what she, herself was suffering from in the last decade give or take, and today when the supreme court announced her death, it noted she died at age 93 and died from complications, at age 93 died of complications from alzheimer's. kate? >> joan, she was put in by ronald reagan, and nominated by ronald reagan, but she was considered a swing vote, and sided with most often with the conservatives, but a powerful presence on that urt ccourt, an the american public, and when you are looking at the court today, she is a higher respect of the supreme court, and would you agree? >> definitely. first of all, she could garner the respect from inside of the room, and conference room, and outside. as i said, you know, she was a poli politician. she was a politician, and came to washington knowing how to count votes, and she had real authority within the court's conference room. she was also like the social glue, and always trying to get her colleagues to do things after hours together, because she knew that built relationships. and for her work outside of the marble walls, she was very much involved in the public speaking and the effort of civic education, and worked with the eastern european countries when they were developing the constitutions in the '90s and into the 2000s. she really saw her role as one inside of the court and beyond. and she had integrity and wanted the court to be held in high stature, and there was controversy recently, and she got caught up with justice scalia with a hunting trip with dick cheney and i won't get into that here, but i will just say that she had the authority with her colleagues, and the stature that the american public responded to. she was someone that when i would draw around the speeches, and again, it was not just women, but men and women who felt that what she stood for in regard to her separation of the powers and the role of the states relative to the role of the federal government was very, very important. >> joan, standby if you will, because our supreme court reporter arianna is on the phone, and sandra day o'connor was a trailblazer and almost beyond imagination that not until 1981 that a woman was on the supreme court, and tell us what you know about that and her passing. >> it is absolutely right. because she was alone on the court, and what is striking me the most in recent years the other female justices, the late justice ruth bader, elaine kagan and they cleared way for them to be on the bench. she was such an inspiration to all of them, and ruth bader ginsburg used to call her, her bigger sister. this announcement came early here in the court and the justices are not in the building, but they will sit again for arguments next week. and as stated she had suffered from and died from complications due to alzheimer's. so as joan talked about, she played such a role on the court for pragmatism. that is what she believed from her background. that is what she felt she could deliver. the court when these deaths occurred, even though she was retired, they had not retired the funeral plans, but expect it to come later on today. >> ariane, talk about trail blazer, yes, and the attributes and politician of knowing thou work a room, if you will, but she has had such a strong hand as a justice on so many aspects of american life, and will you talk about her legal legacy, if you will. >> yes, she did. in her legal legacy, she was definitely faltering in later years, but she did see it chipped away in the new conservative court in the area of abortion and affirmative action, and just as -- chief justice roberts called her a daughter of the american southwest and justice sandra day o'connor blazed a trail as the first female justice and she met that challenge with a challenge and such candor. that is what is so amazing. when she was in conference, that is what she was looking for, and trying to get to the nub of the cases so that the court could rely on something that was common sense. he said that, "we at the supreme court mourn the passing of a beloved colleague and a fierce advocate for democracy." she left the bench because of her husband's alzheimer's, and how poignant that she, too, ended up suffering from the same disease. >> and ariane, she was the only woman on the bench for a long, long time. >> yes. i remember covering an event a few years ago, and she had just retired, but she was on the stage with justice ruth bader ginsburg at this speaking event, and later kagan would talk about her. justice sotomayor, and these women who are feeling that they made the bench, and got on the bench, because sandra day o'connor opened the door to that. of course, she was so attractive to president reagan because of the background and she had such an unusual background and growing up on the range, and she considered herself from the west, and she was a westerner on the bench, and she had come from the local politics to reach the highest court in the land. very poignant her effect on the women across the country, and you will hear about that today and in the days to come, her impact on other young lawyers who really tried to follow in her footsteps. >> ariane despraz vogue. and this is coming in from justice sotomayor. she was a true trail blazer. and i remember studying her when she went into the court in the 1980s and it is remarkable to a lot of women and also to the country, because some of the decisions that she made were huge for the country. >> there is no question. just one really, really small example, before justice o'connor joined court in 1981, the justices referred to each other as brothers and brethren and you would refer to each other as mr. jus justice brennan, and so when she joined court, she adjusted behavior not only off, but on the bench. we can see more in the opinions and more accounting for women in every facet of society in the jurisprudence, but another point that we cannot lose sight of in eulogizing justice o'connor is that even if if the time on the bench started as a remarkable moment for gender equality, she also becomes the critical middle of the court during her 25 years on the bench. into the 1990s, the court moves to where she wants it to move in the ideologically-charged cases. and in 1996, justice scalia said, who is going to forge those bonds now that you have left? and now, 17 years later, i don't believe that we have answered question. >> and just thinking back to some of the female justices, and what they have said about sandra day o'connor and ruth bader ginsburg once said that she was like a big sister. think of the two women of the sisterhood of the supreme court, and