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House Briefed on Iran Attack; Supreme Court Delivers More Power to President Trump. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired June 27, 2025 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SENIOR SUPREME COURT ANALYST: And who knows what's going to happen in the next three years.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: No question. Well, again, big decisions not just on nationwide injunctions, but, as we touched on with Congressman Raskin, on LGBTQ books in schools, or just books that contain any LGBTQ content.

Thanks so much to all of you for distilling these important issues in the span of minutes and seconds.

Thanks to all of you for joining INSIDE POLITICS. I'm Jim Sciutto.

"CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts right now.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: The Supreme Court delivering a major win to President Trump, limiting the ability of judges to temporarily block his orders. What this means for his immigration crackdown, the rest of his agenda, and future administrations.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Plus, House lawmakers are speaking out after receiving a classified briefing on the U.S. strikes on Iran, and they're raising questions about the fate of Tehran's supply of enriched uranium, and they are raising those concerns.

And later: He's divided the Internet over the lengths that he will take to defy aging. Now the don't die guy, Bryan Johnson, is meeting with lawmakers in the nation's capital. Why? We asked him.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SANCHEZ: We start this afternoon with President Donald Trump celebrating a Supreme Court win, the High Court ruling today limiting the power that lower court judges have to block executive orders.

In simple terms, less power for these judges, more power for a president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm grateful to the Supreme Court for stepping in solving this very, very big and complex problem. And they have made it very simple.

Thanks for this decision and thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: In a fiery dissent, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor accusing the majority of shamefully playing along with the Trump administration's gamesmanship.

Another scathing dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson saying the ruling will enable -- quote -- "our collective demise."

This is just one of three historic rulings today.

Let's take you live for reaction to the White House with CNN's Kristen Holmes, who's standing by.

Kristen, what more is President Trump saying?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, this is a really big deal for the White House, Boris. This is something that they have been wanting, but it also green-lights a number of different agenda items.

Keep in mind here, President Trump had a long list of things that he has been trying to get done that have been stopped by these nationwide injunctions in the lower courts. He actually rattled some of them off. All of those now are likely to have that pause lifted and move forward.

It also gives you a little bit of insight into the fact that President Trump and his team now believe that they have more authority with those executive orders, because, essentially, what this is doing is making it that the lower courts cannot pause an executive order on a nationwide platform.

They can do it in that one case, in that one state, but they can't do it nationwide. And this was something that President Trump's team was really hoping for. I think it might be even better than what they thought the outcome was going to be.

Now, in addition to praising the ruling and thanking the justices, he also singled out justice Amy Coney Barrett, who as we reported a few months ago, he had been privately bashing, saying that she wasn't living up to what she had promised behind closed doors when she was trying to get that position.

And he, of course, had appointed her. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: She has taken some heat, though, from some of your supporters who have labeled her weak, squishy, a rattled law professor. What is your take on that? TRUMP: I don't know about that. I just have great respect for her. I

always have. And her decision was brilliantly written today, from all accounts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Brilliantly written. That's -- brilliantly written, obviously, that is different than what I heard just a few weeks ago from people who had spoken to him directly about his opinion of Amy Coney Barrett.

But there is no denying it that right now the White House is soaring very high and they are feeling very good about this.

SANCHEZ: And, Kristen, President Trump was asked by our own Jeff Zeleny in the Briefing Room, had a huge week and he answered questions about Iran as well, the U.S. strikes coming last weekend. And there's still a search for answers when it comes to what Iran's nuclear capacity is right now.

And the president was also specifically asked about whether Tehran may have had secret nuclear sites. He seemed confident that they didn't.

HOLMES: He seemed confident that they didn't, but he didn't entirely answer the question. What he said instead was that they are completely exhausted, that the last thing that they're thinking about right now is a nuclear program.

[13:05:08]

Obviously, that's not what we have heard from some of Iran's leaders. We actually heard the supreme leader, the ayatollah, saying that they won this war. And President Trump addressed that also, saying that he should be truthful, that they lost this war.

He also doubled down on the idea that all of these sites were completely obliterated. But one thing I thought was interesting in his talk about Iran is that he was asked specifically, if it turns out that Iran had capabilities to enrich uranium to a level that concerned the White House, would President Trump consider bombing them again?

And he said absolutely, which is not something we had heard before. One thing to take into effect of all of this is that there is a behind-the-scenes negotiation happening right now between the United States and Iran over this potential nuclear program. There are a lot of conversations happening here.

