called 911 around that time. she had in fact been begging the police for protection repeatedly because she was getting a deluge of threats and harassment. really specific threats over the phone, text, email, over social media, but on the night of december 6, last year, 10:00 at night, december 6, these people who were threatening her turned up at her front door. >> i've been having harassing phone calls and emails and they came out and made a police report yesterday. and last night, about 10 minutes after 9:00, somebody was bamming on the door and now somebody's bamming on the door. oh, they screaming. they still bamming on the door. >> okay. >> they still bamming on the door. lord jesus, where's the police? >> they're on the way, ma'am. >> oh, god. >> ruby freeman is 62 years old. she's the woman on the receiving end of all the vitreal and all the threats and as of december 6, that night, that 911 call last year, it was in-person intimidation and she's not a public figure. she's a 62-year-old retiree, grandmother. she ran a little boutique business selling fashion accessories. but suddenly after the election last year she became public enemy number one in trump world. she became public enemy number one to all these very angry people she had never met and it happened because president donald trump accused her, her personally, by name, of stealing the presidential election from him in the state of georgia. so we played that 911 call from her last week when it was published in the latest installment of this incredible ongoing reuters series about threats and harassment against election officials and election workers in the aftermath of the 2020 election. ruby freedman's daughter had long been an election worker in fulton county, largely democratic county, when the election approached it looked like fulton county would be under staffed for the election so she asked her mom, ruby, if she would sign up as a temporary worker to process ballots on election day. she did so, the two of them, mother and daughter, worked with other election workers through election day and into the night processing ballots in atlanta at the state farm arena. but as president trump and his colleagues, coconspirators -- i don't know. as president trump and his crowd set to work trying to flip the election results, trying georgia to overturn biden's win in georgia and say trump won instead, one of the so-called pieces of evidence they ginned up to justify their case for georgia to throw out the real election results was a video clip from the closed circuit television video, the surveillance vivideo on election night at the state farm arena. and that video clip happened to show ruby freedman, the woman we just heard on that 911 call -- ruby freedman and her daughter doing their jobs as election workers. the clip literally just showed them what they were supposed to be doing. taking ballots out of the containers that ballots were transported in on election day, and then taking those ballots out of that container and running them through the ballot counting machine. that's what they were supposed to do as election workers. that is what they were paid to do. that is what they did as election workers. but former president trump and his lawyers took this otherwise anodyne clip and they started telling everybody that what that videotape actually showed was ruby freedman and her daughter stealing the election. trump lawyers showed the video to georgia republicans in the state legislature, and they showed it to right-wing news outlets, and all along they kept showing this clip and saying that what it showed was these two women counting suitcases full of illegal ballots. how can you tell the ballots are illegal? well, look, they're coming out of these cases. but, yes, those are the kinds of secure cases that ballots get transported in on election day so they can get counted by-election workers. but look at this time. look at these black women and these ballots. they must be illegal ballots, right? look how illegal this looks. let's just say it's them doing something illegal. people will believe it. gentlemen, you see on your screen here mr. hannity from the fox news channel. he ran with the clip on fox news as if it showed something ominous or illegal, even though it did not. almost immediately a conservative website identified ms. freedman and her daughter by name. then trump lawyer rudy giuliani began identifying them by name in his wack doodle presentations to among other things georgia republicans in the state legislature. president trump himself played this video clip on a massive jumbo tron at a rally in georgia. again, it's just a video clip showing these women doing what they're supposed to be doing, taking ballots out of the secure containers they are held in and pputting them through the ballot machine. but they kept saying when they showed the clip it showed a crime. well, just look at it these black women with all the ballots. look how criminal it looks? you may also remember that infamous phone call in which president trump tried to pressure the georgia secretary of state into finding enough trump votes in the state somewhere to overturn biden's win. in that phone call, donald trump mentioned ruby freedman's name 18 times, called her a professional vote scammer and a hustler. the head of elections in fulton county said after that call the harassment of ruby freedman and her daughter got even worse. quote, and it just kept going. well, today ruby freedman and her daughter spoke to reporters for the first time about what they've been going through. they spoke to two reuters reporters who have been doing this remarkable work about threats to election workers across the country. just as a little sort of window into what this has been like for these women, listen to the conditions they felt they had to lay down just to be comfortable talking to these reuters reporters about what they've been through. quote, for this story the two women agreed to be interviewed on the condition that the reporters not take photos, publish audio recordings of the meeting or disclose