♪ [ cheers and applause ] this is "nightline." >> tonight, ladies of the fight. >> hookers for health care! >> at the famous moonlight bunny ranch everyone is looking to get some. >> we need to have coverage too. >> health insurance, that is. a group calling themselves hookers for health care organizing against the president's plan to repeal and replace the affordable care act. why this issue is so hot amongst legal sex workers. and does this protest have legs? plus the photo ark. for this world-renowned wildlife photographer a picture is worth a thousand lives. >> oh, man, that's nice. that is nice. >> on the hunt for images of 13,000 s

sounding the alarm and the horn about the threat of extinction. and tough guy tacos. hollywood's quintessential bad hombre danny trejo trading in his machete for a spatula, opening up a series of l.a. eateries. how he went from serving time to serving quesadillas. but first the "nightline" 5. fios is not cable. we're a 100% fiber optic network. and with the new fios gigabit connection...

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good evening. thank you for joining us. tonight the republican senate plan to repeal and replace obamacare has been declared a failure, prompting celebration from democrats, some conservative republicans, and oddly enough the legal sex workers of the nevada moonlight bunny ranch. it turns out these working women, like so many others, say they have a lot to lose with the repeal of the affordable care act. here's abc's david wright with proof positive that politics makes for strange bedfellows. >> reporter: deep in the nevada desert the wild west is alive and well. this garish outpost on the old american frontier is a world away from washington, d.c., but even here -- >> we're going to go down there, and we are going to make our voices heard. >> reporter: -- they're actively engaged in the debate. >> we have the same

everybody else. >> yes, ma'am. >> reporter: so we're in a stretch limousine with brothel owner dennis hof and some of the working girls from america's red light district in carson city, nevada. and we're headed to the state capitol for believe it or not a protest rally. >> you and -- >> reporter: they call themselves hookers for health care. prostitution is legal in much of this state, and these women are vocal. demanding congress not take away affordable access to health coverage. alice little is one of the founders. >> hookers for health care. an unusual group. >> hookers for health care is a microcosm of the macrocosm that is america. >> really? >> we experience the same exact issues that every american does. >> reporter: today the hookers for health care are

victory. along with every other group that fought against the republican plan. >> i regret that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failures of obamacare will not be successful. >> reporter: senator mitch mcconnell came up two votes shy of the winning hand he needed to move this issue along. so the republican plan is now dead. one of the senators he failed to win over, nevada's own dean heller. >> i think our esteemed senator deen heller has got it right. let's back off and watch this because it's got to be good for everybody. >> reporter: brothel owner dennis hof says the women here have genuine concerns about the republican rush to repeal and replace obamacare. >> you're a trump guy, right? >> i'm a trump guy. i'm a republican. what i'm really troubled with as a republican is we've had 7 1/2 years, david. they want this thing out for 7 1/2 years. how many times they brought it amongst the senators and the representatives to get this

>> and they don't seem to have a plan. >> and they don't have a plan. what the heck are you thinking? wake up. >> reporter: the hookers for health care aren't just starting up a public policy issue. sure the sex here is a financial transaction. >> thank you. >> jimmy: courtship reduced to picking your favorite out of the line-up. >> hi. i'm chance monet. >> reporter: the rest is pretty much a sure thing. the only real limits, your imagination, your morals, and your bank balance. >> cheers. >> reporter: women here are independent contractors. they set the prices and they're free to say no to any customer they don't want to be with. they share half their take with the house. but when it comes to health insurance, they don't have much choice. >> do you have health insurance? >> i do. and here's the thing. i get it through the university. and i always have. >> reporter: christina pereira is a ph.d. candidate in sociology at the university of nevada las vegas doing her dissertation on prostitution. her research firsthand by working in a