And the president and the administration feel very good going into those negotiations as well. But interesting to hear him say that he would bomb them again, also kind of reiterating that he doesn't believe that there's any nuclear threat from Iran right now.

SANCHEZ: Kristen Holmes from the White House, thank you so much -- Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, let's go right now to our chief Supreme Court analyst, Joan Biskupic, who is here in studio with us.

Joan, you were in the courtroom and this was really an extraordinary time. Tell us about it.

BISKUPIC: Sure.

Justice Barrett read this opinion for the majority. That in itself was so unusual. She's the junior justice of the five -- the six conservatives who ruled this way. And I think we have one of her comments that she made from the bench to roll here that you could put up that I think will show just kind of the -- how she laid this out.

Maybe not. OK, they don't. But, anyway, she unspools this opinion for 10 minutes. And then Justice Sotomayor comes back for 20 minutes saying how much things will now change in America because of President Trump's or any president's ability to enforce potentially unlawful orders without any check from a lower court.

Now, Justice Barrett had said that this is something that -- the question of birthright citizenship is not really at issue here. It's more the power of lower court judges and that soon the justices would eventually decide whether what Donald Trump is trying to do by lifting birthright citizenship, whether that's constitutional.

But Justice Sotomayor came right back and said, don't be fooled. This is about birthright citizenship right now, that what this could potentially do is for babies born in the near future here of anyone here who's not a citizen or here on a temporary basis could suddenly not have the ability to have birthright citizenship, which has long been for more than 150 years there in place.

So it was quite dramatic. And two things. The reason I was going to highlight Justice Barrett is just because of her role. She's someone who President Donald Trump has criticized recently in private and he's criticized publicly some of the other conservatives, but they have given him -- this conservative majority has given him really a full sweep.

KEILAR: So what is the real effect of this going forward? If this does limit the ability of lower courts to have these injunctions, is there potentially a patchwork of things that could happen throughout the country?

BISKUPIC: Yes.

KEILAR: What does it look like on different issues?

BISKUPIC: Yes, exactly, Brianna. Lower court judges have stopped Donald Trump from pulling back funding in programs. They have stopped Donald Trump from outright firing, massive layoffs everywhere, RIFs, and just trying to cut back on the Department of Education and other agencies.

And lower courts have put a lot of that on hold. Other policy measures that he has tried to enforce, they have put that on hold. So now those things, the Trump administration now has a very important legal card to play against those, as well as a stronger legal card when he tries to defend on the merits the birthright citizenship move that he's made.

KEILAR: Joan, thank you so much. What a day to be in that courtroom. We really appreciate it -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: With us now is the national legal director of the ACLU, Cecillia Wang.

Ms. Wang, thanks so much for being with us.

A majority of justices found that universal injunctions likely exceed the authority that Congress has given federal courts. They point to a leap in the number of these injunctions over the last few years. How do you respond to that?

CECILLIA WANG, NATIONAL LEGAL DIRECTOR, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION: So, I think, Boris, that the court, or at least a majority of the court has gone out of its way to opine on so-called universal injunctions in a case where it really wasn't necessary to do that.

[13:10:05]

The petitioners here, including 22 states and numerous nonprofit organizations and individuals who are harmed by President Trump's birthright citizenship order, all proved that in order to get complete relief, in order to get a court order that would adequately protect them as people who might move from state to state, they needed to have an injunction that really covered the whole country.

But I will say this, Boris. There are ways in which this opinion is actually quite limited and perhaps I think is going to only give President Trump temporary relief. And here's why. The decision today leaves the lower courts' injunctions that block President Trump's birthright citizenship executive order in place for now.

And it's sending the cases back to the lower courts to give them an opportunity to re-decide on the scope of their orders and asks them to justify the scope of their orders. The bottom line is that there are still many open pathways to block President Trump's illegal and unconstitutional birthright citizenship order and ensure that all babies born in the U.S. are equal citizens, as the rule has been in our country since the end of the Civil War.

The civil -- the case that the ACLU has brought with partner organizations will continue. We will be filing a motion for class certification today. And that's one of the ways in which people who are harmed around the country by President Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship will be able to go and get protection from the courts for this fundamental American right.

SANCHEZ: Yes. So that effort to get a class action certification is something that Justice Kavanaugh pointed to as a possible alternative to get relief from these executive orders.

