-- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com an historic and stunning showdown is under way right now between the obama administration and federal judges. a three-member appeals panel all republican appointees has taken issue with the president's jawboning of the u.s. supreme court over the health care reform law. now an unusual demand from those judges is putting a lot of heat from the justice department in washington. brian todd is following this battle for us. brian, what's going on? >> reporter: one seasoned court analyst says federal judges almost never do this kind of thing. whether he intended to or not an appeals court judge has publicly taken on president obama and walked into the political fire. >> reporter: a barometer of how high the political stakes are for the president and his opponents on the health care law. a public sparring match between president obama and the courts. on monday, mr. obama says this about the supreme court's review of health care. >> ultimately, i'm confident that the supreme court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected congress. >> reporter: but it's the supreme court's job to decide what's constitutional, what's not and the federal appeals court judge takes offense with the president. judge jerry smith of the fourth circuit, a reagan appointee, interrupts a justice department lawyer arguing a part of the health care law. surely the president is not questioning the authority of the courts to strike down laws if they think they're unconstitutional. he uses a partisan term to challenge the lawyer. [ inaudible ] that has troubled a number of people who have read it as somehow a challenge to the federal courts or to their authority or to the appropriateness of the concept of judicial review and that's not a small matter. >> saying what his position is on the authority of the courts in these cases. attorney general eric holder says they'll respond appropriately. >> i think that what the president said a couple of days ago was appropriate. he indicated that we obviously respect the decisions that courts make under our system of government. >> reporter: the president did later dial back from his initial remarks saying he's sure the supreme court will exercise its power carefully, but conservatives still don't like his tone in those first remarks. >> the president is trying to bully the court here, threatening them that if they don't come down his way they're going to have the same thing happen in the state of the union address in 2010. he'll be calling them activists and he'll be saying they're political. >> reporter: the white house responds. >> it's the reverse of intimidation. he's simply making an observevation about precedent and the fact that he expects the court to adhere to that precedent. >> reporter: cnn analyst ron bronstein says every aspect of this is extraordinary. >> i think what we are seeing here is the courts and the confrontation between the administration and the courts being dragged into the overall polarization to define so much of modern, political life. >> reporter: brownstein says the courts may not have been able to avoid being drawn into the political fight here. he calls this the most significant piece of democratic legislation since medicare and it's an election year, the perfect political storm. wolf? >> certainly is. you are, though, getting some information, brian, that even some conservatives are upset with this appeals court judge, aren't you? >> that's right. most won't put their names to this publicly, but conservative legal sources are telling us they're disappointed with this judge's order saying it looks petty. one right-leaning attorney who opposes the health care law says, quote, it looked like he was giving a homework assignment to an unprepared student and it has the judiciary on the defensive, end quote. this could give rise that the courts are looking at health care from a conservative standpoint rather than the constitutional standpoint and they don't like this what judge has done. >> thank you. let's take a closer look at this growing showdown. joining us is jeffrey toobin and jessica yellin and our chief political analyst gloria borger. jeffrey, first to you. how out of the ordinary is it that a federal appeals court judge like this one could make such a demand of the department of justice, a three-page single-spaced letter explaining what the president has in mind. >> totally extraordinary and totally inappropriate. this was a judicial hissy fit, and what the president said was entirely appropriate and entirely within his rights as an american citizen to express his opinion about this law. he wuasn't intimidating the supreme court and couldn't intimidate the supreme court if he wanted to and he was simply saying that the law is constitutional and this judge, doing this ridiculous patronizing act to the department of justice has simply made himself look ridiculous. >> you know, a lot of conservatives including the editorial page writers of "the wall street journal" are going after the president himself and a former constitutional law professor at the university of chicago and "the wall street journal." president obama is a former president of the harvard law review and famously talked constitutional law at the university of chicago, but did he somehow not teach the historic case of marbury versus madison. that's the case of 1803 which said that the supreme court can decide if congress has passed unconstitutional laws even if congress passed those laws overwhelmingly? >> of course, and that, marbury versus madison remains the law of the land. nothing obama said conflicts with marbury versus madison. of course, the supreme court has the right to strike down this law, but what the president was saying he doesn't think the supreme court should exercise that. >> he went a little bit further