what was necessary and needed. it is pretty amazing to think of those two women now kicking it up in heaven together i have to say. >> yeah, i think that the other piece of this is not just that justice o'connor created this opportunity for justice ginsburg and kagan and sotomayor and justice barrett, but she came from a political background. she was the last justice on the supreme court who had ever run for statewide office, and who had been a politician before she was a judge. that shaped her professional experience and job as a supreme court justice, and it gave her more respect for the democratic process deference to state governments and elected legislatures and ever since her departure in january of 2006 when she retired and was replaced by justice olee toe, that voice has been missing from the court. so, i think that, this is what is so important of how we remember justice o'connor. she was a trailblazer, and as the beautiful biographer of her from what was the fact that she was a politician, by the fact that she was a bridge builder, and by the fact that she thought about some of the big legal questions might have small nuanced answers, and this is as much of the will legacy and as much of the court that is missing from the court now that she has retired an passed away. >> and steve, what opinion or decision that she was on will she most be remembered for, if there is one that you can point to, and who on the court now most resystemables sandra day o'connor? >> i will take the second question first which is nobody. she was unique and had a pragmatic approach to judging, and she did not believe that the court needed to go out of the way to deciding more than it ought to, and this opened her up to criticism from the colleagues and the law professors that she was often deciding cases quite small, as opposed to say justice anthony kennedy who would grasp for more soaring principles and rhetoric. so there is not a justice on the court who is resembling her judicial approach, and her background and experiences, and that is a problem will, whether you are sympathetic to her politics or not. and to the first question, and man, one of the first things about the judicial philosophy is that she did not have a lot of the massively principle set-in altering opinions, but one that comes foremost to mind, guys, in 2004, she wrote what is a plurality opinion for the justices that is one of the big post terrorism cases, which is the justices to the left join her so it was not a majority, but it was a u.s. citizen held by the government as an enemy combatant, and he was not entitled to a rigorous hearing before he was detained. that was a big deal in 2004. and she wrote opinions on state power, and that was as the state court turned to principles in the 1990s, but what defines her tenure on the court is this poi pointed hard-to-attribute to hard-cutting constitutional decisions or theories, because she wanted to take the cases one at a time. so i think that is a source of a lot of the pushback against her during her 25 years on the court. but in 17 year since she has retired a lot of us have come to appreciate maybe there is more value in the pragmatic sensible approach the being a supreme court justice than we might have appreciated at the time. >> and steve vladeck, please sta standby. so much breaking news today. and former supreme court justice sandra day o'connor has died. and now we are hearing that elise stefanik is moving to save george santos from expulsion. and that vote is happening any moment. much more is ahead. this is cnn breaking news. former supreme court justice sandra day o'connor, the first woman to sit on the highest court of the land has died. her passing announced this morning by the supreme court. cnn's jessica schneider has more. ♪ >> reporter: sandra day o'connor grew up a cowgirl in arizona 25 miles from the nearest town. >> i became a little bit of a pragmatist, because we have to solve all of our own problems on the ranch. if the truck broke down, we had to fix it. if some animal needed medical attention, we had to provide it. there is not much that we didn't have to do. >> reporter: she had the toughness that ranch life could breed. >> she was incredibly fearless, and part of it was because early life was hard. the parents died and grandparents died, and she was shuttled back and forth from the ranch to relatives in texas to go to school, and she became very self-sufficient. >> o'connor went to stanford for wil w law with chief justice william rehnquist. nobody would hire her, and she was a power ful lawmaker and thn judge. >> and ronald reagan has decided to nominate sandra day on connor to the highest court. >> and now, for the fairness and intellectual capacity and goodness to the public good. >> reporter: in 1981, president ronald reagan nominated her to the highest court. and the senate confirmed her unanimously 99-0. in 1988, the justice survived a breast cancer scare, and she returned to work 10 days after surgery. the dry western with it. remained in tact. >> the worst was my public visibility, frankly. there was constant media coverage. how does she look? when is she going to step down and give the president another vacancy on the court. >> and she did not like the reference as the only woman on the court. >> we have equal voice, and i am no more powerful on this court for sure. >> reporter: and she was a trend setter. >> anybody who knows her, she makes up her own mind and not at all concerned about where anybody else is on the spectrum. >> reporter: her most well known votes are upholding votes on abortion rights and the michigan v casey public education case, and the bush v gore case. she stepped down from the court in 1996 to care for her husband john because of his alzheimer's. >> it is taking a staggering toll on the families and the caregivers. i can certainly attest to that. >> reporter: in 2018, o'connor revealed that she, too, had been diagnosed with dementia, and withdrew from public life. the retired justice was grateful, she wrote, of the countless experiences, including to break the glass ceiling. >> it was not too many years before i was born that the women in this country got the right to vote, for heaven sakes. in my lifetime, i have seen unbelievable changes for the rights of women. it is very important for women to be represented and it is not all male governance as it once was. >> sandra day o'connor died just today. our breaking news for you this morning, but we have plenty of breaking news happening right now, especially on capitol hill where we are going back to in a little bit