even here. now there will be seating for 13,000 people. at the historic plaster de la concorde, they are now building venues for things like break dancing and skateboarding. team usa will be there. >> i am just ready to be there in the jersey competing. >> reporter: equestrian athletes will go for gold while writing golden horses. the olympic flag. a massive police operation underway and 45,000 volunteers chosen. >> i found out there was 165,000 applicants and i was picked out of that. i am so excited. >> reporter: paris has never seen anything like it. and in 100 days, we will all get to share in the celebration. keir simmons, nbc news, paris. >> our friend keir simmons and the city of light to take us

off the air tonight. and on that note, i wish you a very good night. from all of our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late. see you at the end of tomorrow. joe biden was sworn in as president of the united states at 12:00 p.m. on january 20th, 2021. just one day and four hours later, this happened. >> found articles of impeachment on president joe biden. we will see how this goes. >> we will see how this goes. >> biden had been president for less than 30 hours. the house conservatives decided that he had already committed high crimes and misdemeanors and needed to be removed from office.

since the very start of his administration, republicans have been desperate to try and obscure and minimize the two impeachment trials of former president donald trump. and to do that, they aimed for joe biden to be the next american president to face the same humiliation. but that effort failed and it failed in spectacular fashion. for three years we have watched republicans reach desperately for something, anything, that had even a hint of corruption they might been on president biden. but their efforts failed to turn up any convincing evidence that biden or his family had engaged in corruption. republicans did manage to rankle one star witness who accused president biden and his family have all sorts of wrongdoing. but it turned out that guy was just a duke passing along provably false information from people with ties to russian intelligence, and he has since been arrested twice for lying to the fbi. watching republicans tried to impeach biden has been like

trying to watch someone boil soup in the paper bag. just a huge, embarrassing mess that accomplished nothing. and so republicans then decided that they would try the next best thing. if they cannot impeach joe biden they would impeach a member of joe biden's cabinet. and who better to be the victim then homeland security secretary alessandra mallorca's? >> get rid of him. he is derelict in his duty. this guy needs to go. >> he deserves to lose his job because he does not follow the law. >> he needs to be impeached. >> secretary mayorkas is in charge of the southern border and republicans want that to be a key issue in this next election, so what could go wrong? impeach him. well, for starters, republicans have the same problem but they always have. problem but they they didn't actually have any crimes to charge. eventually, they settled on two made-up charges.

the first was that mayorkas failed to enforce the laws of the southern border, which simply wasn't true. in fact, under secretary mayorkas, there have been more deportations, returns, and explosions than there were during the entire trump administration. republicans second charge was that secretary mayorkas had lied to congress when he said that the border was under control which is exactly what it sounds like. an argument about the semantics of what the word control means, and very clearly not a high crime or misdemeanor. so these were not real charges. but republicans decided to move forward with them anyway. yesterday, house republicans brought there to sham impeachment articles to the senate and today, senate democrats killed both of them. after a few hours of procedural wrinkling, a majority of senators voted for neither of the two articles of impeachment

was a high crime or misdemeanor and therefore the articles were unconstitutional. and that was it. here was senate minority leader, mitch mcconnell, just after that vote. >> we have set a very unfortunate precedent here. this means that the senate can ignore, in effect, the house is impeachment. this is a day, it is not proud day in the history of the senate. >> republicans, including mitch mcconnell, are angry today because they spent the better part of this year on this impeachment, and for what? they could have spent that time actually trying to fix our immigration system. democrats negotiated one of the strictest bipartisan border bills in decades, something that would have been unthinkable just a few years prior. it gave republicans almost everything they wanted on border security. but donald trump forced republicans to kill that bill because he thought it might help president biden.