where the meeting took place. both ms. moss and ms. freedman have changed their appearances since their photographs were widely circulated after the election. reuters agreed not to describe how they look now. offering the first detailed account of their ordeal, the two women told reuters of threats of lynching and racial slurs along with alarming visits by strangers to the homes of both freeman and her mother. moss avoided leaving her home except for work. ms. moss' teenage son also targeted by threats and racist messages. he started failing in school. the 14-year-old high school freshman was using his mom's old cellphone. he needed the device to connect to the internet for virtual learning during the coronavirus pandemic. it was the only way he could get online. as threats inundated that phone, the young man could not concentrate. his grades slipped. strangers battered him with threatening and racist voice mails and texts. one told him, quote, be glad it's 2020 and not 1920. you'd be hanging along with your mother. one threat shook her deeply. it said she had a, quote, cute little boy, which she took as a veiled threat to her son's life. ruby freeman said their alarm peaked in january when an fbi agent told them a suspected january 6th rioter had been arrested and found with a list of names of people to be executed. before she became target of trump supporters ms. moss said she enjoyed being the outgoing face of the fulton county elections office getting, for example, filmed for training videos, answering calls for voters. she tucked her business card into the envelope of every voter registration application card she mailed out. today when here office phone rings she's afraid to answer. she tries to avoid giving her name. she rarely leaves her cubicle. asides from commuting she avoids going out in public. she says she's lost the energy to cook or clean or even walk the dog. she says in a soft voice, quote, i can't enjoy anything. i just really have lost myself. but here's where we get to today's very strange turn in this story, a head spinning thing that occurred in the midst of all this and which reuters is reporting on for first time today. if you've seen coverage of this today the thing that's gotten all the headlines is a celebrity angle, possible connection of events to a famous person, and we'll get to that. but just first try to experience this story as ruby freeman experienced it, right? when she got this weird out of the blue visit from a mysterious stranger, after she'd been receiving all of these threats for weeks and weeks after the election. reuters has put together this story from interviewing ruby freeman and her daughter and from police reports and police video that they obtained. so this part of the story happens on january 4th. so it's about a month after that 911 call we played at the top of the show. at this point ruby freeman and her daughter and family including her mother, they've all been under siege for a month with just an avalanche of death threats, harassing calls, e-mails, people showing up at their houses and banging on the door and demanding to be let in saying they're there to make a citizens arrest. at this point it's january 4th. somebody knocked on ms. freeman's door. ruby freeman understandably would not open the door. she called a neighbor. she asked the neighbor to come over and talk to whoever was on her porch and find out whu what they wanted. the neighbor came over from next door and talked to this woman. this woman told ms. freeman's neighbor she was there because ruby freeman was in danger, and she has been sent to provide assistance. ms. freeman is so freaked out after the past month at that point she calls 911 again, and she asks them to send a police officer over to her house just so she can step outside her front door to talk to this stranger. the stranger says she's there to do and ms. freeman is in danger, she's been sent to protect her, to get her protected from some imminent threat. she wants to hear about that, but she asks for a police officer to be there. she calls the police department, tells the woman i will talk to you but not without a police officer present. police officer arrives and speaks with the woman outside ruby freeman's house, quote the woman gave her name as trevian kutti and said she was sent by a high profile individual whom she didn't identify to give ms. freeman an urgent message. police suggested the two women if they were going to meet should meet at a police station so ms. freeman could feel safe. so they all went to the police station, and ruby freeman and trevian kutti the supposed crisis manager all sat down in the police station while a police officer stands nearby. and it's because that police officer was standing nearby there is body camera footage of that part of the meeting. so we've got on tape some of that meeting as captured by police body camera and as published today in edited form by reuters. the audio is a little bit hard to hear. you can make it out, but it's a little bit hard to hear. reuters is the epty that added the subtitles you'll see here on your screen. >> thank you so much for agreeing meet with you. we didn't want to frighten you. i'm here because i received a phone call. not that i didn't know about the situation before because i had heard. but it wasn't a serious concern for me because i had -- we would like to let you know first and foremost we have put in placement a way to move you, to secure you from what may be authorized over the next 48 hours. we have probably 48 hours in which to move you. we would do it on your schedule. i cannot say what specifically will take place. i just know that it will disrupt your freedom and -- the freedom of one or more of your family members. i would like to connect now on the phone, harrison ford -- >> i'm just going to stop right there for a second. you can see in the subtitles there they're talking about harrison ford. to be clear they're not talking about harrison ford the actor. it's not even clear they're definitively talking about a person named harrison ford. but it's cleary somebody