easter days away, trump is peddling god bless the usa bibles. you heard that right. the man who is about to face criminal trial for allegedly paying off a pornography start to keep quiet about their affair while his third wife was at home with his newborn fifth child, is selling bibles. billing itself as the only bible endorsed by president trump, these bibles include the us constitutions, the bill of rights, the declaration of independence, the pledge of allegiance as well as the handwritten chorus of god bless the usa, all for the low price of $59.99. no word on if it comes with a free pair of gold sneakers that you can worship. golden calf, golden shoes, whatever. that is tonight's readout. all in with chris hayes starts now. >> very important, and very important to me.

you have to have it for your heart and for your soul. >> grist mode for the presumptive republican nominee. >> this thing is going to implode so i'm telling people, begin-- be very careful. >> what the ipo means for his desperate search for cash. and days away from his first criminal trial, why donald trump was just gagged by the judge. what happened when the latest republican effort to eliminate abortion reached the supreme court. >> do you have concerns about judges parsing medical and scientific studies? >> yes, your honor. i think we have kids significant concerns about that. >> all in starts right now. >> good evening from new york. donald trump is desperate for cash and while it might look like he just pulled a rabbit out of his hat with today's debut of his media company on stock exchange, the full story is complicated and we are going to dig into all of that. but remember, he has been--

anything with his name on it his entire life. he is being squeezed by astronomical legal bills, running a campaign getting out raised by the other side and selling has gone into overdrive. the latest branded merchandise includes the victory 47 cologne by president trump described as quote the signature scent of success encased in a luxurious gold bottle. my collectors piece, it can be yours-- the collectors piece can be yours for $99. and sneakers including the never surrender hightops, gold bold and tough, limited-edition pairs went for $399 before selling out and i don't think they have shipped so we will see if that ever happens. just today the ex-president introduced a new product, a god bless the usa bible for just $59.99 for tax and shipping. and easy to read large print copy. >> all americans need a bible

in their home and i have many. it's my favorite book, a lot of people's favorite book. this bible is a reminder that the biggest thing we have to bring back to make america great again is our religion. religion is so important, it is so missing but it's going to come back and it's going to come back strong just like our country is going to come back strong. i am proud to endorse and encourage you to get this bible. we must make america pray again. >> really stuck the landing there. you might be wondering what makes this bible so special. in the frequently asked questions section it is the only bible officially endorsed by president trump. the new york times explains quote he is getting royalties from purchases. so obviously the guy will do anything to make a buck. of course he is not just any guy. he is the presumptive republican nominee for president who may be in the

oval office this time next year. at least until then he's the leader of his party with enough power and influence to instruct the house republican caucus to do his bidding. now he is single-handedly blocking funding for ukraine at his orders. think about that. there are many powerful, wealthy, domestic and foreign interests who have cash and want things that donald trump can provide. he has opened up a stand with a big bribe me sign hanging over it which brings us to his company going public and trading on the nasdaq. bloomberg notes that the shares rose as much as 59% before pairing gains which puts the value of the unprofitable company at $7.9 billion providing a potential windfall for trump as he faces mounting series of legal woes. he owns nearly 60% of the company may ultimately be worth $6 billion. it is important to note that he

can't sell it immediately because of a six-month lockup agreement hindering his ability to monetize shares, but to be clear, i don't know if people understand this because of the headlines floating around. the numbers of the valuation are totally, and i mean totally disconnected from the reality of the actual underlying business which has been an utter, abject and complete failure. trump media which includes his social media site treats social has, and i quote, so far struggled to generate a profit losing $49 million in the first three quarters while delivering, wait for it, just $3.4 million in revenue. for context, the federal government officially defines a small business as having revenue between one and $40 million. trump media is a small business who can get preferential

contract treatment. but a local mom-and-pop chain or and at sea cellar. we also just saw one of the most successful media companies read it go public in the last few weeks with a valuation of about $6.5 billion. what was the revenue? last year was over $800 million. it was 160 times more than trump media. this is obviously ludicrous. some of it today driven by the meme stock phenomenon of people who love donald trump. they invest in the company the same way they would give a smaller dollar donation. fine. but there's a bigger problem. it's that anyone who wants to bribe donald trump can now just purchase stock. talk about open for business. we've already seen a version of this play out or something that could plausibly look like how it may work between trump and

