i will be in new york city on may 8th, i'll be visiting many cities and having conversations with some of my favorite people who you also probably know. i'll be sure to share all the information on the shows social media channels for anyone interested in attending. i look forward to seeing you out there on the road and taking your questions, too. that does it for me tonight, the rachel maddow show starts right now. hi, rachel. >> hello, jen, tell me the title of the book, full title. >> the book is called seymore, i'm going to bring in a copy a couple days when i come up to new york. i wish i had this book 20 years ago. and for you, i have some stories in there about dealing with bullies like the kremlin who i've dealt with. please tell me your publication date. >> may 7th >> may 7th. may 7th, say more, communication, jen psaki. i am changing my calendar and moving anything around, thank you very much and congratulations.

thank you. thank you. this is one of the best ones that it has. i'm grateful that science tells us when to expect it and how to protect our eyes so we don't all blind ourselves staring at it.s it was fantastic. so it feels amazing to be able to see these things. a fantastic reminder that we are all, you know -- we are all -- infinitesimal blips in this huge universe. but also, that we are part of at something that is unimaginably huge, something that is bigger than the world. it's such a great thing. that said, i do feel like between the northeast and new

york city getting this big raret earthquake and the eclipse and mount etna starting to blow perfect smoke rings this weekend, i feel between all of those things happening in very close proximity, i'm a little topped up on the universe's party tricks, showing off. it's just a lot in close succession. so i'm ready to go back to boring now. in today's news, here is something that is less of a party trick, more of a dirty trick.k, have you ever heard the term spoofing? people can use hacking techniques so they can buy software that spoofs their phone number. so the way that might appear in your life is you get a call on a land line, if you still have a land line, or more likely on f your cell phone. either one, if there is caller id, when you get that call, the caller id says something that is not true. if somebody has spoofed their number, the caller id will make it look like they're calling from somewhere they're not calling from.

it will make it look like it's a local number when they're not calling from somewhere local. s or they'll make it look like it's somebody who you know thatk is calling you when in fact it d is not. for one financial company that got busted for doing this, they would sometimes make their calls to their customers look like they were coming from one of your relatives. so, like, your cell phone would ring, you would look at the screen and say mom is calling or dad is calling. you answer, and it's not your mom, not your dad. it's actually a debt collector from this company. the company that got busted doing this would make it look like it was people's relatives who were calling them. they would also sometimes spoof their phone number to make it look like this particularly nu nasty trick. they'd call you and spoof their number so it looked like they

were a florist, a flower company, they have a flower st delivery for you. y they would pretend to be that kind of a business when in fact you answer the call. or alternatively, they'd have the call look on your phone like they were a pizza place. they pretend to be a pizza place calling you. they tell you they had a delivery for you.u somebody wants to send you a pizza, or somebody wants to send you flowers. they were given your number gi because they need to complete ee your delivery. they just need to know where you are so they can drop off this gift, drop off this delivery.ca who doesn't want a pizza sent ff from a friend?en who doesn't want some flowers sent from a friend?wa the reason this financial company would do that kind of spoofing, that kind of scam, that kind of trick is so they could find out where you are. and then once you told them where you are, because you're expecting the pizza or the flowers or whatever, then what they would actually send to your door where you were at that moment are the debt collectors.

or they'd send out a repo man to that location to come break into your car and take it. this was a financial company doing this. not just like an organized crime gang or something doing. this this was a registered th american financial institution that was doing this. and in 2015 during the obama administration, they finally gou in trouble for it. that scam where they used fake phone numbers to trick people into picking up their phone or giving up their location, they were accused of working that scheme more than 137,000 times.o they also made other kinds of threats. they falsely threatened people that they were going to be criminally charged. now this financial company had no four bring criminal charges against anyone, but when they ne came after you, one of the things they would do repeatedly is they would threaten that theo could get you locked up, that they could get you arrested. and they wouldn't just call you and make threats like this.ld they would call your relatives. they would call your actual mom. they would call your friends. they'd call your landlord. they'd call your boss.

