whatever strings are able to be pulled, they will be pulled. we will get it done. >> next time. . and thanks to you at home for joining us. it's really good to have you here. so are you ready for a weird one? r this is a truly weird one, and i did not come up with this. this is not a rachel maddow special. this is reported in black and white in full detail in "the new york times."." i am only the messenger.th all right. 1937. amelia earhart, pilot, first woman to fly solo across the atlantic ocean.

she holds tons of records.to she is a national hero. she is inspirational figure.at amelia earhart. she sets off in 1937 to become f the first woman to fly all the way around the world, and it wo does not work. her flight disappears over the south pacific. she is never found, 1937. fast forward 75 years. 2012. so in 2012, there is going to be on the 75th anniversary of her effort to fly around the world whereupon she disappeared, 75th anniversary there is going to be a new excursion to try to find s the wreckage of her plane, to ge try to figure out what happened to her. and eccentric gazillionaire writes to the expedition, writes to the guy who is leading this expedition to go look for amelia earhart. and the gazillionaire guy says i effectively, hey, we've never met, you don't know anything d about me, but i really want to come along on this mission of

yours. and i'll give you a million dollars if you take me. so the guy leading this expedition is well, i don't know, but we really should could sure use a million of this guy's dollars. this is an expensive thing. so sure, i guess you can come along. so they bring him along. and the guy who they have brought along is somebody who has an unusual life. he grew up in fabulous, fabulous wealth. his last name is mellon, mellon with two ls, the banking dynasty. one of the most famous and famously wealthy families in the history of the united states. timothy mellon is an heir to the mellon family fortune. he also over the course of his life used his share of the mellon family fortune to found and acquire and run a whole bunch of different companies,

companies that ended up having just appalling records of the wrongful death of their workers and causing environmental disasters and falsifying their financial records, including at least one criminal conviction o one of his companies. c yeah. any way, but the guy floats on t sea of money. he is a mellon. and he has decided he would like to spend some of that sea of money on which he floats on paying to attend the go find amelia earhart mission in 2012. so he pays a million to make them take him on the mission, and here we pick up with "the new york times." quote, the expedition failed to find ms. earhart's plane, but in subsequent online discussions where members of the expedition shared theories about the er earhart mystery, mr. mellon became increasingly fixated on video taken during a previous as underwater search.

he wrote hundreds of posts over many months where he claimed that he could see airline wreckage, personal effects, and eventually bodies. others tried to explain to him b that he was only seeing rocks and coral, but mr. mellon insisted that he could discern items that they had missed. a banjo, a severed hand. even 75-year-old rolls of toilet paper. okay. just checking in here for a second. it's the 75 years after the -- so this is literally 75 years after the plane went down. and what this dude thinks he sees is toilet paper from back then under the sea today. [ laughter ] because who among us does not think if we drop some toilet paper into the sea, it would be

intact and sitting there waiting to be collected 75 years from now. i mean, in fact, you know, if you're short on storage space in your house or your apartment, have you ever considered storing your toilet paper under the sea, perhaps with spongebob. put it in his little pineapple house. you just tuck it in there. it will definitely still be intact and in great shape 75 years from now. i would say if you did that today, this would be the year 2099. you'd be, you know, floating your toilet paper up because it would be in great shape. i'm sorry. okay. any way. back to this, back to this. mr. mellon insisted he could discern items they had missed -- a banjo, a severed hand, even 75-year-old rolls of toilet

paper. it was apparent, he said, that the heads, the heads, meaning t the anatomical head, the heads of amelia earhart and her navigator were encased in cellophane bags connected by a hose to a nitrogen tank. which he thinks he saw on an undersea video, though nobody else could see it. so alongside the intact 75-year-old rolls of toilet paper, the man is convinced that he has found amelia earhart's head in a cellophane bag. this is strange, yes? this is strange.ra and so what happens next? two things. one of them you might guess. the other one you won't. the first thing that happens is that the leader of the expedition, quote, fielding ea complaints from members about mr. mellon's outlandish ideas, eventually limited mr. mellon's privileges on the online forum, meaning, you know, my dude, y thank you for paying a million dollars to come along while we

