ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
For President Trump, it has been - to borrow a phrase - one big, beautiful week.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: This is a really big day. We've had a big week. You know, we've had a big week. We've had a lot of victories this week.
SHAPIRO: Those remarks came during a press conference where Trump praised the Supreme Court for a ruling that will make it harder for judges to put sweeping legal blocks on his actions. This caps off a high-stakes week in the Trump presidency where several matters remain unresolved. Here to talk about some of the pressures the president is facing is NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith. Good to have you in the studio.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Good to be here.
SHAPIRO: To start with the ruling today, what did Trump have to say about the Supreme Court decision?
KEITH: Oh, he is very happy about it.
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TRUMP: This morning, the Supreme Court has delivered a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law.
KEITH: Really, it is a win for his powers, his executive authority. It makes it much more difficult for opponents to put a quick stop to executive actions that they say are unlawful. President Trump has faced a lot of nationwide injunctions, halting executive actions on everything from ending birthright citizenship to halting refugee resettlement, freezing federal funds, more than two dozen. Now, he says, the way has been cleared for his administration to push ahead. Trump and others in his administration argue that lower court judges have been wrongly blocking the president and therefore the will of the American people. With this decision, the balance of power is now tilted in the president's favor, this one and the next one.
SHAPIRO: And what else is the president putting on his list of wins this week?
KEITH: Well, the strikes over the weekend on Iran's nuclear sites and the ceasefire between Iran and Israel that followed. He is not budging from his early assertion that Iran's nuclear program was totally obliterated. And today, he said he doesn't believe that Iran will go back to trying to build nuclear weapons. That, however, is far from certain. Assessments of what was actually destroyed are still underway.
A more unqualified win is what happened at the NATO summit, which Trump attended in The Hague earlier this week. It has been a big week. Member nations there agreed to spend more money on defense. That's something that Trump has been pushing for for a long time. And all of a sudden, his skepticism about the alliance seemed to just melt away. It also doesn't hurt that at one point the NATO secretary general seemed to awkwardly and perhaps accidentally refer to Trump as daddy.
SHAPIRO: No comment on that.
KEITH: Nope.
SHAPIRO: If the White House is putting those in the win column, what's in the other column?
KEITH: Yeah. This is such a pivotal time. What happens over the next 10 days or so could really define his presidency. First, there's trade. When President Trump punted on his so-called reciprocal tariffs, he set a July 8 deadline to get dozens of trade deals done. So far, just one agreement is signed, sealed and delivered, and many more are in limbo. Today, he angrily announced that he was halting trade negotiations with Canada. Members of his cabinet have said deals with other countries like India, South Korea and Japan were just around the corner for months now.
So as July 8 draws closer, Trump is wavering. You know, this traffic jam of negotiations is a problem that he created. And with the stroke of his pen, he could change it. And this is one of those times where it's really hard to tell whether this is strategic uncertainty or just plain old uncertainty.
SHAPIRO: The July 8 deadline is one thing. There's a July 4 deadline for Congress to pass this bill that's so important to his agenda. What's going on with that?
KEITH: Yeah, there seem to be some speed bumps in the Senate. The latest is that they are set to begin the process of debating the bill tomorrow. Once they get started, that will be a long process, and it's not clear whether it will pass or whether that version can pass the House. Trump wants a bill-signing celebration to coincide with Independence Day, July 4. House Speaker Mike Johnson has said it would be epic. But planning the wedding before the engagement can be dicey.
SHAPIRO: Right.
KEITH: Yeah. And it's hard to say at this moment, whether President Trump will get the party that he wants on the date that he wants. As a reminder, he calls this the One Big, Beautiful Bill because it essentially combines his entire legislative agenda into a single bill. So Trump has a lot riding on this legislation, not just tax cuts - like no taxes on tips - but also funding for immigration enforcement that he needs to keep his pledge of mass deportations. He was supposed to travel to his golf club in New Jersey this weekend. Instead, he is staying in D.C. to monitor the action on Capitol Hill and likely twist some arms.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Tamara Keith. Good to have you here. Thanks.
KEITH: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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