that was one of their favorite techniques, apparently, calling people's place of employment, making these threats about you, the employee at this company, telling your boss how much trouble that you are in. how is that going to go over for you at work? the same company was also found to have changed the terms of people's loans without notifyins their customers that they were making those changes. they just make the change on their own, presumably to their own benefit, and then they would chase you for it without you having had any notification that your loan was now under different terms. they were doing all of these ten different things all at once, and they finally got in trouble for some of it in 2015. citing, quote, illegal threats and deception from this i financial company. the consumer financial protection bureau made them payp more than $48 million in fines r during the obama administration. more than $48 million in fines o and restitution, i should say t

their customers. after the cfpb went after them for using techniques like this. so the basic business of this company was loans. it was super high interest loans, car loans specifically, h to people who didn't have good credit. so you need a car. everybody -- almost everybody needs a car. you need a car, but you've got bad credit for some reason. i'm sorry about that. that's too bad. the good news is there is this one place that will still give you a car loan, even though you have bad credit. the bad news is that it's this place. this place that is going to call your mom, call your grandma and harass them about your car loan. going to call your boss to harass you about your car loan. they're going to threaten to g arrest you and threaten to lock you up and use weird phone number spoofing tricks to get you to inadvertently give up er your location so they can go get after you in person. right? and even if it all goes well, it they're still going to charge you like 20% interest on that terrible loan. even if they're not hounding you

yet and threatening you to the point where they have to pay nearly $50 million in fines and restitution for their sins. how badly do you need that car? the same car loan company was also sued by the u.s. department of justice for illegally repossessing cars from active duty members of the united states military. nice. also for gouging active duty u.s. service members with m interest rates, with illegally high interest rates that this company was not legally allowed to charge to service members. they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle that part of how they were doing business with the u.s. justice department. it's terrible, right? but the guy who ran the e, companies that did those things became very wealthy doing thosee things, a billionaire many timel over. he became also the largest

shareholder of a weird bank in southern california, a bank that initially called itself -- i did not make this logo myself at home on an etch a sketch, no. they really did initially call themselves bank of internet usa. that was their name. somebody lost at mad libs. bank of internet usa. this bank with the car loan guy as one of their biggest shareholders and ultimately their largest shareholder, this bank sort of expanded that guy's horizons into other headline-grabbing business practices, like, say, the tug boat operator in alabama who ended up with a business loan from that bank at 127% interest or how about the mom and pop distribution business in woburn, massachusetts. their business loan ended up at 92% interest and required daily payments.

how about a restaurant? a great, well reviewed, excellent super cute restaurant in new york city. they needed a $67,000 business loan to do a renovation. they ended up with that loan at 268% interest. 268% interest. oh, and if you like to get out from under that and pay it off at once, because who can pay 268% interest, sorry, they're not interested in that either there is a 30% penalty you have to pay just for the privilege of paying that loan off. by the end of the obama administration, this entity was also under investigation by thev s.e.c. bank of internet under investigation by the s.e.c. a whistle-blower who is supposed to be some sort of internal auditor at the company had come forward and made allegations that the bank's clients included criminals and, quote, notorious

criminals, and, quote, very high level foreign officials from major oil producing countries and war zones. the whistle-blower made allegations about the bank alleging tax evasion and money laundering and lying to the s.e.c. so they were under s.e.c. investigation. and for whatever reason, that s.e.c. investigation appears to have poofed. it appears to have gone away once donald trump became president in 2017. when donald trump became president in 2017, he also took the consumer financial protection bureau off the board entirely. his administration disempowered the agency, that same agency that had forced these car loan r companies to pay more than $48 million in fines and restitution, donald trump very conveniently for those companies and that billionaire who ran li those companies, very conveniently made that agency go away. m while trump was in office, this guy's bank started making big surprise loans to jared kushner's family real estate mi

business. at least three major multimillion-dollar real estate-related loans and transactions benefitting jared's family business while jared was working in the trump white house, while the trump white house was doing things that were very beneficial to this bank and to its senior shareholders. i wonder if they ever thought about calling jared's family members to harass them about those loans or if they ever called him pretending to be a florist.re so they can find out where he was and send the repo man out ti get him. t >> wonder if they ever used those techniques on him. the story of this super high interest car loan company threatening its customers and getting in trouble all over the place for doing it, that story has crossed over now from the business news and from the news of fraud and crime into national politics news. because this is the source of funds now that is supporting the man who has a very good shot of being the next president of thee