tried to do this thing, but now i think we're maybe done with you and your insistence on the heads in a bag thing. so that's the first thing that happens. you are no longer here on our online forum, okay, sorry. what's the second thing that happens? s mr. mellon, again, convinced he had seen amelia earhart's head on the sea floor in a cellophane bag sued the expedition, claiming his $1 million gift had been unnecessary because the expedition team already had video evidence of earhart's plane but did not act on it. he spent at least $150,000 on t his own forensic experts trying to prove his assertions. he pursued the case all the way to an unsuccessful appeal. while a judge dismissed mr. mellon's claims, the case dragged on for years, which among other things, imperiled the group's finances. so dragging this out, dragging this thing out for years,

potentially pushing the exploration company to bankruptcy through no fault of their own, right, but he's r dragging them through court m because they screwed him. they had the evidence of the toilet paper all along and the banjo and the heads that no one else can see, but he can see them. okay. so pop quiz.z. which figure in this story is the single largest donor in the country to the donald trump and j.d. vance campaign? if you guessed amelia earhart's disembodied head in a bag, i'm sorry, you're wrong. no, it's this guy. and unexpected twist, which figure in the story is the single largest donor in the country also to the robert f. kennedy jr. conspiracies and anti-vaccine presidential campaign? also nor the head nor the cellophane bag or the toilet

rolls. same guy. you've heard all this noise about donald trump and j.d. vance having support from elon musk and all these eccentric very, very right wing anti-democracy billionaires. actually, no, it's this guy is the biggest donor.es this guy has given more to the trump-vance presidential efforts than anyone else in the country. and he has also given more to a the rfk jr. for president than anyone else in the country. both of those campaigns, him as the largest donor. and of all the weird things in this story, it is actually not all that weird that those two things go together, that trump's biggest donor is also rfk's biggest donor. republican political operatives are now running rfk adds in five swing states that call rfk a liberal and call him pro-choice, neither of which he is, but both of which are intended to cipheri votes way from harris and the democrats by tricking people into voting for rfk instead. the rfk campaign at this point is built to help elect donald trump.

as for timothy mellon, though, the "i found amelia earhart head in a bag" guy, he has made nd nearly a quarter billion in donations to conservative candidates and causes just in the past four years. he's not a long-term donor. he has not been doing this forever, but he is really doing it now. and he indeed has given $75 million to trump and vance and $25 million to rfk jr. and who knows what else is coming. mr. mellon wrote a memoir in 2014 in which he said citizens who get help from the government, quote, are slaves of a new master, uncle sam. he also wrote in that memoir ot that in the 1980s, quote -- i can't even read this. in the 1980s, quote, black people became even more

belligerent and unwilling to pitch in to improve their own situations." even more belligerent. that is the man who has done more, materially more than anyone else in the united states to try to get these men back into the white house. and honestly, to try to get toilet paper the respect it deserves for its really surprising resilience against r deep sea conditions. admit it. you weren't giving toilet paper the credit deserves. 75 years old, under the sea. so we are 99 days out from the presidential election. the democrats by the end of next week will have officially nominated vice president kamala harris as their presidential nominee, which we think means with that timing, they're saying that she will be nominated, officially by august 7th, which is next wednesday, we think with that timing it means that some time just within the next few

days we're going to know who she has chosen as her running mate. interestingly, north carolina's governor roy cooper announced tonight that he is taking at himself out of consideration for that role. he is only the second person who have done that. admiral william mcraven made a similar announcement last week. and, you know, honestly, who knows who the vice president really does have on her short list, who she really wants. this is the kind of decision. the running mate decision is the decision that a nominee absolutely gets to make on their ownsome. so they'll get advice and they'll take advice from all sorts of different people and they'll see how the short-list candidates make the case for themselves in the campaign trail and elsewhere. but ultimately, it's really up to her. so we shall see. popular wisdom at this point is those are probably -- this is probably a reasonable approximation of the folks who are in the running. minnesota governor tim walz, transportation secretary pete buttigieg, kentucky governor andy beshear, illinois governor

