Morning Wire - Iran Nuclear Deal? & Birthright Citizenship | 5.16.25

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

During his Middle East trip President Trump says he may be close to making a deal with Iran on nuclear weapons, the Supreme Court hears arguments on Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions, and football coaching legend Nick Saban has been tapped to bring order to big money college sports. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. American Investment Council: Learn more about the American Investment Council and private equity at https://investmentcouncil.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Trump reveals the U.S. is close to a nuclear deal with Iran. This is a very, very nice step, and there's a violent step. The violence like people haven't seen before, I don't want to do the second step. What other developments came out of the president's Middle East tour? I'm Daily Wire, Executive Editor John Bickley, with Georgia Howl. It's Friday, May 16th, and this is Morning Wire. The Supreme Court hears oral arguments challenging birthright citizenship. What are the wider implications of the case?

We've got judges co-playing as presidents. Look, judges aren't presidents. They're not politicians. They're not there to make executive decisions. And Trump drafts coaching legend Nick Saban to bring some order to Big Dollar college athletics. You know, when President Trump spoke at, you know, commencement at Alabama, you know, he said, all my friends are saying college football is really messed up. You know, let's get together so I can figure out or we can figure out, you know, how to fix it.

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. After months of tense negotiations, President Trump says Iran is on the verge of signing a historic nuclear deal. Daily Wire, senior editor, Cabot Phillips is here with more. So, Cabot, this has massive implications for the Middle East. But for people who have not been following this story, can you just give some context? Well, for decades, Iran has been attempting to construct nuclear weapons. And the U.S. now considers them a nuclear threshold state.

That means they are very close. For obvious reasons, that's of major concern to the West. We're talking about a country whose leaders routinely referred to the U.S. as the great Satan and a government, which spends billions of dollars every year funding terror groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Now, over the last four years, President Biden attempted to revive the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran. He waived sanctions as a show of goodwill. But ultimately, Iranian officials never really came to the table for formal negotiations, and a deal was never reached. But now, after four rounds of formal talks between the White House and Iran, President Trump

says they are now ready to cut a deal. So this is potentially very fast progress. What do we think this deal is going to look like? Well, the general idea is that Iran will agree to never produce nuclear weapons in the future in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions and obviously for peace. A top advisor to the country's Supreme Leader told NBC that they would commit to never making nuclear weapons. They would agree to hand over existing stockpiles of enriched uranium, only enrich uranium to

to low levels consistent with civilian use, and allow third-party inspectors to supervise their entire nuclear process. In exchange, they want the U.S. to lift all economic sanctions, which really have just hobbled the entire Iranian economy for decades now. President Trump has also said he wants to see them cut funding to those terror groups they support, but it's unclear right now if that part will be included in the final deal. But for Trump, the top line of the deal is clear. Have a listen. It's not like I have to give you 30 pages worth of details. There's only one sense. they can't have a nuclear weapon.

Now, there certainly are critics of this agreement. They say there's no way to make sure that Iran will actually hand over all of its nuclear materials. And we just don't know if they'll even allow nuclear inspectors to look at all of their facilities. And it's worth noting many Republicans do want a deal, but not one that allows Iran to continue enriching any uranium, even low levels for civilian use. To that point, 52 GOP senators and nearly 180 GOP House members signed a letter this week to President Trump saying, quote, the scope and breadth of Iran's nuclear buildout have made it impossible to verify any new deal that allows Iran to continue enriching uranium. So we'll have to see if the White House draws a red line on enrichment or allows those lower

levels to take place. Now, why is Iran willing to make this deal now? Yeah, if you ask the White House, they say it's proof that President Trump's peace-through-strength approach is working. And it's really striking if you listen to Trump's message to the Iranians on this deal. He told them, we can go two ways, either the nice way or the not-nice way. a.k.a. the backdrop to all of this as President Trump has been in the Middle East for the past few days. What else has been going on? Well, on Thursday, he started the day in Qatar, where he

met with government officials and business leaders and touted the trillion-plus dollars of investments the Qataris and others in the region have agreed to spend on American products. He also stouted America's main military installation in the region, speaking to troops before a banner with three big words, peace through strength. Have a listen to some of that speech. My priority is to end conflicts, not start them, but I will never hesitate to wield American power if it's necessary to defend the United States of America or our partners. And this is one of our great partners right here. When we're threatened America's military, we'll answer our enemies without even thinking about it.

