conservative viewpoints an telling lies to the american public tonight, former fox anchor, gretchen carlson, on what need to happen for change at he former network plus, another shady real estat deal at the supreme court, a the chief justice dismisse calls for oversight. then, riveting testimony fro the woman accusing donald trum of rape. but we learn from each - date on the witness stand. and congresswoman katie porter on the maga vote to slas funding for medicaid, veterans childcare, and more. all in starts right now. good evening from new york, i m chris hayes. tonight, the supreme court o the united states is under a cloud of scandal it all started earlier thi month with republican feel tha conservative justice, clarence thomas, was acceptin undisclosed gifts from right wing billionaire thomas accepted gifts includin luxury vacations worth literally hundreds of thousand of dollars, and this really, truly special painting from man named harlan crow, who has well, inter
distinctiveness of america i the structure of our government one part of it, of course, i the independents of th judiciary. there is a lot more. chief justice justice roberts doesn t feel like he needs a testimony. so, yesterday, he responded to the senate request with if you will forgive me for opining, a offensively dismissive letter. he attempts a half-worde attempt to gusty up his define refusal to cooperate by citing past president, except guess this all of the president he cites, include examples of past chief justices cooperating wit congressional investigations testified with court congress. he referenced chief justices william howard taft, charles evans hughes, who, guess what? testified before the senat judiciary committee and who testified multiple times i the house. he then had ways away thei testimony as being about, quote, mud vein topics mud mundan
ethics i think there are several different things i think one is what money yo can take or can t take, for th most part, whether the reporting requirements and som of the general ethic requirements that are, you can t sit in cases, those ar statutory, and i think the bind as period i ve always thought so the real key to the distinctiveness of america i the structure of our government one part of it, of course, i the independents of th judiciary. there is a lot more. chief justice justice roberts doesn t feel like he needs a testimony. so, yesterday, he responded to the senate request with if you will forgive me for opining, a offensively dismissive letter. he attempts a half-worde attempt to gusty up his define refusal to cooperate by citing past president, except guess this all of the president he cites, include examples of past chief justices cooperating wit congressional investigations testified with court congress.
about that. if you think that the issue is one of choice, that women should have a choice to terminate their pregnancy, that supposes that there is a point at which they have had the fair choice, opportunity to choice. and why would 15 weeks be an inappropriate line? so viability it seems to me doesn t have anything to do with choice. if it really is an issue about choice, why is 15 weeks not enough time? cecile, justice roberts doesn t believe that any women need apparently another ten weeks or more that would be granted under roe. i mean, it is so obvious, lawrence, both the disingenuousness of that statement, when they ve already let a six-week ban stay in effect in texas as i said. as we know mississippi is passing a six-week ban as well
because as the legislature has seen, wow, we have three justices now on our side so we can basically restrict abortion whatever way we want to. the question is, this has been an established, constitutional right for 50 years. my question back to justice roberts would be what is it that has changed that has allowed this court to stand on its head 50 years of an existing right, as lawrence tribe said, the first time the supreme court of the united states is taking away a right of more than half of the people in this country. what is that justification? frankly, they had none today. the only justification is they didn t want to have women to have the right to access safe and legal abortion and so it was their right and their mission to take it away. cecile richards, thank you very much for joining us on this important night. really appreciate it. thanks, lawrence. thank you. former harvard law professor