jb pritzker, pennsylvania governor josh shapiro, arizona governor mark kelly, maybe va michigan senator gary peters whn is an interesting choice being discussed of late.of we'll see. maybe there is somebody else being vetted we do not know about. i don't think anybody knew that admiral mcraven was being vetted before he announced that he didc not want to be further considered. but whoever he choice, it's all going to happen fast now. and democrats, you know, getting fast out of the gate since kamala harris took the helm with this incredible wind in the sales in terms of volunteers and in terms of energy and in terms of fundraising and in terms of just everything coming together so fast, one of the things that democrats have very quickly homed in on in an i think unexpected but pretty deeply ed resonant way is that there is something a little off with the other side.a there is something a little weird with the republican campaign.

and i don't actually think it's personal. i don't think it is that donald trump is personally weird or that j.d. vance is personally weird. it's that there is something weird about their campaign.t and, you know, weird isn't a pejorative word necessarily. who among us isn't a little weird, right? weird isn't necessarily bad intrinsically. but this the case of the presidential ticket and how they are trying to regain the white house, there is something going on that does feel off and sort of unsettling. and some of it is right on the surface, and one piece of it is deeper and darker. i mean, it's not just because their single biggest donor is a zillionaire who is convinced he found amelia earhart's head in a bag, otherwise he'll see you in court. there is stuff like that right on the surface. it's also trump has been pinging around an eccentric right wing millionaire pin ball machine

since his campaign started. don't forget, everything else going on for donald trump right now, he does owe hundreds of millions of dollars in civil fraud penalties thanks to what he and his business got caught doing in new york state. b as he embarks on yet another rk presidential run, a third al presidential run, with that personal financial disgrace andn pressure looming over him, he has gravitated more than you might even expect, and more than he even has in the past to very eccentric, very right-wing s billionaires, both for financial support and interestingly, to tell him what to do, which he has then done directly to now repeatedly embarrassing effect. so, for example, trump used to call bitcoin and cryptocurrency a disaster waiting to happen. he said he was, quote, not a fan. he said crypto and bitcoin were, quote, based on thin air. well, now, after meeting with crypto lobbyists, he says he is going to make america the crypto capital of the planet. trump was against tiktok.

trump was so against tiktok, he tried to ban it. then he met with a billionaire who has a big stake in tiktok, and now he is a champion of tiktok. trump promoted the right-ring boycott of budweiser, right? budweiser, oh, they're so left wing, which is insane in the first place. but that was thing or the right, and trump is promoted those boycotts.is then an anheuser-busch lobbyist threw him a fundraiser, and trump did a total 180.a we should all be buying budweiser now. now it's electric vehicles. trump has been railing against electric vehicles for years. and really intensely for months now. remember, it was part of his w weird rambling never ending speech at the rnc that there is an electric vehicle mandate, which there isn't, and he is going to free us from the fake e electric vehicle mandate. he'll allow americans to have

gas cars again, since joe biden banned gas cars. again, this is not a true thing he was saying about joe biden or about there being any mandate about electric cars. but he has been on this for months about how electric cars are terrible and he will free us from the tyranny of electric cars, except now he's just realized that this might make for an awkward relationship with elon musk, who is occasionally the richest man in this country, and who owns a large electric car company.an once elon musk reneged a few days ago on what the "wall street journal" had said would be a $45 million a month donation pledge to trump, trump has now started talking about how much he loves electric ar vehicles, how he drives them, how they're incredible, how they're so great. and, you know, you do that once, okay, maybe you evolved or maybe it's a coincidence, or maybe yoc just got old and confused and forgot your previous stance. but it's everything now.