united states. this is now the major source of funds for former president donald trump as he prepares to a sit as a defendant in his first felony criminal trial which starts one week from today while he simultaneously is running for president as the presumptive nominee of the republican partyt the bank in question here, it he really did use to be called bank of internet usa. it has now changed its name to axos bank. when donald trump left office in 2021, normal banks and businesses, at least for a while purported to be shocked and horrified by him using mob violence to attack the u.s. h capitol to try to stay in power by violence, despite losing the election. that was a particularly acute financial problem for him right when he left office, because in 2021, as he left office, he was facing looming deadlines to pay back huge loans on both his trump tower property in new york

and his golf club in south florida. those loans were coming due when normal banks wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. but not every bank it turns out is normal, because this bank, y axos bank bailed him out of both of those huge loans. they came out of nowhere, provided $225 million to trump just before the deadline by which he needed to pay off those loans.de they absolutely rescued him. he also at the time wanted to get out of one of his big money losing ventures, the trump branded d.c. hotel. while trump was president, that hotel was of course a convenient place to accept effectively small bribes. any place a customer wanted to put money, any customer who wanted to put money in the sitting president's pocket could in effect do so by spending money at that hotel either on rooms or at the restaurants or what have you. while i'm sure that was a great source of pleasure and flattery

to the former president while he was president, even with that weird secondary motivation for people to do business there, the hotel overall was a big economic loser. while trump was president, that hotel lost $70 million. so he wanted to unload it. and then this weird thing happened, because it's a money-losing property. but nevertheless, after he left office, when he put it up for sale, he was able to get a a surprisingly high price for it. why was that? h well, in part because the same t bank, axos bank provided $190 million to grease the deal. now, is that a lot of money for them to put into it? i don't know. but trump and his companies pocketed nearly half that amount when the deal was done. so it seems like maybe that was plenty enough money to put into that deal to make it a sweet deal for him.

so this one entity, this financial entity linked to this usurious car loans guy, they've already dumped over $400 million on trump since he left office. not counting the tense of t millions of dollars they dumped on jared while jared was in the trump white house and after. and now it's these same folks who have come back and offered yet more. in the fraud trial against ri trump's real estate business, he was told by the court to put up a bond for $464 million to cover the huge judgment against him in that fraud trial.ri trump's lawyers, you will remember, told the court they'd approached 30 different firms ld about providing that bond. all the firms they said no. they said everybody they went to said no. because of that, they said they had proven in practical terms it's an impossibility to get a bond that big.

no one will do it. we've gone to 30 different firms. it's impossible. we would have to put up real estate to be the collateral for a bond that big. nobody willing to consider a ng bond that big will accept real estate as a collateral, real bi estate as collateral. it cannot be done. it turns out, eh, maybe that d wasn't true. it turns out could have been done, because this same guy, thh car loans guy, the pretend you're the pizza play super high interest call your boss, call al your mom car loan guy, the l biggest shareholder in the bank that one after another been paying off all of trump's debts for him since he left office, this same guy says actually, he'd be happy to put up the bond. he says that he told trump's lawyers he would put up that bond. and, yeah, explicitly, he'd take real estate as collateral. that was no problem for him.o trump's lawyers apparently never told the court that this guy had offered to post the bond. in fact, they told the court that no one would post this bond. the appeals court apparently

believing that no one would post the bond then lowered the bond, lowered it down to $175 million, which ta-da, was then covered by this guy, who had already offered to put up the much larger amount. even though the court was told by trump's lawyers that no one would do that. what did trump have to do to be the recipient of such generosity from a man who, after all, is not that generous? a man who, after all, would threaten illegally to lock you up for missing a car payment, according to the consumer financial protection bureau, whose bank charged a harlem soul food restaurant 268% interest on their business loan. a guy whoa demanded daily payments from a small business in massachusetts that he was charging over 90% interest to, right. this is not seem like a guy who is involved in a lot of super generous business dealings.

