Hi everyone. I'm Katie Couric and this is next question.
My name is Jennifer Adkins. I am from Caldwell, Idaho, and in early twenty twenty three, we discovered that we were pregnant with our second child, and at our twelve week appointment, we got the devastating news that our fetus was not viable, that the baby had Turner syndrome, which means she was missing an X chromosome, and that not only was she not likely to survive the pregnancy, but that I was at risk of developing life threatening complications
on top of that. Because we live in Idaho and this was at a time after Roe versus Wade was overturned, we were unable to terminate the pregnancy in the state of Idaho, and our physicians were unable to refer us out of state, so we were forced to find that appointment on our own and find a clinic willing to do the procedure and travel out of state in order
to terminate our very wanted but not viable pregnancy. So we went to Portland, and even though they provided the best possible care that they possibly could, and they were lovely and they took excellent care of us. It's still hard to not be surrounded by the people that you love and trust and care about and that love you and care about you, and to meet all new providers, a whole new doctor nurse team, and have to go
through this alone with strangers. Losing a child is devastating for any family and to put that out for the world to kind of scrutinize and make judgment on and you know, say mean things about us. But we knew it was also necessary because we knew we had the capability to do it, and there are.
So many people that don't.
And if we can help use our voice to help protect those people and to protect future families from this happening to them, that's what we want to do.
My name is Samantha Casiano.
I'm twenty nine years old and I'm originally from Houston, Texas. When I became pregnant, this was not my first baby. This is actually my fifth child. When I went in for my twenty week scant, you know, they pick up your shirt, they rub the gel on your belly, and everything goes well. We're having a conversation and then all
of a sudden, it goes quiet. They go on to tell me that they were sorry to tell me, but my daughter has been diagnosed with pennaceph lee, which means that my daughter'skull is not fully developed and her brain is not fully developed.
And I felt like this has to be a dream, this is not right, with no way, and I immediately.
Just start to cry. After I spoke to my doctor, I just kind of thought, what do I do? What can I do? Like, what options do I have? My doctor just told me I don't have any options after be pregnant.
There has to be something. And afterwards I go on to.
See if I can maybe go out of state, but the cost was crazy and childcare and I work, my husband works. It just didn't work for us, which is sad because you know, you would think in your hometown you'd be able to get the healthcare that you need,
and that wasn't there for us. And after I gave birth, she was with us for four hours and when I told you she was grasping for air, she was just just like using her whole mouth was open and she was grasping for air, and they gave her morphine, and that hurt even more because you know, to see your little baby get morphine MORPHINEUS. It's morphine.
So it was heartbreaking.
At the very beginning, I wanted to be anonymous, and that changed as soon as.
I met my daughter and saw how she suffered.
I am going to do whatever I can to make sure that no mother, no other baby has to go through this ever again. My daughter died in her father's hands, and it took him an emotional roller coaster to have to go through that no family should have to go through that.
This is what it was like for these women who tried to get an abortion last year. How did we get here? This month marks fifty one years since Roe v. Wade enshrined the federal right to abortion. In twenty twenty two, as we all know, that right was abolished by the US Supreme Court. The ruling, driven by Justice Samuel Alito, took away the constitutional right to choose to have an abortion and gave that authority to the people and their
elected representatives. Now, doctors are afraid, and as we just heard, the consequences for women looking to terminate a pregnancy has often been herowing. Today, New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter Jody Canter explains what was really going on inside the Supreme Court when Roe was overturned. Jody is a top notch reporter responsible for breaking many me too
stories alongside her colleague Megan Tuey. Now she's teamed up with another colleague, Adam Liptak, and the result is an astonishing feat of meticulously sourced reporting with surprising details. Here's my conversation with Jody Canter. Jody, I am so thrilled to have you on the podcast. You are such an intrepid, excellent reporter, and your piece on how the Supreme Court overturned ro V Wade was I think a masterclass in reporting.
First and foremost, How did you get the idea to really dig into this because it was no easy task.
Well, thank you so much, Katie. Adam Liptak and I just wanted to understand what had really happened. This is one of the most consequential decisions of our time. You know, you're talking today about the effect on women's lives, on whether or not they have children, but also it's transformed who's elected in this country, how medicine is practiced, and
the court is pretty opaque. You know, on the one hand, they have oral arguments, the issue written opinions, so we can understand some of their thinking, but the question of how is the law, and especially something this epic really decided is often a mystery, And in fact their papers stay sealed for so long that the written records may not come out until some of us are dead. So Adam and I plunged in and just ask the basic questions.
You know, how do the nin injustices go about doing something so big?
How challenging was that? Jody? I mean, I can't imagine being tasked with really unraveling every aspect of this decision. So how did you go about reporting this? And how many foyas did you have to do? It's a great question.
We did zero foyas because the Supreme Court is exempt from foya. Foya, of course, is the usual means by which the public, including journalists, can find out what's what the government is doing.
Why don't you explain what foyas are?
