that s right. it s an important public service announcement. i encourage everybody to watch at 8:00 and 9:00. this is usually ari s hour. who can do it like ari? i wish you a happy holiday. you made it through two hours of a holiday rock block. did it. i m sorry we re not in the same studio. have a great, restful, well-deserved holiday. enjoy your rock block. i will. thank you all at home for joining me this hour. i m not ari. i m alex wagner. this is the beginning of a two-hour rock block thick with news. we begin here. it s a moment that you are forgiven if you don t remember it or if you missed it at the time. a lot happened on this day. at his speech before the insurrection on january 6, president trump had a lot to say about bias on the supreme court. you know, look, i m not happy with the supreme court. they love to rule against me. the supreme court, they rule against me so much. you know why? because the story is, i haven t spoken to any of them, any o
allowing a condemn ed inmate in alabama to die by nitrogen gas. the justices leaving in place a lower court s decision that deferred to the inmate s wishes to die by nitrogen gas instead of lethal injection. kenneth smith s execution was cancelled after the state could not properly set an iv line. this has been an issue with problems with lethal injection. did this lead to the supreme court s reasoning? that s what contributed to the inmate s decision here. over the past several months, alabama has had a number of these botched lethal injection executions. so that s what led to kenneth smith petitioning to get the method of his execution changed from lethal injection to nitrogen gas. and the supreme court, they ultimately actually did not step into this dispute and that s what left the lower court opinion in place, allowing him to change his method of execution. there were two discents, one
with us. if you can walk us through the ruling and what it means for the former president. good morning, willie. this is the final stage. the courts at every level had affirmed the right of the house ways and means committee to obtain the tax records back to the law that dates back to the nixon administration in which the house ways and means committee can request tax records from the irs. when they did that under the trump administration, the trump treasury department refused to turn them over. as soon as biden took office there was a justice department opinion that said, yes, indeed, these tax returns can be turned over. trump sued and tried to block it. every level of course has ruled in favor of turning over the tax returns and now finally the supreme court heavily influenced by donald trump appointees has affirmed that are, blocked trump s attempt to stop this with no discents. not clarence thomas, not anybody. so but now the thing is, there s only weeks left with the
welcome to the beat. we start with breaking news years in the making. the supreme court rejecting trump s bid for getting his tax returns. here it is. take a look. the order from the united states supreme court. a pending case is now closed. the court very blunt on trump s stay request. the it s denied. it s not signed. there s no discents. the treasury department will hand over those tax returns. you know, trump broke precedent by not disclosing his tax returns when he was running for president and even before congress wanted those tax returns the man had excuses. i would love to give them but i m not going to do it while i m under audit.
rewriting and overhauling aspects of our constitution that have been standinging for decad. so a justice coming on the bench now is going to be dissenting and joining two women who are really quite good at dissenting, elena kagan and sonia sotomayor, who know how to write discents that make it clear to the public just what s happening at the court, at their court, at our court, and i think that s important. the ability to have that clarity and voice and dissenting voice when the fact of the matter is this new justice will not be changing the balance of power on the court. they re not going to be able to avoid dissenting. so i think it s important to have someone who s able to join sotomayor and kagan in that dissenting voice and speak with the clarity and power that they both have. nia, obviously when we ve seen the short list floated out there, obviously president biden is looking at eminently