Morning Joe - Iran's supreme leader endorses direct talks with U.S.

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

June 19, 2026: 8am — Iran's supreme leader endorses direct talks with U.S. To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The president saying it would be unfair for Iran not to have a ballistic missile arsenal while their neighbors in the Gulf do. If other countries have them, it's a little bit unfair for them not to have some. Slow down there, Ms. Rachel. I don't know if sharing is caring applies to ICBMs. Okay, all right. I'm a bit confused here. I'm trying to remember Trump's position on all of this before the treaty. We are going to destroy their missiles and raise their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally again obliterated.

Okay, okay. That sounds bad. Maybe that was taken out of context. Can we play the rest of the sentence? It will be totally again obliterated. Unless it's a little bit unfair. Okay, okay. Yes, thank you.

See? See, see, and you people doubted his dedication to equity and inclusion. That's The Daily Show, highlighting President Trump's reversal on ballistic missiles. Just one of many points in the president's Iran deal being criticized this morning by both Democrats and Republicans. Well, the very latest developments there. Good morning, welcome the morning, Joe. It is Friday, June 19th. With us, we have the co-host of our 8 a.m. hour staff writer at the Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire.

co-host of the Rest is Politics podcast, the BBC's Caddy K, and President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas. He's the author of the Substact, Home and Away. Good morning to you all. Richard, I want to start with you. We didn't get a chance to talk to you yesterday when all of this was unfolding when the details of this memorandum of understanding were made public. As I said, it's not just Democrats. It is Republicans on Capitol Hill. It is conservative media figures ripping this deal.

given your experience, your expertise, what's your take on what we know about it so far? Well, the substack I wrote yesterday was called defeat, and you can dress it up any way you want, you can spin it any way you want, but what it represents is a massive falling away from our articulated goals, things like regime change, unconditional surrender, and so forth. the sequencing of all this will, it gives Iran a lot of rewards up front, particularly financial rewards, which among other things, strengthen this regime among the big losers in this. And we can talk about the others are the Iranian people because this regime now is entrenched far more than it was. A lot of the big issues, as you just have been kicked down the road, particularly the nuclear issue,

which according to the president, was more than anything else, the reason for the war, you know, there was nothing new about the Iranian nuclear program. It doesn't even refer, as you just heard, in that bit about ballistic missiles or Iranian support for groups like Hamas or Hezbollah or the Bhutis, which is another way of saying Israel's concerns were totally ignored. And the irony there is hard to miss since it was Israel that pressed so hard for this war in the first place. So essentially, we've paid an enormous amount, Willie, to get the Strait of Hormuz open for 60 days toll-free. And the agreement actually talks about Iran having the right to consider putting tolls on and other arrangements

after 60 days. So, again, I'm beyond hard-pressed to make the case that this is either a good agreement or one that in any way justifies this war of choice. And, of course, the Strait of Hormuz was open on February 28th when this war started, It's so hard to measure that as a victory either. Richard, what about the money? We've talked about this proposed $300 billion investment fund paid for by Gulf states, the president said, but also perhaps by some private companies in the United States if they want to invest as well.

The sanctions, waivers, the ability to sell oil openly and freely again, which will be a windfall for Iran. What does that mean to the Iranian regime to have all that money flowing back into the country? Well, it's a windfall even without this 300. billion dollar fund. That's essentially to be established. But you've got the return of frozen assets. You've got the easing of sanctions, which among other things, when Iran sells its oil now, it will not have to sell at a discounted price. So it has really two big effects, Willie. One is that, as I mentioned, it strengthens this Iranian regime. The Achilles heel of this Iranian regime is its economic mismanagement. And what this does is buy it a lot of

time economically. And then secondly, a lot of that money can be used, among other things, for rebuilding Hezbollah, rebuilding Hamas, rebuilding missiles, rebuilding drone factories, and so far. So it's funny sort of a way, we're going to be providing the means for Iran to reestablish its ability to threaten not just its own people, but Israel and its Arab neighbors. Republican lawmakers, most of them privately are appalled by this deal. They're saying so, many who've supported Donald Trump through almost everything appalled. Some of them saying it out loud as well, voicing their reservations on the Trump administration's agreement to end the fighting, or at least to pause the fighting in Iran. In an interview yesterday, Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, criticized the provision lifting American sanctions on Iran's oil exports.