else who is working this person who's speaking to and ultimately threatening the election worker ruby freeman. so don't be distracted by harrison ford as if it's the actor. it's definitely not. but, here, let's go back to it. >> i'm going to connect now on the phone, harrison ford, who would be taking this situation to a detailed level for you to let you know exactly what is at stake, what choices you have, whether you would choose or not to deal with us. i am not your enemy. this is garrison. you are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up. i work with some of the biggest names in the industry. crisis is my thing. one thing we don't want to do for you is to create another crisis. i'm going to call harrison ford and put him on speaker. >> who's harrison ford? >> harrison ford is a black progressive crisis manager, very high level with authoritative powers. i am hoping that you are trusting that this information doesn't go any further. i have to honestly advise i don't know her background. >> i could step over there if you're if you're comfortable. that fine? >> at that point the police officer whose body cam footage we're watching here, that police officer leaves the room or goes and stands further away because this crisis manager lady who's laying out this -- this very dangerous situation for ruby freeman she needs to know about, apparently this part she doesn't want the police officer overhearing, the supposed plan to get ruby freeman safe, to move her and it has to happen urgently in the next 48 hours. but what reuters reports happened next after the police officer moved away, according to ruby freeman is that this crisis manager lady got this guy who she's been describing on the speakerphone, and quote, over the next hour the woman in the room with ruby freeman and the man on the speakerphone tried to get ruby freeman to implicate herself in committee voodoo fraud on election day. growing suspicious she jumped up from her chair and told kutti, quote, the devil is a liar before she called for an officer. later at home she googled her name and discovered the woman was, in fact, a major trump supporter. this, my friends, is where the story couldn't get any weirder. it gets weeder because in addition to being a major donald trump supporter that woman, trevian kutti apparently works for kanye west, the hip hop star. more importantly than his music career in this context it's important to know kanye west was a massive trump supporter. he briefly ran for president 2020 in a campaign that was a transparent effort to help siphon black votes away from democrats and his campaign was actually run by trump operatives. in addition to working for kanye west in an online biography that's now been deleted from the web she also claimed to serve as a member of the, quote, young black leadership council under president donald trump. she claimed there was one and that she was a member of it. we tried multiple times in multiple ways to reach ms. kutti tonight to find out about her claimed connections to the trump administration and the trump campaign. we have not heard back. when i say we've tried multiple times in multiple ways to reach her, i really mean emphasis on multiple. but now this all raises a potentially kind of explosive question, right? these folks who were trying to get ruby freeman to confess to having committed election fraud, were they there talking to her just as private citizens, just as concerned citizens, or were they there on behalf of the trump campaign? did the trump campaign know they were doing this? did the trump campaign send them to try to get some confession out of ruby freeman? they said they needed to act within 48 hours? well, why? 48 hours away from that conversation was january 6th when the election were to be certified in congress. if they were trying to get supposed evidence of election fraud, some kind of confession to election fraud to stop that certification, well, 48 hours would be the relevant time frame. in terms of answering this question about who sent these folks to intimidate ruby freeman or did they potentially just do it freelance, let's not forget this happened in the state of georgia. there right now is an ongoing serious criminal investigation by the fulton county prosecutor's office into attempts by donald trump and his allies to interfere with the election in georgia, an investigation that includes an experienced rico prosecutor brought on specifically for this case. to find out if this was an organized conspiracy to commit multiple crimes in pursuit of a single objective. if elections officials in georgia were intimidated and pressured to maladminister the election or to throw the count or do anything else, that would be a crime under state law in georgia. we reached out to the fulton county da's office tonight and they told us, quote, threats against election workers and election administrators are part of the investigation, and any -- excuse me -- and any evidence of those threats is relevant to the investigation. ruby freeman and her daughter are election workers. that is why they are under threat. threatening election workers, threatening election administrators is a crime. it is a crime that is under investigation already in the state of georgia. if those people who were threatening and intimidating trying to extort some sort of false confession out of ruby freeman under pain of some sort of unspecified violence that was going to come to her, if they were there acting on their own behalf that's a crime, if they were there acting under the trump administration or the trump campaign, that's already under investigation by the fulton county d.a.'s office. i should tell you as far as this threat that kanye west's crisis manager lady said she was there to protect ruby freeman from, the threat that in 48 hours people were going to come to ruby freeman's home and disrupt her freedom, well, according to a lawsuit that ms. freeman and her daughter have filed against the right-wing website that originally publicly identified them and that put them in a danger, a crowd of people, a crowd of