it's on everything, like pick a topic. trump takes position, meets billionaire who has opposite position. trump then adopts opposite position. it just happens over and other p and over again. somebody should try to pretend to be a billionaire who hates licorice. get trump to meet an i hate licorice billionaire. see how long it takes trump to start railing about the evil of twizzlers. he is going to ban licorice, make america great again. trump did have one very important billionaire in 2016 who he subsequently lost. it was far-right eccentric silicon valley billionaire peter thiel, famous for saying everything's gone downhill since women got the right to vote and he doesn't think freedom and democracy are compatible. so he chooses freedom. democracy has to go. he lost thiel. trump is working hard to get hih back. and that has caused trump to do

some weird stuff. after thiel supported trump in 2016, he decide head wasn't going to severe thunderstorm politicians any more for a while. in 2022, peter thiel changed his mind.et he couldn't resist. he ran two of his own proteges for the u.s. senate, j.d. vance, of ohio, the man on your left. and blake masters on your right. these are both proteges of peter they'll. these are men peter they'll broke out of clay. they were both given jobs by him, both made wealthy by him.ma he created both of their careers and adopted them both as proteges. and peter they'll in both cases single-handedly funded a de campaign for them at the same time. he couldn't resist, got back t into the game with these two guys whom he ran for senate in 2022.m i say he ran for senate, but he personally individually investen $15 million in each of these senate guys' senate races, which

is larger than any single donation ever made in any other senate race ever by any other person. and he did it for both of them. and there is no chance either of them would have had anything remotely approaching a chance at winning either of those seats without peter thiel. and even still, vance won, but barely. now peter thiel has succeeded in getting him on to trump's ticket, getting trump to pick him as his running mate. blake masters even with peter thiel's $15 million lost, and it isn't hard to understand why blake masters really is the guy who was asked who is the most underrated thinker in america. his answer was the unabomber. so no, he didn't win that senats seat, even with peter thiel's $15 million. but now blake masters is running again. this time he is running for a seat in congress in arizona. and the primary is tomorrow.

and here's the amazing thing. donald trump already has a guy in that race tomorrow. this guy's name is abe hamadeh. he has been part of the whole election denial thing in arizona for trump. he refused to recognize the results of his own last election when he lost. he is associated deeply with the whole trump election denial thing in arizona with the trump election denialist senate candidate kari lake, who trump did an event with just today. this is the trump guy in the race. but then there is also in the same race this guy blake masters popping out of peter thiel's pocket, running in the same race, in the same primary tomorrow. and he's peter thiel's guy. and did i mention that donald trump owes hundreds of millions of dollars right now, and his whole campaign now is about doing whatever the last

billionaire who spoke to him wants him to do. no matter the incoherence. part of what is so weird about the donald trump campaign right now is whatever the last very rich person said in his ear, he immediately said if that's his new policy and always has been. but in the case of appeal, donald trump really does not want to lose this billionaire, right? he does not want to lose peter thiel. he lost him one before, and he has gone out of his way to get peter thiel back. he just put peter thiel's other bizarre protege on his ticket with him, for which he is paying dearly, because j.d. vance out of the gate looks like a terrible running mate for donald trump. but even still, even after trump did that for him, peter thiel isn't ponying up. he really needs this guy. so what's he going to do in this arizona congressional race? what can he do?

he's already got a trump guy in the race, but peter thiel's goty a guy there too running against him.er what can trump do?ru the primary is tomorrow.y he has done the funniest possible thing. i'm pleased to announce that both blake masters and abraham m hamadeh have my complete and total endorsement. oh the courage. he has endorsed both of these men who are running against each other. to be clear, they both can't win. but one of them is the trump guy in the race already, and one of them lives in the pants pocket of a billionaire for whom trump will do absolutely anything. and so here, i hereby endorse both. vote for both. may they both win, even though they're both running for the same seat. but i said there is a lot going on at the surface level in terms of donors and campaign positions and campaign strategy and the way they're behaving in public. there is a lot that is weird

