made to look kind of like the civilian version of an m-4 rifle but sized down so like toddlers can use them. not toy guns, not like supersoakers, squirt guns, not bb guns, not cap guns, real guns that fire real bullets. you have heard of the ar-15. now meet the jr-15, as in the junior ar-15. the company that makes it is just super cute about the whole thing. they call themselves we-won, tactical. they the logos for the little girls and little boys version of this gun for babies. the logos were this little kid's skull and bones pacifier with a cross bone and this one for girls. because why should any kid have to wait until they're done with the teething process before they can start carrying their own assault rifle? they advertise the jr-15 as smaller, safer, lighter. they apparently recently did drop the pacifier logos and the scooby-doo cartoon font in some of their advertising. but it's not like they're no longer claiming this is an assault rifle for babies. i mean, they could change their marketing of it. they could say this is for a different purpose. they could have started to say they're making this mini sized assault rifle for people with unusually short arms. are you built like a t. rex, have we got the assault rifle for you? or they could market it for people with low upper body strength. can't handle a gun that weighs more than two pounds? find yourself unable to lift a carton of milk anymore? don't worry, it doesn't mean you shouldn't have a semiautomatic rifle of your dreams. it's specifically designed for you, great great grandma. when they dropped the pacifier logo explicitly targeting the gun to the teething toddler market, that might have seemed like it was signaling that they were abandoning the whole idea of assault rifles for kids, but no, it turns out they just dropped the pacifier logos and the cartoon font but they're making clear that it is not just for people with little tiny arms or not just for people with very poor upper body strength. it's still definitely for preschool. and the reason you can tell that it's still their targeted market for this gun is because this is the image that pops up on the splash page at their website. clear enough? here's another view of the same target consumer, maybe she's, what, 5? think she's 5? and if america is now marketing smaller, lighter, fully functional semiautomatic assault rifles for 5-year-olds, i mean, what's next? why would we stop there? if they really want to get the full market share, maybe they could do a littler one that babies can use in the crib. maybe they could fire it with their feet or something. the junior ar-15, the jr-15 for toddlers is a real thing. for its part, the company who makes this kid gun says the reason it's so great for kids is not only because it only weighs two pounds and is sized for little fingers and little arms and little hands, but they're very hot to tell you it has special safety features. the special safety feature appears mostly to be just a second deliberately awkward safety knob on the other side of the gun from the regular safety. because surely, kids won't be able to figure that one out on their own. the website snopes.com, which debunks fake things, they had to do a snopes post not long ago assuring people this is not a projected plot line from the simpsons or a borat movie to dramatize how insane things can get in this country, no, this is a real thing. is it designed for children? true, yes. it's in the news today because in the great state of illinois, where there is a pugnacious democratic governor named j.b. pritzker, in illinois, they're about to pass a new law that would ban gun marketing, gun advertising that specifically markets guns to kids. this is sort of a poster child kid assault rifle for that new law. now, of course, they're not banning the gun itself. heaven for fend, we cannot do this in this country, but they're at least trying to ban the advertising of these assault rifles for babies. california passed a law along the same lines last year. now other blue states including illinois are following suit. gun rights groups and their republican supporters are absolutely outraged. they're absolutely against any such move. why on earth would you want to limit any sort of communication or marketing targeting children with this sort of thing? i mean, from their perspective, hey, what could possibly go wrong? to this day, people don't believe me when i tell them what it is that republicans did first the last time they got full control in washington. the last time they got control of both the white house and the congress. you remember when that was, right? that was the result of the 2016 election. and there was so much shock and consternation over what candidate donald trump had said he was going to do with the presidency and what he had campaigned on. there was so much shock and surprise over the election that the election outcome, particularly at the presidential level, but the election outcome was that republicans not only got the white house, they also got the house and senate. but amid all of the consternation and shock and the rapid change that portended, no one remembers what they actually did with that power once they got it. but it's true, it is as real as the ar-15 military style assault rifle sized down for preschoolers. the first substantive thing the new republican congress did in 2017 when they got full control in washington was the republicans passed legislation that would facilitate access to firearms for people who had been formally adjudicated to be mentally ill. not just like people who seem a little off, but like people who were formally adjudicated by the government to be mentally ill and unable to handle their own affairs. the first thing republicans did with