On Thursday, the Supreme Court appeared likely to keep blocking President Trump's rules about who can become a citizen, while also searching for ways 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 from becoming citizens, even for a short time, just because their parents were in the country illegally.

The judges listened to reasons why the Trump government wanted to quickly change the rules about who can become a citizen, after other courts said they couldn't do it yet.

Court orders that apply to the whole country have become a key way to stop Trump from changing the government, but they also make him and his supporters very annoyed.

Since January, when Trump started his second term, judges have made 40 orders that affect the whole country, a lawyer named D. John Sauer said in court at the beginning of a two-hour discussion.

The government wants the court to quickly deal with birthright citizenship and other immigration issues.

Someone could quickly start a case like this, and it might even work in the whole country.

But when Justice Amy Coney Barrett and others asked him questions, Sauer said the Trump administration might not support this lawsuit. They might even try to make it take longer for many people to join the case.

It's not common for the Supreme Court to talk about urgent requests. Usually, the judges focus on the main problem of the case.

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

They will probably decide by the end of June.