billionaire republican donor who is a top american shareholder. earlier this month he goes to mar-a-lago, meets trump at his home, he's one of the biggest donors to republican politics and then the next day or a few days later the ex-president probably reversed his vision. he wanted to ban it and now he doesn't. this was also the biggest institutional shareholder of the shell company that recently merged with trump media. he explains december regulatory filings shows that susquehanna international group owned 2% of that. it is unclear if they still own the shares in the company said it is a market maker and a 0 economic interest in trump media which i believe. they can sell to whoever. but take a second and think about the possibilities here for someone that has an interest . all the people who want stuff

from donald trump, from desperately cash strapped donald trump who has the clock ticking on the lockup agreement, people that want tax cuts, government contracts and favorable treatment in favor-- foreign relations, this was already a nightmare the first time he ran for president in 2019. now he is more desperate with more people of interest before him. so right now donald trump is up for sale to the highest bidder. jesse is the senior editor and one of the authors of a 2020 to expose on the republican mega donor. it's good to have you here. >> thank you for having me back. >> people invoke this all the time about how jimmy carter had to put his peanut-- on a truck. >> seven months before the election the guy who is the presumptive nominee, having this stock a blowup that is now the most straightforward way to

increase his network. i've never seen anything like it. >> we haven't ever seen anything like it. the original sin of 2016 was that he did not divest from his company. he did not stand down, he sort of talked about doing that and then he put his kids in charge but didn't actually do anything like put it in a blind trust. but here it is absolutely straightforward. you could then purchase stock and prevent it from going down. and he or any other hedge fund manager could step in. or any foreign owner. >> the stock is worthless. there's no underlying business. so it's not like you have a profitable business and you are running some big industrial company in people by your stock because they want to invest. it will be worthless. >> it has a very tight public float so very few shares are actually available to the public it can be controlled and stay

high-end elevated for a long time if you have to borrow the phrase from crib does, if you have diamond hands. but the saudi's or qatari's could just not sell. six months comes by and donald trump could sell. he could monetize his position, they could elevate stock, drive it up and elevate his wealth that way. it's money into his pocket. >> at one level, tik tok is one of the clearest example of this, trump is a huge donor but something i think he pulled really don't understand is how much tax liability in the specific and broad policy form is on the table for america's billionaires with this election? >> it's extraordinary. trillions of dollars because the trump tax cuts will expire next year. that was a

disproportionate gift to the wealthy class. now, yass has a bunch of tax games going on. he's one of the wealthiest people in america. i think people are dramatically underestimating his billions of dollars. it's roughly 30 or $40 billion. he has a big stake in tik tok and he also pays way less in taxes than his peers so someone like ken griffin pays a relatively high rate for an old tree-- ultra wealthy guy. yass pays extremely low taxes because they are very aggressive about their taxes. they don't want higher taxes and they don't want an irs that is aggressive. >> and one of the things the biden administration did was put more money into the irs. you've reported on this about the fact that basically audits of wealthy people have fallen off a cliff and you are more likely to be audited if you are

poor than wealthy because they've gotten so bad. they have reinvested in audits at the top. they are, there are huge financial incentives for the richest people to make sure this goes away. >> jeff yass hates texas. a former partner of his told us they hate taxes. they really do. they estimated they saved about $1 billion in taxes from a scheme that should definitely be audited according to the experts. they are very aggressive, they have their eye on that and this is a huge issue for donald trump versus joe biden. >> right now you have a situation where donald trump needs two things. he needs actual cash, and he also needs donations. we have a completely unregulated finance system. you can write a check for $1 billion if you want to. >> yass is one of the major donors to republicans already.

it's chump change for them. >> if you are going to save the money-- >> it's great return on investment and all yass season the world is options. that's the way he understands everything which is, is this a good debt for me? can i put down a little bit of money and do i have a good chance, good roi here? and trump of course is a guaranteed roi, if he wins. so of course you're going to do that. and yass doesn't believe that donald trump won the election. he's operating in the real world but he doesn't care. he will still donate. >> in 2016 his whole thing was i'm not beholden to the republican donor class, i am self funding my campaign, he put some of his own in and fun raised a ton. and a very prodigious small dollar fund raiser. he is now dependent on this

same wealthy donor class and it is clear as day that the yass mar-a-lago is very specific on to talk but is more broad than that, in terms of what policy would look like and what the funding, the various flows of capital and cash would be in seven months. >> i think there is a worse cynicism here because these ultra wealthy donors prefer not to have donald trump if they can possibly have-- they wanted ron desantis or nikki haley. they don't want to fund donald trump and would prefer not to have him. but once he is the nominee, they are going to get comfortable. and not only that, but they recognize that he is a good investment, a reliable investment because they can buy him. >> jesse eisinger who has done great reporting on this for pro- public a . this is where i learned his name but he is one