full power in washington was literally make it easier for officially crazy people to get guns. to this day, people still do not believe it, but look it up. it is true. and now, naturally, along that same plot line, now we have kid-sized fully functional semiautomatic military style assault rifles that fire real bullets. california last year and illinois now are trying at the state level to at least block the marketing of those. but the guns exist. and gun groups and their republican supporters are very much opposed even to trying to regulate the advertising around this new product. i understand, i think i understand perhaps as well as anyone, i'm going to guess, that national level american politics is hurly-burly right now. but i am also here to tell you what's going on in the states in many cases, it is just as wild. and it doesn't get enough attention, i think, even when it directly illuminates or relates to or is the manifestation of what's going on at the national level. so take the fully functional military style assault rifle for children example, for one, take also florida, for example, where the florida republican governor is not running a great presidential campaign, but he is trying, and he's so far doing better than any other republican at mounting some kind of showing against former president donald trump. the strongest wind in ron desantis' sails in this republican primary, the strongest wind in his sails for the purpose of motivating the conservative republican base has been his claim that he would make america more like florida. make america florida again. ron desantis' pitch for the presidency has basically been at its most successful, that his leadership in florida is a success story. he's been elect orally successful in florida. he's won re-election by a lot there. if you put him in charge in washington, he would do the same thing for the whole country and he could put in place the kind of governance he's been able to pursue in florida because he's been so successful there. that has been the sort of best version of ron desantis' pitch to be president of the united states. the problem is that part of the reality of what's actually going on in florida under ron desantis is leprosy. now they have got leprosy. not a metaphor, actual leprosy. headlines, central florida is a hot spot for leprosy, report says. headline, what's behind the increase in leprosy cases in florida. headline, as leprosy cases rise in florida, what you must know about the infectious disease. so florida has a leprosy problem, florida also has a malaria problem. headline, alert issued after locally acquired malaria cases confirmed in florida. headline, malaria confirmed in florida. mosquitoes after several human cases. headline, health officials say florida malaria cases contacted and transmitted in sarasota which hasn't happened since the 1950s. so poor florida. not good news, right? leprosy and malaria both, a, in america, b, in the 21st century, and c, in the same state at the same time. terrible news for florida. but particularly terrible news because it's happening at a time when ron desantis is the governor of florida, because under ron desantis as governor of florida, florida state government is missing its top two public health officials who would be responsible for containing outbreaks and dealing with emerging epidemics. florida doesn't have anybody in those jobs anymore. because who on earth would want to be a public health official working for governor ron desantis, whose whole make america florida gambit is largely based more than anything else on him being a covid contrainian, who insisted covid wasn't a thing, and hand-picked a surgeon general for the state after the man came forward as a group of quacks who insisted some disease is caused by sex with demons and if we could just get a handle on that problem, then why would you need vaccines. stop it with the demon sex, you perverts. ron desantis is running for president in large part on the basis of his far sighted wisdom on covid in florida. his hand-picked surgeon general in florida came out and made it the official recommendation of the state of florida that young men definitely shouldn't be vaccinated against covid. why? because it's so dangerous. he was later found to have falsified the data that supposedly justified that conclusion. he remains the surgeon general of florida today. and why wouldn't he? ron desantis loves him in that job. don't worry, though, now that it's leprosy and malaria in florida, i'm sure they'll do great with it. and ron desantis will then take that model to the whole country, gulp. we're also seeing some interesting stuff in the states even as it relates to the most hurly-burly thing in national politics, which is the legal problems of the republican presidential front-runner. we'll have more on this coming up later on in the show, but even as former president trump is charged federally for among other things allegedly overseeing a plot to sneak fake votes into the electoral college count, the local republicans who signed up to be those fake electors in seven states, they are now facing an array of criminal investigations and in some cases charges themselves. in three states now, we have either overtconfirmation or clear indication that the fake republican electors are the subjects of open criminal investigations at the state level. that's arizona, new mexico, and georgia. in one other state in wisconsin, the attorney general there won't say either way whether there's an open criminal investigation. and still another state, in michigan, all 16 fake republican electors have been now charged with felonies under state law. i mean, depending on how things proceed in all of the other states, we're looking at potentially