SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
This time of the year is always busy at the U.S. Supreme Court, and nobody knows that better than Nina Totenberg.
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DETROW: Hey, Nina.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: Hey. It's - I would say - fun to be here, but it's a little stressful, too.
DETROW: So June is usually pretty stressful for you, I imagine.
This is Nina and me about a decade ago on Facebook Live in front of the Supreme Court. It was June 2016, and we were ticking through a flood of decisions coming out at the end of the term and vying for space on the plaza with tourists and court watchers.
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TOTENBERG: Again, we've got a lot of stuff going on behind us, so just don't - just ignore it.
DETROW: We talked about an immigration case, an abortion case and an affirmative action case out of Texas.
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TOTENBERG: In a Texas school, you get admitted, but 25% - hey, guys. Quiet. (Laughter) Sorry, folks. This is real life.
DETROW: And real deadlocked. Nina had to file for ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. So once we wrapped, we got in her car and drove back to NPR. It isn't that far of a drive, but Nina had stuff to do, so she booked it, weaving through traffic, honking, yelling at other drivers, gunning it through yellow lights, all while classical music played in her car.
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DETROW: This was my professional initiation into the world of Nina Totenberg, juggling multiple Supreme Court decisions, commanding a crowd to ensure good audio quality and careening back to headquarters to make it on the air on time. Nina's been doing some version of this for five decades. So we wanted to have her on our weekly Reporter's Notebook segment as the Supreme Court once again nears the end of its term. And this time, it is even busier than usual.
TOTENBERG: I've never lived through a period like this. The government is filing motions almost daily.
DETROW: That's 2025 Nina. This spring, the Supreme Court has become the focal point of the legal battle over President Donald Trump's executive authority. He signs executive orders. Lower courts block them. The government asks the Supreme Court to unblock the blocks, and Nina reports on all of it. I started by asking Nina how she would describe the dynamic right now between the court and President Trump, who did nominate a third of the court's current justices.
TOTENBERG: I think the word would be very awkward.
DETROW: Yeah.
TOTENBERG: I mean, so at the end of last term, the chief justice wrote this decision for mainly the six conservative members of the court, giving President Trump enormous immunity and other future, at that point, former presidents 'cause he was a former president saying, my immunity sort of travels with me a great deal. And the court gave then-former President Trump more than his lawyers had actually asked for. It was an incredibly broad ruling. But now, it has seemed in the last few months since President Trump has been in office, that the court is increasingly dubious about some of the assertions that the solicitor general and the president are making. That doesn't mean that it's not a conservative court, and it doesn't mean that it hasn't sided with the administration plenty of times. But it is increasingly skeptical, I would say.
DETROW: And as we talk about the tension between these two institutions, there was a really interesting moment after President Trump addressed Congress earlier this year, an interaction between him and Chief Justice Roberts, where he goes up and he shakes the Chief Justice's hand - and I forget exactly what he said - but thank you, thank you; I won't forget it. And that was by and large interpreted as Trump thanking him for the immunity ruling.
TOTENBERG: And the expression on the chief's face was priceless. It was sort of frozen, like with a frozen smile. And, you know, none of these justices want to be the handmaiden of any administration. They don't see themselves that way. There are six conservative members of the court who are very devoted to a conservative ideology that they have spent their lives promoting. And they don't think that what they do is just because Trump asks them to. They do what they think is right. Some people may say, well, they're influenced by their own personal views, but they don't think that. So this is really an affront to them in a way, and it's very hard for them, I think, all to deal with it.
DETROW: I want to talk about the way that you have covered the Supreme Court, and I think let's just use Chief Justice Roberts as an example because I know you're very thoughtful and deliberate about how you approach covering the justices, how you view this with a long-term view, how you try to get to know and understand the people who are going to be shaping the courts. When did you first meet John Roberts? When did you start talking to John Roberts?
TOTENBERG: You know, he used to be somebody that I used often in my stories when he was a lawyer because he had a lot of cases in front of the Supreme Court when he was a private lawyer. And I remember one day when I got caught in traffic, and I was, like, 20 minutes late, and I came in thinking, oh, my God, I have - you know, he's left by now. And there he is, sitting there patiently waiting for me. There was no remonstrating. You know, there was there was no saying, how dare you come late? None of that. We did a very nice interview. It was very clear. He was always terrific, but he is not one of these people that you can sort of get to know easily. And I don't know him. Well, let's just put that really...
DETROW: Yeah.
TOTENBERG: I don't think anybody who covers the court does. And, you know, he has a few really close friends, but he's not one of these people who you see all over social Washington a lot. That's not his style.
DETROW: Whether it's Roberts or the other justices, can you tell us about how you try to understand the justices that you cover better, how you try to engage with them, given the very formal roles that they have and the way that they carry out their power and rulings that it's your job to try to understand and bring to our audience?
TOTENBERG: I want to make clear - this is not like covering Congress or the White House. You don't just bop into a justice's chambers and say, hey, how about lunch today?
DETROW: Yeah.