of the biggest donors. >> he is an ultra-secretive guy and people don't know anything about him. >> yet another judge imposes a gag order on donald trump. we are here to break down the latest in his upcoming hush money trial ahead. money trial ahead. it smells amazing and gives my skin over the top moisture! from dull to visibly glowing in 14 days! ♪♪ see the difference with olay. okay y'all we got ten orders coming in... big orders! starting a business is never easy, but starting it eight months pregnant... that's a different story. i couldn't slow down. we were starting a business from the ground up. people were showing up left and right. and so did our business needs the chase ink card made it easy. when you go for something big like this, your kids see that. and they believe they can do the same. earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase with the chase ink business unlimited card. make more of what's yours.

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the former chairperson of

the republican national committee will not be a contributor to the network. this comes four days after nbc news announced her hiring as a political analyst. we don't have a show on weekends or mondays and between then and now i've been talking to people inside the company and most of what i wanted to say has already been said well by my colleagues from people like chuck todd and joe scarborough. everyone thought, oh no a republican on nbc news. we all recognize a variety of views is vitally important in understanding the country and doing good programming. the reason this precipitated the visceral gut reaction that it did is that, there's a bright red line in american life after january 6. this attempt to end the democratic system as they know it. and attempt that as rachel noted last night is ongoing.

it is very much still happening. but ronna mcdaniel might be on the other side of that line. she aided and abetted on the biggest attack to destroy american democracy since the civil war and helped perpetuate lies that donald trump told as part of the plot to overthrow constitutional order. we want to keep the system going. people involved in the kind of work they do are also signed on to the basic project. we are in this business at a time when the information environment has never been more polluted and confusing. it's important for us to do the best we can to tell the truth all the time and everyone is going to make mistakes. but the big lie of a stolen election is one of the most

consequential, systematic lies told in recent memory probably up there with all the lies about the vaccine, both of which have incredibly damaging effects and have destroyed the credibility of institutions and political parties and corporations associated with them. in the end all you can ask of people is diligence, open- mindedness, critical thinking and above all else, good faith. when i'm speaking to you here right now i'm not putting on a show about what i think and believe. this is it. i could be wrong about things, lord knows i must be sometimes, i might have opinions you think are wrong, we might tell stories in ways that you think leave things out or emphasize a wrong angle but the key to this imprecise-- enter price is the bedrock trust that we really are acting in good faith. we really are trying to get it right. we are not feeding you lies to be good team players.

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donald trump is once again under a gag order by a new york donald trump is once again under a gag order by a new york court. this and comes from the judge

overseeing trump's trial on hush money paid to an adult film actress. the judge prohibits the ex- president from quote making or directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses in the case, making or directing others to make public statements about counsel, and members of court staff and the district attorney staff, or the family members of any counsel or staff. if those statements were made for the intention of material interfering. he is also barred from making or directing others to make statements about any juror in this criminal proceeding. the uncontested record reflected in prior extradition statements establishes a sufficient risk to the administration of justice. nbc legal correspondent joins me now. at one level not surprising but still striking that this far along into his legal entanglements judges understand how necessary this is to keep

things moving. >> this is the third gag order in cases facing former president trump, two of which have been upheld on appeal and now we see one here that basically mimics the language in the case that was upheld by the washington dc circuit as modified. but as you and i were discussing, there is a third provision that is not present in the others which deals with jurors. in this case, there will be juror and on enmity vis-@-vis you and me. but there will not be juror anonymously to donald trump who is entitled by statute in new york state to know the names of those people who will be casting judgment on him. on one hand that seems really fair. on the other hand when we are talking about this particular defendant with this particular history of social media posts, you can understand why the judge felt obliged to go above and beyond anonymity. he says while the protective order related to juror anonymity prevents the dissemination of certain personal information, it is not

sufficient to prevent extrajudicial speech targeting jurors and exposing them to an atmosphere of intimidation of the proposed restrictions are narrowly tailored to achieve that result. the people who are about to send a judgment or may potentially do so have to be protected from him, from his speech even though he is a former president and presumptive republican nominee. >> we keep reaching for this trope because it's the only representation, the mob trial. i don't think there's a violent intimidation that's going to happen in specific terms but people that have been on the wrong side of his social media posts will find themselves with a real security situation. we've already seen this in new york courts as it relates to court staff and essentially anonymous or should be anonymous staff who have been inundated with threats and security problems.