interviewing her co-workers. many of them don't have the top-quality health insurance she has. >> i'm sure there's going to be people who would say if you have trouble getting health insurance because you're a prostitute get another job. >> right. >> what would you say? >> what we do is real work. sex work is work. >> right. >> we pay taxes. we have families. we work hard. there's no difference between this and any other service labor job. >> does it not worry you that this job might put you at risk? >> every profession has its own associated risk. prior to this i was a jockey. and my risks were falling off of the horse, getting a concussion, or potentially getting killed. >> that's certainly a high-risk profession and yet no one would begrudge a jockey health care coverage. in fact, you'd think they were foolish not to have it, right? >> oh, absolutely. jockeys have to have insurance. it's incredibly important. i'd say it's my right and my body. i can do whatever i so choose with my body so long as i'm co

happy with what i do. this is the world's oldest profession. >> reporter: ironically, what puts them at risk isn't the moral stigma attached to what they do. it's the fact that they're self-employed. in america millions of others doing very different work face a similar predicament. >> i pay taxes. i lead a fairly normal life. i teach. i have students. and i'm also a legal working girl. and i'm proud of what i do. >> there are also practical arguments that say that engaging in high-risk behavior should have consequences. maybe you should pay higher premiums for your health insurance. >> to some extent i do agree with it. i'm a little on the fence about it, right? to be honest. but again, when you're talking about legal prostitution, we aren't at risk. >> reporter: by state law these women are tested weekly for stds. >> all right. all done. >> reporter: only if they have a clean bill of health can they continue to work. >> west 5th street. >> reporter: they also rely on planned parenthood, also under threat from the republicans.

22-year-old roxanne to planned parenthood. >> got this. >> reporter: for her first pap smear. >> i've got a lot of good information here. >> reporter: naturally they pick up free condoms also required under nevada's prostitution law. >> we have condoms in here as well as lube. >> this is my room, and this is where i stay most of the time. >> reporter: 42-year-old shelby starr is one of the stars of hof's love ranch. >> i have a guy coming in this afternoon. wonderful. >> reporter: she's been doing this job for five years, earns upwards of half a million dollars a year. >> i had three parties in a row. and wow. >> reporter: and she needs the money. she's the family breadwinner. >> i've kind of been going through it a little bit lately. for the past month i've been sick. and i went to the hospital. i had kidney failure, renal failure. >> reporter: her husband is sick too. neither of their illnesses are related to her work. >> do you have health insu

i have blue cross blue shield. but at the moment the state of nevada is not accepting blue cross blue shield. they dropped them. so i'm not really sure what i'm going to do. i mean, i've already gone through a month of being in and out of the hospital as well as my significant other. i may owe the whole entire bill, and his bill's already over $700,000. >> reporter: because of pre-existing conditions it's unlikely they would qualify for insurance on an open market. >> you must be worried. >> i'm very worried. i think if the insurance doesn't cover it i'm going to owe the rest of my life and leave my debt to my children. and that i don't want to do. >> reporter: around the pool at the end of the day a debate about the national debate. >> if i don't want to have health insurance, why should i be taxed? >> reporter: their points of view reflect conversations taking place across the country. >> how many of you guys have health insurance right now?

>> reporter: harley is young and healthy. she resents having to pay the obamacare penalty for not having insurance. >> paid a $3,000 fine last year because i don't have health insurance. i don't qualify for the affordable care act because of the amount of money i make and because i choose to be an independent contractor. >> i'm going to embarrass you, dennis. you get half of what each of these girls do. shouldn't you offer health insurance as a benefit? >> well, you know what? i'd like to, david. but they're independent contractors. they're their own businesswomen. and the federal laws won't allow me to do that or i would go out and make a deal and try to help them with that. >> there's nothing written down that allows independent contractors to receive coverage from an employer. >> couldn't you form a union? >> yes. >> yes, we sure can. >> you know what? i want you to be the head of the union. >> reporter: right now nevada state laws regulate what they do and how they go about doing it. but the industry and the government give them no good options to protect

how worried are you about this whole debate? >> it could literally kill me. i'm incredibly worried. i don't want to see my friends die. i don't want to see my family die. it's real and it's personal. it's scary. it's worth talking about. and it's worth fighting for. >> reporter: out here on the frontier they feel like they're fighting for their lives. i'm david wright for "nightline" in carson city, nevada. next, a different breed of photographer on a mission to capture every living species in human care on the face of the earth. his life or death reasoning behind this project. plaque psoriasis is not always easy. it's a long-distance run. and you have the determination to keep going. humira has a proven track record of being prescribed for nearly 10 years. humira works inside the body to target and help block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to symptoms. in clinical trials, most adults taking humira were clear or almost clear and many saw 75% and even 90% clearance

