supreme court justices. first time in urhistory. it's not like everyone before this was good so we didn't need rules. no, we had a justice resign ahead of being probably impeached for alleged bribery.ei we had a supreme court justice revealed to have been in the kkk just a few weeks after he got confirmed to the court. we had a justice who was so anti-semitic he reportedly would not speak to one of his colleagues. he would not speak to justice brandeis for years because justice brandeis was jewish. that guy was such a thorough going jerk that when he died, s not a single one of the other t supreme court justices even bothered to go to his funeral. we have had some bad ones, i tell you. but we have never before had a whole wing of the court that has produced corruption scandal after corruption scandal after r corruption scandal. and not like esoteric legalese versions of corruption that are hard to understand.de things like buy me an rv, buy my mom a house. those kinds of financial corruption allegations. again, one after another after another. and so now, for the first time, we've got a united states supreme court code of ethics. as of today. and yes, it is kind of a hot mess. it is both obviously necessary, or something like this is obviously necessary, because ofl the unending litany of corruption scandals involving the current crop of conservative justices on this court, and also, it's kind of an impossible thing to do. just technically, because the supreme court is, there's a hint in the name, supreme. they're not really supposed to answer to anyone else. so how do you hold them to account? for complying with this ethics code. it is a mess. it is overdue, obviously needed, it is also a mess. my friend dahlia lithwick is going to be here live to talk about it as soon as we found ou that the supreme court had madee this surprise move, we called dahlia right away.is i'm really looking forward to that conversation. also, looking ahead to tomorrow's news, we are expecting a giant protest tomorrow in washington, d.c. something like 50,000 people are expected on the national mall tomorrow, which is a very big , number for a national mall protest. and this comes tomorrow at the tail end of what has been a very intense few days of protests around the world over the mounting death toll and the jush unbearable suffering in gaza, and in israel. this was friday in new york. the latest in what is now almost a daily series of pro-palestinian protests in new york. this briefly shut down grand central station. this is also friday the same day in qatar, and in jordan, and in lebanon, and a huge friday protest in yemen. on saturday, this was london. look at this, a huge 300,000 person march and rally, one of the biggest we have seen anywhere in the world. the london event included this on the steps of the national gallery, a pair of shoes with a name tag with a name associated with each pair of shoes, each representing a child who has been killed in gaza thus far during this war. the same day as the london event, these were protests in argentina and barcelona and brussels, and dublin. this was also saturday, berlin and edinborough and paris. some protesters displayed names and photos of journalists who er have been killed while covering the war. there have been a lot already. these were all on saturday, ahead of this very large march on sunday, also in paris. this one was a march and rally against anti-semitism. now, tomorrow in d.c., this big expected protest on the national mall is to call for the release of the israeli hostages that hamas has been holding since their terrorist attacks on october 7th more than a month now. this rally tomorrow on the national mall will be calling for the release of the hostages, also calling for solidarity with israel. family members of some of the members being held hostage will be speaking at this event, that's tomorrow in d.c. all of these protests just further upping the pressure here on the u.s. government and around the world. upping the pressure to find some resolution to end the terror, to alleviate the dire situation for civilians in gaza. it is hard to imagine their there even being a way it could get worse but it's getting worse every day. a soaring death toll that shows no sign of abating. president biden today said in the oval office that gaza's hospitals must be protected. he said he, quote, hopes and expects that israel will use what he called less intrusive action related to hospitals in gaza. we shall see. we will see that big event in washington, d.c. tomorrow, and then more protests sure to come here and around the world. there's lot going on on that front. today, we also learned of the death of former president trump's oldest sibling, his older sister, maryanne trump barry. she was a respected federal judge in new jersey for most of her career. she was on what's called senior status on the bench when her younger brother was elected president in 2016.br senior status is a sort of semi retirement that federal judges can stay in basically forever, but maryanne trump barry did an unusual thing when her brother was president. she gave up senior status and resigned from the judiciary all together, that was in 2019. it happened right after "the new york times" exposed her role in what the paper described as a decades-long pattern of the trump family engaging in what was alleged to be massive systemic tax fraud. judge barry was alleged to be not just a financial beneficiary of the family's tax fraud but, quote, she was in a position to influence the actions taken by her family. now, that is a serious moral and potentially legal allegation against anybody in any line of work. if you're a federal judge, that is a serious ethics allegation for a sitting federal judge. and those kinds of allegations if proven would violate the judicial code of conduct that applies to all federal judges other than the supreme court. and so in the wake