I do have concerns that certain aspects of this deal are a step in the Iran direction. For instance, we're going to lift sanctions on Iran's oil exports right away. And based on their pre-war rates of production and recent prices for a barrel of oil, you're looking at somewhere between $150 and $200 million a day. So that's $400 or $4.5 billion to $6 billion every single month. That's a lot of money. And we know that this terrorist revolutionary regime is not going to spend that money on daycares or on hospital.

They're going to use it to rebuild their drone stockpiles, their missiles to fund Hamas and to fund Hezvala. Meanwhile, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker, Mississippi blasted that proposed $300 billion

fund to rebuild Iran. Writing in a statement, it would quote, make Iran's payoff under President Obama's 2015 deal look like a pittance by comparison. So Jonathan Lemire, there you have high-ranking prominent Republican senators speaking out in very specific ways against the deal made by the president.

Has the White House absorbed in the last 24 hours all of this criticism, again, not from us, but from Republicans, from the Wall Street Journal, from the New York Post, and all over the conservative media, and are they prepared to do anything about it? Is anything changing? I mean, they hear it. They're not happy about it, but they're trying to just blow past it. It's another sign of just how desperate they are and just put this whole matter behind them. We saw an attempt to spin this yesterday from the president on Truth Social, and when he spoke

briefly to reporters. I know he spoke to Mark Caputo from Axios, I believe we're talking to a little later about that. We had J.D. Vance, you know, who's become sort of the face of these negotiations of late. You know, go to the White House briefing room yesterday and talk about it. And I think there are a couple things here. Now, behind closed doors, there are some administration who are concerned. that Iran won't hold up their end of the deal. And that's a reasonable concern because Iran has never held up their end of the deal.

So that's part of this. But I think there is a recognition. They're not going to say it publicly that this was nowhere near what they thought was going to happen when this war started. And they are hearing these Republicans, you know, slam every piece of this. None of the president's war aims, you know, that he outlined, you know, in the conflict's first days, were accomplished. I also wrote this week about this was a defeat for President Trump, you know, makes him. and the nation look weaker on the global stage. So we are going to see that they're trying to spin this.

They're going to keep trying to do that. But then I think they're going to try to just move on. That's how this, Willie, as we all know, that's how the Trump administration has always worked, in particular in the political shop in the West Wing and the president himself. He believes he has tremendous faith in his ability to change the topic of conversation. If there are bad headlines, he throws something else out there. He tries to distract.

He tries to move on to the next thing. And they think that in the coming days, they'll be able to do that as well. They're more concerned about the politics right now than they are about the long-term geopolitical ramifications. Now, that's to their mistake. Those ramifications are real, and the world's going to feel it for a long time.

But they're trying to just move on to the next story. To your point, the Epstein files were dominating the headlines on the day that this war started. The president does like to change the subject. You mentioned Vice President J.D. Vance. He's no longer traveling to Switzerland for negotiations today with Iran, raising questions about the next

phase of talks between our two countries. The White House cited difficult logistics for negotiations in announcing the postponement of that trip. The Swiss Foreign Ministry also said today's planned talks between the U.S., Iran, Qatar, and Pakistan would be pushed to a later date. Earlier yesterday, the Vice President brief reporters at the White House on the tentative deal with Iran staunchly defending the agreement through a series of often misleading claims. Vance asserted lifting oil sanctions on Iran was, quote, not a new benefit for the country. But as the New York Times points out, under the preliminary deal, Iran will be able to sell its oil for more into a wider array of buyers. The vice president also claimed the financial benefits to Iran will only be available if the country

fully complies. But the agreement states the U.S. will unfreeze Tehran's assets and release restricted funds, quote, under the implementation of this MOU. Here's more of what Vance had to say at the White House yesterday. The simple fact is that the only way the Iranians get any of those resources, not a single penny, by the way, from the United States of America under any circumstances, but the only way that they would ever get any benefit of the bargain is if they comply fully and change their behavior. And so you really have a win-win situation for the United States of America.

If the Iranians don't change their behavior, their military and their nuclear program is still destroyed. The Obama nuclear deal allowed enrichment. Ours will not. The Obama deal allowed the accumulation of stockpiled weapons-grade material. Ours is actually leading to the destruction of that stockpile of enriched material. So there are many differences. The Obama deal gave them over a billion dollars of American money.