Notably, though, Justice Alito said that judges should avoid doing that to excess, in his view, because it would become a nationwide injunction essentially by another name. I wonder what you make of that statement from Justice Alito and whether you're concerned about getting that class action certified to be nationwide.

WANG: I'm not concerned. I think that we will prevail both in seeking class certification and ultimately on the merits question of whether Trump's effort to end the 14th Amendment's guarantee of birthright citizenship is lawful or not.

I'm confident that we will prevail on both fronts. And Justice Barrett's majority opinion for the court points out that class actions remain a different theory for how courts can give plaintiffs who go to the courts seeking protection from illegal government action the protection they need under the Constitution of the United States.

I think the broader question that the court's opinion kind of leaves open is that, when the federal government is a defendant and the court rules that their policy is unconstitutionally, typically and historically, federal officials will implement those court orders by just stopping their enforcement of the illegal policy, not just as to plaintiffs who won the order.

President Trump is a federal official who we will see testing those norms of presidential behavior. Luckily though, the federal rules of civil procedure and precedents of the Supreme Court give people many different options that are still available in order to get those protections for their fundamental rights under the Constitution.

So I think the decision today, while troubling, is in the end limited.

SANCHEZ: Yes, we will see what comes next and we hope to continue the conversation then.

Cecillia Wang, thanks so much for sharing your perspective.

WANG: Thanks, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Of course.

Still to come, we're beginning to hear from House lawmakers following a classified briefing on those strikes on Iran's nuclear sites. What's their understanding of the damage done to Tehran's nuclear program?

Plus, a warning sign for Republicans. There's evidence that a key voting bloc, one with the power to decide elections, is now turning on President Trump. We will dig into the numbers with you.

And, later, roughly two months after plunging into a bear market, stocks expected to hit record highs -- these important stories and many more coming your way on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:18:39]

SANCHEZ: Happening now, new details emerging after top national security officials briefed House lawmakers on those U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.

Despite President Trump's repeated claims that Iran's nuclear program was -- quote -- "obliterated," both Republicans and Democrats are now saying that Iran still possesses a stockpile of enriched uranium.

Let's take you live to Capitol Hill with CNN's Lauren Fox.

Lauren, what more are lawmakers saying?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, behind closed doors, Republicans and Democrats both told me that this was a professional briefing, that they were able to ask a series of questions, and that there really weren't the kind of political fireworks that you might see after the kind of drama and frustration that has unfolded in the previous days in the reaction to the fact that this had been postponed for so long.

But there are a number of folks who are saying now that the goal of this was never to completely destroy all of the material, and you have some lawmakers acknowledging the fact that there may still be a lot of uranium left in Iran.

Here is a collection of what lawmakers said after this briefing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DON BACON (R-NE): We don't know, or at least I don't know, the presence of where highly processed uranium may be. It's clearly the facilities that put all this together are destroyed or it will take them years to recover.

[13:20:05]

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So, I mean, do you think the president is overstating it when he says totally obliterated?

BACON: No, I think he's accurate. Now, does that mean that people can sit down and try to rebuild facilities? I mean, we don't know what Iran will do. But I think they have set them back years.

REP. MICHAEL MCCAUL (R-TX): It's the enrichment capability, capabilities that were taken out. There is enriched uranium in the facilities that moves around, but that was not the intent or the mission.

RAJU: Do you think that -- are you concerned about where that uranium might be?

MCCAUL: My understanding is, most of it's still there.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Obliterated is a very total word. So perhaps with further information we will know more. We do know in the public domain that the enriched uranium is still there, and that was never part of the goal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: Now, there were several House lawmakers, especially Democrats, who made clear to me that they still believe that a lot of intelligence is still to come.

Obviously, this is a slow process to gather information on the ground, understand the full destruction, understand the full scope of what happened here. But that is certainly still in play and lawmakers are going to continue to expect to be briefed up here on Capitol Hill.

SANCHEZ: Lauren Fox, thank you so much for the update -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Let's talk about this more now with pollster and communication strategist Frank Lunch -- Luntz. Pardon me.

You were a message guru, and so I really want to ask this question of you. This word, this focus on obliterated, how are people receiving it and did the president maybe step in it by using that word and making it something that is maybe harder to sell with all of this debate around this word?

FRANK LUNTZ, POLLSTER: It's a mistake. And what I don't understand is why they didn't clarify, is Iran stronger or weaker today than it was seven days ago? Is Iran more or less capable of threatening its neighbors, threatening the U.S.?

