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Supreme Court Rejects Trump's Bid To End Birthright Citizenship; Three Conservative Justices Dissented In Birthright Case; Supreme Court: States May Ban Trans Athletes From Girls' Teams; Supreme Court Loosens Campaign Finance Laws In Win For GOP; 6-3 Conservative-Liberal Split On Court Grows More Pronounced. Aired 12- 12:30p ET

Aired June 30, 2026 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR, INSIDE POLITICS: Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Manu Raju in for Dana Bash.

And we are following major breaking news. Supreme Court out this morning, closing out its term with a pair of landmark rulings. The justices rejected President Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship but handed him a major victory on one of his signature cultural war issues. The court sided with states seeking to bar transgender athletes from competing on girls and women's sports teams, drawing immediate praise from the president, who called it a quote, big win.

But so far, the president has not commented on the court's decision to strike down his executive order, ending birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and some temporary foreign visitors. Justices upheld the 14th Amendment's longstanding guarantee that with narrow exceptions, children born on U.S. soil are American citizens.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, put it this way, quote, citizenship, then and now was the right to have rights to fully participate in our political community. The framers of the 14th Amendment extended that promise to quote, every freeborn person in this land. We keep that promise today.

But conservative Justice Samuel Alito, writing a stinging dissent that says, in part, quote, the court's interpretation also has national security implications. Suppose that country is a strategic adversary or enemy of the United States. Suppose the child never visited the United States while growing up and was inculcated with hatred of this country. According to the court, that person is a citizen of the United States.

I'm joined right now by a terrific group of reporters and legal analysts. It's great to see you all. A lot of people to digest this very busy day, including Laura Coates. Walk us through this very significant ruling, the birthright citizenship ruling, specifically. It was a pretty decisive opinion by the chief justice here. LAURA COATES, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: As it should have been, the 14th Amendment is particularly decisive, and frankly, this was the only conclusion the Supreme Court could have reached, and in my opinion, maintained its credibility to uphold the 14th Amendment. We have known since that 14th Amendment, post-reconstruction, let alone the Dred Scott decision, which said had the nerve to say, actually that the children of freed slaves could not be citizens.

You had the Wong Kim Ark case that said that a man who was born in this country, the United States, whose parents were born in China, was not truly a citizen because his parents had not been. Well, Supreme Court said no, no, he was born here, he in fact is. And this had been codified, and it had been resolved, so many people thought to the extent that why would the Supreme Court entertain this in this particular fashion, but they have said definitively that somebody born on this soil is an American.

Now, the issue of allegiance came up very much so in this conversation. The administration suggested that one who was not born in this country to American-born parents would not have the requisite level of allegiance to this country to be considered American enough. They had to have some sort of higher standard. They rejected that, including the idea of jurisdictional concerns around somebody who is that way. But this was the conclusion that upholds the credibility of a court who has been questioned time and time again, as simply trying to pander to the present United States, this issue was quite clear.

RAJU: You know, Joan, you were inside the court and just ran over here. You made it just in time for this. The ruling, a lot of people thought going in that this would have been a more decisive, maybe 7281, it was six-three. What do you make of that?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: That is a very good point. Well, yes, this seemed like it would be a no-brainer, because for centuries this principle has existed. We drew it from Britain. We have it here that if you're born in the U.S., you are automatically a citizen. But yet you have three dissenters -- and you have three dissenters, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Sam Alito, and then Justice Brett Kavanaugh peeled off in part, even though he was with the majority to say that there is a way that maybe Congress could get involved here.

But one thing we were looking for was to see how the chief justice was able to handle this as a leader. Could he have pulled the court together, because when you think back at other times when the court was coming up against the president, such as in U.S. v. Nixon, or you know, the Steel Seizure time, you know, there were really important to bring together as many justices as possible and here they really splintered on this decision.

[12:05:00]

But I have to say, in the courtroom, Manu, what you always like to hear about and I like to tell about. You know, the chief read it in such a matter of fact way, you know, as if he were -- you're saying it to Laura, yeah, we know this. This was a preposterous idea, there's nothing in our history, there's nothing in our law that would have allowed this executive order that President Trump signed his first day back in office. He took only seven minutes to read it, only 26 pages to lay it out in his written opinion. Clarence Thomas, in his dissent, joined by Neil Gorsuch, 91 pages.

