Nina Totenberg

Well, I have to tell you in truth that sitting in the press section, I don't think any of us except maybe one or two people on the far end could see the president at all.

And the White House had imposed a new restriction on how we cover the court, which is they told us to sit down before the court started, the proceeding started.

The guards told us to sit down.

And I very clearly said, you know, this is our job is to look and see what's going on in this courtroom.

at least before the proceedings began.

And they said, well, I'm sorry, this isn't our decision.

This is a new rule that the White House imposed on us.

So I didn't see anything of the precedent.

But part of that is, of course, also that I'm short.

Well, what really stood out to me was that they were on their best behavior.

They really didn't beat up counsel a lot.

You know, what you see today as skeptical questions, which, you know, we always write this intro, this introduction to a piece that says the Supreme Court appeared skeptical today or ready to reverse or whatever.

Certainly when you look at the body of two hours plus of argument,

you can see where the wind is blowing if it's indicative.

On the other hand, none of the justices were really... They didn't get in big fights with either counsel.

And it helped also that there were only two.

Sometimes we have several and it gets very complicated.

But here we had...

Cecilia Wong representing the ACLU and the clients of the ACLU.

And then we had the government's chief advocate, John Sauer, who, by the way, was President Trump's personal lawyer before he became Solicitor General.