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Supreme Court Sides With Trump In Two Major Immigration Cases; Auto Fires Back At Sotomayor After She Reads Dissent From Bench; Inflation Tops 4 Percent For First Time In Three Years; Trump Refuses To Sign Housing Bill Unless Action On Voting Bill; Source: Trump Called GOP Sen. Cassidy A "Lunatic" At Lunch. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired June 25, 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]

CHRISTINE BRENNAN, CNN SPORTS ANALYST: So therefore, you'll see them later in the tournament. In this case, you're seeing two of the greats, 25 years old, 27 years old, young men in their prime, playing terrifically goal scoring machines. You're seeing them in a game tomorrow in Boston. That's a rare treat.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN CO-ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: We'll be anxious to watch. Christine Brennan, thank you very, very much. And to our viewers, thanks very much for joining me this morning. You can always keep up with us on social media @wolfblitzer and @pamelabrowncnn. We'll see you back here tomorrow morning, every weekday morning, 10 am Eastern. Inside Politics with our friend and colleague, Dana Bash, starts right now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: And the breaking news out of Washington is the Supreme Court's conservative majority delivering two major wins for President Trump's hardline immigration policies. In one case, the justices ruled that President Trump can turn away migrants seeking asylum by physically preventing them from stepping onto U.S. soil to make that claim. The second allows them to end a policy that gives temporary legal status to more than a million people fleeing their home countries because of war or natural disasters. In both cases, the justices split along familiar ideological lines.

I have a panel of experts and reporters to explain what all of this means. Joining me now, Priscilla Alvarez, I want to start with you to just explain in the short term what this means for asylum seekers.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the administration notched two victories here for its immigration agenda on two separate fronts. The asylum seekers that you're mentioning have to do with the U.S.- Mexico border. So, essentially giving the administration the ability or the power, the authority to turn away those asylum seekers who may be trying to present at a legal port of entry to claim asylum.

So, this gives the administration and future administrations a lot of latitude in the ways and how many people can try to claim asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. However, there may be an unintended consequence there because people may instead opt to try to cross unlawfully versus going to those ports of entry. In the short term, Dana, I would say that the numbers at the border are very, very low, and there have been other restrictions in place. So, these are the types of policies that officials tell me they've always wanted to keep in their back pocket in the event that there is a surge, but we need to think about this decision not only as one that matters today, but one that would give future administrations a lot of power as well in the event of any type of crisis at the border, and in terms of asylum claims at the border.

On the other front with temporary protected status, Dana, that is a form of humanitarian relief for people already in the United States. So that is a win for the administration, for the interior of the United States. They have been trying to revoke this for multiple countries on many, many times, because they believe that this is not temporary, that the temporary protected status has been extended for many of these countries multiple times, and therefore, it sort of lost what it was in statute.

I do want to say, Dana, this does have a near-term implication for those who have it, who will become ineligible and then eligible for deportation. But also, I just want to note, with Venezuela and the two earthquakes that happened there, that is the type of situation where a Department of Homeland Security secretary might consider extending TPS for those here because of a natural disaster. In fact, Haiti was originally granted TPS for the same type of earthquake in 2010. So, it's just very interesting that this came down today, and will have immediate ramifications for those nationals.

BASH: Yeah, that is such a good point. Of course, we all remember that horrible earthquake. Paula, over to you. Explain the legal reasoning by the justices who wrote the majority.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Dana. I also just want to note, we are surrounded by a non-Supreme Court related protest, just in case it gets a little noisy here. We're all exercising our First Amendment right. But when it comes to the Supreme Court decisions today on the TPS, the Temporary Protected Status case. The justices held that TPS is not -- it cannot be subject to judicial review unless it's a constitutional claim.

Now, this policy was challenged based on an argument that the decision to target Haitians and Syrians was based on racial animus, but in the majority opinion, Justice Alito wrote that none of the cited statements from the president or the secretary was overtly racial, and in substance, he writes all express policy views could be raised based on race-neutral justification.

So, there are other claims that they could bring, but the justices said that they are unlikely to be successful, which is why they're not even giving them any temporary relief while they continue to litigate this.