dozens of local republican activists and minor officials, the trumpiest of all, right, people who absolutely devoted to donald trump, who could be looking at felony criminal charges for their part in the fake elector scheme that the trump campaign told them to carry out. there were 84 people who signed up to be fake electors. and just as it's possible to look at donald trump as the 1,090th defendant to be charged in the january 6th investigation, as jonathan karl has been saying, we may also end seeing trump as the 85th person involved in the fake electors scheme to also face potential criminal liability for having jumped off that particularly ill-advised legal high dive. everybody else is going to have to face trial for this stuff, but he's not? i mean, the way these things are being charged at the federal level, it really looks like what's going to happen on the fake electors thing in terms of criminal charges is going to happen in the individual states, where republicans tried to steal the vote this way. there are open pending law enforcement decisions on this now in wisconsin, in arizona, in new mexico, in georgia, which means that part of the overthrow the election criminal liability saga is really worth watching, not just at the federal level, but in those individual states. so this is my pitch for watching what's happening in the states. again, both as a reflection of and in some cases as the most sort of peeked manifestation of what's happening in national politics. of all the states, if you're picking a single one to keep an eye on as in tonight and tomorrow, the one to watch i think is ohio. and again, this is a fascinating story about ohio, but it is also national news. because ever since the conservatives on the u.s. supreme court overturned roe last year, last june, republicans all over the country have been tempering their glee over that long sought achievement, finally, now they can ban abortion. they have been tempering their glee over that with their worry over how much the country hates that. because however much they, republicans, want to ban abortion, the country really broadly does not want that. and most worryingly for republicans, this is something americans are proving their willingness to commit to in the voting booth. and you can see it in the plain numbers. since republicans got their wish and overturned roe, there have been six states in which there's been a state-wide vote on abortion rights. six of them. in all six, abortion rights have won by a lot. it's happened in swing states like michigan, it's happened in liberal states like california and vermont, in conservative states like montana and kentucky and kansas. every single state where there's been a state-wide vote on abortion rights since they overturned roe, every time voters have voted, been able to vote on this issue, they have voted for abortion rights and against republican abortion bans. over and over and over again in all the states that have voted on it. and that is about to happen again in the great state of ohio. this november, this upcoming november, ohio voters are set to vote on a state-wide ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution so it protects abortion rights. now, republicans in the ohio legislature and the republican governor in ohio, they have instituted an all but total abortion ban in the state, and ohio voters don't like it. and ohio voters are very likely going to overturn, they're going to vote to overturn ohio's abortion ban when they go to vote on it in november. everybody knows that. ohio pro choice people know that, ohio pro life people know that. people voted against republican abortion bans in every state where anybody has voted on it since dobbs, including in states like kansas and kentucky. so it's safe to say that voters are going to vote against republican abortion bans when they get the chance to do so in november in ohio. unless -- unless ohio republicans can rig it somehow. unless they can figure out a way to change the rules so ohio voters won't be allowed to do that. and that is why there's this big important vote tomorrow that is really worth watching. tomorrow, weird day for an election, right? august 8th. but yeah, that's on purpose. ohio republicans have put forward a single issue ballot measure that will raise the threshold for amending the state constitution from what it has been for over a century, 50%, so instead it now has to be 60%. it's the only thing on the ballot tomorrow. it's the first time in nearly 100 years that a single issue ballot measure has been put before ohio voters in august. that's because everybody expects next to zero voter turnout for any single issue ballot measure in august. but presumably, republicans thinking was that if nobody turns out, they'll be able to use just their small activist hard core base to change the rules, thus depriving ohio voters of the right to say no, the right to reject what republicans are otherwise getting away with in that state, even though lots of people in the state, a majority of people in the state, really hate it. what's happening in national politics is absolutely bananas. the personalities are bananas, the stakes are the country of having a criminal defendant, and potentially a convicted felon as the leader of one of the two parties, that's as bananas as it gets, but the place where the rubber meets the road over and over again is the states. with malaria and leprosy now running up numbers in a state where they eviscerated public health infrastructure for maximum political impact in the republican presidential primary, where blue state governors are having to come up with ways to stop assault weapons for toddlers without running afoul of republican appointees on the u.s. supreme court, who will