of "the new york times" reporting on judge barry's involvement in this massive alleged tax fraud with her brother, president trump, and other members of the trump family, the court that she sat on actually started investigating this as an ethicst matter. and ten days after the court confirmed that they had started investigating her for this alleged ethics breach, she resigned from the bench. she gave up her lifetime tenure as a judge. that is the one sure way she could call off that investigation because judicial conduct rules don't apply to retired judges. so she retired. suddenly, and without ed explanation, ten days after the investigation was announced, and that killed the investigation. it is honestly one of the most serious substantive scandals bs ever associated with a presidential family member, and we have had some doozies. but i mean, a lifetime -- given up a lifetime tenure on the federal bench to avoid the e investigation into the serious decades-long tax fraud allegations laid out against you with documentation in "the new york times." specifically, it seemed, designed, that retirement designed in such a way to stop that investigation and let her get away with it. i mean, like i said, we had some doozies when it came to presidential family members ethics problems. but this ranks right up there. that said, with this former ks particular president, this was like the 489th most serious scandal associated with him, and so it instantly became totally l obscure trivia basically as soon as it happened. but it happened.en and maryanne trump barry passed away last night at home in new york city. she was 86 years old. and i tell that story in part because i think there is an important point here that relates in some ways to today's news. and it's the point about an institution, in this case an institution like the court policing itself. there was no criminal case that was ever brought based on the trump organization alleged fraud that was described by "the new york times" and that series back in 2019. no i don't know why that is. i don't know why that was never the basis of a prosecution of trump or his family members or his business. whether or not there were ever going to be criminal charges brought against judge barry or former president trump or anyone else involved in that alleged fraud, still you had this institution, you had the judiciary, you had the court itself where judge barry worked, starting an investigation into the matter. and that investigation depending on how it went could very well have resulted in her being we censured as a judge or reprimanded or impeached and removed off the bench. and the reason that sort of as damocles was hanging over her and it forced her into an unexpected retirement as a judgt is because that institution decided to police itself, the judiciary has an interest as an institution in policing itself and maintaining its own standards and policing its own members make sure they stand up to the values that are professed by that institution. and that dynamic, institutions policing themselves, upholding their values as institutions, policing their own members, holding their own representatives accountable for violation of the rules of those organizations regardless of the legal issues, regardless of the criminal law. that institutional self-policing is a really important thing, in our country and in every other. we saw this dynamic at work this weekend in another important institution in another news story that very much flew under the radar. this weekend, pope francis, the head of the catholic church, took the very unusual step of removing an american catholic bishop from his job. this is a very, very rare thing. and the context here matters. you might remember that just before the january 6th attack on congress, like three weeks before that, in mid-december 2020, there was another day of crazy right-wing pro-trump violence in the streets of washington, d.c. you remember this? december 12th, 2020. number of people were stabbed. there were brawls in the streets of washington, running, fist fights and battles. this was the day when a black lives matter banner was stolen and burned from a d.c. church. the largest event in d.c. that the pro-trump forces had organized on this day that devolved into violence and running street battles, the largest event pro-trump forces e had organized was something called the jericho march. this was a mike flynn thing, where stewart rhodes, the leader of the pro-trump right wing paramilitary group the oath keepers who is now in jail on sedition charges. this is where stewart rhodes atr this event called for trump to invoke the insurrection act to i use the military in american streets to keep trump in power. this jericho march was the thing that was timed in washington to coincide with overturn the election rallies that happened at multiple state capitols all at the same time. again, this was december 12th, i 2020. that night is when we saw the running battles in the streets of d.c. and arson and people being stabbed. this was in the violence here be and the radicalism, this was the pro-trump radical right's warmup act for january 6th. and that event, the jericho march, the headline event of that day, included an address, a speech from a sitting catholic bishop from bishop joseph strickland from the diocese of tyler, texas. a serving bishop speaking at an event that was calling for the overthrow of the u.s. government, calling for the overthrow of the u.s. election results, including by the use of the army, the u.s. military against u.s. citizens on u.s. soil. c this bishop from texas has been one of the most outspoken members of this strain in the american catholic church right now where there are ultra rightr super political pro-trump priests and catholic leaders. and you know, that's not that weird. a lot of organizations have lots of idealogical diversity. it's not that crazy to expect you