And after that, he made his final stop in the United Arab Emirates, where he again met with more business leaders to push for further investments in the American economy. And for people watching the video version of this show, which all of you should be doing, you can see that he was greeted with a traditional hair dance. Yes, that is a real thing. It was very cool to see that video has since gone viral. So Trump getting quite the warm welcome in Abu Dhabi. A very memorable visual for sure.

Khabit, thanks for reporting. Absolutely. Made in America means something to our country's private equity investors. When you invest 700 billion annually in American companies and the 13 million workers and families they support, you're investing in the success of, Main Street. That's money powering growth in manufacturing, tech, energy, and innovation. And it starts with private equity backing American ambition. Learn how private equity keeps American businesses growing at Investment Council.org, paid for by the American Investment Council.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Thursday in a case challenging President Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship. The pivotal case calls into question whether lower courts have the power to block executive branch actions. Joining us to break down the case is Daily Wire White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olahan. Hey, Mary Margaret. So tell us about the president's efforts to end birthright citizenship. Well, good morning, John. And yes, the court took up this case in April, and it hinges on three lower court cases issuing nationwide injunctions blocking Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship. Now, Trump's executive order interprets the 14th Amendment to deny automatic citizenship to children who are born in the U.S. if their mother was unlawfully in the country or if their father isn't a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident.

The order is currently on hold while the Supreme Court considers it, and the Trump administration is arguing that the lower courts exceeded their authority. Here's U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer speaking on this topic. Since January 20th, district courts have now issued 40 universal injunctions against the federal government, including 35 from the same five judicial districts. This is a bipartisan problem that has now spanned the last five presidential administrations. universal injunctions exceed the judicial power granted in Article 3, which exists only to address the injury to the complaining party. So let's start with the left side of the court. Where did the liberal justices stand on this issue? Well, the liberal justices clearly didn't agree with the Trump administration's arguments. They believe Trump's order is at odds with many, many years of Supreme Court precedent.

To be clear, the birthright citizenship issue was being indirectly considered. The main objectives of the case are the nationwide injunctions, and those were the focus. of Thursday's arguments. Justice Katanji Brown-Jackson said that the Trump administration arguments seem to turn the justice system into, and I'm quoting here, a kind of catch-me-if-you-can regime. Here she is explaining that thought.

Justice Kagan says, let's assume, for the purpose of this, that you're wrong about the merits, that the government is not allowed to do this under the Constitution, and yet it seems to me that your argument says we get to keep on doing it until everyone who is potentially harmed by it figures out how to file a lawsuit, hire a lawyer, et cetera. And I don't understand how that is remotely consistent

with the rule of law. One moment I found particularly interesting. Justice Sotomayor argued that the Trump administration was violating not only precedent, but also the, quote, plain meaning of the 14th Amendment. Here's that exchange. It was about giving citizenship to the children of slaves, not to the children of illegal immigrants.

who really were not even a very discreet class at that time. And there was some people in Congress who argued against the 13th Amendment just because of that. At one point, Justice John Roberts had to actually ask Justice Sotomayor to let him hear the rest of Sauer's answer. We are not claiming that because we're conceding that there could be an inappropriate case. Only a class. Can I hear the rest of his answer? Meanwhile, Justice Kagan pointed out that many lower courts are ruling against Trump's executive order. This is not a hypothetical, she says.

Every court is ruling against you. What about the conservative justices? Do they seem open to the administration's arguments? Well, some of them seem skeptical, but Justice Clarence Thomas pointed out that the United States, quote, survived until the 1960s without nationwide injunctions. Here's Justice Thomas on that point. We survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions. That's exactly correct. In fact, those are very rare, very rare even in the 1960s.