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statistics and he is saiz can be attention-grabbing. but sometimes it takes a picture to truly resonate with people. and no one knows this better than famed animal photographer joel sarturi whose images of threatened species have stirred governments into wildlife conservation efforts. here's abc's gio benitez. >> it's like a $6,000 camera. doesn't he know that? >> hey, hey. >> reporter: getting that perfect shot isn't always easy. just ask wildlife photographer joel saturdayortori. >> not a bashful bird at all. see how that fits? >> i heard about a crane getting testy with you. >> there was a hornbill that was trying to draw blood a little bit. >> done. thank god. >> reporter: it's all in a day's work for his life work, his photo ark. >> the goal is to get all 13,000 or so species that are in human care. we're about halfway done now. 6500 so far.

and how he captures them are the subject of new three-part pbs and pbs.org series "rare: creatures of the photo ark." >> you call it rare. >> mm-hmm. >> why? >> we're looking at some of the rarest creatures left on earth in this show. >> reporter: sartori and his team spent a year traveling to eight countries on five continents photographing these creatures in captivity. >> oh, man, that's nice. >> reporter: the results are these stunning portraits on black-and-white backgrounds. >> people want to know, well, why don't you do this in the wild all the time? cole, you can't just walk up to animals and put a black background behind them in the woods. >> okay. maybe you can. >> i can't believe we're getting this. >> how long does it take you to photograph each one of these species? >> it it's a bigger animal we generally have more time. we're squenly good until the meat rundowns out. with birds in these shooting tents it's a 30-second or one-minute deal. >> reporter: some of sartore's images have gone viral. in 20

major world landmarks like the vatican and the empire state building. >> so right now you're shopping. >> i am. i'm shopping. >> reporter: we met sartore at the bronx zoo in new york where he hopes to shoot one day for his ark. >> a lot of people will say wait a minute, this is about having animals in captivity. but you really see zoos and zookeepers as heroes. >> oh, yeah. zoos are heroes. and the people that work there. for sure. zoos really are conservation centers. for many of the species that i photograph they only exist in zoos now. they're extinct in the wild. >> reporter: according to a new study by the national academy of sciences earth is on the brink of its sixth mass extinction. nearly 200 species have vanished just in the past century. a rate of about two per year. >> we are on track to half of all species by 2100 if not more. >> half. >> this is my desperate attempt to get people to pay attention. >> reporter: as a veteran "national geographic" photographer for more than 25 years, people have been paying attention to his work. >> joel, what do you

>> i think they can elevate themselves to iconic status if they're done well enough. >> reporter: in australia sartore says his photos of injured koalas helped prompt the australian government to recognize the species as threatened. >> a group of nurses at a wildlife hospital held back, i don't know, 20 koalas that had all been killed by dogs that week. so we spread them out on a blue tarp and we photographed that. >> it's a heartbreaking image. >> oh, my god. yeah. but it speaks to koalas not being able to fend for themselves against human intrusion. so we see results. real results from these pictures. and that's very encouraging. >> reporter: sartore strarted the photo ark more than a decade ago when he was off the road taking care of his wife kathy and their three children. >> my wife got breast cancer, believe it or not, and she was on chemo and radiation for a year, and i'd never been grounded. >> reporter: his first photo was of a naked mole rat taken on the cutting board of the local cutting zoo. >> you ready? >> yeah, we're ready. >> all right. >> reporter: today