and just to be precise i'll look at the words. he said it would be unprecedented for the court to overturn the law. >> what would be so unprecedented about the supreme court right now overturning the health care reform law, given 200 years of the supreme court doing these kinds of things. >> it would be unprecedented for the supreme court to overturn the central economic legislation of -- of -- of president and a congress. in the 1930s the supreme court did something almost this dramatic in overturning some of the new deal and then in 1937 they went back on this, but it is certainly extremely unprecedented for an act of this magnitude to be declared unconstitutional. that doesn't mean that the supreme court can't do it. it doesn't even mean that they shouldn't do it. but the fact that it is unprecedent side simply a fact all statement which the president, i think, had every right to make. >> jessica yellin, you're at the white house and you're talking to white house officials all of the time. he made one statement on monday and he seemed to backpedal a bit on tuesday. do officials privately acknowledge that the president may have fumbled this one. >> reporter: they won't believe that they believe he fumbled, but he was cleaning up at the very least, his remarks on tuesday. the remarks he made on monday, i know that he was prepared to be asked the question. he thought it through and he came out and said what he did on monday after consideration, but the -- the way he expressed it ended up being messy, at the very least, because it stirred up a hornet's nest, and by the way, we're all responding to it. ret ma the remarks on tuesday were far more nuanced and far more delicate and drew finer distinctions to allow everybody to understand more carefully what he meant. the bottom line is what he was doing on monday was an attempt to steer the public discussion and not a deliberate attempt by the white house to play the refs on the court and it was taken as an attempt to sway the court and that's where it's been taken as a sticky issue, and so we saw him refine his comments on tuesday, wolf. >> and, gloria borger, you wrote a terrific column entitled "epic failure from washington sets us adrift." let me read a line and then we'll talk been this supreme court case is a waterloo for political polarization because it underscores something we should have known all along. great changes in national public policy should never be erected on slender partisan majorities and you're referring to the fact that health care reform law was passed with virtually no republicans onboard. >> that was something i learned covering the congress when senator daniel patrick moynihan was in the congress, and just watching this whole debate it makes you understand that every side is suspect no matter what it does, wolf. you have the congress being suspect with such a low approval rating and having approved health care reform in a very partisan way and in our polls, the supreme court is suspect. half of the public believes it makes political decisions and barack obama is somebody who polarizes the american public one way or another, some like the president and some don't like the president. if the law had been passed in a bipartisan way, i don't think, sure, it might have been challenged before the court at one point or another, but i think this kind of vitriol that sets it up to be a huge, political argument and a huge part of the political discussion in the campaign would not exist. >> we'll see how the attorney general and the justice department respond to this federal appeals court judge tomorrow. gloria will be filling in for john king later today, "john king usa" at 6:00 p.m. eastern. jessica yellin will be back and jeffrey toobin, always good to have him in "the situation room." you know who else is always good to have in "the situation room," jack cafferty. >> just in time for the election and for courting the hispanic vote, the obama administration is out with yet another way to ignore the nation's immigration laws. the department of homeland security now wants to issue so-called unlawful presence waivers. these are meant for illegal aliens who are related to u.s. citizens. the way the law works now is these people have to go back to their native country and request a waiver of inadmissibility, but the federal government says the proposed changes would significantly reduce the length of time u.s. citizens are separated from their immediate relatives, the illegal aliens. critics are slamming the proposal calling it stealth amnesty and back door amnesty and that's exactly what it is. mr. obama promised immigration reform when running in 2008 and that never happened. in instead of reform it looks like bending of the rules for some of the estimated 12 million illegal aliens. gee, just in time for the president's re-election campaign. it must be a coincidence. they started cutting back on deportations without criminal records and started reviewing all existing cases that resulted in a big decline in deportations and even though one study shows that immigrants with criminal records don't necessarily make up a larger portion of those deported. president obama told univision, pardon me, in february that the administration is re-emphasizing its focus on criminals and at the borders and not on, quote, hardworking families. it's all designed to get enough hispanic votes to get a second term in the white house. here ate question, why does president obama continue to refuse to enforce the nation's immigration laws? go to cnn.com/caffertyfile or go to my blog or t"the situation room's" facebook page. >> who thought we would be talking about marbury versus madison? >> you would. >> i tweeted about it earlier in the day. >> 1803. just missed it, right? just a few years. >> just barely. >> jack, thank you. rick santorum is vowing to fight even as mitt romney widens his lead. now some are wondering if santorum wants romney to lose to president obama so that santorum has a better chance in 2016. we go inside the republican battle next. the party chairman reince priebus standing by to join us live. mitt romney is reasserting himself as the inevitable nominee. wait until you hear how he's laying into president obama today. the tornado outbreak. we're going there live. stay with us. you're in "the situation room." top quality lobster is all we catch. 