where the bill to expel george santos is about to be under way. and more breaking news, and this time in regard to donald trump over whether he has immunity where an appeals court has just weighed in. we will have more on that. all right. we have more breaking news. we have word of the appeals court decision regarding donald trump which has huge precedent-setting implications of donald trump and the court overall. they said that trump does not have presidential immunity of lawsuits regarding january 6th. so we have crime reporter and also politics reporter kaitlan p -- katelyn polantz with us. >> we have been waiting for this for over a year. and so, it is with members suing donald trump, and he said that everything that i did while i was president should be immune. you can't sue me over that, and that is his argument, and in the appeals court, the federal appeals court in washington, d.c., said, no, that is not the case, these lawsuits against donald trump can go forward. i want to read some of the things that the court wrote. the president does not spend every minute of every day exercising official responsibilities, and when he acts outside of the functions of his office, he does not continue to enjoy immunity, and so they are drawing a line saying that there are things that you can do while you are president that can be held accountable in court. that is a major decision, a major evolution of what the law is. the other thing that this three-judge panel in the d.c. circuit court of appeals is writing is that they are saying that there are campaign actions, and there are president actions. presidency actions. what the president does while he is campaigning for re-election including that rally on january 6th, that can be considered a campaign action, and that is something that you can move forward with lawsuits against. there are things that a president does as president that you cannot sue over, and that he enjoys immunity over, but not in this situation. donald trump can contest the factsf this case and whether these people are able to get some sort of comepensation or wn in this case, but it is consequential, because it represents not only these lawsuits, but we have a appeals court to weighing in on the parameters of the presidency and where a president is protected and where he is not. and it could be the same sort of thing that the same appeals case is going to be looking at in the coming weeks in some of the other cases. >> and now, katelyn just laid out that no one is above the law, and people think about it in the criminal sense, but if i am correct, and correct me if i am wrong, but this is applicable in the civil lawsuits and the president cannot get away with, and so he can be sued by anyone if it is not a part of the capacity as president. is that how you are reading this, elie? >> right, sara. so this is enormously consequential decision, and let me explain why. when it is coming to the notion of immunity, there are some things that we know and don't know. this is what we do know a federal official, president on down cannot be sued civilly if the conduct has something to do with the actual job, and something to do with the president acting as president. something like a federal prosecutor acting as a federal prosecutor, and then if it is outside of the job, then, yes, you can be sued. but the federal appeals court said that what donald trump did around january 6th was outside of the scope of the presidency, he can be sued. but this is the bigger issues that katelyn was referencing, donald trump is making a bigger argument of the criminal charges relating to the 2020 election, and he is going to make similar arguments elsewhere and we do not know yet, but we may find out if there is criminal immunity for a federal official like the president, but this is an important decision, because even if there is criminal immunity, we have a court of appeals saying that if it does exist, it would not apply to donald trump, because what he did january 6th is outside of the scope of his job. so now that is a big ruling, because he can be sued civilly, and also what can be happening in the case criminally, too. >> and so is this significant because of the office of the presidency? >> yes, for sure, kate. this is beyond donald trump, and it is going to the office of the presidency, itself. this is reaffirming if the person is doing the job of the president, they cannot be sued, but if you are outside of that scope, then you can be sued which relates to the principles of the office. so we will also get the answer to if there is any immunity to criminal charges. it could be not only the president, but cabinet members, and so we will get that answer soon. but the core ruling is that, yes, donald trump can be sued civilly, because the actions of january 6th were outside of the scope of the job as president. >> none of this stuff is in the constitution, and it is not like the framers envisioned this issue, and that is why there needs to be a legal ruling on this in particular as katelyn said, what presidenting is, and what campaigning is. where are the lines. so it is fascinating and the supreme court is likely to get involved, and still breaking news. in georgia right now, donald trump's attorneys, and you can see the live pictures there of judge scott mcafee, but they are in court of the state election case against donald trump making a key argument now. what are they asking for? they are asare -- >> they are asking for a lot of things. and we are in the position of the case where the big question is timing. there was that trial that had been set to go forward the co-defendants sidney powell and ken chesebro plead guilty and now there is a huge question hanging over judge mcafee's head of when is this case going on the calendar and how long do the parties have to make their arguments and get it addressed in court. there is also a question of what donald trump's team has to do going forward in that, he has been hopping on what other defendants in the case have been arguing, but his lawyers have not been out there on their own, and we have seen it in court, and this hearing is just starting, so we will be watching exactly what happens there, and where judge mcafee takes i. >> i want to go to you, elie honig, and we are looking at the pictures of the judge, and the first time that trump's attorneys have been there in person defending their client. and what they are looking at is if they can look if anything can be thrown out on these ground, and if that is going to be involved with the subversion case along with others? >> yes, sure. the