From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Daily.

Today, the Supreme Court upholds President Trump's travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries.

What that tells us about the depth of the president's power over immigration.

It's Wednesday, June 27.

Adam Lipteck, what was the fundamental question that the Supreme Court was deciding on Tuesday?

The Supreme Court was considering whether President Trump had the lawful authority to do something he'd long wanted to do, spoke about on the campaign trail.

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.

Which was to impose restrictions on travel from a number of mostly Muslim countries.

We have no choice. We have no choice.

That question has two pieces to it. One is did Congress give President Trump the authority to make these judgments in the realm of immigration and national security.

And the second one was whether he had illicit motives, whether he had animus against Muslims in imposing these executive orders.

I think Islam hates us. There's something there that is a tremendous hatred there. There's a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it.

Because if he did, there's an argument that the Constitution prohibits the action.

And we can't allow people coming into this country who have this hatred of the United States and of people that are not Muslim.

I guess the question is, is there a war between the West and radical Islam or is there a war between the West and the Islam that's right?

It's radical but it's very hard to define. It's very hard to separate because you don't know who's who.

And that's what lower courts had determined that his original intent to keep Muslims out of the United States as he articulated it had kind of contaminated this travel ban.

And they ruled against it over and over.

The President Trump's latest executive order is a scaled back version of the original which was struck down by a federal court.

There were three versions of the travel ban. The administration issued another travel ban. It's third in eight months.

In this version, they dropped the country of Sudan. They added Chad, which is since again, been dropped. But they added North Korea and Venezuela.

And those are obviously not predominantly Muslim countries.

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