so instead of legislation, republicans made a failed attempt to impeach someone who committed no crime on an issue they themselves refused to solve. it would be one thing if this was the only area where our government is breaking down because of the hollowed out husk of what was once the republican party. but it is not. because at the same time that all of this was happening in the senate today, republicans in the house of representatives were also tripping all over themselves to benefit a strongman. only this time the strongman wasn't donald trump. right now, speaker mike johnson is facing a revolt from inside his own party over his decision to finally put aid to ukraine up to a vote in the house. johnson had resisted doing that for months but this wiki finally relented. here he is, explaining the reality of what he is facing, just a few hours ago. >> i am operating with the

smallest margin in u.s. history. i have a one-vote margin. listen, we are not going to get 100% of what we want right now because we have the smallest majority in history and we only have the majority in one chamber. >> despite what speaker johnson understands her, far right members of this party are now saying they will call in a vote to oust johnson over his decision to bring up ukraine aid and that is going to go to the floor for a vote. that is how much the far right vote does not want to help combat russia's war of aggression. and this is not just a problem for the republican party, it is a problem for ukraine and america and the rest of the world because ukraine and the voting ukraine funding has become a leverage point for russia. the washington post has some explosive reporting today a newly revealed documents from inside vladimir putin's government. documents that show how russia is seeking to subvert western support for ukraine and disrupt the domestic politics of the

united states and european countries, through propaganda campaigns and supporting isolationist and extremist policies. russia is fomenting division over ukraine because it wants to weaken america's role in the world. in particular, one russian policy expert cited in one of these documents specifically calls on russia to continue to facilitate the coming to power of isolationists right-wing forces in america. just to put a finer point on this, russia very much wants the marjorie taylor greens of the world to continue doing exactly what they are doing because it serves russia's interest's. this is not the only piece of evidence we have of that. last week, two top house republicans warned that pro- russian propaganda had infiltrated the republican party and was being repeated by republican members of congress

in debates about ukraine. earlier this week, majorie taylor-greene parodied vladimir putin's essential life justifying his invasion of ukraine by calling the ukrainian government nazis. ukraine is the only nation other than israel to have a jewish head of state, vladimir zelenskyy. but majorie taylor-greene wants to block it to that country because she says it is run by nazis. so who knows where this vote on ukraine could lead? republicans could vote to remove speaker johnson and through the house of representatives, and therefore much of our american government would be in chaos. something that would directly serve russia's ends, and maybe that is the whole point. joining me now is senator chris murphy, democrat from connecticut. he is a member of the senate appropriations committee and the senate foreign relations committee. it is great to see you. thank you so much for being here. first, let me just get your reaction to the report we had

at the post about the way russia is delighted to see the infighting over ukraine unfolding in the u.s. congress. >> well, of course they are because the only way they could win in ukraine is if the united states withdraws its support for ukraine. let's be clear about why we care so much about stopping russia from taking over ukraine. it is not just because we have a kinship for the ukrainian people. it is because putin has made clear that he is not going to stop ukraine. if he is giving the entire country, he could be moving on to a nato alley that would be u.s. troops. u.s. men and women, americans fighting and dying in europe. this could be a greene light to china, to invade taiwan, disrupting a regional war. this is cataclysmic for u.s.

interests. the triggers that could be set off by putin winning so expeditiously in ukraine, only because the united states is abandoned there. there is no doubt that putin is spending a lot of money in the united states trying to undermine support for ukraine and support for individuals. there is no doubt that he is rooting very badly for donald trump. there is no doubt that he will likely play a big role in this upcoming election. if we get this across the finish line, if we do find ukraine, it will only be through the beginning of next year. and that is a pretty clear guarantee that this would be the last ukraine funding bill that whatever clear the house- senate. >> to that end, i want to draw everyone's attention to a quote from a russian opposition figure. he said that americans have considered so far as they are not directly participating in

the war that any loss is not their loss. this is an absolute misunderstanding. a defeat for ukraine, he said, means that many will fear stop fearing challenging the u.s. and the costs will increase. it feels like some people in the senate in the republican party understand the importance here of not empowering the isolationists, both as a matter of functionality and in terms of the cause of democracy in another world. do you think that speaker johnson is able to bring funding to the chagrin of the far right members of this? is it a signal that house members are realizing that they have been useful idiots for the kremlin? >> no. i would not go that far. it seems as if speaker johnson has made an individual decision and that it would be a disaster for the united states to abandon ukraine. this would be his legacy. with his abandonment of ukraine.