about this campaign thus far. but there someone last thing in terms of the weirdness of this campaign that i think is actually quite serious. you probably heard this weekendy that donald trump told an audience on friday night that i they vote for him this november if he's voted back into office this november, they will never have to vote again. he told the audience on friday to, quote, get out and vote just this time. he said after this time, quote, you won't have to do it anymorea you won't have to vote anymore. he said, quote, in four years, you don't have to vote again. we'll have it fixed so good, and you're not going have to vote. now this is not the first time trump has told a campaign audience they will never have to vote again once they vote him back in this time again. that is alarming for all the reasons you think it is. he is positing this like it's a happy thing, oh, joy, never have the burden of voting again. the point of democracy is we vote all the time, and we like it. that's how we decide what

happens in our country. he is promising his followers that he'll end all of that. and it just -- it's exactly what you think it is. but let me also point out something more strange, which has been happening at the same time and it hasn't had as much attention. the day before trump made those remarks on friday, on friday he said you're never going to have to vote again after you vote for me this one time, the day before that on thursday last week, he didn't say that people wouldn't have to vote any more once he was elected this november. no, the day before that on thursday, he told his supporters, not that they're going to have to vote again, but that they don't have to vote this time, that they don't need to vote for him this november. >> my instruction, we don't need the votes. i have so many votes. >> my instruction, we don't need the votes. i have so many votes.

he said that on thursday last ma week. and it turns out this is something when you look, he says this all the time now. watch. >> my instruction, we don't need the votes. i have so many votes. >> we don't need votes. >> i tell my people, i don't need any votes. we got all the votes we need. >> we don't need votes. we've got more votes than anybody has ever had. mo >> don't worry about the voting. we got plenty of votes. >> don't worry about voting. of all the weirdness around this campaign, this is a truly strange thing to tell people, right? don't vote. i don't need your vote. i don't want your vote. i mean, all the surface-level weirdness is worth noting. have your single biggest donor being the i have amelia earhart's head in a bag guy. having your finger on picking the eccentric billionaire for

your running mate even though you had no idea what a disaster he is on television, all of this is weird. but telling voters do not bother to vote for me, it doesn't matter if you do. i don't need your votes that is a thing that could prick up your ears, because what that means is that he doesn't think he needs to win the vote to win the election. he doesn't think he needs to win the election in order to take power. he thinks something other than votes is going to determine whether or not he gets back in the white house. at rolling stone today, they profile 70 different election officials who have been put into position in the swing states of arizona, michigan, nevada, nortc carolina and pennsylvania, who are election denialists, committed election denialists. officials that have been put in place in all of those states to make sure that election results know matter what they are do not

get certified in those states this year. quote, at least 22 of these election officials have already refused or delayed certification processes in recent elections. according to democratic election lawyer marc elias, quote, i think we are going see mass refusals to certify the election in november. quote, republicans are countingb on not just that they can disrupt the election in big counties, they're counting on the fact that if they don't certify in several small counties, you can't certify statewide results. 70 officials in place across just the swing states. for all the surface level weird behavior and language and strange choices and incoherence and odd donors in the republican campaign, the serious core at the heart of it is that they're not planning on the vote being

counted as normal. they're not counting on the election results being tallied as normal. they're not counting on the vote. and in fact trump is now repeatedly saying the vote willy not matter. he doesn't even want your vote. the republicans are counting on the election results not being certified. thereby creating chaos in washington around the results. just like 2020, right? just like january 6th, 2021, except this time with no mike pence in the way and with republican officials already in place in multiple states saying yeah. you may not get any sort of official vote. the weirdness of this campaign is astonishing 99 days out. the dislocation from real campaigning, though, the dislocation from actually asking people for their votes, that means something. t it means they are not trying to win this thing in a normal way. so 99 days out, as democrats stand up, what by all accounts looks like a juggernaut traditional campaign under kamala harris, are they prepared

for this level of weirdness el after the votes are cast?vo are they ready for what's coming? more ahead.