>> and the law clerk became almost a celebrity in her own right during that trial certainly with none of the benefits of celebrity because of the allegations against her. when people say is trump going to appeal this? he is certainly going to try but the gag order was upheld on appeal and this is a state that understands what this person is capable of because we endured an 11 week trial in which his behavior led to the kind of compilation of threats that supported the motion in this case now. the only thing that keeps changing is that as the months go by his social media behavior gets more and more monstrous and justifies the imposition of restrictions like this that ordinarily might be antithetical to what we consider to be a defendant's right to talk. >> on that point just in the last day, he's going after-- what i think is interesting because sometimes people says he have no self-control. he does have self-control. he knows what he's doing. so he goes after the judge, the

judge's daughter, he goes after da alvin bragg as well and keep in mind, the judge's daughter, that is a really messed up thing to do but she is not included in the order that the judge issued. that's exactly where he's crossing the line. >> he also waited until after yesterday's hearing. i can't believe it was just yesterday, but the purpose was to determine whether or not the indictment needed to be dismissed because of alleged discovered violations. he gets through the hearing and calls a press conference at 40 wall street where he does a couple of things. he talks about some of the actors not covered by this order but also talks about a senior lawyer in the das office who is covered by this order. staff, someone who had previously worked in the new york attorney general's office and the department of justice. while that is coincidental and probably not surprising because senior people in law enforcement

move between them all the time. this person worked with alvin bragg in the attorney general's office and he uses that as proof that this is biden led election interference but talks about this person by name. he waits until after the hearing to do it. that is not coincidental either. >> this will be the first time, again, that we are introducing jurors into a criminal trial. we've had similar juries, jury selection is set to start on april 15? it is a whole new set of challenges and 1 million different directions to get my head around what that is going to look like. >> i wish i could tell you that we know what it's going to be like but so far we have no insight into what a questionnaire is going to look like or if there's going to be one. whether there will be a process that is mostly verbal with people raising their hands to answer questions or going to sidebar with judge and counsel to talk through things that could potentially be objectionable. the most that everyone understands is that this could

potentially last two weeks or longer just to select a jury and if you were to ask me is a really going to take that long? yes, i think it's really going to take that long. >> the order came down yesterday that we are going to start this trial. we've been through this enough and i always say well we will see but it looks like this is going to happen. >> i think it is going to happen and the court to which trump will appeal the start date is the court he has dealt with before, the first department of the appellate division, the appeals court here in manhattan. these folks have seen these plays before so trying to use this as a gag order, he has a publicity motion to adjourn the trial because of all the publicity attended to it. none of those are likely to succeed. they may move the needle a day or two with a temporary stay a

while he court considers his motion but i think we will still see this start sometime in april. >> do you feel that judges are learning? he is a unique defendant in a civil and criminal setting for 1 million different reasons. not the least of which the fact that he is the ex-president but the fact that he will post about your daughter, right? one of the things we have been talking about is how much the legal system almost at an institutional level has struggled to deal with this consistent aggressive so see up at the of this individual. do you think they are getting better? >> i think they are getting better. i think there are rules built into the system that can be exploited by a defendant as litigious and persistent as this one. but do i think they are getting better? in most cases yes but it also goes back to, what is the temperament of the individual judge? do i think he's different

because he has presided over trump cases? not necessarily. it may have been who he always was or trump was unlucky enough to draw him here. similar to kaplan who presided over both former cases. do i think that the judge is learning or adapting to the circumstances that donald trump the defendant presents? not necessarily. it goes both ways. >> informative as always. thank you very much. the conservative supreme court here's the latest threat to women's rights. everything we've learned about the far right push to ban abortion pills ahead. voya helps you choose the right amounts without over or under investing. so you can feel confident in your financial choices voya, well planned, well invested, well protected. head & shoulders bare clinically proven dandruff protection with just 9 essential ingredients no sulfates, no silicones, no dyes.