would see it in the church. not more crazy than seeing it in any other institution. but the catholic church is an institution. and among ultra right catholic priests right now, things have been kind of bananas. we have got, for example, one t, ultra right priest in the state of wisconsin calling for pope francis to be assassinated. calling for the pope to be murdered. and we've got this bishop in texas campaigning at a stop the steal overthrow the government by force event. and so this weekend, again, a s little bit under the radar given everything else going on in the news, the catholic church, the pope this weekend removed this u.s. catholic bishop in texas. that happened this weekend. and you see this in history, too, in the 1930s. it was catholic priest named father charles coghlan, he had a massive radio audience, 30 million people listening to him weekly at a time where the u.s. population was 130 million people. he became a hugely important figure on the american ultra right. by 1936, he was telling listeners when the ballot became useless in the united states, he would urge them to use bullets instead.he he openly endorsed what he called the road of fascism, by 1938, coghlan was defending pogroms and nazi mass violence against jewish people in germany. by 1939, he was depicting jews as a life sucking octopus strangling the united states. by 1941, he was cheering on nazi military victories in europe saying the end result would be that hitler would create, quote, a united states of europe, which he said would, quote, appeal to americans despite all the propaganda aimed at disparaging it. so therefore, americans should root for hitler to win. by that time, a cell of the armed paramilitary group that he had formed among his radio listeners had been put on trial in new york for sedition, for stockpiling bombs and planning the assassination of multiple members of congress and the violence overthrow of the u.s. government. by 1942, the u.s. military had banned his publications from being shipped to u.s. military bases. then his publication was just banned from the u.s. mail. after individual radio stations first started to balk at vi carrying his increasingly pro-hitler rants, finally, the catholic church itself pulled c the plug on him. and told father coghlan that his radio days were over. busted back down to the status w of just a regular parish priest. again, in terms of the sort of policing at work here, charles m coghlan was never criminally charged with anything. we know now that the justice department did develop a pretty good case against him as a paidg foreign agent.ag they also seemed to have developed a pretty good case against him for tax evasion, but they didn't charge him. and the important part here is even without action by the justice department and the criminal law, these other institutions stepped up. the u.s. military, the u.s. post office, crucially and belatedly, the catholic church, deciding that somebody praising pogroms and preaching violence and preaching for the institution on a fascist authoritarian dictatorship in the united states, that was not okay with them. given that he represented the church. that he was part of the church. they finally decided after years of being too afraid to do it, they finally decided that they would act as an institution to just stop helping this guy. to self-police. to not let him use them as an institution to accomplish what he was trying to accomplish, which they finally decided was too much against their values to stand for. it took years but they got there. now, tonight, here's the headline in "the new york times." quote, accused of echoing fascists, trump campaign warns its critics will be, quote, crushed. accused of echoing fascists? you either are echoing fascists or you aren't. despite the sort of pulling the punch element of that headline, the subheadline on that story dl tonight in "the new york times" does get there a little more directly. the subhead says, quote, the former president likened political opponents to vermin, similar to the dehumanizing rhetoric wielded by dictators like hitler and mussolini. the washington post headline just got there more directly. headline, trump calls political enemies vermin, echoes dictators hitler and mussolini. the quote from trump was this. he said, quote, we will root out the communists, marxists, fascists and rical left thugs ut that live like vermin, lie, nd steal, and cheat on elections and will do anything possible, legally or illegally, to destroy america and the american dream. a threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. the threat from within. the vermin. former president made these comments in a veterans day speech. they did not appear to be ad-libbed. they appeared to have been written as part of the speech and something he read off his teleprompter. even if by some chance they weren't in the teleprompter for that speech, he made sure he meant them for sure and meant them like that when he put them in writing in a social media post that used the exact same language, that used the same word vermin after he delivered the speech in new hampshire. and this is not subtle. i mean, everybody knows what this means.er if you know one thing about mass murdering dictators in history, they refer to the people they want to mass murder as vermin, insects, termites, anything to make their follower see those those people as some thing to be exterminated, not someone you might know. professor ruth ben-ghiat who is the author of the book strong men said this is part of her effort to re-educate americans to see violence as justified, patriotic, and even morally righteous. gut to bet people to lose their aversion to violence, savvy eo authoritarians also dehumanize their enemies. that is what trump is doing. trying to get people to lose their aversion, their natural aversion to violence.o and this comes at a time when "the washington post" of course