And one last thing, I would say, you know, usually with this kind of hot case, we would have a dissent from the bench of oral dissent, and neither Justice Alito nor Justice Gorsuch showed up today. It was just Clarence Thomas. So, what we're left with from him is just what we wrote. And just to mention one thing about his idea of why he dissented, he really points to the history of the 14th Amendment as he interpreted as something that was important for the freed slaves. And he says at one point that, you know, this was -- this amendment was geared toward emancipation, and this is -- this is something that is more to him was important to have preserved rather than to use it as ground --

RAJU: Steve, you seem to see that significant in terms of the six- three split here.

STEVE VLADECK, CNN SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Yeah. I mean I guess I was surprised. You know, when we listened to the oral argument back in April, I think a lot of us walked out thinking that we were heading for the kind of historical ruling that Joan alluded to, where the court really spoke with one voice, maybe even with just a narrow concurrence by Justice Alito and Thomas.

And there was actually, in the end, a near-run thing. I mean six to three that the executive order is unlawful, but five to four, as Joan notes, about the meaning of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, you know, Manu, that to me is a sign of two things. One, how much President Trump has moved the Overton window on this conversation. I don't know that anyone could have thought 10 years ago that you would get a five-four Supreme Court decision, holding that the citizenship clause means what it says.

But second, I think it tells us a lot about this court that, you know, even though this is a loss for President Trump, it is a pretty close call the day after a major win for President Trump at the end of a term that has been full of some pretty big wins for President Trump, alongside a couple losses. You know, there's a lot of effort out there to suggest that the court is, you know, fiercely independent, that it's moderate. I see in the vote count in today's ruling, if not in the bottom line, a court that really is much further to the right than we've seen in a very long time.

RAJU: Yeah. To that point, Tyler, you covered the White House for the New York Times. Just look at the wins and losses that Trump has had this term. That's not every case, but these are some very significant ones. We weakening the Voting Rights Act, huge implications for the midterms, firing independent agency officials that came out just yesterday, trans athlete participation, winning.

He lost on firing Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board. He also lost in restricting mail-in ballots. Of course, tariffs was a huge issue in addition to the birthright citizenship. But on this one, birthright citizenship, of course, immigration has been central to the president's political identity. He had to have known that this outcome was very likely.

TYLER PAGER, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I mean, I think, as the analyst just laid out, there was a common belief among many that this would be ruled in the way that was. But I think to just take a step back when you put up that list of wins and losses, some of the cases most important to the president: tariffs, immigration, birthright citizenship, firing Lisa Cook, those are the ones that he was arguably most vested in.

And I think another thing to remember is that a lot of the people on this court are people that the president himself personally appointed, and as we have talked about, the court is supposed to be an independent institution. The president doesn't always feel that it's supposed to operate that way. He feels ownership over his decision to appoint and get these specific justices confirmed, and so he is taking this personally, that he has lost many of these cases. We haven't seen, as you noted at the top, him react unless he has in the last five minutes.

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PAGER: But I do think that it's important to remember that he feels -- he felt personally invested in these cases that he lost, and also in appointing these justices. So, while on the whole, he said many significant wins, some of the cases most important to him he lost and I think we'll see him react.

RAJU: Yeah. But he was pushing the bound of what he is allowed to do, and the Supreme Court in a lot of ways did allow him to push the bounds of what he could.

AYESHA RASCOE, NPR HOST, "WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY" AND "UP FIRST": I mean, they absolutely have, and I mean in some ways, and people often say that the Supreme Court saves Trump from himself, because the fact is, I mean, tariffs were not -- they're not popular. And when it comes to this issue of birthright citizenship, you know, the issue of immigration is moving in the U.S., right? Like its importance is going down, even for Republicans, not at the same level for Democrats, but it is going down.

[12:10:00]

And I think that there is a concern that there were a lot of people who were OK with an immigration push when you dealt with criminals in the country, when you dealt with people who were, you know, doing bad things. But when you start going after people who were born in this country, who are, you know, working jobs, doing everything that you would think an American would do. I think that has a very different feel for people.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, BLOOMBERG POLITICAL & POLICY COLUMNIST: But listen, this is, I think, part of a broader conversation that you hear going on among Republicans and conservatives, and that is, who is an American, who deserves to be an American, who deserves refugee status, right? Is it white South African -- Africans who claim that they're being persecuted? Is it Haitians who come here and get protected status? Of course, you saw the Supreme Court reverse that.