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a new toothpaste from parodontax, the gum experts. today the supreme court heard oral arguments in the case to ban the drug mifepristone and for decades it has been one of the safest and most commonly used abortion pills. medication abortions make up the majority of all abortions in america. banning it would be a disaster for vital health care in this country coast to coast. red and blue states. fortunately for now it looks like arguments were so transparently ridiculous that even the supreme court was not buying it. but first it is worth remembering just how this case got before the highest court in the land, something that the vast majority of cases never do. the entire undertaking is, in my view a ludicrous insult to the entire judicial system.

here's how it happened. back in august 2022 about a month after the supreme court overturned roe versus wade, a brand-new entity called the alliance for hippocratic medicine was incorporated in the city of amarillo texas. it is comprised of five antiabortion groups, none of which are based in texas. you may be wondering why a handful of out-of-state groups opposing abortion decided to form their group in a relatively nondescript texas town along route 66 and it's because at the time, amarillo texas functions as something of a legal loophole for right-wing causes. because of a quirk in how the us court system works until just a few weeks ago, federal suits filed in this relatively small texas town would fall before the same judge, a guy who first made his name as an activist for far right religious causes decrying everything from divorce laws to address gender rights and marriage, and of course

abortion rights. in a 2017 entry, he submitted to a legal journal he wrote about the need to protect religious medical providers who in his view cannot use their pens to prescribe or dispense abortifacient drugs designed to kill unborn children. not long after he submitted that he asked to have his name taken off of it citing quote, reasons i may discuss at a later date. they came abundantly clear when it was announced that trump had appointed that matthew kaczmarek to the bench and was finally confirmed in 2019. and then, if you wanted to get your case before this extreme right wing trump judge whose views on this stuff were clear as day, all you had to do was get a ticket to amarillo texas and figure out a way to file your case there. but even then, you still need to at least pretend to follow the rules of the american legal system and those fundamental of

which is the concept of standing. for you file a lawsuit you need to show that you represent someone who is actually being harmed by whatever law or rule you are challenging. here's where things got a little tricky for the alliance of hippocratic it is in. they wanted to ban mifepristone as an ideological product and it wasn't like it was people who was harmed by the drug are suing so they got a little creative with legal reasoning and here's what they came up with. the abortion pill can sometimes give doctors the sads. doctors lose the opportunity to provide professional services and care for the women and child through pregnancy, which causes harms to providers who no longer can care for patients and bring about a successful delivery of new life. this would be like saying oncologists were being harmed

by smoking cessation efforts because they like doing oncology on people with lung cancer and if there's less people with lung cancer than they are deprived of the joy of helping people. they are arguing that providing abortion pills harms the doctors because they don't get to deliver babies and that makes them sad. this is the argument. to put it lightly it is a ridiculous argument but judge kaczmarek is not a serious jurist. he's a hack. so to no one's surprise he ruled in favor of the group and issued a nationwide injunction in all 50 states of mifepristone, blocking access to it. that decision was stopped by the appellate court and made its way all the way up to the supreme court who heard oral arguments and i have to say even with a court with the same ideological makeup, they seem pretty skeptical of the antiabortion pill argument.

>> is it the first time, isn't the only time any court has restricted access to an fda approved drug by second-guessing fda expert judgment about the conditions required to ensure the safe use of that drug. >> under federal law, no doctors can be forced against their consciences to perform or assist in an abortion. correct? >> do we have to also entertain your argument that no one else in the world can have this drug or no one else in america should have this drug in order to protect your clients? >> this case seems like a prime example of turning what could be a small lawsuit into a nationwide legislative assembly on an fda rule or other federal government action. >> the difficulty here is that at least to me, these affidavits read more like the conscience objection is strictly to actually

participating in the abortion to end the life of the embryo or fetus and i don't read either of them to say they ever participated in that. >> not every justice was so skeptical of the arguments as ludicrous as they may be. they used today's hearing to help antiabortion activists do their homework. i will be joined on that next. . . and more on-time deliveries. the united states postal service built for how you business. to give your teeth a dentist clean feeling. start with a round brush head. add power. and you've got oral-b. round cleans better by surrounding each tooth to remove 100% more plaque. for a superior clean. oral-b. brush like a pro. this looks like an actual farm. it looked cute on the app. ( ♪♪ ) meanwhile, at a vrbo... when other vacation rentals

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stalwart opponent of abortion rights and his wife was the lawyer arguing in favor of banning mifepristone. just a reminder of the scope of the antiabortion movement, from senate to supreme court did have a professor at the new york university school of law and kate shaw. the justice correspondent for the nation. great to have you. i will start with you, melissa on how you think arguments

unravel. >> this will be discussed as a short victory, that this will be punted out of supreme court on jurisdiction grounds because the claims were so outrageous and i think that is likely right. it will be a nominal victory but what was really important is that the justices are laying bricks for arguments that are going to come down the pipe later. we heard a lot about the 1873 act passed in a fever dream of victorian repression that has been languishing, unenforced for years on the books, but under the field. they can revivify this by getting the right president of the right department of just this, which would allow them to prohibit the shipment of mifepristone and other abortion related drugs across state lines or through the mail. they could get a nationwide ban on abortion without going through congress if they revive this law. we heard a lot about the comstock act today with the number of justices teaming amenable to the prospect of