TOTENBERG: It doesn't happen. They keep a fairly good distance from most reporters, although there will be social occasions where you could chat occasionally, which is why I try to break bread with any of them who will break bread with me. And it's easier to do when you've known somebody in the past. So there are a couple of members of the court who I knew well before they were on the court. It's a lot easier to invite them to dinner than it is to invite somebody who doesn't really know you. It seems a little strange. I'm not going to ask them anything at dinner about the court's business. I just want to get to know them and have them know me as well.
DETROW: This is something that is a big part of beat reporting, but people with opinions on the internet chime in on a lot.
TOTENBERG: Yeah.
DETROW: And can you explain what the value is as a reporter, what you're getting as a journalist by trying to understand somebody better who you're covering?
TOTENBERG: You get a real sense of what motivates them, how they came to the ideas that they came to, what were the influences, how they think. It's incredibly helpful. And I actually think it's good for the justices. I don't think that coming to dinner with a few interesting people is going to compromise them.
DETROW: I think, like you cover this institution that due to the fact that - probably partially due to the fact that people wear robes, but also due to the fact that this isn't televised, there's - like, there's still this mystery to the Supreme Court that there's certainly not to Congress, increasingly not to the White House. Can you just help listeners understand what it's like day to day? Like, what is it like when you're walking into the Supreme Court, sitting down in the back and covering oral arguments, and how has that changed over the years? I mean, I know one big way it's changed is you don't get to reenact people's questions...
TOTENBERG: Yes.
DETROW: ...Like you did for so long. It was, like, your signature style.
TOTENBERG: Forever, forever - when we didn't have audio.
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TOTENBERG: ...Percent of the vote. Chief Justice Roberts - well, if you think that there was a prior Democratic gerrymander in 1990, can't the new party in power redress that? Answer - they should not be able to after a court-drawn plan is in place. They should have to...
You would go running downstairs after an argument. We would stand around, you know, sort of supplementing each other's notes, the group that covers the court regularly, and then we would run to file. So now we do have the audio, and I think, even though it's in some ways easier and in some ways harder to put together a piece quickly when you have two hours of audio, for example, and a lot of it is very legal mumbo jumbo, it's - I think it's really valuable for the public 'cause they can listen to the whole thing if they want. But I mean, it is a little bit like covering the Kremlin.
DETROW: Yeah. How so?
TOTENBERG: (Laughter) Well, you have no idea what's going on behind those closed doors.
DETROW: Yeah.
TOTENBERG: The court always says the most important thing it does is issue opinions of the court and that you're supposed to read those and then rely on the likes of me and my colleagues to report on them. But you don't have the kind of access that you do when you cover other institutions in Washington. You just don't.
DETROW: Yeah. When I covered Congress, you could physically run down lawmakers.
TOTENBERG: Right.
DETROW: When I covered the White House, you'd be in the same room, and you could yell questions. Neither of those are options of the Supreme Court. You can't yell a question in the middle of...
TOTENBERG: (Laughter).
DETROW: ...Oral - I guess you could, then you wouldn't be in the courtroom much longer (laughter).
TOTENBERG: You wouldn't be ever invited back (laughter).
DETROW: What do you think - I'm thinking about how this institution and this beat has changed over the years. What do you think the biggest cases that fundamentally changed the way that the country sees the courts, fundamentally changed the way that the court operates are over that period of time?
TOTENBERG: Well, obviously, Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs opinion - Bush v. Gore essentially decided the outcome of an election. The Pentagon Papers was a hugely important case in its time, and it established pretty clearly that it's very - going to be extremely hard to get a temporary restraining order to prevent publication of information that the press has gotten its hands on, whether it's done so in a nice way or not.
DETROW: You mentioned Bush v. Gore, this is the 2000 decision to stop the partial recount in Florida in an election that George W. Bush ends up winning by about 500 votes. Can you tell us about your personal experience covering that story?
TOTENBERG: Well, my honeymoon had been when the first argument in Bush v. Gore - and I - we'd picked the day to get married in November, figuring that all of Washington would be gone then.
DETROW: Right, 'cause you put life on hold until after election, if you're a reporter.
TOTENBERG: Right. You put life on hold until after an election, and this was after the election. Well, so we go off on our honeymoon, and I was run over by a power boat (laughter) on my honeymoon. And I'm very lucky to be alive, and I'm very lucky to be married to a trauma surgeon.
DETROW: Yes.
TOTENBERG: So we come back, and I'm on the steps of the Supreme Court on the morning of the penultimate argument. And I'm doing a standup interview with the "Today Show," and Matt Lauer says to me, Nina, we read all about you being - having this terrible accident on your honeymoon, but you look really great. And I said, well, Matt, it's a triumph of makeup and drugs.
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TOTENBERG: And that was exactly accurate. One of the reasons I think I don't have a clear memory of all the things that happened back then is that - the drugs (laughter).
DETROW: That is Nina Totenberg, NPR's legal affairs correspondent. Nina, thank you.
TOTENBERG: Thank you, Scott.
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