what's he charging trump for this $175 million favor? reuters, quote, don hankey, the billionaire businessman whose company provided the $175 million bond that trump posted in his new york city civil fraud case told reuters that the fee his firm charge former president trump for the bond was, quote, low. hankey declined to disclose the fee. lawyers say surety companies typically charge between 1% andh 2%. meaning it should have been between 1.75 and $3 million. hankey says he now feels his company did not charge trump enough. why does he feel that way? quote, because of the new york attorney general's subsequent scrutiny of the bond as well as all of the media attention around it. hankey said in an interview wit reuters, quote, we probably didn't charge enough.

didn't charge him enough for the $175 million. you know what you do? you could call trump and pretend to be a pizza place, ask him where he is so he can get his free pizza and go send a repo man to go take it from him, or something. so none of this is a secret or hard to find, right. there has been incredible reporting on this story. just tonight, we've used reporting from nbc news and "th new york times" and the associated press and rolling stone and propublica. that incredible quote i mentioned is from reuters. this stuff is known, and the guf who is behind all of these hundreds of millions of dollars being shoveled to trump in his time of need has been happy to do interviews about how happy he is to do this. and certainly there is a disturbance in the cosmos to have a man whose company was sued by the justice department for charging illegally high

interest rates to active duty members of the u.s. military and illegally repossessing soldiers' cars so he could become a billionaire, there is a disturbance in the cosmos that that same guy is now volunteering to a news organization, yeah, it was a real low fee i charged him for i this most recent $175 million favor i posted for him. after i already shoveled him, ed after me and these entities with which i am associated already shoveled him more than $400 m million before this. yeah, i didn't charge him much. why should i? maybe have should charged him a little more. there is something that blots out the sun in that story, n except not in a way that makes you appreciate the wonders of the universe. it makes you want to pound nails into something with your forehead, if you're like me. but as mentioned there in that n reuters story, this is also not just a news story, it is a legal story and a legal question, because this bond, this remarkable gift from this incredible company is how trump

is avoiding potential bankruptcy. it's how trump is avoiding potentially having to sign over his bank accounts and his brokerage accounts. and selling off his assets, just one week before he becomes a defendant in his first criminal trial. the new york attorney general's office has called for the court to scrutinize this gift, this bond and has called on the company that provided it to justify it. just cosmically, ethically, this is a heck of an on-ramp to the next would-be presidential administration.on legally, though, will it stand? and how will that be determined? joining us now is former new york assistant attorney general adam pollack.ta that title means he used to work in the new york district ck attorney's office. nff it's nice to have you with us. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me on. >> let me first just ask you in

my explaining that, did i explain any of it the wrong way around or put the wrong cast on it? i feel like i'm not a lawyer and all of us are learning about sureties and bonds and bonding agencies by the seat of our pants as we try to follow this politician through the pinball machine that he's put us all in. >> i think you've got it perfectly. and i think it raise as lot of questions, both as you said from a political and regulatory standpoint, and also from a legal standpoint. i think when you have an dp interesting hearing in court on this coming up on the 22nd. >> what are the legal issues that stand out to you from the reporting that we've had on this issue this far? >> so this bond, as you said, allows trump to stave off enforcement, stops the attorneys general from seizing hiss asset, seizing his bank accounts, seizing his real estate. and the bond is supposed to secure the judgment, or at least secure the $175 million portion. and this bond fails to do that.7

it didn't come from those 30 new york insurers that he mentioned. it came out oft left field, or as the reporting you described. >> in terms of who is allowed to do these sort of things and under what terms, how will this company have to justify the bond, according to the demands of the new york attorney general, and how will the court evaluate whether it's kosher? >> so a couple of things. first, procedurally, these bonds by law must be written by a new york insurer. this insurer, knight insurer, is not a new york insurer. so just from the get-go, it is not a valid bond in new york. that's the first thing. even if you look beyond the procedural requirements, an insurer has 20 have enough capital, enough money to make good.