[12:05:00]

On the asylum case. Here again, the majority holding that you are not in the country until you actually cross the border. So, it's interesting to see this pair of wins for the president today. Not a big surprise, given that this is a conservative supermajority with an increasingly expansive view of executive power.

BASH: Yeah, absolutely. And Joan, you were in the Supreme Court in the chamber when the justices put forward these two opinions. I can't imagine how it felt in there because we've seen the divide over and over again, but this was really explicit

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: It really was, Dana. And it boiled over in this one encounter between Justice Alito and Justice Sotomayor, who was dissenting from both of these immigration cases, and actually all three of the cases that Samuel Alito read today from the bench. And after he finished the Mexican one, the one about the border and the definition of has somebody arrived or not arrived, and you know, that involves border agents going out and actually blocking asylum seekers from getting in.

There's all sorts of good reasons for why administrations, and not just the Trump administration, administration before it, and the Biden administration for a while wants to limit who's coming, but the method is one that's very controversial. And after he finished explaining why that was perfectly legitimate for the administration to do, to block these asylum seekers, Justice Sotomayor said I have a dissent here.

Now, Justice Alito paused, so he must have known that something was coming from her, but I'll pick up on how he responded after she spoke. She begins, Dana, by talking about kind of the moral imperative of allowing asylum seekers who are fleeing serious persecution from coming to America -- allowing them to come to America.

And she recalls incidents from the Nazi Germany era, specifically one episode when 900 Jews were on a ship, trying to get to first Cuba and then to the U.S., and they were turned back in 1939. They go back to Germany, about, you know, a substantial portion of them end up dying in concentration camps. And she brings that to the fore immediately as she's starting to dissent about this case involving the Mexican border.

And then she talks about, you know, kind of the narrow idea of asylum that the majority has captured here, has captured here, and also talks about how it's really a way to circumvent the legitimate statutes that are on the books here, the way that the majority has read it. She finishes, she takes, you know, about three times as long as Sam Alito had taken to deliver the actual opinion.

And the first thing he says, before he starts to recount the temporary protected status opinion that he also has, he says, if I had known what the dissent was going to say, I would have explained my ruling more, and he just sits there, kind of stone-faced, and everyone's like, wow, and you know, he definitely suggested he was blindsided.

I have a feeling that she might have said maybe right before they were going on the bench, you know, hey Sam, I've got something to say, but then he then goes with, you know, just anger dripping from his voice to then detail what happen -- what they were ruling in the Temporary Protected Status case. And as you just heard from Priscilla, that ruling really will affect a lot of people immediately, and the liberals dissented from that in a very strongly worded statement from Justice Elena Kagan, but she chose not to read anything from the bench, probably because there had been enough fireworks for the morning at that point.

BASH: Yeah. And I'll just -- I have it here, unless you want to read it. I will -- what Elena Kagan wrote in the dissent. Do you have it? You want to do it?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, you go ahead and do it. I don't have --

BASH: OK, I'll do it. I'll do it. She wrote in the dissent, and this is specifically about Alito's claim that that Paula put up about the idea that there's no evidence that this was based on racism. So, what Kagan said is she put up examples of what she thought were racist comments based on this policy.

2024, Haitians are eating dogs. They're eating the pets. 2021, Haitians in the U.S. probably have AIDS. 2021, Haitian immigration is like a death wish for our country. 2028, a shithole country, which is filthy, dirty, and disgusting. And these are all President Trump's statements, of course. 2018, why is it we only take people from shit hole countries? Why can we not have some people from Norway and Sweden?

[12:10:00]

So, Jeff, understanding all of that in the dissent, going to the specific question about Haitians, we all remember that this became a very big issue in the 2024 campaign, when J.D. Vance and President Trump were claiming, without evidence, that Haitian immigrants were eating dogs and cats. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats, they're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what's happening in our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Jeff?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, I mean, those comments were certainly surprising and shocking in the moment. You could see the response on Vice President Harris's face there, but in the end, they obviously did not matter in the election. One thing I have my eye on is Ohio this year, Springfield, Ohio, that the president mentioned.