trump supporters did descend on ms. freeman's house on foot and in cars yelling at her through bull horns just 48 hours after she got that stark warning it was going to happen. that is what happened at her home on january 6th at the same time pro-trump rioters were ransacking the u.s. capitol in washington, d.c. ms. freeman was not actually at home on january 6th when the crowd descended on her house. she had fled her house on the advice of the fbi. she wouldn't return home for two months. but you know what? other than the warning to leave her home, it doesn't appear that law enforcement, federal, state or local law enforcement has done much to help or protect ruby freeman and her family against all of these threats and all of these efforts to intimidate and harass her. reuters reports that one year on the threats against her and her daughter have not been investigated by local police or by state authorities. federal agents have apparently monitored some of the threats, but they have made no arrests. quote, freeman showed hundreds of threatening e-mails and text messages to police in cobb county where she lives. she visited the fulton county police station, told officers about the threats while she was there. her phone buzzed nonstop with menacing calls. freeman says an officer answered more than 20 of the threatening calls. in response to freeman's at times panicked emergency calls to 911 cobb county officers meant to her home multiple times, but police officials never opened investigations into the threats that she faced. and yet for all that the reason we have that video of ruby freeman talking with the crisis manager lady who showed up on her doorstep to threaten her in an even more insidious way, the reason we have that tape is when the cop suggested they go to the police station and have that conversation, ruby freeman said yes. maybe she would be safe at the police station. she did need protection from this kind of stuff. and that -- to me that's the sort of gut wrenching, heart breaking part of all of this. i mean, the citizenship of ruby freeman and her daughter is so clear through all of this. her daughter loving to be the face of the elections office in fulton county, helping her foalo citizens vote, happy to explain any questions or concerns with any voters receiving their absentee ballot applications or needing any other assistance from the voting office. she loved doing that. asked her mom to fill in as election worker. we need more folks to come in and work. and her mom decided she would come in and work on election day. all that up through and including ms. freeman turning to the police repeatedly because she needed someone to protect her. she trusted that they would protect her. but not asial person has been charged or as far as we can tell even investigated for what has been done to her life. it's been over a year now since this torrent of abuse started raining down on ruby freeman and her daughter because of president trump naming her, rudy giuliani naming her, this right-wing website, conservative media outlets running these lies about her. she didn't do anything wrong. but lest you think this is all in the past, it's all reswrufbled now, take a look at what's happening in georgia right now today. former georgia republican senator david perdue -- you might remember he lost his u.s. senate seat to the democrat jon ossoff. david perdue is now running for governor of that state. he's running for governor because president trump asked him to. he's his preferred candidate and it's easy to see why given the things he's saying. he's building this campaign for governor on the debunked claims of voter fraud in that state. shortly after launching his gubernatorial bid this week david perdue said he wouldn't have allowed biden's victory in georgia to be certified if he had been serving as governor at the time. he's also calling for a special legislative session to delve into all of trump's conspiracy theories of what happened in 2020. and now today david perdue filed a lawsuit pushing those baseless conspiracy theories. georgia public radio summed it up with this rather blunt headline. quote, david perdue files election lawsuit with recycled, already disproven claims of fraud. the lawsuit he filed today claimed fraudulent ballots were counted in fulton county, georgia, even though that is bull and has been thoroughly refuted by investigators, thoroughly investigated, thoroughly refuted. his suit also renews the conspiracy that centered around ruby freeman and her daughter. it argues fulton county election workers pulled out suitcases of illegal ballots and counted those ballots multiple times. and you can bet that the threats and harassment will kick back up again for ruby freeman and her daughter and her grandson and her mom. now that that conspiracy theory is back in the news. and maybe this is all a stunt in terms of david perdue trying to get elected as the next trumpy republican governor of georgia, but it's also a part of a really big multi-variant systematic attack by republicans on the voting system in georgia. i mean, one of the things georgia republicans just gave themselves the power to do is replace local election boards in that state. reuters reports in numerous counties, quote, the republican controlled georgia state legislature shifted the power to appoint some or all election board members to local county commissions, all of come are currently controlled by republicans. so rather than allowing local communities, local counties, local municipalities to pick their elections officials. instead republican state legislatures have given republicans the power to pick all those local officials. and the effect is stark. the effect is that republicans are now across the state of georgia purging democrats, particularly black democrats from county elections boards all across the state. these are the boards that control voter access, you know, polling locations and early voting procedures. these are the entities that have the control over vote tallies and audits and recounts. they're taking all the democrats especially