recently reported that trump's advisers are working on a plan p to invoke the insurrection act on his first day of office which would give him the power the paramilitaries were calling for ahead of january 6th, the power to use the u.s. military, the u.s. army against american civilians on u.s. streets. it comes at a time when "the new york times" is newly reporting as of this weekend that trump's advisers are planning to build camps in the united states, camps capable of holding millions of people once he is back in office. a plan to put millions of people in camps in the united states. and they plan to do it using the military rather than by passing some new legislation that might make it seem legal. they plan to just do it unilaterally. again, using the military. building camps to hold millions of people, using military force against your own people. saying your political opponentsr country. none of this is subtle. and apparently none of this is s an accident. these things aren't being blurted out accidentally. right? they're in the speech. they're in the social media posts. these supposed plans for the new administration are being technically leaked, as of tonight, the trump campaign put out a statement officially disavowing all reported plans, but these supposed leaks are also accompanied in many instances by on the record interviews with some of trump's most senior advisers, people putting their name to it and ad explicitly confirming these plans. and just, again, to be clear, this talk about exterminating the vermin in this country was not an ad-lib. it's a repeated line. he wants to be known for this. he wants everybody to know this is the language he's using, and the fact it's all happening at once, the reporting on the camps they're going to put people in, the military force against civilians, the vermin speech. the fact it's happening at once presumably means it's not an m accident. they're rolling it out on purpose. because why? because it's exciting to his followers. the transgressive thrill of yet more lines being crossed. more people being shocked and scared and insulted and offended. that's the transgressive thrilla of trump's radicalism. yes, it's an effort to intimidate his opponents and also to excite his followers especially as he really does seem to try to get them excited about the possibility of cathartic violence against trump's enemies. and he knows he's going to get called a fascist for talking this way. for proposing things like this. he's inviting it. and he's calling all of his opponents fascists too. trying to rob that word of its meaning, call me a fascist and then i'll call you a fascist and that word will become somethinga we throw around and it doesn't actually attach to anything real. and we'll there by rob it of its power. sure, call me a fascist.e i'll call you a fascist too. i mean, that's where we are. so here's the question. what is the institution in our country that is going to find that intolerable and that is going to see this as something that's happening on its patch t which it needs to fix? what is the institution that's going to feel the need to self-police when it comes to somebody speaking on their behalf like this, espousing these kinds of things? there's no church here to shut down a father coghlan or a bishop strickland in texas. there's no judiciary to launch an ethics inquiry like you might of a judge. no criminal law springing into action here as americans we of course have the constitutional right to espouse and say even the worst political ideas without committing a crime by doing so. there's no bar association to yank his law license. there's no radio or tv network l to say we're not hosting your show anymore. what is the institution here that decides this is on their patch? what is the institution here that decides that you can never espouse things like this and also be part of them and also represent them? there is only one. it's his political party. which when he is running to be the republican nominee for president of the united states, means he's contending to lead that party. while promising he will build camps it hold millions of people in this country and use the military against american civilians at home in america and his political opponents are vermin who will be crushed and exterminated. that is the test here. that -- he's not running as an independent. he's not running as the trump for president candidate. he's running as the republican, he wants to be the republican nominee for president. so that is the only institution, the institution that is be tested here. this is him testing the political party that he says he's going to lead. testing them now. one year out from the election, to see what they will tolerate as an institution. which means every single member of that party will now have to answer whether this is who they are, whether this is what they stand for, whether this is the cause of their party. we know from history that a country under threat does not stand up for itself amorously with some kind of civic objection that just redounds toi the country at large. in real life, a country under threat stands up for itself whee the institutions that make up the civic and political life ofo the country stand up and say an what they're for and what they can no longer stand for. there is only one institution in this country that is implicated by what he's doing and he's testing them. that's the point where we are now. he has forced it there. what now? in order for small businesses to thrive, they need to be smart, efficient, savvy. making the most of every opportunity. that's why comcast business is introducing the small business bonus. for a limited time you can get up to a $1000 prepaid card with qualifying internet. yep, $1000. so switch to business internet from the company with the largest fastest reliable network and that powers more businesses than anyone else. learn how you can get $1000 back for your business today. comcast business. powering possibilities. i emphasized to him i thought that the -- the claims and the ability to challenge the election results was essentially over. he said to me, in a kind of excited tone, we don't care and we're not going to leave. i said what do you mean? he said well, the boss, meaning president trump, and everyone understood the boss, that's what we all called him, he said the boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. we are just going to stay in power. and i said to him, well, it doesn't quite work that way, you realize. he said we don't care. >> said we don't care. that's newly obtained video obtained by "the washington post." it's former trump lawyer jenna ellis speaking to fulton county prosecutors. she has since pled guilty and sort of thrown herself on the mercy of the court, making a tearful allocution to the court about her regret for her role in president trump's efforts to stay in power, despite losing the election. but in that video, ms. ellis says despite losing the 2020 re-election effort, trump did plan to stay in the white house, quote, under any circumstances. she says when she told one of trump's top advisers it doesn't work that way, he responded by saying we don't care. joining us now is nbc news presidential historian michael beschloss. thank you for being here. i have been looking forward to talking to you all day. >> me, too. rachel, great to see you. >> i don't go to you often just because something has happened where the former president has said something scary or something outrageous or something where he's yanking the chain of the media asking us to respond. >> we both have been very self restrained. >> you have to be. otherwise, he knows how to get the media to talk about him. >> he pulls our chains. >> yes, and i hate that more than anything. i don't play requests. i don't like doing stuff that other people want me to do. but the reason i wanted to talk to you about this instance is i do feel like it's a sort of historically important moment. is there any u.s. historical precedent of a major party presidential candidate saying he will stay in office despite losing re-election or using the kind of eliminationist rhetoric we have seen president trump use about his political opponents saying they're vermin who need to be exterminated? >> not even close. that's what i'm worried about, is that people will hear this stuff and they'll become numb to it and think this is something that is sort of standard for a presidential candidate to talk about fellow americans as vermin who need to be rooted out. or making the other threats as he's made about suspending the constitution or the one that you mentioned about possibility of military dictatorship at the hands of a president who is an autocrat meaning trump back in office. and i guess what i worry about is, you were talking about father coghlan. i haven't talked to you on air, am i allowed to congratulate you on the great new book? >> thank you. >> you'll not like my mentioning it because you're too modest and eldpnt, but i'm doing this without being asked. some of the most chilling stories about father coghlan are in that book, this radio priest as you were saying, millions of listeners on the radio, raised millions of dollars but he wasn't running for president, and he didn't even sound as bad as donald trump has sounded in it last 48 hours. we have never before since 1789 seen a major party presidential candidate with these kinds of threats of violence and autocracy and even one might even think, you know, conceivably threatening the lives of people when his spokesman for instance today said that, you know, people who oppose the president and who accuse him of saying the wrong thing should be in danger of having their -- i think the phrase was, their miserable existence crushed. that's language we have never heard before from a major party candidate or his spokesperson. >> on the issue of coghlan, the reason i brought him up, it's not because i'm super interested in his anti-semitism and his embrace of fascism and all the ways in which he was bad. i mean, i am interested in the fact he was apparently taking money from the nazis and the question of whether they were going to indict him. there's a lot of interesting story telling to be done there. >> a lot of interesting parallels. >> exactly, the thing that's interesting to me in terms of the present moment and the way history can hopefully help here is the fact that so many different institutions, not the criminal law, different institutions stood up to say to coghlan, you are not going to organize anti-semitic pugrams and a violent overthrow of the u.s. government here, not with our help. it was institutions in u.s. civic life, the church famously, but also the owners of radio stations and also the u.s. military barring his publication from being sent to any bases. it was the postmaster general deciding that this was not something that was safe to be sent through the mail. he was deplatformed in a way by lots of different institutions and ultimately removed from the radio gig that gave him that massive audience. the institutions standing up and policing it. have we seen important institutions in the united states police their own representatives, police themselves in a way that has been effective against this kind of danger in the past? >> sure. the most important one is a president who loves democracy and saves us from the abyss. that's what franklin roosevelt did in 1940 by saying, we americans have to join the world to stand up against hitler, and actually, you know the story, rachel. it says it perfectly. roosevelt made a deal with the vatican to have coghlan silenced, saying this is a danger to america. this is not a very good thing for your priest of michigan to be saying these things. not great for relations with the united states. and so it was because roosevelt