This deal gives them zero dollars of American money. So a lot of substantive differences, but I think the most important differences are where we're coming at it from a position of strength and the fact that our Gulf Coast partners love this deal. A lot to talk through there. First, though, Iran's Supreme Leader issued his first reaction to this agreement in a statement read by state media. The leader who's still not been seen in public since he was wounded in a strike at the beginning of the war seemed to authorize his officials to hold direct talks with the U.S., but added face-to-face discussions do not mean, quote, acceptance of the enemy's position. Supreme Leader also added he believes President Trump signed the deal, quote, out of desperation. Katty K, basically this memorandum of understanding opens the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war began, and opens the door to nuclear talks, which President Trump has sort of refocused as the central question over the last couple of months, moved on from regime change and some of the other goals and said they can't have a nuclear weapon. It's unclear if Iran's actually ready to have serious nuclear talks. Yeah, and remember that those nuclear talks were also going on on February the 27th before we started. bombing. So we're really are back to the status quo ante with a kind of new element where J.D. Vance and this crack team of negotiators seem to feel that they've got a regime that

has been calling death to America for the last 47 years to decide to abandon all of that and become part of the normal operating world and part of the kind of Western economies. I mean, I think that is the most, Richard, one of the most fanciful bits of what we've been hearing, particularly from the vice president for the last few days, was that somehow over the last four months, Iran has changed its mind, whereas what everything that I hear from people on Capitol Hill and in the diplomatic community is that the intelligence is pointing in the other direction, that you have an IRGC, which is now more hardened and entrenched in its position as the leaders of the regime in Iran, not less. So where do you buy this Iran is the new Switzerland line?

By or Switzerland, I'd be offended. There's zero evidence whatsoever that Iran is more moderate. If anything, Iran has been rewarded for this aggressive behavior, whether it's towards its own people or towards its neighbors. It's being rewarded for standing up to the United States. And what the vice president just said, can I just say, the agreement, as everybody knows, simply says we're going to negotiate nuclear issues, other than that. that Iran is given the pledge of intentions, not that it means anything, that they're not going to have

nuclear weapons. But nothing that he just said is in the agreement. Iran has not agreed to either get rid of or dilute the enriched uranium they have. Iran has not agreed not to do new enrichment in the future. Iran has not agreed to allow international inspectors the kind of unfettered access they would need in order to determine what it is and is not doing. So it seems to me, not only does this agreement fall short of the administration's own initial war aims, but what the vice president just said set up standard, that I think are unlikely to be met. I think Iran is going to have future enrichment activities. I don't know what they're going to do with the existing enrichment, but that's not nearly as important as what they do in the future and what they're

prepared to do with inspectors. But Iran is going to remain active. Plus, a lot of these hardline leaders, my guess is, when they think about the last few months, they're saying to themselves, we only got attacked because we didn't have a nuclear weapon. Look at North Korea and so forth. So the idea that they've given up on that ambition, I think, is a pipe dream. Everyone's state vote. We've got a lot more to get to this morning, including President Trump, telling Axios yesterday, there are, quote, no limits to his presidential powers. the extended ceasefire with Iran. Mark Caputo joins us with more from his sit down

with the president at the White House. And as we had to break a quick look at the travelers' forecast this morning from Acqueweathers Anna Azalean. Anna, how's it looking out there? Good morning, Willie. It's a brighter day across the Northeast. Still some rain at times, but it's spottier compared to yesterday.

And we don't have the severe weather threat to talk about. For the southeast, it's more of the same from yesterday. Still life-threatening flooding because of Arthur, but heavy rainfall more this morning compared to the afternoon. Still some spotty thunderstorms, but we're looking towards improvement and recovery. As far as airport delays, Atlanta, still in the afternoon, lightning's going to be a problem. Boston and Miami are the other issues. It's helping you make the best decisions and be more in the know.

Make sure to download the Ackyweather app today. President Trump sat down with Mark Caputo of Axios at the White House yesterday for his first interview since signing the agreement that extends the ceasefire with Iran. Here's part of that conversation. What have you learned about not just the exercise of power, but the limits on your power as a result of the conflict? There are no limits. No limit. No, not, I haven't learned that lesson yet.