hijacks family vacations to find animals to photograph. like he did two summers ago during an emotional shoot in prague. >> you had that beautiful image of the white rhino. and that white rhino you said died just days after you shot it. >> yeah. the northern white rhino. her name was nabire and she lived in the zoo in the czech republic. she was one of five left on earth at the time we photographed her, and she was very old. and she died about eight days later. >> reporter: today there are just three left in the world. >> it's the best rhino shoot i've ever had and the worst rhino shoot i've ever had. >> we have one. >> we got one? >> yes. >> reporter: in "rare" sartore also seeks to show some of the world's smallest threatened species like the lower keys marsh rabbit which is almost gone. he also goes on a taxing hike in cameroon looking for the rare cross-river gorilla, but instead he finds beetles in a pile of dung. >> this pile of poop make the whole hike worthwhile. people also say what's

favorite animal? and i also say it's the next one, no matter what. >> reporter: sartore says his project will take 25 years to complete. >> and really for you this isn't just a photo project. >> 100% a conservation project. i'm not doing this just to have something to do till i die. it's 100% devoted to getting people to wake up and realize that as these species go away so could we. we're talking about the future of life on earth. >> reporter: for "nightline" i'm gio benitez in new york. and next, he's a hard man who serves soft tacos. how actor danny trejo became a budding restaurant yoour. when you're close to the people you love, does psoriasis ever get in the way of a touching moment? if you have moderate to severe psoriasis, you can embrace the chance of completely clear skin with taltz. taltz is proven to give you a chance at completely clear skin. with taltz, up to 90% of patients

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♪ and finally tonight, at these restaurants you do not want to send your food back. here's abc's nick watt. >> one of the most recognizable faces in all of hollywood. danny trejo. kind of mean-looking. "from dusk till dawn." "muppets most wanted." "spy kids." >> when people see me, guys will automatically go -- puff themselves up. and i've got to be hey, what's up? how are you doing?

we've qugot a problem. >> reporter: danny trejo launched his third act. first prison followed by hollywood tough guy and now a smiling restaurateur helming an expanding successful empire. >> that's pretty good. >> yeah. >> reporter: so far two trejo's tacos, two cantinacantinas, a t truck plus a new coffee and donuts place. >> we run out of donuts by about 11:00. we're done. >> reporter: how did this happen? >> ash, the producer of a movie called "bad-ass" that i did, he saw that i love food, and he said why don't you open a restaurant? >> i was expecting him to be unpleasant. >> no, he's the nicest guy in the world. >> he actually brought a business plan. >> jeff and i worked on kind of a little presentation. this is what it's going to be. >> frankly his face is everything. >> yeah. that's what people recognize. >> reporter: his glaring visage. remember him in "heat"? >> why are you doing this? >> i like donuts, and i love the police. they told me a long time ago when i got out of the

penitentiary, they said, remember, a busy man that's time to do everything. >> reporter: he's now been clean over 40 years, works as a drug counselor. got his hollywood break on "runaway train" in '85, landed a small role after a friend hired him to teach eric roberts how to box. >> teach during the day. you've got three minutes. hi, buddy. those are beautiful. >> i love danny trejo, talking trash one second, smiling at kids the next. i'm nick watt for "nightline" in hollywood. >> it was danny trejo who said "every good thing that's ever happened to me came out of helping others." thank you for watching abc news. and as always, we're online at >> hey, everybody. welcome to hometown heroes week. this week is our chance to recognize all those selfless people out there who set a great example for the rest of us. and i can't think of a better way to say "thank you" than to give them a chance to win $1 million. so let's play "who wants to be a millionaire."

♪ welcome to the show. are you guys ready for more hometown heroes week here on "millionaire"? [cheers and applause] me too. our returning contestants are among the most deserving people to ever play our game. the three of them took down a terrorist on a train in france, saving countless lives. so please welcome back alek skarlatos, spencer stone, and anthony sadler. [cheers and applause] welcome back, alek. >> hello. >> spence. >> hey, chris. >> anthony. [cheers and applause] welcome back, 'cause you guys are in the middle of a great game; doing very well. >> [sighs] >> yeah? i'll get everybody up to date on that in just a little bit. where are you private lives these days? you know, what's going on-- because here's the thing; when you guys walked through, catcalls, women-- standing ovations,