on the side of right and democracy said coghlan should stop doing this, that he did not have that kind of dangerous effect during the war. and you see where i'm going. here we are in 2023, 2024, you know, people are going to be dissatisfied with the democratic nominee assuming it's joe biden or even if it's someone else. on the other side is a party as you have been saying, rachel, that is silent about a potential front-runner or an actual front-runner, donald trump, who is talking about fascism and suspending the constitution. and sending military soldiers to suppress dissent in every city in the country. that's what we're dealing with. so we could very well a year from this month have a pretty stark choice, and that is one presidential candidate, major party, who is defending democracy as roosevelt did in 1940. and another who is, if he is elected, could take us down the road of mussolini and hitler and other dictators in the dark history of the world. that's as dark as this is. i think if people get sidetracked and say, well, i prefer a third party candidate, or i don't like something that, you know, joe biden did in 2022, you know, fine. but this is the central choice. every one of our friends who is watching tonight, take that choice very seriously, please. >> nbc news presidential historian michael beschloss, thank you very much for being here. sober stuff. thank you. we'll be right back. stay with us. the power goes out and we still have wifi to do our homework. and that's a good thing? great in my book! who are you? no power? no problem. introducing storm-ready wifi. now you can stay reliably connected through power outages with unlimited cellular data and up to 4 hours of battery back-up to keep you online. only from xfinity. home of the xfinity 10g network. ♪ talking about loving, divided in three like a circus ♪ ♪ ring one executive ♪ ♪ 2 is legislative ♪ ♪ ring three judiciary ♪ ♪ see it's kind of like my circus ♪ ♪ no one part can be more powerful than any other is ♪ ♪ each controls the other you see and that's what we call checks and balances ♪ >> balances. it is not the catchiest of the school house rock songs. it's not "i'm just a bill," but the point of the song still stands as does the animation. we have a three-ring government. executive, legislative, and judicial. those three rings of government are all coequal. the president, the congress, and the court can check and balance each other, but there's no entity above any of them that can swoop in and fix one of them. and something seems to be going wrong. figuring out how to regulate or constrain one of those three coequal branches of government, that is very difficult as a constitutional matter. but you know what else is hard? watching a snowballing cavalcade of ethical scandals at the united states supreme court that have been revealed in the press over the last few months. the billionaire friends with the private jets and the all expenses paid luxury vacations and the weird real estate deals. all of these conservative justices have come under scrutiny, calls have mounted for some kind of ethics investigation at the supreme court. it's also been hard to watch reactions from the justices ranging from dismissive to hostile from the scrutiny they have been under from the press. all of that has made it all the more surprising this is the headline today. chief justice john roberts unveiling what the conservative justices and their defenders have been insisting they don't want and don't need, a code of conduct for the supreme court. and who will enforce this supreme court code of conduct? the answer to that is as much of a mess as you might expect. and that's next. stay with us. n't have to worry about daily hiv pills because i switched to every-other-month cabenuva. for adults who are undetectable, cabenuva is the only complete long-acting hiv treatment you can get every other month. it's two injections from a healthcare provider. now when i have people over, hiv pills aren't on my mind. don't receive cabenuva if you're allergic to its ingredients, or if you're taking certain medicines, which may interact with cabenuva. serious side effects include allergic reactions, post-injection reactions, liver problems, and depression. if you have a rash and other allergic reaction symptoms, stop cabenuva and get medical help right away. tell your doctor if you have liver problems or mental health concerns, and if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or considering pregnancy. some of the most common side effects include injection-site reactions, fever, and tiredness. if you switch to cabenuva, attend all treatment appointments. it feels good to just live in the moment. with every-other-month cabenuva, i'm good to go. ask your doctor about cabenuva today. (man) mm, hey, honey. looks like my to-do list grew. "paint the bathroom, give baxter a bath, get life insurance," hm. i have a few minutes. i can do that now. oh, that fast? remember that colonial penn ad? i called and i got information. they sent the simple form i need to apply. all i do is fill it out and send it back. well, that sounds too easy! (man) give a little information, check a few boxes, sign my name, done. they don't ask about your health? (man) no health questions. -physical exam? -don't need one. it's colonial penn guaranteed acceptance whole life insurance. if you're between the ages of 50 and 85, your acceptance is guaranteed in most states, even if you're not in the best health. options start at $9.95 a month, 35 cents a day. once insured, your rate will never increase. a lifetime rate lock guarantees it. keep in mind, this is lifetime protection. as long as you pay your premiums, it's yours to keep. call for more information and the simple form you need to apply today. there's no obligation, and you'll receive a free beneficiary planner just for calling. quote, the absence of a code has led in recent years to the