I know there are, but, you know, there are no limits. We defeated them totally militarily. Who else could have done a blockade like that? I did a naval blockade when not one ship was able to get through some tribe. They didn't, you know, did it last very long. And it certainly brought Iran to the table more than before. However, beginning of conflict, you had talked about you only wanted unconditional surrender. And the MOU doesn't look like unconditional surrender.

Well, it really probably is unconditional surrender. And White House reporter for Axios, Mark Caputo himself, joins us now. Mark, good morning. So take us inside that conversation with the president. There's a lot, even just in that one clip we played there. This is not unconditional surrender for Iran, obviously. But what stood out to you? What's not for me is the guy didn't really sleep.

The president hadn't slept much, I think, in maybe two hours. He had flown back from Europe. But his general attitude was very positive, despite all of the negative commentary and pushback over the deal. The president seems pretty relieved because he has an exit here. And he's looking at two things. He's looking at the stock market. And he's looking at the price of oil. And the price of oil is down.

And at one point in the interview, he said it or a few points in the interview. He said that. At one point, he said, it's a gusher. as if he literally struck oil through this deal because of the price, like, lowering. And that really impressed me because it just shows what Trump is really focused on. Yeah. Mark, you talked also about, I mean, a whole range of things. You had half an hour, I think, with the president.

You spoke about regime change. You also spoke about his relationship with Netanyahu. We heard J.D. Vance earlier being very critical of the Israeli government. surprisingly so for an American vice president. How was the president when you asked him about his relationship at the moment with Netanyahu? Yeah, specifically asked him that. And he said, like, BB, like, we're good. He said, but we've got to keep him, and he sort of paused for a second, sane.

And I said, well, how do you control Israel from attacking Lebanon and possibly sort of starting to wreck the ceasefire of the steel? and he says they're going to do what I say, and they listen to me. And it was just a very kind of clear statement from Trump that he thinks he has so much influence over there because of not just his relationship with Netanyahu, but also I think Israel's standing in the world, as Vance indicated that he has this sort of ability. Now, whether or not Netanyahu is going to go along with it, who knows, we reported a little while ago at Axios, that very hot phone call that Trump had with Netanyahu and Netanyahu attacked Lebanon. a certain point, and the Iranians started to pull out of negotiations and caused all the

stern and dron. So it's less of a close relationship now than it was heading into the war. He spent the last few days in Europe as the details of the MOU started to come out, and we report on the program the number of Republican senators, Cassidy, Cotton, Wicker, who have now come out pretty critical about the deal. Do you think, and you say that the president sounded genuinely positive about what he had achieved, Do you think now that he comes back and he turns on Fox News and he's sitting in the residence and he's watching television and he sees the criticism even coming from Fox News, that that's going to change his mind about this deal or that it's going to make it harder for him to defend it? Will the tide him who predicts what Donald Trump is going to do? Nevertheless, I would find it difficult to believe that he would change that much.

my general view of Trump is that if you criticize something that he has started to put his chips in, he doesn't like the criticism. I asked him during the interview, are you going to punish any of the Republicans who oppose you on this? Because there are elements of the deal with sanctions that are going to need to come back to Congress for sort of a final approval in part to set up or make effective as $300 billion reconstruction fund. And it took me a little while to, to get the president to answer, but he said basically no. Now, I'm wondering if that'll change. That is, if the criticism reaches a fever pitch from his own party, does he start to really push back and start to target people? I don't know that. So, Mark, congrats on the interview.

Obviously, it's yet another example of President Trump trying to assert his own reality, right? Living in denial, I'd argue, about some of the outcomes here in Iran. But he can read the polls, and certainly other members of the Republican Party can, and they see how unpopular's war was. and currently how unpopular he and the GOP is. So is there any recognition, not from Trump himself personally, but AIDS you've talked to, just about what a bind therein? Is there any sort of concern as to what this meant for November? If you scratch a few layers beneath the surface, yeah, you'll hear that,

but there certainly is going to be nothing on the record or even on background. But you can tell that what was just really concerning them is not just the poll numbers, but what was causing the underlying whole number of troubles. And that was the price of gas. And my guess here, having talked to them over the past few months about the war, is that the argument they're going to make is, look, everyone was complaining about gas prices. Well, gas prices are coming back down, and therefore what the president's proposing is a good idea. And that might be a challenging argument for his opponents and his critics to push back on.