prohibit them from banning any such gun. where state level criminal prosecutions of efforts to overthrow the lawfully elected government of the united states might not only intersect with federal prosecutions, those state prosecutions might be the only prosecutions left standing if one particular criminal defendant gets elected president and then he immediately dismantles the u.s. justice department, which is he definitely overtly promising to do. and where republicans are now absolutely clear as a bell that this whole democracy thing is not going to work for them on the things that mean the most to them. when they're absolutely clear that voters hate what they're doing and so they better come up with a way to get away with what they're doing without the voters getting a say on it. those are all very much national political dynamics. but watch them at work tonight. and tomorrow in columbus, in toledo, in cincinnati, in akron, in youngstown, in cleveland. joining us now is connie schultz, she's a pulitzer prize winning columnist who wrote for cleveland's plain dealer for nearly a decade. her newsletter is called hopefully yours. connie, great to see you. thank you for being here tonight. >> so glad to be with you, rachel. and boy, did you sum it up well. thank you. you really laid it out. >> let me ask if -- i mean, i'm looking at this from sort of a national tv show point of view, from a national perspective, but i feel like i am seeing currents of the kind of national republican project right now in this very specific fight in your state. >> well, what i love is that yes, you're speaking from a national perch, but you're smart about it. and you know, you have to actually look closely at what's going on in ohio. the early voting numbers are, i mean, we keep getting new updates throughout the day today. they're well over 600,000 now. we're getting reports of lines and seeing video of lines all the way around the block at the boards of elections on the last day they could vote. we don't -- you know, signs don't vote, i don't tend to pay a lot of attention to yard signs, except in august, when i'm seeing so many vote no signs throughout the state because i of course drive around the state. so i think -- i know, i'm not going to do a think, let's not do that. i know republicans have underestimated how much voters were going to care about this, and not just democratic voters. understand, this is more than a conservative overreach. this is -- this is a chance to what they see it as is a chance to change representative government. and it's a power grab. and a lot of republicans are seeing that, seeing it the same way. and you're right. they claim -- they try to make this claim it is to save the constitution, to protect the constitution. yet the secretary of state said no, it's about abortion. the head of right to life in ohio, it's about abortion. you're right, they're afraid of what's going to happen in november. they should be, it was overreaching. i have contended all along, ever since the supreme court decision, i don't think a lot of republicans ever wanted to actually win it all, right? because then they were going to face this. the uprising. and they have really underestimated how many voters are going to show up. and what's interesting, too, one thing you didn't mention but i'm sure you're aware of, earlier this year, they said no august elections. this stunt is $20 million. early in the year, no more early elections, now here we are, republicans are once again putting this on the ballot in august, and election day is tomorrow. i'm looking forward to voting. i'm going to do it in person. and we should of course acknowledge, i'm married to u.s. senator sherrod brown. that doesn't have anything to do with my opinion, but i'm going to disclose that. the secretary of state is one of the people who wants his job right now, but yet running for the senate, but also pulling this stunt. >> let me ask you about the other side of the fight here. is this a democrats versus republicans fight in ohio, or is this the kind of fight, where it's clearly republicans and the anti-abortion movement that is pushing this, with a lot of support from, you know, outside of the state billionaires and all that stuff, pushing to change the threshold to make it harder for people to vote for abortion rights in november. but on the other side of the fight, is this the democratic party taking the lead in the organizing, or is this a sort of more organic or more broad coalition than that in terms of people on the other side? >> this is definitely more organic. you have doctors organized in a way they never have been before, to protect reproductive rights. you've got organizations like red wine and blue, dahlia lithwick, you know her, dahlia and i were together with a large group of women with red wine and blue a few weeks ago in cleveland for a training session on how to get signatures for the november ballot issue. the thing i couldn't get over afterwards is how many women came up to us and wanted to tell us how this is the first time they have ever been involved in politics in their lives. and we're talking about not just younger women, talking about grandmothers, talking about a lot of women -- i'm a grandmother of eight, this is not new for me to care about this, but what i hear them saying over and over again is, we really thought we would be in a different place at this point in our lives. we thought the country would be in a different place. and the thing i love about the attention ohio is getting for this is i really hope we can get over this narrative that ohio is simply lost. it's a red state now, right? because i do think, i don't want to make predictions, but i'm pretty optimistic about tomorrow's vote and i'm increasingly