because he has the coalition of democrats and republicans, the senate has already voted 70-30 with a bipartisan majority for ukraine. he knows it would be him and him only who would get the blame for handing ukraine to vladimir putin. so i don't think this suggests any conversion inside the republican party to understand the way it is influenced by russia. in the here and now, and for today at least, we should celebrate that. >> do you have an expectation that we will be looking for a new speaker of the house? what is your expectation for the u.s. congress? what happens next? >> so my senses are that there are some democrats who will oppose this. should speaker johnson go through with his proposal to bring aid to ukraine, aid to israel and humanitarian assistance before the house.

and should that be successful, he needs to get enough republicans to support it so that alongside democrats, it passes the house and moves to the senate. so it is possible that he will surprise -- survived this because there could be a handful of democrats who will support him. the reality is that right now, the only way to pass anything through the house of representatives is a coalition of mostly democrats because the majority of republicans in the house are just full-time arsonists. they are inside government to destroy government, to destroy the legitimacy of government, to try to bring down the government. so whether it is votes for who was the next speaker, votes to pass a budget, it is really still democrats that are the only thing that keep that place functional. johnson has finally realized that. >> in terms of burning down the government, i have to ask about

what happened in your chamber today. democrats effectively killed off the impeachment trial. senator mitch mcconnell who likes to be in institutionalist when it suits him suggested that an unfortunate precedent had been set in so go doing. what is your reaction to that? >> well, the dangerous precedent that we could have set was to legitimize and endorse this sham of an impeachment process. those articles of impeachment are laughable on their face. there is not a sliver, there is not a hint of a high crime or misdemeanor. this is just 40 pages of complaints about what is happening at the border today. what really stands for is a simple premise. republicans do not want to fix the border. as you mentioned, they had a chance to do that. i would negotiate that the toughest set of changes in 40 years that would have brought order to the southwest border, republicans rejected that bill because they actually want the border to be out of control.

what they want is for there to be headlines every day about how chaotic the border is so that they can score political points and so that it will help them in this election. it's just a mechanism to keep the conversation about the border in the headlights. i think the american people are catching on. i think all of this evidence that republicans are just interested in politics and are allergic when given the chance to actually vote for changes that would get the border under control is starting slowly to sink in with the public. >> they are definitely keeping the border in the headlines through their own political chicanery. good job. senator chris murphy, thank you for making the time tonight. really appreciate it. >> thank you. we have lots more ahead tonight, including republicans wasting no time to turn up a congressional hearing about anti-semitism on college campuses into a broadside against woke-ism. tomorrow, a continuation

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donald trump was not in court today but his criminal hush money trial was top of mind this morning. he took to truth social to rant about what he considered unfairness during jury selection yesterday, specifically that his lawyers were not allowed unlimited opportunities to strike prospective jurors. never the mind that his legal team with a lot of the same number of so-called peremptory challenges as prosecutors and they have used the same number of those challenges to weed out people they believe would not be impartial jurors. it appears what donald trump is actually upset about is that he is being treated, so far, mostly like any other criminal defendant. trump has had to sit through

the groundhog day -like tedium of jury selection and its repetitive question and after trump spoke and gestured in the direction of the juror he was reprimanded, as any other defendant would be, by judge juan marchand who said he would not have jurors intimidated in his courtroom. this process is proceeding so normally that judge marchand believes a jury will be seated in time for opening statements to begin on monday, which is way ahead of the two-week timeline he estimated earlier this week. joining me now is george conway, attorney and contributor to the atlantic. thank you for being here. i know you were in the vicinity, you are in the zone, and i want to hear about what that was like. first, what do you make of the dissonance between trump asserting that this was all such an unfair jury selection process and the fact that seven jurors have already been selected? >> he is going to say everything is unfair, no matter how it comes out. he thinks he is going to get unlimited peremptory challenges. it does not happen.