It's realized the American people don't really pay a lot of attention to the finer points of foreign policy and, you know, these various points of the MOU. They're focused on their lives and they're driving around and every day there's been a scoreboard on street corners that people have seen. And that's the price of fuel. Even if you drive a Tesla, you at least can see what the price of fuel is doing. And it's been up and people don't like it. And now it's going to come down and the president's hope is as a result of that coming down, the fortunes of Republicans increase. is if they take yes for an answer, his version of yes, and embrace this deal. Coming up, we'll preview the big decisions due out from the U.S. Supreme Court, including

one on President Trump's attempt to limit birthright citizenship. That conversation straight ahead on Morning Joe. Hey, it's that time of the week for a look at what's on the Morning Joe reading list. And with us now, of course, New York Times' bestselling author Ryan Holiday, he hosts a top-ranked podcast, The Daily Stoic. It gets roughly 5 million downloads every month. He's also the owner, of course, of The Painted Porch, an independent bookstore in Texas, where Ryan regularly talks about reading recommendations with more than a million of his followers on social media.

And Ryan, it's always great to have you here, especially for this topic. Your theme this week sends us around Juneteenth, and let's start with a classic, up from slavery. Tell us about it. Yeah, this is one of the great American memoirs that more people need to know about. Booker T. Washington is born into slavery in 1856. He's freed at the end of the Civil War. And then when he decides he wants to go to college, he walks 500 miles to apply for college, which he gets in by cleaning the room, the waiting room. He's sitting there for hours and hours waiting, and he decides to clean the room. That's what gets him into college. And then he goes on to found the Tuskegee Institute, which people may have heard of,

improving the lives of millions of people over the subsequent years. This is a powerful memoir that more people need to read. You know, Ryan, one of the things we celebrate our 250th celebration and our anniversary is a nation. I've got to say one historical figure who certainly gets a lot of notice, but nowhere near the amount he deserves for the influence that he's had. of course, is Frederick Douglass. He is one of the two or three most remarkable figures of the 19th century. And his second autobiography really is still a classic. And it actually shows a man who is intellectually, emotionally, spiritually still progressing to become the great leader that we all

know him to be today. Yeah, as Trump said, it's a guy we're recognizing more and more these days when he is in fact and was in fact one of the most famous Americans in the world at the time of his life, more famous than Abraham Lincoln, a friend of Abraham Lincoln, I think deserves to be recognized as a second American founder, a person who understood what America was about in many ways better than some of the original founders. But in this book, you get not just that. You get, again, the powerful biography of a man who comes literally from nothing. He asserts that once you cannot be whipped, you are already half free. He fights his slave overseer, teaches himself to read,

runs away, and then becomes, as you said, not just a great thinker, but one of our great writers, one of our great political activists. And this is a biography that should be assigned in every school and every person should know who this man is. Yeah, everyone. You know, there's also, there are so many Civil War books, great Civil War books. We all have our favorites. One of mine is Eric Fonner's The Fiery Trial, but you've picked out another classic. This Hallowed Ground by Bruce Catten.

Tell us about it. Yeah, as you know, every American man has to choose between whether they become obsessed with World War II or the Civil War. I'm a Civil War guy. and I think this is the best single volume history of the Civil War. It is riveting. Bruce Catton is an incredible writer. It reads like fiction.

If you want to start somewhere with the Civil War, you can't get better than this. And then because it is Juneteenth, if you just want to read about the final year of the Civil War, his book, A Stillness at Appomattox takes us through the last 12 months of the Civil War and is also, you know, equally incredible. Another book you have recommended is Clint Smith's How the Word is Passed, and it really examines the institution of slavery and the lasting imprint that slavery has had on American history. Tell us about it. Yeah, in a way, this is a road trip book, and it's a road trip book through the real American history. Not the nostalgia, not the revisionist history, not the lost cause history, but the real history of America. He does visit Galveston where they announced Juneteenth famously, as well as Monticello and the Whitney plantation and the Angola Prison.