On all these key questions, the Trump administration was successful. And I want to be -- I want to articulate this very clearly. This was a successful mission, until you set the bar at obliterate, which is very -- it's very hard to say and it's very hard to actually do. And that was never going to be part of what this was about.

If you bury all that nuclear capability that deep in the mountain, what does that say about you? This is not peaceful. This is not what Barack Obama, when he negotiated the agreement, this is not what was supposed to happen. And the U.S. held Iran accountable and they were successful in pushing that back months, if not years.

But when you set the bar at obliterate, when you basically say that you have to eliminate everything, it's impossible to do. So here he is successful, and yet he's on the defense. And its his own messaging mistake.

KEILAR: You're saying that he should have said, look, they generated all of this nuclear material, even though there was this joint agreement?

LUNTZ: Exactly.

KEILAR: But he had pulled out of the joint agreement.

LUNTZ: But it was still -- what Iran has been saying since that day that everything it's doing is peaceful. And, obviously, it's not. And Iran was saying that it's not a threat, and, obviously, it is. And we thought that if we went at this, it would provoke World War III, and it didn't happen. And the only reason why he's not getting credit for it is because of

that one word. Pay attention to your language. Your language is your life.

KEILAR: It may be a mismanagement of expectations, right?

The expectations game is so important in messaging here. According to new CNN polling, a majority of independents, 60 percent, disapproved of the decision to take military action in Iran. That was before conflicting assessments of the mission's success. What do you think about that?

LUNTZ: And I'm not surprised, because, in the end, you have to explain why. And this was a surprise to the American people. And I don't feel like that that statement that he gave, the three minutes that he spoke on, what was it, Friday night, that he didn't set the context enough, that, when the American people are listening, you have the responsibility to explain why, why, when, where and how.

And he did it well. And the people who ran that mission are heroes. And the one thing that I don't understand, maybe you can explain this to me, you have been doing this for a long time, why are we not celebrating these people? These are heroes. They took their lives in their hand. They went there on a mission that was incredibly dangerous.

They came back safely. They did their jobs. Why are we not celebrating this success? And the answer is because he raised expectations to a level that it could not be met. And there's a lesson I will use to teach my students, to teach the people watching right now. Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Do what you say. And don't overpromise, because, in the end, that will undo your credibility.

[13:25:12]

KEILAR: I also want to ask you about independence when it comes to the big, beautiful bill, which is -- it's such a critical point right now on the Hill.

LUNTZ: But that's another example, big, beautiful bill.

KEILAR: OK, well, that aside...

LUNTZ: Why are we doing this? Why do we...

(CROSSTALK)

LUNTZ: But why do we talk like this?

KEILAR: But, Frank, that aside -- OK, that is because that's what Trump is calling it, right?

But, that aside -- and the Democrats have other things they want to call it. They don't believe it's a big, beautiful bill. But, that aside, there are Republicans who are looking at this, and they have a lot of concerns. There are concerns that, when you look at the cuts to Medicaid and other programs, and you look at some of the tax cuts, many of which will benefit the wealthy, that this could be their Obamacare.

And when you look at independents, an analysis of four recent polls by Zach Wolf shows that they oppose this bill by about 3-1.

LUNTZ: But the key here is, once again, to explain the attributes and the components of it. Does it increase accountability? Does it increase enforcement? Does it actually cut or simply slow the rate of growth?

I went through this in 1994. I'm old now, and I remember when they did this to welfare. They were increasing welfare. They were increasing Medicare from $4,800 to $5,300, an increase, $4,800 to $5,300, but they weren't explaining it that way, so the public thought that it was being cut.

It's simply, in many of these cases, they're cuts to the rate of growth. So, yes, was more money promised? Yes, but are we spending more money? Are we investing more money? The answer is yes. And, in the end, the Republicans are correct that we believe in the requirements of work, that this is a core part of the legislation.

But you know what? No one's talking about that. And the Democrats are correct that they don't want anyone left on the side of the street because they cannot afford health care. Both political parties are in jeopardy of misunderstanding what is happening right now, and whoever's the better communicator is the one who wins that battle.

KEILAR: Always great to talk to you, Frank. You said you're old. I say you are wise and young at heart, and thank you so much for sharing that wisdom with us. We appreciate it.

Jurors in the trial of Sean "Diddy" Combs spent days listening to graphic testimony about how his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura said that he abused her. And now the defense is calling the former couple's relationship a -- quote -- "great modern love story."

We're live outside the courthouse next.

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