So, this is a real cultural argument that conservatives are having, J.D. Vance, for instance, made this statement that's like, oh, well, somebody who has ancestors who fought in the Civil War have sort of a more claim to American-ness than somebody who didn't. What side they fought on. I'm not sure what he means by that. But listen, I think this is going to be an ongoing conversation that's going to animate this culture war that is, is a race based.

RAJU: Go ahead.

VLADECK: And it goes back to optics versus impact. I mean, I think, you know, to Tyler's point, the birthright citizenship ruling is very visible to the president. But from an impact perspective, I mean, look at what the Supreme Court did last week in regards to the temporary protected status cases, with regard to folks applying for asylum at the border. From a pure numbers perspective, those rulings are much more important and are much bigger wins for President Trump and for his immigration policy. And so, again, I think, you know, you have to take all these things in context.

RAJU: Yeah. And speaking of cultural wars, of course, the transgender athletes' decision, saying that they cannot -- particularly states can ban -- impose bans on transgender athletes. The president said, big win. The United States Supreme Court just ruled against men playing in women's sports. Well, it wasn't exactly that, though, Laura, was it?

I mean, this was more allowing the states, but the state -- this is the map of the states that have passed bans on transgender athletes. Certainly, a victory for Trump, because they wanted to make sure those bans can be effective, but it doesn't say -- doesn't outright ban trans athletes from playing women's sports, correct? It allows states to do.

COATES: That's exactly right. The NCAA is interesting in that it also delineates between sports. They make a lot of decisions to our 27 states that essentially came down to this issue, whether somebody who was assigned male at birth, whether they could be banned from playing in a women's sport at the high school or at the collegiate level. This is an attempt to go from the patchwork to perhaps the more universal of things that are happening.

The Olympics already decided this issue in many respects. We hear a lot about it. We know that money comes into play as well. It's not just about the idea of the unfair competitive advantage is also the unfair advantage that they have spoken about in their arguments, in terms of the eventual finances that could accompany NIL deals, for example, a zero-sum game of sports, they actually talk about as well. And while the culture wars are fixated on, people will say comments like, well, I kind of, the not in my backyard association, not on my daughter's court, will be their acronym.

This really comes down to how the court was going to view one's gender identity and transgender versus sex-based discrimination. You already can have differences, albeit equivalent in some respects, differences in the way in which schools operate to have different sports leagues. They don't have to have one sports basketball team, or one swimming team, or one track and field team, they can have women and men competing differently.

They acknowledge that. They actually use a law -- a rule essentially saying that you didn't have to make an exception, or the schools did not have to make a case-by-case exception based on one's strength or weight or athleticism. They didn't want the schools to be in a position to have to do that. They wanted more universality, but this is a huge win for those who believe that there was an unfair advantage that could not be compensated.

RAJU: And the question will be how do states respond? Do they impose these bans afterwards? And if some don't, you know, that will let a band up back in court. We'll see what is actually more -- a lot more to discuss, including, coming up. We'll talk about the other big decision today. It's a significant win for Republicans and could mean an avalanche of new money in the midterms. Plus, after months of mystery, a New Jersey congressman is back on the Hill, and now, he has an explanation for where he's been.

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[12:15:00]

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RAJU: It's been 16 years since Citizens United transformed campaign finance as we know it. And today the Roberts court rejected one of the few restrictions left on how politicians can spend and raise money. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the six-three conservative majority that candidates can closely coordinate with national parties. A big win for Republicans who are pushing to gut the post-Watergate rules. This year, the Republican committees that help elect candidates to the House and Senate are raising more money than their Democratic counterparts.

My smart panel is back. Ayesha, this is one of several rulings that's turned out to have huge impacts on the midterms. There's dealing with the how, whether election ballots can be counted after election day, there was the Voting Rights Act that was gutted, that huge amount of gerrymandering that could help Republicans.

[12:20:00]

And now on this, and this could be very beneficial for the GOP because Republicans have been outraised by the candidate level, by and large, in the Senate races. In particular, but their outside groups have just a ton of money. Just look at the amount of money that the NRC, the Republican senatorial campaign, which brought this case, $48.9 million in that they have compared to the Democrats, 38.9 million in the Senate side. And it's you compared to the other outside groups as well, significant. So, that's why they can make up for that disparity.

