Up First from NPR - Syria's Relationship With Israel, Birthright Citizenship, Trump's Big Bill

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

President Trump did not make normalizing relations with Israel a condition for dropping sanctions against Syria, raising questions about how the two neighbors must navigate an unclear future. The Supreme Court hears historic arguments in a case challenging the constitutional provision guaranteeing birthright citizenship. House Republicans are still negotiating the details of a wide-ranging legislative package they hope to advance by the end of next week.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Krishnadev Calamur, Carrie Kahn, Kelsey Snell, Ally Schweitzer and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ana Perez, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis, and our technical director is Carleigh Strange. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

On his trip through the Middle East, President Trump takes a friendly approach to the new ruler of Syria. What does that mean for Syria's neighbor Israel, the U.S. ally still bombing targets around Syria's capital? I'm Steve Inskeep with Amartinas and this is Up First from NPR News. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution guarantees citizenship to people born in the United States. Both the Supreme Court and Congress have affirmed that, so why is the issue back at the high court?

And House Speaker Mike Johnson is struggling to unite his conference around President Trump's quote, big, beautiful bill. There's red states and blue state folks, right? We got more red state folks in our conference and they have concerns about it. We have blue state people, we have realities they they've got to deal with it at home. Can they find a compromise before Memorial Day? Stay with us, we've got all the news you need to start your day. These days there's a lot of news.

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President Trump is in the Gulf state of Qatar on the third day of his trip to the Middle East. He received a standing ovation from a crowd in Saudi Arabia when he vowed to lift US sanctions against Syria. And he had compliments for that country's new leader which he shared with reporters on Air Force One. Syrians celebrated the lifting of sanctions on the streets of Damascus although all of this is causing some confusion in Syria's neighbor, Israel,

which was Syria's enemy for decades. What does all this mean for a close U.S. ally? Let's ask NPR's Hadil al-Shalchi. She joins us now from Tel Aviv. So Hadil, President Trump says sanctions on Syria will be lifted. He also said that Syria's new leader is ready to normalize ties with Israel.

Is that what he really wants? I mean, it really appears so. Syrian President Ahmad al-Shar'a has been saying he wants no trouble with Israel for months now. And yesterday he said in a speech that Syria will be a land of peace. You know, the Syrian government has been making these overtures ever since they took power in December. You know, two weeks after the fall of the Assad regime, I spoke to the Damascus governor, Mahmoud Marwan, who said on behalf of his leader, Syria wanted cordial relations with Israel. This is what he told me.

Marwan said, we want peace and we cannot be an opponent to Israel or an opponent to anyone else. He also told me that he wanted the United States to facilitate those relations. And then yesterday on the heels of Trump's comments, Shara spokesperson Ali Rifa'i spoke to Israeli media and he backed this up. He said, we want peace in the region and that includes Israel. All right. Is that what we're hearing from Israel? So there's no official comment yet, but we do know that Israel was kind of stunned at

the news that Trump wants to lift sanctions. You know, Israeli media had reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Trump not to lift them. Israel's line all along has been that shut on his people are terrorists, that Israel must defend itself from them, and they say that's why they need to expand, and they've been expanding past a long recognized buffer zone into Syria. Israel's also been continuing its bombing campaign in targets in and around Damascus. But at the end of the day, here in Israel, Syria of course is a consideration, but front of mind is the war in Gaza. Yeah, Israel has been continuing air strikes

there in the past three days while President Trump is in the region. What's going on there? Well, just in the past 24 hours, Gaza health officials said at least 150 Palestinians were killed, including dozens of children in Israeli airstrikes in the north and the south of Gaza. You know, Israel's also blocked aid into Gaza for more than 10 weeks now. No food, medical supplies, shelter supplies have entered Gaza in that time. Israel says it wants to pressure Hamas to release more hostages that way. But aid groups say that Gaza is on the brink of famine, that nearly half a million Palestinians are in, quote, catastrophic levels of hunger. During this trip that Trump is on in the Gulf,

there haven't been any public talks about a ceasefire. But this morning, he did tell reporters that he has concepts for Gaza, that he'd be happy to let the U.S. get involved and he'd make Gaza, quote, a freedom zone. All right, that's MPR's Hadil Alsalchi from Tel Aviv. Hadil, thanks. You're welcome. Today the Supreme Court hears arguments over birthright citizenship. The Constitution's 14th Amendment says in part, all persons born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens of the United States.

The Trump administration sought to overturn that language and lost in lower courts. The justices chose to hear the administration's appeal. Joining us now is NPR legal affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg. So, Nina, what exactly is the issue in this case? Well, A, that's the million dollar question. At one level, it's about birthright citizenship, namely the constitutional provision that, as you say, guarantees automatic citizenship to anyone born in the United States. The Justice Department, knowing that it almost certainly will lose its claim that the 14th Amendment doesn't really mean what it says, the department has instead asked the court

to focus on a separate question, a technical legal question that could make the legal process for challenging any Trump policy far more difficult and lengthy. Okay. So this might be an odd one. Can you lay it out for us, please? Not only does the text of the 14th Amendment guarantee automatic citizenship, the Supreme Court 127 years ago unanimously declared that is clearly the meaning of the amendment. And that precedent has never been disturbed. And to put icing on the cake, Congress passed a statute codifying birthright citizenship almost a century ago. President Trump, however, has never accepted any of that. So on day

one of his second presidential term, he issued an executive order barring citizenship for any child born in the U.S. whose parents were either not here legally or who were here legally but on a temporary basis like a work visa. Immigrant rights groups and 22 states promptly challenged the Trump order in court. Since then, three federal judges, both conservative and liberal, have ruled that the Trump order is, as one put it, blatantly unconstitutional, and three separate appeals courts have refused to unblock those orders while appeals are ongoing. All right, so given that, then why did the administration go to the Supreme Court on an emergency basis asking it for help?