And you see in the history of these places, the real history of America, this is an incredibly moving book. It's worthy of all the praise that it gets. And it is, it's a reckoning with the real history of America and our actual past, which allows us, I think, to build a better future. Yeah, you've selected another classic, the warmth of other signs that looks at the great migration of six million black Americans who fled the south for the north and west from World War I to 1970. Tell us about the warmth of other signs. The New York Times asked me for my 10 best books of the 21st century so far. I said this one, and so did many other people. I think they put this book at number two. It reads like a great

Russian novel. It is a it is a history of the great migration, people moving from all over the deep south to Chicago, to New York, to Los Angeles. And not just the journey to where they ended up and how they remade those cities, but how they got there, right? How, how scary it was to drive from Alabama to Los Angeles in 1925. And in many cases that it was illegal to do so. This is just an incredible book, a look through all different types of lives. Isabel Wilkerson is an incredible writer. And yes, this is another one that everyone should read. And your final selection talks about Abraham Lincoln. A man, you know, you talk about we select World War II or the Civil War. I was more of a World War II kind of guy. But I decided one year to dive in and learn

more about Abraham Lincoln because obviously one of the two great presidents in America. history. And I found in Lincoln just an extraordinary, extraordinary story, an extraordinary man. And I agree with Tolstoy, who says he may be the single greatest figure in history since Jesus Christ. I think that's right. There's so many books about Lincoln that you can read. And what I like about this one is it's an ethical biography of Lincoln, right? So, it's not so much when he was born and what his childhood was like, but it looks at the ethical choices, the moral choices that he has to make, which is ultimately what leadership is, making those impossible moral decisions. And Lincoln struggled with those. You know,

I think it's interesting, you know, he's known as Honest Abe, but he was known as Honest Abe because he was a good lawyer, you know. He gets his reputation before politics, and he brings that reputation to politics, you know, a vexing position to say, the least. And so here we have Lincoln, you know, under, under incredible pressure, under incredible strain, struggling with these momentous choices. And he does his best. And I think here we have a biography of what leadership is supposed to be like in the ideal we're all supposed to aspire to. You know, this whole idea of honest Dave, though, let me just ending on this. I'd love to get your thought. It really doesn't fit Lincoln because Lincoln was very careful, unlike Jeff,

not to write his thoughts down. He knew that from the time he got into the Illinois legislature, then in the early 1830s, a racist state. Up until he was assassinated in April of 1865, he would spend 30 years balancing, going back and forth, doing things that people would be horrified by, and then appearing to be extraordinarily progressive on a race. Frederick Douglass talks about it, I think most compellingly, 20 years after Lincoln's death. But even the emancipation, I mean, you know, it's interesting, and forgive me for telling this Lincoln story, but it's just for, for viewers that want to understand Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to Horace Greeley and said, you know what?

Okay, my goal is the union, getting the union back together. If that means it's a union that is half free, half slave, that's fine with me. If it means it's all all free, that's right. I don't care. I only care about the union. Now, most people would read that and be horrified that Abraham Lincoln could still say that in the middle of the Civil War. But the second he said it, his advisors all said, oh, my God, he's going to move forward with the Emancipation Proclamation. because they knew Lincoln always was playing the jury,

and he was acting, I'm disinterested aid. I don't care. This slavery thing, let those crazy people think. But he made his argument that it was, we needed emancipation for military purposes, for practical purposes. And even when he was taking the moral high ground, he never showed that hand publicly, did he? Yeah, we don't give Lincoln enough credit for his craftiness

as a politician, for his craftiness as a communicator, for his ability to compromise, to bring the public around. He was a genius, not just morally, but a genius in the actual job of bringing those morals into the world, which is ultimately what leadership is about. It's not having the right thoughts. It's about bringing those right thoughts into the world, right? Deeds, not just words. And Lincoln is both. That's why he's such a towering figure. All right, Ryan, a holiday. As always, thank you so much. Have a blessed Juneteenth, and you can check out the Daily Stoic anywhere you get your podcast.

And please visit the painted porch.com for your books and for more information. We write back with more morning jail. Barack, there are no words to express how proud I am of the way you showed up and continue to show up every single day. It has been an honor to be by your side. You have made me a better person and have given us all an example that we should strive to emulate. And I hope you know, oh, there is truly no higher calling than that.