if it did happen, this trial could take forever. would you strike everybody in manhattan? it's crazy. >> yes. >> he would not have to do that. it would take the entire year in the next year and the year after that but he would have to sit there. but that is classic donald trump donald trump thinks the rules don't apply to him and if they do apply to him than it is unfair and that is his whole stick. >> so far it really feels like, and you wrote to this in the atlantic. it is like perceiving apace in an almost humdrum fashion with the exception of these outbursts. i do have to ask you about this because judge marchand has not been playing around with this. i think it was a few hours ago, trump shared, reposted on truth social, this claim from jesse watters of fox. they are catching undercover liberal activists lying to the judge in order to get on the trump jury. so saith jesse watters. does that run up to the line of

violating the gag order? does that flirt with it were is that fair game? >> it is not for game because it is a lie. there is no evidence to support it. if you are referring to specific individuals and trying to intimidate them it would violate the gag order. i think he is just trying to poison the well in the public domain. saying that nothing here is fair, it can't be fair. people can't be fair to me. even though he spent his entire life in new york until relatively recently. >> independent of trying to poison the well, which is no small thing, it also could be at some point construed as this goes on and the jury is finally selected as a form of intimidation that puts the jurors lives in danger as they perceive liberal stooges out there to get trump. my question to you is, marchand has uttered at some point that the suggestion of jail time could be a part of this if trump violates the gag order. do you think there is any universe in which that happens?

>> i think it is possible. i think it is possible because he does not know boundaries and boundaries have to be explained to him. he has to actually believe that the boundaries will be a factor. before that happens i think merchan is going to be very, very explicit about it. like okay, that's it. you've done this. you've done this. this is it. next time, bring your toothbrush. >> i mean, you have seen merchan in action. do you feel like that is going to take an extraordinary amount of fortitude to even consider doing something like that to a former president of the united states who is a former candidate for president? what is the impression you have gotten? >> he is the judges judge. he is very straightforward, businesslike, and serious as a jurist. i think he is very competent. i think he is very conscious of what he is doing and what he is projecting in the courtroom. and i think he is going to protect the jurors because that

is the most important thing. his job is to ensure a fair trial and that means protecting the people who are going to be deciding the facts of the case, which is the members of the jury, the members of the public. >> when you talk about trump's inability to control himself, there is something happening, i believe, tomorrow afternoon, called a sandoval hearing. really, my law degree and television law school, i am getting closer to taking the bar. but the sandoval hearing is going to determine basically which of trump's criminal and misconduct acts could be used if trump were to take the witness stand and were to undergo cross-examination. is that right? >> that is basically it's, yes. >> said trump is going to be presented with a litany of wrongdoing. can you explain that process? and what the likelihood is that trump absolutely freaks out during that? >> he is not going to enjoy it. when you hear about all the bad

things that have been attributed to him, i don't know how he is going to react. it will be everything from what he has done, the lien the public domain, including about e. jean carroll and all of that stuff. i mean, if he knows on the stand, he is just going to open a lot of that up. i think the issue is whether or not it is efficiently prorated with his credibility for the prosecution, to cross-examine on it. it probably will be. he is not somebody who should go with that. that being said, you know, he is a narcissistic sociopath. he is impulsive and if he feels, on a given day, that he has to do it, he could decide to do it and overrule his lawyers.

but other times he has followed his lawyer's advice. he followed their advice during the first e. jean carroll trial, basically not to show up. then he showed up for the second one and he couldn't contain himself. that cost him tens of millions of dollars because he basically behaved exactly as the plaintiff was describing him, as somebody who was remorseless, ready to say anything, who had contempt for the courts rulings and contempt for the truth. he acted out right in front of the jury. it is going to be a lot harder for him this time because this is a lot more. if this is about his own people testifying and describing things that he did, people who were there from david , we never heard from david packer. hope hicks, we never heard from him about this. he is going to have to sit here and listen to it. he is not going to enjoy himself.

