to pick up and use. the minority, led by justice sotomayor, who warned today that, quote, the man in charge of enforcing laws can now just break them. ironic, isn t it? but for six in the majority, including the chief justice, the already highly controversial decision is meant to protect the presidency, writing that the framers always demanded an energetic, independent executive. we ll dig into the immediate fallout. plus, did today s legal bombshell effectively blow up jack smith s january 6th case against former president trump? what the decision said about the evidence smith can and can t use against the former president if the case gets to trial. it s not just d.c., could the cases in florida and georgia be wiped away, too? as the former president celebrates what he s calling a big win for democracy, a big decision awaits the current president. stay in the race or step aside after thursday s disastrous debate? i ll ask one of biden s top advisers what it s going to ta
at times the court s use was described as a narrow legal principle the special needs doctrine which originally concerned drug testing of railway workers. under this special needs doctrine, the fisa court has allowed the u.s. government to vastly expand its domestic surveillance operations. its rulings have so dramatically redrawn american legal boundaries that the times concludes the fisa court has created a secret body of law and quietly become almost a parallel supreme court. joining me today, msnbc political analyst and executive editor at msnbc b.com, richard wolfe. joan walsh, and retired u.s. army captain and author of the other wes more, wes moore. we have the sound bite. let s take a listen. the government s going to launch an investigation. i think they re going to say
get these things wrong. i don t think civil rights question shoes go to voters partly because you get into the thing of the whim of the voters and where the political whims are. we don t vote in this country on fundamental rights. freedom of speech will always be there for us. and these sort of questions like marriage and family fall within that. i mean, how would we like it if this four years people say, well, you can be married to jonathan, i can be married to rita and then the next four year, we don t like it. although i m sure he would make a wonderful spouse, i don t want to hopefully we ll find out one day. moving right along. but one point i want to make here is a lot of times the court reflects kints of where we are as a society and i think what s so interesting about this time right now is we re right on the cusp. you can really see the supreme court going either way where five years ago, you know, their decision would have been obvious coming down against same-sex
have to say. so, pete, we didn t get the answer today. we could possibly get an answer on monday. so does that mean is monday the last possible day we could hear from the court on these issues, on this question? oh, no. if the court wants more time it sometimes happens that there s a big issue. it was already scheduled for one conference. and then changed to another today. and sometimes the court wants to keep chewing over these cases and they ll keep rescheduling them for future conferences. so we really can t conclude anything today. all right. pete williams at the supreme court. thanks for that breaking news. i want to bring the table into this. what do you make of that? to hear pete williams chuckle like that, we ve all been waiting for a very long time to hear what the supreme court will
big development expected from the high court. the justices are in private conference deciding whether or not to review any of the ten separate gay marriage appeals before them. pete williams joins us on the phone from inside the court. pete, what can you tell us? reporter: we re getting the order right now. i ll ask the court official if she can hand me an extra copy. but here it is. just this second here. and, well, we ve been waiting all afternoon to see if the supreme court would take any of the gay marriage cases and we ve just gotten aporders list here. and none of tgay marriage cases are on here. so it appears we won t hear today. i can t imagine that they would give us two orders list. i think this is it. so now the question is what does that mean. and it could mean one of several things. it could mean that the court wants more time to talk with