Former President Barack Obama clearly growing emotional there at those words from First Lady Michelle Obama. Yesterday's grand opening and dedication of the Obama, presidential center featured performances by Bruce Springsteen John Legend, Christina Aguilera, Stevie Wonder, Bonn on the Edge, and many more. Former President's Biden, Bush, and Clinton were all in attendance. The center is located on Chicago's south side and features a public library, playground, athletic center, and museum. It officially opens to the public today, coinciding with the Juneteenth holiday. And tonight, MS now's Michelle Norris hosts a special behind-the-scenes look

inside the Obama presidential center, featuring exclusive interviews with the former president and first lady, as well as members of their inner circle. Hope comes home, airs at 9 p.m. Eastern, right here on MS now. In a ruling yesterday, the Supreme Court narrowed a federal law

banning drug users from owning or possessing guns, and the high court still has several more cases to go before the term ends. That includes the case of Trump, B. Barbara in which the federal government is seeking to restrict birthright citizenship. For more, let's bring in former state attorney from Palm Beach County, Florida, Dave Aaronberg. Dave, great to see you. Yeah, busy docket's still ahead, but let's start there with the birthright citizenship case.

The justices seem skeptical when they heard arguments. What should we be expecting whenever that ruling does come down? Jonathan, I think the president's going to lose. The Constitution says what it says. 14th Amendment. It's right there. If you are a strict constructionist, which is what Chief Justice Roberts and his six to three, conservative majority say they are, they're going to look at the plain wording of the 14th Amendment, and they're going to say birthright citizenship can only be changed by a constitutional amendment, not by executive order. So it's going to be a loss for the

president. And they are delaying this until the very end. I think it's because you're probably going to see a bunch of concurring opinions, maybe some dissenting opinions from a and Justice Thomas, but in the end, Trump's going to lose and he'll be very disappointed in what he considers his Supreme Court that they're going to rule against him. Well, he often has received the benefit of their rulings. Dave, give us your quick take on that decision I just read about yesterday, about the drug users and guns, and also quickly highlight for us another case you're looking to hear a decision. Well, normally, Jonathan, second amendment cases are quite divisive.

at the Supreme Court. This one, though, was unanimous, which shows how marijuana has bipartisan support. You know, I know that Chief Justice Roberts wants us to believe that the Supreme Court is an apolitical institution where they just follow the law. But ever since Bush v. Gore, I don't know how you can say that with a straight face. So this ruling reflects our country's cultural shift on marijuana. It's viewed differently than other drugs. 42 states plus D.C. have some sort of weed legalization. But to me, the most surprising part of the opinion was a concurring opinion. written by the odd couple of Justice Alito and Justice Kagan. They compared marijuana use to the use of alcohol during our country's founding.

That's when alcohol was widely tolerated. It was everywhere. And yet the founding father has never passed laws to completely strip citizens of their right to bear arms simply for being regular consumers of alcohol. So to uphold a gun regulation, the Supreme Court requires the government to prove that the law is consistent with the nation's historic tradition of firearm regulation. And since the founders didn't disarm people for having a routine glass of whiskey at home, Alito and Kagan said the government cannot now disarm someone from being a recreational user of marijuana. Just to your last point, I do think that the Supreme Court is probably going to limit the president's power to fire executive branch folks like Jerome Powell and others because it's just in the Constitution, it's in the law. The president doesn't have that kind of power.

And I think that's going to be another blow to the president who thinks his power. is unquestioned and unlimited. We'll be watching for those decisions. Former state attorney from Palm Beach County, Florida, Dave, Eric, Dave, thank you so much. We want to quickly get to a few other stories we're tracking this morning. Heavy rain and flooding, the remnants of tropical storm Arthur continue to impact the southeast.

The storm made landfall yesterday morning and has since been downgraded. It now heads across the southeast, with states like Georgia, the Carolinas, and Florida, expected to experience widespread precipitation. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is warning residents living in parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida of potentially life-threatening flash flooding. There's also the risk of tornadoes. Rainfall is expected to decrease by tomorrow. And a look at how the host stations are faring at the World Cup.

Mexico's already advanced to the next round, the first team to clinch a berth in the knockout stage. They won again last night. Canada secured its first ever. World Cup victory with a 6-0 blowout yesterday evening in Qatar against Qatar. And the main event today, the U.S. men's national team will play its second match of the group stage this afternoon against Australia. That's 3 p.m. Eastern the game taking place in Seattle. They did, of course, win their opener 4 to 1 against Paraguay.

Frankly, they're looking the best they've ever have. Let's hope it continues this afternoon. That does it for us this morning. Thank you. Have a great weekend. We'll see you Monday morning. money power politics with Stephanie rule is up next after a short final break