you can't guarantee that he will be able to control himself. >> he will have to listen to it day in and day out. he has to be there for all of this. he gets a break on wednesdays. he will be accosted with a lot of material, a lot of tedium. what does that do to a man who, as you call it, is a psychopathic narcissist? >> he is a narcissistic sociopath. yeah. he is a psychopath also. >> tomato, tomato. what has it been like as you watch this unfold? as you describe the building in which it is unfolding? it is a beehive of activity and yet it is also incredibly mundane. >> it is a standard building, the projects administration, 1938 to 1941. as one reported, job. it is plain. it is spartan. and it is very functional. so it is not, there are no

goldplated toilets. there is nothing fancy about it. it is very not trump -like. it is not an environment that he would want to be associated with, even if it were something he wouldn't want to home. so it is just the juxtaposition of him and his unwillingness to accede to the rules and norms of society and his contempt for the legal processes, lined up against this building an institution that does this every day with hundreds of people involved. and so it is the juxtaposition, as i wrote today, the ordinary and the extraordinary was just quite amazing. and the fact that it was kind of mundane, to the point where i nodded off on day one, it was

a tribute to the system, actually. >> well, you are allowed to nod off because you are not running a presidential campaign where your chief point of attack is calling someone sleepy. >> right. >> i look forward to more dispatches from the front lines. thank you for joining us tonight. coming up, republican lawmakers. republican lawmakers in arizona today, once again locked in an attempt to appeal a 160-year-old abortion law, set to go into effect in their state. first, house republicans held a hearing on anti-semitism at columbia university today, or at least that was supposed to happen. more on that coming up next. (vo) dan made progress with his mental health...

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to make clothes softer, fresher, and better. in case you missed it, this is how most of today was spent in the house education committee hearing and anti- semitism at columbia university. >> i didn't -- >> i have your answer. let me move on here. >> republicans in congress brought columbia university president down to washington, less to hear her answers and more to pointedly say questions at her. now, if the republicans in the committee were actually listening, the president was quite clear.

here was her response to a question about whether or not anti-semitic speech is tolerated at columbia. >> it is important and has no place in our community. i think one of the issues that we are actively debating now, and which david shows her, i hope, is part of the anti- semitism task force, will help us find solutions, as you have asked for, is to clarify where language crosses the line from protected speech to discriminatory or harassing speech. >> president shafik was very precise there. the debate that should be happening on college campuses right now is the one about where the line is between first amendment speech and discriminatory speech. that is a very worthwhile conversation. but that was not the conversation we saw in the house today. instead, we saw stuff like this. >> how many, could you say,

rattle off like 10 republican faculty out of 4000 off of the top of your head? >> i could, actually. we have two of our fellows from our institute for global politics your former trump -- >> let me ask you another question. >> what is the number of republicans on the faculty have to do with anti-semitism? we're going to get to that. the congressman asking the question there clearly did not like the president shafik could answer his question. it didn't fit the narrative that he was trying to establish. a narrative other republicans tried to cement with questions like these. >> can you explain why the word folks is spelled folx throughout this guidebook? is this how columbia university spelled the word folks? >> no. >> what does a student group spelling the word folks with an x to be gender inclusive, what

does that have to do with anti- semitism? well, both that question and the one asking president shafik how many republicans are on the columbia faculty, both of those questions have a lot to do with the conversation republicans were actually trying to have in the house today. a week ago, a group of jewish faculty members at columbia published this open letter to president shafik, imploring her not to fall for the exact republican campaign we saw in that committee hearing room today. rather than being concerned with the safety and well-being of jewish students on campuses, the committee is leveraging the anti-semitism in the wider effort to caricature and demonize universities as hotbeds of woke indoctrination. we are going to talk with the dean of the colombian school of journalism, gelati cobb, about what is actually happening at columbia's campus and what republicans are trying to do here, right after the break. t

our food fresher, our families safer, and our planet cleaner. to help us get there, america's plastic makers are investing billions of dollars to create innovative products and new recycling technologies for sustainable change. because when you push for smarter solutions, big things can happen. right now across the u.s., people are trying to ban books from public schools and public libraries. yes, libraries. we all have a first amendment right to read and learn different viewpoints. that's why every book belongs on the shelf. yet book banning in the u.s. is worse than i've ever seen. it's people in power who want to control everything. well, i say no to censorship. and i say yes to freedom of speech and expression. if you do too, please join us in supporting