if i went out and started writing car insurance, i'd very quickly run out of money, right, if i went out on to the street and wrote car insurance. similarly, the law ensures -- two new york laws ensure that a insurer has to have ten times as much capital as any given policy or any given bond. here they have very far from 10 x, and they say conveniently, well, the new york law doesn't apply to us. we're not bound by the 10 x requirement because we're not a new york insurer. it's awfully circular. >> yeah. we're not bound by those rules because we're not a new york insurer. but they're not a new york insurer -- yeah. let me just ask you about a point about how the court was ao communicated with on this point. it seems, i don't know, it just seems wrong in a layman's sense that trump's lawyers told the appeals court we can't have a $464 million bond, nobody will

pay it. an the gentleman who put up these funds now says openly to numerous news corporations oh, i offered to pay the $464 million, and i made that offer before the court ruled that the bond amount should be lowered. now the court didn't explain the reason that it was going to lower the ruling.it but presumably, it bore on theig decision that they'd been ab advised that nobody could put up a bond that big. should trump and his lawyers t have advised the court that they did in fact have somebody on the line who was willing to pay the larger bond amount before the court ruled that that bond amount would be reduced? >> they absolutely should have advised the court. they absolutely should have told the court we think that we have somebody. t we have somebody on the line. not a new york insurer, but we think we have somebody on the

line who can guarantee the full amount and will do what's necessary to get licensed, maybe retroactively, but will come into new york and get licensed.b they didn't say that. >> former new york city assistant attorney general adamo pollock, thanks for making time. thanks for clarifying this story. >> thank you. >> thank you

how much you can save. early in my term, i announced a major plan to provide more than 40 million working and middle class americans student debt relief. tens of millions. tens of millions of people's debt was literally about to get canceled, but then some of my republican friends and elected officials and special interests sued us, and the supreme court blocked us. but that didn't -- well, that didn't stop us. today i'm proud to announce five major actions to continue to relieve student debt from more than 30 million americans. >> president biden speaking in

wisconsin today, announcing a new plan to lower student loan payments for tens of millions of americans who have student loans. the substance of this is straight forward, right? help people who are drowning under big student loan payments. our country wants people to go to college. so our country should reduce the disincentive to go to college by making it less economically disastrous to do so. people who are having trouble with their student loans, relieve that economic pain, make it easier on them. the substance of it is straight forward. the politics of it is straight forward too, right? here is the president going to a critical swing state, unveiling a program that he hopes will be particularly popular with young people, young people of course particularly crucial for his bid for reelection. so the substance is straight forward and important. the politics are straight forward and important for president biden. but just as important are the politics on the other side. republicans already sued and successfully blocked one of

president biden's plans for forgiving student loans after president biden pivoted to use a different program to forgive more student loans, republicans sued to stop that one too. now president biden has announced this latest plan today in wisconsin. and so new republican lawsuits against that one are expected any minute as well. and just think about what that means, step back from that for a second. republicans are suing over and over again in multiple states, republicans are suing to make sure that americans have to pay more in student loans, to make sure that you have to pay more interest to banks on your student loans. that is what they're offering america in this election year. isn't that what america most needs for banks to make more money off people who took out loans to go to college? isn't that really morally -- isn't that a real justice issue for america? everything is so personality driven in the way we talk about

politics, it sometimes doesn't get covered. but what the republicans are offering in terms of policy right now, what they're actually doing in places where they have power, it's all stuff like this. they really are trying desperately in a concerted effort across multiple republican-controlled states, they're trying as hard as they can to make you pay more to the banks for your student loans. in states where they are in power, they are repealing child labor laws because, yeah, american voters are desperate for a solution to our long national nightmare of children not being allowed to work overnights in super dangerous jobs. the most influential group of republicans in the u.s. house of representatives just officially proposed raising the retirement age for social security, because surely it's a huge problem in america that we're not forcing our elderly to work into more of their senior most years before they can collect their social security.

raising the retirement age. they're also still crusading against in vitro fertilization. the republican study group in the house still pushing against ivf, and still pushing for a national abortion ban, even in the blue states, right, on top of the draconian state bans that they've already put into place in almost every state in the country where republicans are in control. this is not a popular suite of policy proposals and policy options from the republican party. the things that republicans are setting themselves up against are reported by 70, 80, 90% of americans in some cases. so, yeah, if i were them, i'd prefer personality-driven politics coverage as well. even so, their leader, donald trump, really did try to change his press coverage on one of those agenda items. on one of the agenda items on which republicans are pursuing their most unpopular policy choices, and that is on the issue of abortion, and that is

an issue that has a new very, very jagged political edge that is just emerging from a very unexpected place, and we have that story coming up here next. stay with us.