enforcing the act to stop the distribution of mifepristone.ne .amy coney barrett gesturing toward the argument of fetal personhood, the idea the fetus is a person for purposes of constitutional and statutory law and if the fetus is a person you don't need a ban on abortion at all, it has the same right as any other person. there's a lot in this argument that this is a victory it will be interesting and we will see the cause -- cost of it after the election. >> i will savor the victory for a second, because let's not, let's be clear, the fundamental' argument that women are manatees, that people need to be able to see in the wild, that , it gives them joy, that was rejected and it wasn't clear prior to today. the second thing that's important to understand is these arguments, had they gone through, could have been used to sue every single drug on the

market. they could've been used to short circuit the entire fda approval profits including for vaccines one of the reasons i'm confident we are going to is i don't think that the judges want to see a world where people can sue viagra makers because they suffer the injury of seeing over excited text from 50-year- old men, right? we don't want that to happen so i think this argument is going to fail. >> that just means the bar is that low. if that's a victory, the fact that women are not manatees and we aren't bringing down the entire pharmaceutical industry and regulations because the justices finally realized this might be too far, that shows the bar is that low. >> it got to the court, i mean, we agree, it never should've gotten here, but i didn't know. they might have done it.

>> they still could. all bets are off, this is an unpredictable court, but again, this is a court that wants to look moderate before the election. they've already killed roe v wade, they've already seen the backlash at the ballot box. they don't want more of it in november. they can simply give us what looks like a moderate opinion today but then there is more. >> this decision will come out and it will be one of the last things to come out and they might leave town and see, we don't hate all women, here are your pills, they might try to do that to tamp down the movement. people like me won't let that happen, but we have to be aware that that's part of the process. >> so the comstock act, there's a great book on this, who comstock and her had this crazy relationship. he was, comstock was assessed

with her, he's assessed with vice, he doesn't want people looking at pornography or smutty materials or anything to do with women through productive health in any way, this law is still on the books. let's take a listen. the comstock act part was like, what are we doing? >> shouldn't the fda have considered the application of that? >> the comstock provisions do not fall within fda slang. >> i am sure you heard the answers of the solicitor general, and counsel, with respect to the comstock act. i would like you to comment on their answers. >> sure, justice thomas. we don't think there's a case in this court that empowers the fda to ignore other federal law, with respect to the comstock act, is relevant.

the comstock act is drugs e should not be mailed, through the mail or through common h carriers so we think the plaintext is pretty clear. >> one of the points is that in this case, you've got the judicial branch sort of looking at the architecture of federal bureaucracy. if trump or any republican president comes in the office, they would then control that federal bureau and you can imagine them putting someone ing the fda or as attorney general, that would try to take the comstock act over all kinds of lovers of powers that are being hinted to to stop this from happening. like absolutely, but i think one of the ways to stop that, i know this will sound weird it to be resent homes, democrats e who are elected could repeal the comstock act. >> i had not thought today and everyone is like well, we don't really like this law but it's on the books.

hey, let's repeal it. >> there are things we can do, the people we voted for can repeal and we wouldn't have the sword of damocles hanging over our head. >> we already know that congress is profoundly dysfunctional. both sides of the aisle are profoundly dysfunctional. being able to amass political momentum to do something like that i think is going to be difficult for either party. >> my point is more that it would be a useful political thing to say, like they did with ivf protection, like a, we are against this. >> i don't know how many people understand, to understand comstock you have to be in the weeds, someone working on reproductive rights all the time and not everyone is good we get that. this is why the republicans are talking about this. that's why jonathan mitchell said to the new york times that he doesn't want donald trump talking about the comstock act because he doesn't want to tip off the electorate that this is coming a down the pike and they don't

need congress to do anything. they are counting on congress ey being completely polarized, they can do this by themselves the new republican president. >> there are gestures that mike pence has been interviewed, figures in republican policies. the project 25, 2025 lays out a bunch of ways they can not just use the comstock act but the fda, there are a bunch of levers. >> band that has a legal jargo term, we are talking about contraception and the comstock act was passed to prevent this tale of contraception. >> they don't like women getting contraception and crusaded against it because it would wake them have -- make them have sexual lives. he wanted to stop that. he was an interesting guy who had a chronic problem with self pleasure. i didn't just make that up, i hope. look it up. >>