It really exploded in 2007 in our cert petition in Summers Against Earth Island Institute. We pointed out that the Ninth Circuit had started doing this in a whole bunch of cases involving environmental claims. Trump himself sounded off from the Middle East saying in a truth social post, and I'm quoting here, birthright citizenship was not meant for people taking vacations to become permanent citizens of the United States of America and bringing their families with them all the time laughing at the quote, suckers that we are. The United States of America is the only country in the world that does this. For what reason, nobody knows, but the drug cartels love it. A very consequential case in the hands of the high court now.

Mary Margaret, thank you so much for reporting. Thanks for having me. President Trump plans to create a commission to study ailing issues in college athletics with the possibility of signing an executive order. Here to tell us more is David Cohn, co-host of Daily Wires, Crane and Company. Hey, David. So we've got a lot of chaos in college sports right now. We've talked about this a little bit before.

Now, President Trump is getting involved, and it's specifically about the sort of economic, you know, Wild Wild West that we see there. Tell us what's happening here. Certainly, as you and many of your listeners know, college athletics has experienced a bit of turmoil over the last few years. And it's not just with college athletes being able to participate in their own name image and likeness, what we call NIL, but direct compensation from the universities in some of these collectives. Well, President Trump gave a commencement address week before last at the University of Alabama, and he was introduced by legendary head coach Nick Sabin. Trump went on to deliver this instantly viral line. It is clear to see the next chapter of the American story will not be written by the Harvard Crimson.

It will be written by you, the Crimson Tide. True. That's true. Now, shortly after this interaction with Coach Sabin, the president announced he was creating a commission. And that commission is going to, and I'm reading here verbatim, deeply examine the unwieldy landscape of college sports, including the frequency of player movement in the transfer portal, the unregulated booster compensation to paid athletes, the debate of college athlete employment, the application of Title IX specifically in regards to revenue sharing,

and even conference membership makeup and conference television contracts. There's a lot going on there. Now, Coach Sabin has a seat at this table, correct? President Trump has named Nick Sabin, the co-chair of this commission, with the other co-chair being Cody Campbell. He is the chairman of Texas Tech's Board of Regents, and he created Texas Tech's NIL collective. Now, Coach Saban had not given any public comments on this before the day before yesterday.

Here's a bit of what he had to say. To be honest with you, I don't really know much about this commission. I don't really know what this commission would do. You know, I think we know what needs to be done. I just think we've got to figure out who's got the will to do it. Now, Coach Saban has long called for more guardrails in the system, and here's a little bit more of what he had to say to Paul Feinbaum this week. I don't think it's in the best interest of the players to necessarily be employees.

And I think authentic name, image, and likeness is good for players, but I don't think pay for play is necessarily what we want. Many people believe Nick Saban is the best person to lead this initiative, given his on-field success with seven national championships over the years with Alabama and LSU and the fact that he is recently retired as of last year. Other people, though, see this as being a bit hypocritical given the amount of money Coach Saban himself made from college sports. Yeah, and Affleck commercials as well. That's how you hold up a trophy. So hanging over all of this is this pending settlement between the NCAA and the House. They call this the House settlement.

Is that going to affect any of these decisions and what the Commission is doing here? That's a really great question. So House, versus the NCAA is a class action antitrust lawsuit that, in effect, would allow college athletes to participate in revenue sharing from the TV deals via the universities, basically, and not just from booster collectives and the sort. There is a settlement that is expected within the coming weeks or really even within the coming days. So it's quite likely that this new endeavor would not interfere with that at all. But that didn't stop the plaintiff's attorney in this case, and his name is Steve Berman from blasting Sabin and Trump and their discussions they're having.

I want to read this quote here from Berman. College athletes are spearheading historic changes and benefiting massively from NIL deals. They don't need this unmerited interference from a coach only seeking to protect the system that made him tens of millions of dollars. On the other hand, though, the NCAA would love the involvement from the government. Now, you know, we have talked at nauseam with Senators Tommy Tupperville and Ted Cruz on our show craning company, there have been no bills put forward that have gained traction in Congress. So I think President Trump is now saying, well, I'll take matters into my own hands.

My massive settlement on the horizon. Fascinating stuff happening. It is fascinating. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with more news you need to know.