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here's how "the new york times" put it in a headline today. "trump says abortion restrictions should be left to the states. after months of mixed signals,

donald trump said that whatever states decide must be the law of the land." hmm. similar headline over at "the washington post." "in new video, trump says abortion policy should be left to states." reuters had effectively the same takeaway. abortion laws should be decided by u.s. states. similar in the guardian. trump says each u.s. state should determine different abortion laws. same thing over "the wall street journal." they gave theirs a little flourish. trump says states should chart their own paths on abortion. today donald trump did put out a video statement in which he did indeed say that restrictions on abortions are things that should be decided by individual states. looking at these headlines, you might get the impression that that was somehow trump moderating his position on abortion. these headlines are exactly what donald trump wanted after delivering his remarks on abortion today. sadly, that is exactly what he

got. even though the actual content of donald trump's remarks today indicated something very different than what was in those headlines. the substantive new and important thing articulated by donald trump today was that he has now abandoned any criticism he once had for the strictest abortion bans that are now in effect or under consideration. and i love me some "new york times," and i love "the washington post," and i love reuters, and i love the guardian and i love "the wall street journal." i cannot do 98% of what i do without reporting from institutions like these to give us the facts on which we base everything that we do in the news business. but the headline spin today from multiple excellent news agencies about what trump did was just absolutely at odds with the importance of what he said. i mean, florida has a total ban on abortion, a six-week ban on abortion that is set to go into

effect on may 1st. trump, until now, was critical of strict abortion bans. he used to call abortion bans like that too severe. he called the florida abortion ban a, quote, terrible mistake. today trump eliminated that from his vocabulary. he voice nod concern whatsoever with florida's abortion ban or any other abortion restriction any state might want to impose. trump used to be a critic of six-week bans. now he is apparently fine with them. trump was also silent on the issue of a national abortion ban, which his own party has been relentlessly pushing. a national ban is something he himself reportedly said he supports as recently as a few weeks ago. trump today also, for what it's worth, falsely accused democrats of executing children. that's what he said democrats

abortion policies are, which is to execute children, which has a nice qanon flavor to it, in addition to it being completely, completely false. and so perhaps a more accurate headline about donald trump's remarks today might have been something like, you know, channeling qanon conspiracy theory, donald trump falsely accuses democrats of executing children. or trump abandons previous criticism of strictest abortion bans. trump avoids mention of republican proposals for national restrictions. or maybe try something like this. "donald trump also said today that he is, quote, proudly the person responsible for the ending of the constitutional right to an abortion." "proudly the person responsible for the overturning of roe v. wade." he did explicitly say that today. and that would have made for a great headline. "trump takes personal credit for

ending the constitutional right to abortion in america." criticism of most draconian abortion bans, right. short, snappy, accurate, rightfully spotlighting the issue that roe v. wade has gone, and it's because of him. it's not how it got covered today, which i'm sure trump is delighted with. but the substance of the matter here gets darker from here, because when the supreme court overturned roe v. wade, thanks to trump, we didn't just lose the roe v. wade ruling and thereby the constitutional protection of the right to an abortion. we also got something new, right. the case that overturned roe v. wade was called dobbs. that decision created a brand-new legal standard, one that would provide a precedent for taking away civil liberties of all kinds. one that could be applied not just to abortion, but also to, say, the rights of gay people. i mention that because we're seeing ripple effects from that decision not only now in our own country, but far, far away from us, a continent away.