optimistic about how this is going to go in november. in large part because as you said, it's grassroots movement. an organic movement. increasingly what i love is hearing from women who understand that just because we're in our 50s and in our 60s and in our 70s, that doesn't mean we have to be irrelevant. it certainly doesn't mean we're going to be invisible. this is new, this is -- my mother's generation didn't feel this way, but we have a very different approach to life. i mean, it's called hopefully yours because to me that is the only way to approach all of this. the laziest thing in the world to be is a cynic because then you just give up. hope takes work. but hope is also a fact. and i see so many hopeful people involved in this right now, and it makes me happy for them because i think they're going to feel really good tomorrow. >> connie schultz, pulitzer prize winning columnist for wrote for the cleveland plain dealer for nearly a decade and married to sherrod brown. we have been watching the turnout numbers in ohio. it's hard to extrapolate from turnout numbers to see what the overall turnout will be, but it looks like a lot of ohioans will be out there tomorrow. thanks for being with us tonight. >> thanks for doing this. >> all right, we have much more ahead tonight, including some breaking news on the trump investigation. a surprise new court filing tonight from special counsel jack smith. i did not think we were getting this tonight. we got it. it's a doozy. it has serious implications and we'll have that next. stay with us. >> vo: for us, dris the only way we can get our baby to sleep, so when our windshield cracked, we needed it fixed right. we went to safelite.com. there's no one else we'd 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comcast business, powering possibilities. . so there's some breaking news tonight in the latest federal criminal case against former president trump. we knew we were going to get something in that case this afternoon or this evening. we didn't know we were going to get this other thing. here's the situation. let me explain it in layman's terms as i not a lawyer understand them. on friday night, special counsel jack smith asked the judge in this case for a protective order. which basically means when the government hands evidence over to trump's defense team for use in the trial, the judge should order trump and his lawyers to not release any of that evident publicly. in making that request, jack smith's team pointed the judge to this social media post from trump last week, if you go after me, i'm coming after you. by putting this in their filing requesting the protective order, they were basically alerting the judge to the presence of this posting. the implication was, hey, if this is the kind of thing this guy is saying publicly at this stage, there's no telling what else he would post when we give him stuff that's really sensitive. so on friday, prosecutors asked the judge for this protective order. they cited that troubling posting by trump. today, this afternoon, we knew that trump's defense team had to file its reply. they did. almost as if they were confirming the contentions from the prosecutors in their filing with the judge, they took this proposed protective order, the things that prosecutors said trump and his team should be barred from releasing to the public, and they said that a whole bunch of stuff should be crossed off that list. they specified recordings, transcripts, interview reports, related exhibits of witness interviews, trump's team said tonight, we ought to be able to do whatever we want with all that stuff, including making all that stuff available to the public. so that filing from trump's team saying no, no protective order is necessary, you should much more narrowly tailor it. that was the filing we were expecting tonight from trump's team. what we didn't expect was for jack smith's prosecutors to come back within just a couple hours with a big hard nosed response, pushing back hard on trump's proposal. this is from the new filing from prosecutors that came in just within the last hour. quote, the defendant, trump, proposed an order designed to allow him to try this case in the media rather than in the courtroom. the defendant's principal objection is it would not permit him to publicize in the media various materials obtained by the government in discovery. they also say they want to make sure trump is not allowed to write down any personally identifying information such as addresses and phone numbers of witnesses. they say that quote is particularly important here because of the defendant and his coconspirators' practice as described in the indictment of publicly targeting individuals. in their filing, jack smith's prosecutors urge the judge to implement the protective order that they proposed in order to safeguard witness privacy and the integrity of these proceedings. in other words, hey judge, you know what this guy is like. you know he has a habit of publicly targeting witnesses against him, and anybody else who goes up against him. now he's saying he wants to be able to publicize evidence and things about witnesses that we give him as part of this trial. don't let him do that. again, protective order was requested on friday. trump's defense team had to file its response by 5:00 today. they did so right before 5:00. then jack smith's prosecutors came back just a couple hours after trump's team handed in their filing. when prosecutors say they want these proceedings to go speedily, this is what they mean. they're apparently not kidding around. and the judge appears to be on the same page because just in the last few minutes, oh, wait, there's more. just in the last few minutes, the judge has ordered a hearing