Republican Governor Mike DeWine, who of course, is retiring and leaving the office. He has been very defensive of the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. He has attended a Sunday mass there alongside them. He's from that part of Ohio. So, I think it will be interesting to see the political fallout, perhaps this year in both the Senate race and the governor's race in Ohio about those comments about Haitians.

But back to the Supreme Court ruling, I mean, look, this was definitely a strong win for the Trump administration, but there's one more important immigration case to come, that's the birthright citizenship case, which will likely come next week or on the days to follow, and it's hard to imagine the Trump administration having a win in that case. We will see, of course, but this certainly is a win, and I would assume that we will hear something from the president later today on this.

BASH: Yeah. I'm sure we will. I'm glad you brought up Springfield, Ohio, and the politics there in this election year because it will be interesting to see how it plays out, whether or not it actually helps Democrats, since there are a lot of locals there of all political persuasions who very much like having them in their community.

Thank you so much. Don't go anywhere, though, because up next, what was supposed to be a victory lap on Capitol Hill, of course, didn't end up that way. In fact, it turned into a screaming match between President Trump and a Senate Republican. Plus, the U.S. men's national team plays its next World Cup match tonight. We'll explain how one of the star players is embroiled in a major Supreme Court case. Still to come.

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[12:15:00]

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BASH: A big economic concern for Americans across the country is finding affordable housing, and though Congress actually worked in a bipartisan way to pass legislation this week to start to help, the bill is not yet law, and that is because President Trump is still using it as political leverage.

President Trump not only canceled the signing ceremony, he then got into a shouting match with a Republican senator during a private lunch on Capitol Hill. It is quite a turn for Republicans who just this time yesterday, we're talking about how they hope that this will be really important for them to use on the campaign trail as inflation tops 4 percent for the first time in three years, but if you ask President Trump, everything is fine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We had a really great meeting, and we're very proud of the party. We like our leader. We like everybody really in the room. I don't like a few people, but that's OK. I think you know who they are. But we -- I'll give you -- I'll give you that information someday. But for the most part, we have a really well unified party, and I said it very strongly, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: You know, after the lunch, Senate Republicans did give President Trump a win. They took back the rebuke that they had passed on the war in Iran. I'm joined by a fantastic group of reporters. Lauren Fox, I'm going to start with you on Capitol Hill. It looks pretty empty there. Did the House and the Senate just say we can't get him to sign it? There's not much more for us to do. We're going home for the weekend.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Senate is gone now for a two-week recess, Dana, and the House is scheduled to vote on their last vote series in just about under an hour at this point. But essentially, yes. The huge question mark right now is, what more is there to do on Capitol Hill, especially in the House because you have some Republicans who are holding the floor hostage because they want the Senate to pass the voting bill that is really important to the president, the SAVE America Act.

That is not happening. The votes are not there. And yet, Speaker Mike Johnson has members of his conference who say that they are not willing to vote on anything on the House floor until it passes in the Senate. Speaker Mike Johnson is going to meet with the president later today, potentially to try to find a way forward, but the House is also canceling votes tomorrow. Unclear what's going to happen next week, but yeah, I think there's a sense right now on Capitol Hill that they did this huge housing bill. It hasn't been signed by the president. What else is there to do before 4th of July?

[12:20:00]

BASH: And Tolu, I want to play what Lisa Murkowski, senator from Alaska, said about this standoff -- I don't -- and my understanding is that she was not in that explosive lunch yesterday, but she has a very important voice. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): If he chooses to hold up his own agenda, because he wants action on the SAVE Act. That's, I guess, his call. It is not helpful to him. It's not helpful for the country, and it's not moving the needle. If you don't have the votes, sir, you don't have the votes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And Tolu, before I bring you in, I just want to remind our viewers what she was talking about and what the president is trying to get past that. As Senator Murkowski says, he just doesn't have the votes for what he calls the SAVE America Act. He wants to require proof of citizenship to register to vote, require voter ID to vote, additional steps to get the states to remove ineligible individuals off voter rolls, new penalties for election officials who run afoul of the law, and most mail-in voting, prohibit this has nothing to do with voting, but prohibit trans athletes from competing in women's sports and ban some procedures for trans kids.