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hey, everybody, so today iowa put in place a trump abortion ban, which makes iowa the 22nd state in our country to have a trump abortion ban. and this ban is going to take effect before many women even know they're pregnant.

and what this means is that one in three women of reproductive age in america lives in a state with a trump abortion ban. so what we need to do is vote, because i'm going tell you something. when i am president of the united states, he will sign into law the protections for reproductive freedom. so let's get this done. >> that's vice president kamala harris embarks on her second week as a presidential candidate, her message is not subtle. donald trump regularly brags about overturning the constitutional right to an abortion in this country. and if you're going to brag about that, then every state abortion ban that makes possible gets your name on it. the latest abortion ban in this country went into effect today in iowa. it's as draconian as it gets. it makes abortion illegal after about six weeks, which as the vice president said, before -- that's before many women even know they are pregnant. kamala harris has long been the biden administration's most forceful high profile advocate for abortion rights. in march she became the first vice president to ever visit an abortion clinic.

polling shows a major increase in support for abortion rights since roe was overturned. abortion rights ballot initiatives have had a 100 success rate in state after state, even in deep red states. they'll be up for a vote in at least six more states this november. donald trump chose a hard-line advocate for national abortion ban with no exceptions as his running mate in j.d. vance. but at the republican national convention this month, they basically avoided the issue entirely. kamala harris today talks about the trump abortion bans and the newest trump abortion bans. and saying one in three -- one in three women of reproductive age in america lives in a state with a trump abortion ban as she puts an absolute bulls-eye on that issue. it's clear this is not the only issue on which this campaign is going to be decided. but having a draconian abortion ban, a total abortion ban go into effect today, less than one hundred days from the election, just puts this more front and center than it ever even was before. joining us now is democratic senator from massachusetts,

elizabeth warren, senator warren, it's great to have you here. thank you so much for making time. >> thank you. good to be with you. >> first, i haven't had a chance to talk with you since kamala harris became the nominee. she's the de facto nominee at this point. let me get your reaction first to what this week, this eight days has been like in democratic politics. >> it's just been amazing. she has pulled our party together. she is ready to go toe to toe with donald trump. and she's going to win on november 5th. you can just feel it out there. the people who are signing up, who are coming in, who are volunteering, who are pitching in their 10 bucks, who are talking about it in the grocery store and at the drug store and on the sidewalks, the energy out there is unbelievable. and people -- people are hopeful. they're hopeful about the kind of nation that we can build and

about how we can treat each other with some basic respect. and this -- this issue around abortion has so many layers to it in terms of what it means to people. you know, vice president harris said it right. 30% of all women in the united states live in a state that effectively bans abortion. over a million more women were added to that list today. and we've really seen over the last two years what that means. i've stood there with women, talked with women who have been told by their doctors that they need an abortion. they're in the middle of a miscarriage, but they're not close enough to death yet to be able to get the help they need. i've also talked with doctors who say they make judgment news in some states about, well, i know it's medically necessary, and i know i'm eventually going to be able to do it.

but if i give the medically necessary care a little too early, could i be prosecuted criminally. that's what we've created. but here is the thing. if donald trump and j.d. vance end up in the white house, it won't be 30% of women will live in states with those bans. it will be 100%. because make no mistake. they're not stopping with the states that have banned abortion. they are coming for everyone. red states, blue states, and they can do it from the national level. so this is one of those moments you just have to keep saying it over and over and over. we're 99 days out. we got to say it. every day for the next 98 days, ring the bell. they want to deny access to abortion. and by the way, that also means access, denying access to ivf. they want to do that.