the black democrats off those boards and replacing them with republicans systematically. because they've given themselves the power to do this under their new legislation. under their new legislation the republican controlled state election board now has for itself the power to assume control of any county election board that it deems underperforming. and surprise, one of the counties they've already deemed underperforming is fulton county, predominantly black metro atlanta fulton county where most democratic votes in the state come from. the county where ruby freeman and her daughter counted votes on election day, just the way they were supposed to do it, where her daughter still works at the elections office. the republican state election board has declared fulton county is an underperforming county in terms of its election. they're already moving to take it over for themselves, to get rid of local control to install their own. it certainly would appear that what they're trying to do there is have the biggest black democratic county in the state of georgia taken over by presumably white republicans. it is bad enough -- it's heart breaking enough to see the way that efforts to overturn the 2020 election upended the lives of election workers like ruby freeman and her daughter, but it really does look like just the beginning. i mean, yeah, threatening and harassing individual election workers has really been working for them. imagine how well it's going to work for them when they just take over the entire elections machinery top to tail to do with it what they will. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ experience the power of sanctuary at the lincoln wish list event. - oh...oh. - what's going on? - oh, darn! - let me help. experience the power of sanctuary lift and push and push! there... it's up there. hey joshie... wrinkles send the wrong message. help prevent them with downy wrinkleguard. feel the difference with downy. do you struggle to fall asleep and stay asleep? qunol sleep formula combines 5 key nutrients that can help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up refreshed. the brand i trust is qunol. small businesses like yours make gift-giving possible. now, comcast business has an exclusive gift for you. introducing the gift of savings sale. for a limited time, ask how to get a great deal 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new abortion ban go into effect despite roe v. wade. went into effect 100 days ago today, on september 1st. and a bunch of different entities brought legal challenges against texas' abortion ban. the biden administration's justice department brought a legal challenge to it as well. today the supreme court ruled on those challenges, and it in a 5-4 ruling they decided they would leave texas' abortion ban in place. abortion providers will be allowed to go ahead with some lawsuits trying to legally challenge it in lower courts, but those lawsuits don't stand a great chance given the ruling today from the supreme court. and overhad the law still in place, the law still in effect. abortions still banned in texas. five republican appointed justices who were in the majority today let it stand. and remember the weird way this ban works. texas didn't just up and declare abortions a crime and then send out the cops to arrest people for it. they made this weird new law that's designed to evade roe v. wade. it's designed to get around the fact abortion is a constitutionally protected right. and the way they do it instead of sending out cops to arrest people for having an abortion or providing an abortion, they setup this weird scheme by which random private citizens are invited to bring lawsuits against someone who's involved in an abortion. and if that lawsuit prevails, if they can prove a person provided an abortion or worked as a receptionist or checked someone in at an abortion clinic or they can prove you loaned your sister money to get an abortion or let her stay at your house the night before the appointment, if they can prove you were the uber driver or bus driver who dropped her off at the clinic, then you the implicated person who assisted in the abortion, you have to personally pay $10,000 to the person who sued you plus their legal fees. this is the scheme by which texas' new abortion ban is enforced. it is admittedly bizarre. it has the effect of putting amateur stalkers on the trail of every woman in texas who seems she might have been pregnant at some point in the past and now she seems like she's not. but justice clarence thomas, sam aleto, neil gorsuch, amy coney barrett all okayed that today so it stays in place. justice john roberts, the chief justice is a lot of things, but one of the things he is is a very clear and direct writer. he doesn't exaggerate. he does not use hyperbole. that's what i think for a lot of people made it all the more alarming when he wrote today in dissent. again, he was on the losing side of this ruling. he was in the minority, but he described what the court did today as such. he said, quote, texas has passed a law banning abortions after roughly 6 weeks of pregnancy. this law is contrary to this court's decision in roe v. wade and planned parent hood vs. casey. it's had the effect of denying the exercise of what we have held as a right protected under the federal constitution. texas has deployed an array of stratagems. the clear purpose and actual effect of the texas abortion ban has been to nullify this court's rulings. it is, however, a basic principle that the u.s. constitution is the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is. indeed, if the legislatures of the several states may at will anull the judgments of the courts of the united states and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery. the nature of the federal right infringed does not matter. it is the role of the supreme court in our constitutional system that is at stake. that was chief justice john roberts today. nevertheless saying letting texas ban abortions this way means states can just overrule the constitution now. states can overrule