So, again, there's a standoff. Senator Cassidy, our understanding is the only one to actually say to the president that the president isn't necessarily communicating with the Senate Republicans the way it would be helpful to do, and I'm obviously, saying this in diplomatic terms for a fact.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Yeah. This devolved into a shouting match between Senator Cassidy and the president, no love lost between those two men. President Trump endorsed against Senator Cassidy's primary opponent, and that primary opponent won, and Senator Cassidy is now basically a lame duck. He's not going to be in the Senate anymore after this year, and this year was supposed to be all about affordability. It was supposed to be president driving home the message for the midterms about how he's making things more affordable.

Instead, we've seen the war in Iran. We've seen the operation in Venezuela. And now, we see the president fixated on this elections bill just four months before the election, trying to change the rules around elections, even though that would cause chaos this close to an election requiring people to find their birth certificate in order to register to vote and produce IDs that that are federally approved in order to vote in places where that is currently not the rule, not necessary.

The president is fixated on this. He said that, you know, Democrats are cheating in elections. He's really laying the groundwork to undermine confidence in the results, which polls indicate will be not favorable towards the president and his party in November, but a number of his associates within the party are saying that he is not doing what would actually help them win elections, which is focus on affordability.

This housing bill that would have potentially made housing a little bit more affordable is something that was bipartisan and Republicans wanted to be able to make to their voters, and now the president is blocking that for the time being.

BASH: Right, right. And Amy, yet that is true, that a lot of people are saying we got to do this, but as Lauren was referencing, there are Republicans in the House who say no, we want this voting measure. And my question for you is, how this plays out on the electoral battlefield. I'm going to put up the battleground states -- excuse me, battleground districts. This is based on you and the Cook Political Report.

2026, there are 38 and in 2018 when the Democrats took the House the last time, 75. So, the whole notion of taking back the House of Representatives is going to be much more difficult based on the math.

AMY WALTER, PUBLISHER & EDITOR IN CHIEF, THE COOK POLITICAL REPORT: Well, yes, there are two different math problems. Dana, you're right. Unlike 2018, there aren't as many targets for Democrats to go after. There just simply aren't that many Republicans sitting in really vulnerable districts as there were in 2018. But also, Democrats don't need as many districts, they don't need to win as many in order to flip the House. They only need to net three seats. Now, obviously, redistricting also scrambled the math a little bit, probably netting Republicans somewhere between five and six seats.

So, let's say Democrats probably need to get at least 10 seats in order to flip control of Congress. The challenge that Republicans are having, and Tolu noted this, is that the number one issue for Americans, whether you live in a Democratic state or a Republican one or district, is the issue of affordability, and the president -- as your clip highlighted, not only is not talking about the issue, but he continues to say America is the hottest place.

[12:25:00]

There is no recognition at all to the fact that so many Americans feel like they're falling behind and that's not something he likes to do, and it's not something he will do while he is president because it suggests that he's not been successful.

The second biggest problem for Republicans in those districts and in the vulnerable Senate races as well is a lack of enthusiasm from Republicans. They simply aren't as interested in voting, and the interesting thing about this fight over the say back, Dana, is that the more that the president leans into this idea that these elections are rigged, that Democrats are taking it from us, that illegal people are voting. Is that it also doesn't help to motivate Republicans?

So, Republicans already feel unmotivated, in part because they see that the party is divided. They're not kind of going all in the same direction, the president is not on the same page as party officials in Congress. And then at the same time is saying well, maybe don't vote, because well, it's or if you do vote, it's not clear that your vote is going to matter.

BASH: Yeah. It is -- it is such an interesting message there. Stick around. Jeff, I'm going to get you first in the next block that we're going to talk about, a whole bunch of politics. Coming up, though. Politics on the pitch. Why the House Speaker was asked about team USA's top scorer. Plus, I spoke exclusively to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro about the future of the Democratic Party, after three elections in New York, pushed the party there further left. His response ahead.

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