Nina Totenberg

And then we had sitting in the audience was the President of the United States.

And I think that the justices were tough

It's true on both sides, but they did it in a nicer way than they frequently do.

Let's put it that way.

I guess that's the nicest thing I could say about it, or most interesting thing.

It could have been, if you were either John Sauer or Cecilia Wong,

and you think they gave you a hard time, it could have been so much worse.

Yes, this is a very conservative court.

But repeatedly in the lower courts now, we're seeing the

some defiance by the Justice Department and the Trump administration, saying, well, we're not going to do that, even though the lower courts are telling us to do that.

And when that is the background, and as this case comes to an argument today, it is, you know, you could see the justices trying to figure out, well, as Kerry said, okay, so you've got this rule that's going to be prospective now, but there's

Nothing that says here that you can't change that if we rule for you.

It may not be prospective in two or three years.

And that's a really good example of, I think, the sort of the atmospherics, the subtext of what's going on in the courtroom today.

And likely to go on in the conference that we will not know anything about until we get an opinion.

And, you know, it's interesting because Justice Kavanaugh, in the previous case where birthright citizenship was a tangential...

issue that the court didn't get to.

But he did discuss it with Sauer a year ago and said to Sauer, how will we know that a baby in one state or in one hospital or in one village is deserving of birthright citizenship and someplace else they're not deserving of birthright citizenship?

How will we know if their parents are legally in the country?

How will we know if they're domiciled?