the federal court. the supreme court doesn't have to be obeyed anymore, not if this is how it's going to go from here on out. justice sotomayor, she was more blunt in her assessment. she said, quote, the court should have put an end to this madness months ago before the ban first went into effect. it failed to do so then. it fails again today. the court just betrays not only the citizens of texas but also our constitutional system of governing. the court effectively invites other states for texas' model. it echoes the philosophy of john c. calhoun, a virulwant defender of the slave holding south that insisted the states had the right to veto or nullify any law which they disagreed. the nation, she says, fought a civil war over that proposition. this choice to shrink from texas' challenge will have far reaching repercussions. i doubt the court let alone the country is prepared for them. at surface level this was a sort of complicated abortion related ruling today from the supreme court, but the bottom line here is that texas has successfully found a way to ban abortion. a few questions. does this open the door for every other republican-controlled state to ban abortion in it same way, just using the copycat law? when justice sotomayor today and john roberts warned this means states can't just end abortion rights this way, they can end any federal right they don't like. does that really mean what they're saying this means? under this new supreme court precedent could a blue state that's tired of gun violence put a $10,000 bounty for somebody for selling an ar-15? sure there's a federal constitutional right to bear arms, there was a right to get abortions in texas, too. but they did that with this bounty scheme. could a state like texas next say not only do they not like there being a federal right to abortion, they don't like contraception. it's sinful, so now they'll put a $10,000 boupty on anybody who sells condoms or birth control pills. what about freedom of speech? sure there's a federally protected right to freedom of speech, says so in the constitution. the courts have upheld that. but in "x" state, how about a $10,000 bounty on someone who says something against jesus christ? $10,000 bounty if you can catch somebody saying something blasphemous. yeah, there's a federal right to free speech, but states can get around that federal right problem. that's what they screamed about from the losing side of this case today. are they right? hold that thought. e they right hold that thought. this is the sound of nature breathing. and this is the sound of better breathing. fasenra is a different kind of asthma medication. it's not a steroid or inhaler. fasenra is an add-on treatment for asthma driven by eosinophils. it's one maintenance dose every 8 weeks. it helps prevent asthma attacks, improve breathing, and lower use of oral steroids. nearly 7 out of 10 adults with asthma may have elevated eosinophils. fasenra is designed to target and remove them. fasenra is not a rescue medication or for other eosinophilic conditions. fasenra may cause allergic reactions. get help right away if you 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when that ruling came it would be dressed up to maybe look like good news for abortion rights but the ruling would actually be nothing of the kind. well, today we got that ruling and as usual she was right. senior editor at slate.com appreciate you being here tonight, my friend. thanks for making time. >> hi, rachel. >> am i right in thinking this might have been even worse than what you expected? >> i think so. i think when we talked a week ago i said that the court would just flat out strike down sb8 under the theory as you said in your leadp you know this is really bad if you're a gun owner in texas. in california you sure don't want this kind of scheme to be taking your gun rights away. the court didn't strike down sb8. the court just said here's a really narrow pathway for the plaintiffs to keep on trying to sue. so i was right insofar as i think there's a lot of people who construed this as a win for the abortion clinics. not a win, tiny little tunnel to try to vindicate their rights. but, oh, boy, this is really, i think, as you said a signal of how far the court has moved from trying to mollify us with gaslighting. they're just, they're down. >> the tiny little way you describe it there's some way abortion providers -- justice gorsuch has seftively sort of tilted the courts against those future challenges even as they go forward. is that enough, that -- that sense in which this is still an ongoing matter, is that enough to hold off every other republican-controlled state in the country passing copycat legislation and them all getting themselves abortion bans like texas because this will be an ongoing concern? >> emphatically, no. not only is it not clear what the abortion providers can, in fact, do in texas and we're going to see in the next couple of days as they roll the dice and take a risk about whether they can, in fact, start to perform the procedures that they haven't been able to perform for 101 days. but the court was really clear i think in giving a map for -- four states have already talked about putting copycat bans into effect, and i think we're going to see more of that. i think the court pretty much said if you're a red state and you want to ban abortion, do what texas did but tweak it a little around the edges and you'll keep winning. so i don't think anyone who wants to copy what texas did is anything but emboldened after today. >> wow. dahlia lithwick, senior editor at slate.com, thank you for being here. your clarity is always comforting because it's clear. it's deeply unsettling at times like this because what you're being so clear about is pretty unsettling itself. thank you, my friend. >> thanks, rachel. >> all right, we'll be right back. stay with us. stay with us superpowers from a spider bite? i could use some help showing the world how liberty mutual customizes their car insurance so they only pay for what they need. 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