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>> hi, wolf, by the way. i don't know what he's going to do. i think that, number one, i think governor romney had a big night last night, so i think we can all agree on that, and i think, number two, pennsylvania's going to be extremely important. i think these candidates for whatever it's worth have set up a narrative that if you can't win your home state that spells a pretty big problem. so i think those are facts that we can all agree on. i'm neutral on this, and i do think the candidates including speaker gingrich and others have bought into this narrative that these guys have to win their home states. and so i think there's some truth, i guess, in general to what's with being said, but i don't know first hand what these guys are going to do. my job is going to be obviously to rally around the nominee and defeat this president. >> my own sense is that if he does win. santorum does win pennsylvania april 24th, take a look at what's happening in may. you have texas, arkansas, nebraska, kentucky, north carolina, west virginia, those are all states where santorum could do well, as you well know, in states like that. how worried are you, as party chairman, that it could be brutal through may that this fight could get really intense and ugly on setting the stage for a weakened eventual republican nominee. >> i'm not, wolf. i'm not worried about it at all. i think that actually, we're getting a lot of benefits from this primary. we made over 1 million voter contacts in wisconsin. we have volunteers all over america including 50,000 new volunteers in hawaii that will be available out there and an important u.s. senate race. so i don't buy into that. i do, though, believe that momentum and delegates together matter a great deal, and the other piece of this, of course, is you need money, right? so you have to be able to show donors out there that you have a viable shot at getting to the requisite 1144, and so all of these things converge. we're going to be patient here. we have been. we've been raising record amounts of money so it's not like we're suffering here in the republican party. the opposite, we're benefitted from the excitement and i still think this thing will come to an end, wolf, within the next month or two. >> and you think romney will be the nominee? >> we'll have to wait and see. >> without endorsing him you can just give me your opinion. >> yeah. i could do that, but right now i'm going to play the rnc chairman position to the book, and we're going to get behind a nominee no matter who wins and hold this president accountable to the promises he made to the american people that he can't seem to keep. >> reince priebus, thanks very much for coming in. good luck. >> thank you, wolf. >> the verbal battle between romney and president obama is heating up. listen to this. >> he wants us to reelect him so we can find out when he'll actually do. with all of the challenges the nation faces, this is not the time for president obama's hide and seek campaign. >> we're seeing romney pivot away from his republican rivals and toward the president in the general election. we'll have the latest details on these skirmishes. stay with us. you're in "the situation room." great shot. how did the nba become the hottest league on the planet? 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[ female announcer ] the sun powers life. ♪ and now it powers our latest innovation. ♪ introducing the world's only solar-powered home energy system, which can cut your heating and cooling bills in half. call now to get up to 1,375 dollars in rebates. or zero percent financing for 18 months on select lennox home comfort systems. offer ends june 15th. plus download our free lennox mobile app with an energy-savings calculator to show how much you'll save with a lennox system. if your current system is 10 years or older, start planning now and take advantage of special financing. so call now to get up to 1,375 dollars in rebates. or zero percent financing for 18 months on select lennox home comfort systems. offer ends june 15th. and download our lennox mobile app -- free. lennox. innovation never felt so good. >> rz president obama is ratcheting up his re-election effort by going after mitt romney, but now after sweeping three more primaries romney is pivoting and looking ahead to november and hitting hard at president obama. let's turn to our senior congressional correspondent dana bash. it's all about the general election now from the obama and romney campaigns' perspectives. is that right? >> oh, sure, it seems that way. i was at mitt romney's speech this morning and gone was the fast-talking guy scrambling to appear conservative. this was written to sound to feel big like the speech of a party nominee and romney lifted the veil a bit more to give us the outlines of his strategy against the president. >> reporter: politics ain't bad, the saying goes and he accuses president obama of playing a different children's game. >> he wants us to reelect him so we can find out what he'll actually do. with all of the chal everyoleng nation faces which is not the time for the hide and seek campaign. >> reporter: all, but guarantee he'll be gop nominee, romney pivoted even more towards november accusing the president of failing to improve the economy and overhaul entitlem