Well, as I said, the department certainly knows it's going to lose on birthright. So instead of asking the court to rule on the legality of Trump's executive order, the administration is asking the court to do something else, to curb the power of federal district court judges to do what they did here, not only rule against the administration, but bar enforcement of Trump's executive order nationwide. The odd result is that today the context is birthright citizenship, but most of the debate is likely to focus on the tool these judges used called universal injunctions, like the ones in this case that have barred the administration from enforcing its policy anywhere in the

country while the case proceeds through the appellate courts in numerous jurisdictions. Legal scholars, of course, differ dramatically on this question of nationwide injunctions and whether they're sometimes needed to prevent legal harms from continuing. But ultimately, Notre Dame law professor Samuel Bray thinks this case was filed at just the right time psychologically when the justices are slogging through lots of other emergency appeals. You just have to imagine the justices are looking at the potential for the emergency docket consuming the entire summer when they're supposed to be away. The summer break, he says, is good for the justices. They get time to recharge, let tempers cool, and come back from vacation refreshed for

a new term in the fall. But in layman's terms, this could really screw up their summer. And everyone understands that. NPR Legal Affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg. Nina, thank you. My pleasure. President Trump has talked for months about what he calls one big, beautiful bill to accomplish much of his domestic policy agenda, including immigration and tax policy.

That bill is advancing through the House this week, and it turns out its beauty is in the eye of the beholder. House Speaker Mike Johnson wants the bill passed by Memorial Day, but is still contending with tensions with his own party. Joining us now to talk through this is NPR's Barbara Sprunt. So Barbara, a big bill, two weeks to go to finish it. Where are they in that process? Yeah.

So three committees voted yesterday to finalize their portions of this big bill. That includes things like extending the 2017 tax cuts, no taxes on tips and overtime, cuts to Medicaid, and cuts to the food assistance program called SNAP. Now, the Budget Committee is meeting tomorrow to take all the individual bills approved by these various committees and put them into one big package. And that is what House leadership wants to vote on next week. Okay, so that's what they want.

I'm wondering though if they can get it because we've talked before about the speaker struggling with a narrow majority. So what divisions is he dealing with now? Yeah, that's right. Well, there's two main groups here. One, members of the Freedom Caucus have pushed back on the current state of bills saying they just won't result in significant enough deficit reduction, which they see as their mandate here.

And that proposals to add work requirements to Medicaid, the joint federal state health care program for those with disabilities and the elderly and low income wouldn't kick in soon enough. It's worth noting that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the changes in this House bill mean at least 8.6 million people enrolled in Medicaid could lose coverage. And some moderate members worry that those cuts could become a major issue in the midterms next year. All right.

So who else is upset or worried? Well then you've got the SALT group, members in districts with high property taxes like California and New York who want to see the cap on deduction for state and local taxes be lifted significantly. And that's expensive to do. So it's fundamentally at odds with members who want to slash spending overall. So there's a lot of tension there. And Speaker Johnson is acutely aware of that.

Here he is yesterday. There's red states and blue state folks, right? We got more red state folks in our conference and they have concerns about it. We have blue state people. We have realities they've got to deal with at home and they need some relief for their constituents. So I am trying to be the sort of the neutral empire in the negotiation and build consensus. He said he's confident they'll be able to work out a compromise that everyone can live with even if everyone isn't fully happy and he's planning on meeting with members concerned about SALT this morning. Okay, let's just say

Barbara for a second that they overcome all of this and the House of Representatives passes that big bill next week. What happens then? What happens after that? Then comes the Senate, where some Republicans are already throwing cold water on the House's efforts here. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson told our colleague Deirdre Walsh yesterday that the House bill is quote, a sad joke.

Several senators on the GOP side have said they can't support it in its current form. And this makes some House members concerned. There's the dynamic of they don't want to take a vote on a tough package that's going to have some controversial elements like cuts to Medicaid only to then be rolled by the Senate. So up here, it's not just tension within these to then be rolled by the Senate. So up here it's not just tension within these groups and these factions in the House. It's also tension between these two Republican run chambers. That's DC, right? That's how DC works. That's FBR's Barbara Sprant, Barbara, thanks. Thanks, eh?

And that's a first for Thursday, May 15th. I'm Ian Martinez. And I'm Steve Inskeep. Make your next listen, Consider This, from NPR. Up First covers three big stories of the day. Consider This drills down on one. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Christian DeV Kalimor, Kerry Kahn, Kelsey

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