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in december, republicans on the house education committee questioned the presidents of harvard and m.i.t. about anti-semitism. days later, the president of the university of pennsylvania, elizabeth mcgill, resigned. after a month of personal professional and attacks, the president of harvard, claudine gay, also resigned. now it was the president of columbia university, minouche shafik, who republicans had in

the hot seat. joining me now to unpack this and what these hearings are really about is jelani cobb , dean of the columbia's universities school of journalism. it has been a busy time on campus. can you give me a sense of what is happening on your campus? there was a hearing today where i feel like we didn't actually get an accurate picture of how deep the battle lines run in with the fundamental arguments are around. >> it is contested. there are debates, heated debates, happening. there are protests and demonstrations and counter protests and counter demonstrations. just as this has become a hugely polarizing issue in lots of different avenues of american life, we are seeing that play out on the university campus, where people are supposed to engage with ideas. they're supposed to debate. they're supposed to think about these things critically and so on so we are seeing a lot of

that happen. in addition, on the day today, people are going to class, learning, reading, preparing to graduate and all the things that happen in a normal academic year. >> is there conversation about, president shafik got at this today. the presentation needs to be about, what is free-speech and what is discriminatory speech. is that a debate that is happening to any and at this point? >> the irony of this, this is the debate that we have had serially, long before this conflict began. this was a debate of a robust issue that we should be debating on college campuses. of course, the irony of this is that the president was being questioned by congress, which actually has purview over this. it makes legislation give pause. and you know, the supreme court's, which determines by presidents what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. so really, universities are being beaten up. columbia, in particular, being beaten up,

over things we have no control over. we are following the guidance of the people doing the questioning here. >> it seems like, to that end, what was happening in congress today wasn't really about columbia. it wasn't necessarily about anti-semitism. it seemed like it was very clearly an opportunity for republicans to go after what they perceived to be a group of liberal leads and the woke is and that is penetrating america 's college campus system. did you think that they were successful in maligning columbia university today? >> they set all kinds of things about columbia university. this is not the institution that i think most of us experience. even though there had been incidents of anti-semitism, no question. those incidences have been denounced. what we have seen in place of this is there has been a disingenuous caricature of what the university stands for, what

is going on. that is not simply happening today but has been going on for weeks before this. and so listening to that hearing , you would not think that there was anything redeemable, you know, happening at columbia university. >> do you think, i mean, it seems that the war in gaza and the absolute schism that has been created in its aftermath, and some would say predating the war in gaza, has been a political opportunity for republicans and conservatives in particular to kind of get out the cultural focus of liberal elites? not to be repetitive, but i do wonder how effective they have been in turning some part of the country against what is perceived as higher institutions. >> sure, but i think that one of the more pernicious things and one of the more disingenuous things here is the presentation of this as if this were a kind of better of

principal. what this is really about is the perception that universities are too liberal, especially elite institutions. this is on par with the attacks on dei and the attacks on affirmative action. following the playbook of what we have seen it new college in florida, for example. so the idea is supposed to be that we are laying the ground for these institutions to be something other than what they are perceived to be. well, these are also genius institutions. i teach opinion writing. i have students whose views are all across the spectrum, as you will find at this university, at the institution. >> republicans attend columbia too, in other words. >> shockingly, they do. i have actually taught a few, amazingly. but that is not, none of these issues of substance were on display there. this was a kind of theater in order to caricature the university to further an agenda