in the nation of uganda, activists there have been fighting a radical deadly new law that effectively hunts gay people. this new law in uganda punishes people just for being gay. it punishes them with life in prison in some cases. in some cases, it punishes being gay with the death penalty. death penalty is the penalty for homosexuality. the second highest court in uganda just upheld most of that law, including the death penalty part of it. in their ruling, the court in uganda cited dobbs, cited the american supreme court decision that overturned roe v. wade. they cited dobbs as the justification for why the kill the gays bill is legally sound. we didn't just get the overturning of roe v. wade thanks to donald trump. we got the new standard that replaces it, this dobbs standard that is now being cited internationally as evidence that even in america, nobody has a right to bodily autonomy, not to get an abortion, and not to

survive your own government if they decide to kill you for being gay. joining us now is melissa murray, law professor at new york university. melissa, thanks very much for being here. it's really nice to see you. >> great to be here. >> i -- despite appearances, do not love doing media criticism. it's not my forte. i'm also not a lawyer, but i did feel like the legal or the headline coverage today, the media coverage today of trump's statements sort of missed the nut of what it is that he actually said and the implications of his statement. as a lawyer, as a close observer of these things, do you agree? >> i think that's right. donald trump has sort of tacked back on issues of reproductive freedom. he had said that he was in favor of a ban on abortion at perhaps 15 weeks, 20 weeks that would still be quite a significant development.

it really shows how much the overton window has shifted since dobbs, a 15-week ban, a 20-week ban would have been patently unconstitutional under roe v. wade and planned parenthood versus casey. so we've really moved far beyond that again, this has been an issue with him and with his party. they keep moving farther and farther to the right. it seems he is willing to go there. as you say, it's not just questions of reproductive freedom in this country. dobbs has unsettled a whole body of guarantees, privacy, dignity, and bodily autonomy for all individuals. and it has ripple effects in other areas like marriage, like consensual sex. and we are seeing that not here in the united states just yet, but in other places. and it's very clear that we could also feel those reverberations in this country as well. >> what do you make of this court in uganda citing dobbs as essentially as a way to hold up america as a country that also believes there is no bodily autonomy, that the state is right to encroach on your bodily

autonomy in this case, including to institute the death penalty for certain offenses associated with homosexuality. what do you make of them citing us in that way for that purpose? >> well, i mean, dobbs is an authoritarian opinion. and that is a decision that promotes the kind of authoritarianism we thought we had said goodbye to in this country when bowers versus hardwick was overruled in 2003 decriminalizing same-sex sex. but it's not just that the ugandan court said that dobbs eliminated any right to bodily autonomy in the united states. what they said specifically was that this was a question that was reserved for the people and was being returned to the people. and the people were debating this. and essentially, it's just a claim that majority will can and should prevail, even over basic protections for minorities and protections for fundamental rights. so it is essentially a call for mob rule. and we're seeing it in uganda,

and we could certainly see it here. people forget that justice thomas' concurrence in dobbs was basically an invitation to begin litigating a range of different protections like protections for contraceptions, protection for intimate life, like same-sex sex and same-sex marriage. all of those are on the table now that roe has fallen and dobbs is the law of the land. >> melissa murray, law professor at new york university. melissa, thank you so much for being here. this is -- it's not complex, it's just dark, and your clarity on it is really helpful for us understanding it. thank you. >> thank you. >> all right. we'll be right back. stay with us.

i mentioned a few minutes ago contrasting politics that we're seeing between republicans and democrats on child labor, of all things, because apparently we're living in a dickens novel whether or not you want to be. we now really do have republican governors all over the country repealing child labor laws, repealing laws designed to protect kids from dangerous kinds of work. and the repeals generally start with republican legislatures like, say, the one in wisconsin, where republicans recently voted to do away with work permits and parental permission for 14-year-old kids. however, in wisconsin, after the republican legislature did that, their bill went not to a republican governor to get signed. their bill went to a democratic governor, wisconsin governor tony evers. and today wisconsin governor tony evers vetoed that bill, saying, quote, asking more kids

to work is not a serious plan or solution to address our statewide workforce issues. where as one democratic state assemblywoman in wisconsin put it, quote, the answer to wisconsin's worker shortage is not shorter workers. i did not make that up. she actually said that. she's the one who wins. watch this space. shipstation saves us so much time it makes it really easy and seamless pick an order print everything you need slap the label on ito the box and it's ready to go our cost for shipping, were cut in half just like that go to shipstation/tv and get 2 months free

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don't wait! call, click or visit an xfinity store today. thanks for being with us tonight after the big eclipse day. i'm still kind of excited from having seen it. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is up next. many states will be different. many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative than others, and that's what they will be. at the end of the day this is all about the will of the people. now it's up to the states to do