RASCOE: It's a huge deal, right? I mean -- and then you couple that with the voting rights, being voting rights act, really being gutted. I mean, these are having impacts when people vote. I do think that, you know, this is something where you often talk to people, they want to get money out of politics. But the Supreme Court has went in the totally opposite direction, and I do think that ultimately that does lead to a disconnect, right? Like, people are going to go to the -- to cast their ballots in November, but are they actually being heard and represented in, like, when you have decisions like this that seem to go against the popular will.

RAJU: And you've, Joan, you've quite literally wrote the book about John Roberts. He's been chipping away at campaign finance for years.

BISKUPIC: This is an area where he has always been with the conservative majority to treat money as speech and money as something that should not be restricted. In fact, this shows you how much this court has changed, because for this ruling today that lifted restrictions on coordinated campaign contributions between a party and a candidate. It had to reverse a 25-year-old ruling that have that -- the liberals had endorsed, and those liberals have -- are gone. And Justice Brett Kavanaugh, as he read this from the bench, said, I'm picking up where Clarence Thomas left off 25 years ago in his dissent.

This is another one where Justice Thomas, who once was a really lone voice on this court, is at the center. If not, inspiring his conservative colleagues this way. And just to go to what Ayesha was saying about, what are the public expectations? Brett Kavanaugh just brushed away ideas of undue influence here. That if this is a problem, then the policy makers, you know, Congress, the states can step in in some way that could look for -- look for restrictions, but not this kind of restriction because it essentially just -- again, what he stressed was the unfairness to squelch the voice of political parties when other groups don't have those kinds of limits.

And he even said this is interesting, you know, these justices actually are much more politically aware than we want to get them credited for, and they wanted this, and he said, you know, political parties over the 25 years since that last ruling have been, you know, kind of falling behind in terms of influence and this should regenerated.

VLADECK: And I think, I mean, the Joan, I think, has this exactly right. The real story to me of this ruling is just how sort of unapologetic the court is for overruling its own precedent from 2001 in a case called Colorado II, the second time in two days that the court has tossed a decades old precedent on the scrap heap. This really is a centerpiece of Justice Kagan's dissent in the campaign finance case. She says we're supposed to have good reasons for overturning these precedents, just because the court's membership has changed is not supposed to be one of them.

And it gets back to this point about the activism of this Supreme Court, not that it's, you know, sort of showing deference to President Trump or showing deference to any particular body, it's doing what it wants, when it wants, right, without any regard to the historical precedent it's running rough shot over, without any regard to why it's supposed to follow its precedent, Manu, we thought in regard to what the public thinks of these rules.

RAJU: Yeah. And Joan, I want to ask you about the interpersonal dynamics between these justices, because to that point, that's created a lot of tension on this court. The fact that they're disregarding a lot of cases, past precedent.

BISKUPIC: Definitely. And the three liberals --

RAJU: How frosty are relations right now --

BISKUPIC: Very frosty, very frosty. They constantly talk about, we get along, we're really happy with each other. No, and it bursts out in the open, as we saw when Justice Alito was so testy with Justice Sotomayor as she was dissenting. And Justice Sotomayor today dissented from the bench in the trans athlete case to say how terrible it was going to be in terms of fairness on the competitive field.

And but they're -- they'll have the summer away from each other, which often will help. But I think -- I think what we're seeing -- what we saw this week, what we saw this session is what our future will be, and that's because the conservative members of the court were chosen for certain reasons. And it was chosen -- they were chosen for their vigilance and on the kinds of rulings that --

VLADECK: And reliability.

BISKUPIC: --not just President Trump might want, but the -- but the Republican party would want. That was the whole point.

[12:25:00]

COATES: Well, the word reliability, I think, is an important one because it's exactly why the court is constantly criticized because overturning precedent is not just a matter of throwing away trash, it really is that the American public has chosen these nine Supreme Court justices in terms of a body that is supposed to provide the consistency, reliability, so that people can manage their lives accordingly. Every time you overturn precedent, you undermine the ability of the American public, along the voting public to understand the world in which they live and operate in the balance of power.

And so, if they are in the business of deciding what we just said no longer applies, then how can the American public be in the habit of understanding what laws and rights they retain and what will end up on the fire heat.

RAJU: And as we go to break, we'll just be watching retirement watch this summer. Look at the Supreme Court justices' ages there, from the 78-year-old Clarence Thomas to the 54-year-old Justice Amy Coney Barrett. I'd suspect she's not on the retirement watch, but we'll see what Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and maybe Sotomayor decide to do.

All right, coming up next. New Jersey's missing congressman is back on the Hill with an explanation for his months long absence that voted Americans can understand.

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