on the issue of this protective order to take place no later than this friday, again, this minute order from judge chutkan just handed down saying no dawdling, people, we're going to do this this week. we're holding a hearing on it no later than the end of this week. so that's happened. here's something else to watch. as this federal criminal case against trump hurdles along, trump of course is not the only person in legal jeopardy here. not only does he have co-defendants, we could soon be seeing indictments of other people involved in the conspiracies with which he's charged. we're particularly watching a number of state courts for new potential charges. what that might mean is next. stay with us. ♪ limu emu & doug ♪ what do we always say, son? liberty mutual customizes your car insurance... so you only pay for what you need. that's my boy. now you get out there, and you make us proud, huh? ♪ bye, uncle limu. ♪ stay off the freeways! only pay for what you need. ♪ 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if there are going to be additional charges brought against fake electors at the federal level or elsewhere, does that open up new avenues for potential witness testimony against trump and his existing co-defendants? are any of his unindicted coconspirators? i have many questions. i did not know this was still an open federal matter. joining us now is amy gardner, national political reporter for "the washington post." i appreciate you being here tonight to talk about this reporting, thank you. >> it's great to be here. thanks, rachel. >> do we know anything about the contours of the federal investigation into the fake electors and how that investigation might differ or overlap with some of the state investigations that have already borne fruit in terms of charges in michigan and that may yet bear fruit in other states including georgia, new mexico, arizona, wisconsin? >> i think we do. we learned quite a bit from the federal indictment this last week. we learned that jack smith is alleging something quite revelatory in my view, which is that the trump campaign was basically executing a scam, he alleges, by claiming that the electors were meeting only to preserve their legal recourse should any of their lawsuits prevail in court in the various states where they were contesting the results. what jack smith is alleging in this indictment is that people including rudy giuliani, knew all along that they were planning to use these elector certificates to attempt to obstruct the proceedings on january 6th, 2021. and that's pretty remarkable. to your question, where that differs from what we think, what is happening in some of the states and what we think is going to continue happening in georgia, potentially next week in new mexico, potentially in wisconsin, where governor tony evers has called for an investigation there, is focused more on the electors themselves. it appears mr. smith is focused on the trump campaign, his lawyers who were executing the plan, not the electors themselves. that's one of the key distinctions between the federal and state investigations. >> can you tell anything, i was very surprised in your reporting today, very interested that you described new subpoenas, new raft of subpoenas going out on the electors issue, even now. is there anything different that you can tell from what you know about the new subpoenas compared to with earlier parts of the investigation in terms of how it's evolving? >> unfortunately not. we don't know very much at all. what we do know is in the states, the focus has also included an examination of the electors themselves. we know, for instance, that in georgia, at least three of the electors who voted on december 14th, 2020, for donald trump and sort of presented themselves as the true proper electors are under investigation and are targets in the investigation by fulton county district attorney fani willis. we really don't know much more about what's happening with the federal investigation. it's not unusual as i'm sure you know for subpoenas to continue after an initial indictment. we also, as you noted in the previous block, there are six coconspirators unnamed in the indictment in the federal indictment, and we know who five of those six are. giuliani, of course, is one of them. and we're expecting -- we don't know whether there will be further indictments but it certainly would not be unusual for there to be additional charges coming down the pike. >> amy gardner, national political reporter for "the washington post," who has been really hot on this story for a very long time now, and as it continues to evolve. i appreciate you keeping us updated. thank you. >> thank you. again, we have state level charges already against fake electors in michigan. we know or have reason to believe there are open criminal investigations of other trump electors in georgia, in new mexico, in arizona, and possibly in wisconsin. eyes on those states as this stuff continues to evolve. we'll be right back. stay with us. ay with us i suffer with psoriatic arthritis and psoriasis. i was on a journey for a really long time to find some relief. cosentyx works for me. cosentyx helps real people get real relief from the symptoms of psoriatic arthritis or psoriasis. serious allergic reactions and an increased risk of infections or lowered ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms, had a vaccine or plan to or if ibd symptoms develop or worsen. i move so much better because of cosentyx. ask your rheumatologist about cosentyx. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ wherever you go. wherever you stay. all you need is one key. earn and use rewards across expedia, hotels.com, and vrbo. 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