Maureen Grappi

Yeah, so predicting how they are going to rule is always tricky and they may not know themselves and they will sit down soon to informally vote on how they want to rule on this.

And then someone will start to write the opinion, which will be circulated amongst each other.

And until that opinion is final, justices can change their views.

Going into this argument, there is an expectation that this would not get a very good reception at the court.

None of the lower courts that have looked at this issue have sided with Trump.

But even though we heard a lot of skepticism and got a lot of tough questions for the Justice Department on Wednesday, they weren't completely dismissive of the administration's arguments, and they had some tough questions for the challengers too.

So some of the key conservative justices, it did seem like that they were more likely to rule against the president.

But we won't know that until the decision comes out.

right so there are the children of people who are undocumented there they enter the country and either without permission or stayed here without permission that's the biggest category but then there are also many people who are here on a temporary basis who would be affected that includes people who are here on work visas on student visas those who were allowed admission through humanitarian programs or because they are seeking asylum and if

Trump's executive order goes into effect, their children would not have automatic citizenship.

Yes, it's certainly possible that some babies born here would be recognized as citizens of no country.

And at this point, it's unclear what the solution would be for them.

Well, right now, the federal immigration laws are built on this long-time understanding of what birthright citizenship is, who it covers.

So, for example, there's no mechanism for Barbara, the woman who's the lead plaintiff in this suit, there's no mechanism for her to add a child that is born here to her pending asylum application.

And that's because the asylum laws assume that her child is already a citizen, so they didn't anticipate that situation.

Well, that depends on what the Supreme Court decides.

If they issue a ruling against Trump and they say that this is not what the citizenship clause means, then there's little that Congress can do unless they want to pass a constitutional amendment.

It's also possible that the court will issue a decision.

They won't address the constitutional question.

They could strike down the president's executive order based on similar language in a citizenship law that was passed in 1952.