not in just a part of the country. not in just some states, but all over this country. that's their extremist agenda. >> to have the contrast on that issue, roe v. wade overturned, 22 states, republican-controlled states having banned abortion. to have kamala harris who is such a champion against donald trump who just picked j.d. vance who could not be more extreme on this issue, talk about a stakes spotlight. talk about a very, very, very clear choice for the country and one that electorally favors democrats. we have seen abortion, ballot measures pass in the red estates in the country, abortion rights when people have the right to vote, they vote for them. all of that, for me, makes me worry more acutely about the way the election is going to be conducted.

i have had conversations with you about this in the past. i am very worried that republicans seem to be approaching this election as one they don't need to win, that they need to game. they don't need to get the votes; they need to get the vote counters. they need to take care of the certification process. they need to take care of the process of the electoral votes being reported to washington. and somehow by doing that, it won't matter how americans vote. given the stakes of this, that's scary in any circumstance. given the stakes of this election, it feels like a cliff. how do you feel about that? >> so i look at it this way. everybody's got a job to do for the next 99 days. and the job for me and for most of the people who are out there listening to this is we got to get our votes out. we don't win if we don't get our votes out. we don't win if people don't go

to the polls. we have got to get our votes out. we can't discourage people from doing that. we can't say the game is going to be played out somewhere else. we need to vote. and we need to vote in such overwhelming numbers that it is hard to ignore what we've done. now, simultaneously, we need people who are fighting them in the courts, and that's happening. we need people who are figuring out how to do the rules and the ballot challenges and how to keep all of our states' votes counting, absolutely critical. but we can't miss the center of this. and the center is we got to get as many people as humanely possible to understand that abortion is on the ballot come

november 5th. ivf is on the ballot come november 5th. and extremist supreme court is on the ballot come november 5th. and of course best of all, kamala harris is on the ballot come november 5th. and that we have a senate on the ballot. we have a house on the ballot. we have got to turn out our votes. but we got to get focused on turning out that vote. >> i hear you. and it's a smart and clear message, as always. senator elizabeth warren, democrat of massachusetts. thank you so much for your time what is cirkul? cirkul is the fuel you need to take flight. cirkul is the energy that gets you to the next level. cirkul is what you hope for when life tosses lemons your way. cirkul, available at walmart and drinkcirkul.com.

i have great respect for our institutions. the separations of powers laid out in our constitution. but what is happening now is not consistent with that doctrine of separation of powers. extremism is undermining the public confidence in the court's decisions. today i'm calling for three bold reforms to restore trust and accountability to the court and our democracy. >> three bold reforms. president biden had already said that he wants to spend his remaining months in office working on bold reform to the united states supreme court. today he finally spelled out what that means. he called for three specific changes. one, fix the damage done by the recent court decision that said presidents are free to commit crimes without fear of prosecution. he says that should be undone the only way you can undo something like that is with a constitutional amendment. number two, he said there should

be term limits for supreme court justices. they shouldn't serve for life anymore. he said there should be 18-year terms. that would have the effect of stopping any single president from reshaping the bench for a generation. and third, he said we should institute a binding code of conduct, an ethics code so justices would at least need to report things like the lavish vacations they have quietly been accepting from rich people who have an interest in the cases that are before the court. that today was president biden's very specific three-part pitch for trying to restore public trust in the supreme court. now at least one justice, justice elena kagan has already said yes to part of that in concept, saying there does need to be an enforceable code of ethics. justices should no longer be allowed to just police themselves since clearly that is not work. so there is that to start. writing today at slate.com, the civil rights attorney and legal

scholar sherrilynn ifill underlined the urgency of this moment. quote, in just the last three terms alone the court has upended long-standing precedents, wiping away rights it formerly deemed fundamental and upending the protections and guarantees upon which tens of millions of americans had come to rely for decades. joining us now is sherrilynn ifill, one of my favorite people to talk to about anything, but especially the supreme court. sherrilynn, it's really nice to see you. thank you for being here. >> thank you, rachel. >> you have been an advocate for a long time that the court needs discipline effectively. the court needs reform, that it has behaved in such a way in recent years that rightfully call its legitimacy into question to the public in a way that's dangerous, given the important role of the court in our society and in our system of government.

