On Thursday, the Supreme Court seemed likely to keep stopping President Trump's rules about who can become a citizen, while also looking for ways to limit court orders that affect the whole country.

It wasn't clear what the decision would be. But most of the 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, even though lower courts had stopped these changes from happening in all states.

Nationwide rules have become a key way to control Trump's plans to change the government, and they are making the Republican 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 as arguments began. These arguments lasted over two hours.

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

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 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 arguments about urgent appeals. Usually, the judges focus on the main problem of the case.

The government didn't ask the court to decide the big question now. If the court agrees with the government about rules that apply everywhere, we don't know how long the different rules about citizenship will affect children born in the US.

We think they will decide by the end of June.