misunderstanding at the justices of this court unlike all the other jurists in the country regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rule. to dispel this misunderstanding we're issuing this code. they're only doing it to dispel this misunderstanding about how closely they have been following the ethics rules. paying off a supreme court justice with like an rv or buying his mom a house or the private jet and yacht trips. that was all a misunderstanding by us the american public about just how ethical that really is. or something. joining us now is dahlia lithwick, senior editor at slate and author of lady justice, women, it law, and the battle to save america. dahlia, my friend, great to see you. thank you so much for being here. >> good to see you, rachel. >> how do you see these news at the supreme court has for the first time issued an ethics note, an ethics advisory that is apparently for us but maybe not for them. >> i like to think of it as an ethics aspiration. like it's a little -- it's a little wish casting. it's the court saying it's not us, it's you. you misunderstood our ethics rules and so let us explain again these long standing ethics rules that we have not abided by but if we explain them again, you'll understand. listen, you're right to be cynical, rachel. and i think i want to say something in the vein of what you and michael beschloss were just talking about. which is it feels like it's a joke that this is how institutions police themselves. but it matters a little bit that the supreme court for the first time in history responds to an american public that demands that it police itself. and so i'm not happy about these rules, which are purely advisory, which everyone is going to tell you, no enforcement mechanism, that feels like more of the justice gaslighting us and telling us that we misunderstood the ethics rules all along. it matters a little bit to me that justices kavanaugh and barrett and kagan and the chief justice think this is important enough to do right now. and so i want to be as grumpy as you are, because these are not real rules. but i'm also want to signal that i think as far as institutions policing themselves go, the fact that the u.s. supreme court for the first time in history takes note of american public fury at its ethics violations matters a tiny bit. >> yeah, the responsiveness itself is an important part of the story here, and then recognizing that their legitimacy does depend on us believing that they have legitimacy, and that our opinion as a public matters. i take your point on that. on the specifics of what they put in print today, is -- did they clarify their ethical rules in any way that would make a difference in any of the high level headline scandals that we have seen that really seem like plain corruption and bribery scandals among a number of these judges? >> no, it's the very opposite of that, rachel. this is, to the extent that courts are meant to promulgate rules that either means something looking backward or going forward, this does neither. looking backward seems to exculpate the worst behavior we have seen, and going forward, this isn't a pledge or a promise. this isn't binding, as everybody has said. there's no mechanism by which to investigate or enforce these rules. so this is really like it's a hallmark card from the court to us saying, like, trust us this time. we're really going to adhere to these rules that we promise we have adhered to all along. nothing about this should make us feel good about going forward. justices committing to something, because they will all decide for themselves. so no. this isn't a code of ethics that can be cast in amber to mean something. i think it signals a court that wants to be in some kind of conversation, conversation is a generous word. let's call it a sermon on the mount, but i think an attempt to say holy cow, our popularity ratings are plummeting. our behavior has been appalling. people get that. they don't think there should be a scenario in which multibillionaires are determining what cases come before the court and how those cases are decided. they get that now, and i think that the fact that justices thomas and alito don't fully sign on to changing their conduct isn't the end game here. the end game is a court that feels that it has to answer to us, and i think that matters a little bit. >> i hear you and i think that's right. dahlia lithwick, that's the kind of conversation that i really always enjoy having with you. you always teach me something. thank you so much for being here tonight. >> back at you, rachel. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. has no idea she's sitting on a goldmine. well she doesn't know that if she owns a life insurance policy of $100,000 or more she can sell all or part of it to coventry for cash. even a term policy. even a term policy? even a term policy! find out if you're sitting on a goldmine. call coventry direct today at the number on your screen, or visit coventrydirect.com. in order for small businesses to thrive, they need to be smart, efficient, savvy. making the most of every opportunity. that's why comcast business is introducing the small business bonus. for a limited time you can get up to a $1000 prepaid card with qualifying internet. yep, $1000. so switch to business internet from the company with the largest fastest reliable network and that powers more businesses than anyone else. learn how you can get $1000 back for your business today. comcast business. powering possibilities. so thanks for being with us tonight. one quick note, i'm going to be on the late show with stephen colbert tomorrow night to talk about my new book "prequel an american fight against fascism." i'll see you there tomorrow night. and i'll see you back here on monday. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is up next. i don't support the clean cr for the same reason i didn't support the last clean cr.