Nothing's going to happen until Putin and I get together, OK? And obviously, he wasn't going to go -- he was going to go, but he thought I was going to go. He wasn't going if I wasn't there.

And I don't believe anything's going to happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together. But we're going to have to get it solved because too many people are dying.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: President Trump's visit to Abu Dhabi and his push for peace in Ukraine is just part of a much bigger breakneck diplomatic effort with mixed results.

CNN's Alex Marquardt joins the panel now. Let's start first on this question of Ukraine and Russia and what we just heard from the President.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, the President is coming off of a week of a trip to the Middle East that went off without a hitch. It went as well as it possibly could have for him with the exception of the distraction as far as he's concerned about the Qatari plane.

And now, to some extent, he's coming crashing back to reality where this Middle East trip with, you know, countless economic deals that have been signed is running straight into the far thornier issue of trying to end this war in Ukraine. And we thought we were moving towards a potentially momentous meeting with the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and potentially Trump all at the table.

Remember, it was President Putin who suggested that for the first time in three years, the Russians, the Ukrainians --

BASH: Yes.

MARQUARDT: -- sit down together.

BASH: What do you make of what he said about, he thought I wasn't going, I thought he wasn't going? I mean --

MARQUARDT: There's been so much back and forth. And I really I think that this is Putin yet again thumbing his nose at this entire process by sending not just not himself, but a very mid-level junior delegation while the Ukrainians have sent their top officials.

Now, Ukraine has scrambled and said, OK, we are going to meet with them. So there is some progress being made. But no doubt this is going to add fuel to the critics. I would say the realists who think that Putin is playing for time and actually does not want to negotiate.

GANGEL: Can I remind everyone of the cartoon of Lucy and Charlie Brown --

MARQUARDT: That's right.

GANGEL: -- and the football? I think that's what we just saw again. Putin has delayed and delayed. He's holding --

BASH: Putin is Lucy here.

GANGEL: He is Lucy, yes.

BASH: OK.

GANGEL: Yes. Putin is Lucy. And, you know, President Trump looked a little irritated there and this like, if he knew I was going, he would have gone kind of thing. Putin holds the cards here and he does not -- he is not ready to have this meeting.

[12:55:00]

BASH: And let's kind of broaden it out as you did a little bit there, Alex, about the many, many things that the President has been doing just in the past few days. Just today, we saw the President call for a U.S. lead -- led freedom zone in Gaza days after negotiating, of course, for the release of American-Israeli former hostage Edan Alexander, who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7th.

The President also claimed that Iran has sort of agreed to terms on a deal to deny them nuclear weapons program. We'll see if that has traction. And then, of course, we have seen these conversations that he's had that he's having right now in Abu Dhabi. We saw the conversations he had in Saudi Arabia.

And so it's obviously very mixed. What is going on, Isaac? Understandably, because he put such a premium as a candidate on ending the Russia-Ukraine war. Clearly, he hasn't given up. It is much harder than he thought. There are talks now resuming on Israel-Gaza.

So mixed bag, I think, is maybe fair, but there have been more successes than perhaps people thought he would have in the short term.

DOVERE: Yes, I mean, I think with the Gaza thing, he's made this announcement now. How does it square with what he said a couple months ago where the U.S. was going to take over Gaza and redevelop it? How does that work? Part of this is, he makes announcements sometimes that people like or that seem like success, and then we have to see what actually comes of them, right?

But I think when it comes to the Ukraine situation, we see there most of all in dealing with Putin. But overall, Donald Trump is a man who has done very well on the force of his own willpower. He's gotten elected president of the United States twice. It's gotten him to be an international celebrity, all these things.

But he is running up against other people who have a lot of willpower. And one of those people is Vladimir Putin, who does not seem to care that much that he is frustrating Donald Trump (INAUDIBLE).

MARQUARDT: And another one is Benjamin Netanyahu, who in some regards right now is pulling a Putin.

DOVERE: Yes.

MARQUARDT: He is bending to the pressure, like Putin is, of sending a team to negotiate a ceasefire, but it isn't the highest level team. And Netanyahu isn't showing any sign of really budging when it comes to this IDF operation that they're planning for Gaza.

Certainly, there's an immense amount of pressure on both Putin and Netanyahu. But so far, they are playing along with Trump, but they're managing to resist him.

DOVERE: As Trump said that he would resolve these things within 24 hours or before he was even inaugurated. It didn't happen because he's running up against these forces.

ALVAREZ: Well, and that's to the point, two people under pressure, two world leaders under pressure. Well, you can add President Trump to that list because he himself, to your smart point, had put this deadline of day one, he was going to resolve these wars. Well, the reality is a lot different.

And to your point, Jamie, about how he looked irritated, you know, these talks -- the way that he was describing them was that nothing was going to go anywhere unless it was him and Putin speaking, which sets up yet another marker of when does that conversation happen?

And so as he sets these markers and as they sort of fall away, the question -- or these conflicts remain and the question is how do they get resolved? BASH: I remember December of 2015 was the first time I interviewed then candidate -- new candidate Donald Trump. And one of the first things that he wanted to talk about was, I think it was right after the Iran nuclear deal was signed. And one of the first things he wanted to talk about was how it was a terrible deal.

MARQUARDT: Yes.

BASH: Well, now they're trying to work on another one after he pulled out of the first for the second time. Let's listen to what the President said about Iran.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

TRUMP: Iran has sort of agreed to the terms. They're not going to make out, I call it in a friendly way, nuclear dust. We're not going to be making any nuclear dust in Iran. And we've been strong. I want them to succeed. I want them to end up being a great country, frankly, but they can't have a nuclear weapon. That's the only thing. It's very simple.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

MARQUARDT: They have not been able to explain clearly how this deal that they are coming up with is going to be any different than the one that Obama struck back in 2015. They are resistant to that criticism. But the path that we're going down now does appear to be very similar to what's known as the JCPOA.

We also haven't gotten a very clear answer from the Trump administration and the many different voices around Trump as to what level of nuclear activity there can be in Iran in terms of minimal enrichment, whether it's full dismantlement --

BASH: Right. He just said no weapon.

MARQUARDT: He just said no weapons. You can have a civilian nuclear program for energy without a weapons program. And so he is, yet again, lowering the bar. The Iranians have said very clearly it is a red line. It is non-negotiable that we must have some kind of enrichment capability for civilian purposes.

You have some voices in the Trump administration saying, no, that's not acceptable. But the negotiations do continue. We've just had the fourth round. Proposals have gone back and forth. A fifth round is in the works. So that does look promising, but we don't know how big the daylight is, how far apart the gap is.

BASH: We're going to have to leave it there. Thank you all. Rock and roll show. Appreciate it.

Thank you for joining Inside Politics today. CNN News Central starts right now.