what do you assess as the sort of the weight, the heft, the potential to meet the moment of these reforms proposed today by president biden? >> well, it's going to be a very steep climb. obviously, this is not something that can be done by presidential fiat or by executive order. it would require congress to pass legislation. and that means that obviously this will not happen with this congress. but if the next congress is to take it up, it would likely mean you would have to have a majority of democrats in both the house and the senate. and that's why talking about this election, it's important to not just talk about the president if you want supreme court reform, but it's also a heavy lift, because, look, rachel, it's difficult. it's difficult for me as a litigator to talk about these kinds of reforms and the need for them. but as a civil rights lawyer, as someone who believes in democracy, and as someone who understands the power of this court, not only to hold the line and the rule of law, but also to get us off the track of healthy

democracy, the court has done it in the past. and i think we have to take very, very seriously what this court is doing, the track that it's on, and what it could potentially do to our country. >> it is my sense that the effort around the trump-vance candidacy and the republican party is in part about trying to get them votes, but it is a significant part about trying to get the election to be contested in some technical way so that it ends up in the courts for some reason or another because i believe republicans think as long as it gets into the courts, it gets ultimately to the supreme court. and no matter what is before the supreme court, they would do whatever is necessary to put donald trump back in the white house. i say that as a nonlawyer and just an observer of the political process he is here and what republicans have been work knocking on the lead-up to this election. can i ask if you share those concerns? >> if you had asked me this question a year ago, i might have hesitated. but after the supreme court's decision in the 14th amendment section 3 case in which the court essentially read out of

the 14th amendment the provision that says insurrectionists cannot serve by coming up with this idea that congress needs to pass some legislation to make that provision of the 14th amendment effective, the court's decision and the charges brought by the justice department against many of the january 6th rioters, and finally the presidential immunity case, which is absolutely mystifying, unless you believe what the dissenters i think, the three women appointed by democrats have been trying to tell us, and their dissents have grown ever more strident and strong as they have tried to warn us that this court essentially is behaving as though it is in the tank for trump. it does not matter to me whether they are in fact in the tank for trump that is how they are behaving. and they are making leaps and bounds -- this is the part that is hard i think for nonlawyers

to understand is how the court is violating the rules of litigation, the way we bring cases before the court, who we say can bring cases before the court, how those decisions are made, what kinds of questions are raised by a piece of litigation. the court is making fast and loose with those rules that governor how people like me litigate in the court. and so they are so recklessly determined to get to the outcome that they want in these cases. not that just the trump case, but the abortion case, the affirmative action case, that they are running rough shot over the rules that we play by. and that's what makes a legal system fair is if we all have to abide by the same rules. and once you don't have the same rules of the game, you no longer have a legal system of integrity. and so i think at this point we have to recognize what is in front of us. we may not want to, but we have to. and i'm gratified that president biden, this has been a long road

for him as well. at least has clearly put this issue before the american people, and vice president harris has endorsed it as well. and we have to grapple with our reticence and our discomfort and confront the fact that this also can be a threat to our democracy. it's not just donald trump. it is also a court that does not see itself bound by any rules and appears to have an agenda. >> sherrilynn ifill, endowed civil rights chair at howard university law school, thank you for this that is both hard to hear and strikes me as profoundly true. thank you so much. it's good to see you. >> thank you, rachel. >> we'll be right back. right bak

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i would be remiss if i didn't tell you tonight that there is another one of those huge, huge zoom calls in support of kamala harris' campaign going on. black women got the ball rolling first, of course. there have since been calls for black men and for asian pacific islander people and for lgbtq people and lots of different groups. but tonight's is white dudes for harris, and organizers say 75,000 people rsvped to attend. apparently among the attendees is the dude himself, jeff bridges who said on the call tonight, "i'm white, i'm the dude, and i'm for harris." politics ought to be fun. occasionally it actually is. thanks very much for being with us tonight. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is up next. this nation was founded on the principle there are no kings