On Thursday, the Supreme Court appeared likely to keep stopping President Trump's rules about who can become a citizen, while also trying to find a way to limit the power of nationwide court orders.

It wasn't clear what the decision would be, but most judges worried about what would happen if the government could stop children born in the US to illegal immigrants from becoming citizens, even for a short time.

The judges listened to reasons why the Trump government wanted to quickly change the rules about who can become a citizen. Courts had stopped these changes from happening across the country.

Court orders that apply to the whole country have become an important way to control Trump's plans to change the government. This has made the President and his supporters more and more annoyed.

Since January, when Trump started his second term, judges have made 40 orders that apply to the whole country, a lawyer named D. John Sauer told the court at the beginning of a long discussion.

The government wants the court to quickly deal with some issues, including birthright citizenship, which are related to immigration.

Someone could start this case and work on it fast, and it might even be used in the whole country.

But when Justice Amy Coney Barrett and others asked him questions, Sauer said that the Trump government might not support such a lawsuit. They might even try to make it take longer for groups of people to make claims together.

It's not common for the Supreme Court to have discussions about urgent appeals. Usually, the judges focus on the main problem of a case.

The government didn't ask the court to decide the big question now. If the court agrees with the government about stopping orders that affect the whole country, we don't know how long the different rules about who is a citizen will last for children born in the US.

They will probably decide by the end of June.