of kind of making it more difficult for our institutions to function. >> yes. i will say, if we have time, i would love to play in exchange between president shafik and representative rick allen, who was asking if she wanted columbia to be cursed by god. can we play that? >> are you familiar with genesis 12:3? if you bless israel, i will bless you. if you curse israel, i will curse you. do you consider that a serious issue? i mean, do you want columbia university to be cursed by god? of the bible? >> definitely not. >> okay. that's good. >> >> definitely not. >> it is a curious logic to bring in white christian nationalism into a conversation about anti-semitism. it is portrayed the underpinnings of the argument. it is a culture war.

it is about republican white christian national conservatives against multicultural liberal learning and that is the fight they want to have. >> i also thought it was race baiting the president who has egyptian origin. it was thinly veiled. what was happening was the most thinly veiled of the most pernicious parts we have seen given the proliferation of anti- semitism we have seen in the right wing of that party itself. >> maybe the mirror should be turned upon the party. i have to ask. we talk about this is a exercise in politics but it has consequences. the number of university heads that had to step down that had to leave their posts or have been professionally wounded in

the course of this. does that make you worry? are we turning a corner when the goals of one side of this have been revealed to be not pure? >> the real concern is that we are in a moment of democratic crisis. it goes back to the 50s when we are talking about the cold war. how do you handle challenges to your democracy? by being more democratic. you have to double and triple down on your principles. so to see these kinds of assaults on free speech and academic freedom at a point where we are also seeing other parts of our democratic tradition being assailed is deeply chilling. >> been of the columbia school of journalism. thank you for bringing much- needed perspective to us on a not like this. still to come, arizona

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there are so many people watching right now, watching what arizona is doing. >> we have had since 1864 to repeal this law, for the past six years democrats have introduced this bill.

democrats have introduced this bill for six years and have been ignored. every single one of them. including this one. >> that was the arizona house floor after republicans date legislatures for the second time in less than two weeks rejected efforts to repeal a abortion been from 1864 that was reinstated last week by arizona's top court. joining me now is author about the post dobbs era called unbearable. what do you make up the discrepancy between what republicans are calling for between getting rid of the pain and what republicans are actually doing? >> what happened is the supreme court handed them a gift that has proven to be a curse for republicans.

some of them are true believers such as the speaker of the state house who says some of us believe killing children is wrong and people like trump who will say whatever it takes for them to be victorious. up until the supreme court made it possible for these zombie laws to go into effect, these two sides could be an alliance, unfortunately americans have seen the troop relet consequences of abortion being banned when it is not just a debate tactic or a political move and they found out they really do not like the reality of how women are being treated across the country. hence this conflict were people like kerry lake and trump would like to say they are against something that they either championed or in the case of trump directly enabled, suddenly they are acting shocked, because they are in tough races.

contrast that with the legislators in arizona, the house and senate controlled by republicans. one in each chamber crossover votes. when the motion to begin debate on the repeal failed when it was blocked by republicans, they cheered. on one leg you have kerry lake working the phones and trump saying it goes too far but when push comes to shove there are plenty of republicans that are thrilled that the 19th-century is coming back to rule women in arizona. >> looks like the voters in arizona will do it. they are concerned a referendum will in trying abortion in the state legislation. they want to add a second referendum to the ballot to confuse things. i wonder if you think they can be successful or if citizens are paying close enough attention that it will not work?

>> i was on the phone with a spokeswoman for that campaign and she believes that people in arizona will not be fooled. we are seeing a sustained voter outreach and interest in seeing past the office to occasion. voters didn't fall for a change in rules and they went on to pass it overwhelmingly. what you are hearing in arizona is people scrambling. notice what the republicans are offering to put on the ballot directly relies on trying to confuse people. to be clear some of it is harming patients because all of these dueling laws and which one is in effect has prevented people from getting abortions in arizona even when it is legal and allowed. so it has consequences but the politics of it, there is no reason to think arizona will be different from many of th