It's basically a written request to a government entity saying will you please show us these emails or these records because the public has a right to know. The Supreme Court is exempt from that. So there were some public records that we could rely on, and every case is a story, right, litigation is an narrative, and the Dobbs litigation is especially interesting because, Katie, I'm going to say it a little impolitely, this case was a nothing burger
when it first emerged. It was this Mississippi law that was blatantly unconstitutional when it was passed because it contradicted Roe, it didn't look like it had a chance, especially because Justice Ginsburg was still on the court.
Tell us a little more about the Mississippi law and what it stated.
So basically, what Mississippi wanted to do is they wanted to permit women to have abortions only before fifteen weeks. So it doesn't sound that controversial on the face of it, right, because most abortions do occur before fifteen weeks. But the reason why it was so provocative is that the Supreme Court for many, many, many years had held that you can't restrict abortion before viability, before say twenty three weeks,
and that had been secret for a long time. So really what they were saying was, we want to change the rules of when abortion restrictions are permitted. So two federal courts said no, said you can't do this, and they made a last ditch appeal to the Supreme Court when Justice Ginsburg was still alive and it looked like they had no chance, and then Justice Skinsburg died and everything changed.
In fact, that was a huge turning point for really the ethos of the Court. Before we get into that, I just wanted to ask you a couple of other quick questions about the actual reporting. You had a difficult time finding sources because everything is so tightly held there. It's like a secret society in a way, right, Jody, And anyone who kind of shares information is shun and
if it's discovered who they are. Right, Can you talk about kind of the culture of the Supreme Court, because it's so fascinating.
It's correct to work there is pretty much to take a vow of silence. So it's a pretty dramatic situation because no matter who you are at the Court, if you have access to the deliberative process, you are confronting some of the hardest issues in American life. That's what the Court is doing right now. They're taking on all of these very controversial, hot button topics, and yet you
can't tell anybody what you've seen. And also there's no accountability for these nine people, they have lifetime appointments, and nobody is anybody else's boss there among the justices. Meaning we look at Chief Justice John Roberts and he looks like he's in charge in many ways, but he's really not. He's really not. He's the administrator of the court and of the federal courts, but he really doesn't have a
lot of leverage over the other justices. And so then, to make things even more difficult, Adam and I were reporting in the shadow of a leak investigation, of course.
Right, so they were even more paranoid to talk to you, right, anyone associated with the court.
It was very difficult. But as you know, that's why we do. We weren't doing it just for the sake of breaking open the silence. We were doing it to try to illuminate the court, to help us understand this critical institution, and to provide some function of accountability. I mean, as you know, we've both done this our whole lives. In journalism, probably the most basic function of journalism in a democracy is to just keep an eye on elected officials.
It's why in a small town you want a journalist sitting there at a school board meeting or watching the mayor, because you want to say, a representative of the people is independently, not with government support, watching these government officials to be able to see what they do. And so in some ways we were just fulfilling that very basic function.
Getting back to the Mississippi long curious Jody, and this is a bit of a quick left turn. Has viability changed with technology? I guess that's one of the questions if in fact this twenty three week window has been protected for a long time by the Supreme Court, Has technology and modern medicine in fact allowed fetuses to live even if they are less than twenty three weeks old. I don't even know the answer to that.
I mean, I'm not a doctor, but I can tell you that Roe has always been a controversial decision, even among liberals, and as you know, the fights about abortion are just epic. And I think there has been some legal wrangling over whether the viability rule is smart because viability can change, right, But the I don't think that was really what was happening with Dobbs. What happened with Dobbs is that the composition of the court change and
big time. Yeah, I mean often you have a Supreme Court that's stable for years and years at a time because of these lifetime appointments. But very quickly, from Justice Scalia's death in twenty sixteen up until very recently, you're looking at a court that's been repopulated and mostly with conservative justices.
Well, let's pick up with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg's death. She was sort of a firewall in terms of a case like this, even being heard. She passes away. What happens, She passes.
Away just as the justices are about to take their first preliminary look at Dobbs. And as you know, the Supreme Court operates in two phases. The first level of discussion is about whether the justices should take the case at all. The second level of discussion is if they take it is actually about deciding the case. So, in very quick succession, Dobbs goes on the discussion list. Justice Ginsburg dies with weeks until the twenty twenty presidential election,
in the final days really of President Trump's term. He replaces Justice Skinsburg with Amy Coney Barrett, who is known to disagree with abortion. She's basically a favorite of the anti abortion movement and young and young and shuffled on the Court in record time, a very quick nomination process. So she's coming onto the scene even as President Trump is being shuffled out of the White House and then.
The Court they're trying to shuffle him out.
Of the well exactly as he loses the presidential election, is a better way to say it. And so the Court is sitting there with this very hot button case. And then it's in January of twenty twenty one, in fact, two days after the January sixth insurrection, that the justices have the first conversation about whether to take Dobs or not. And this very new justice, Justice Barrett, has to decide what to.
Do, and she doesn't want to take it. She's very hesitant at first. What we were able to report is that she initially votes to grant that means to give it the green light, but she voices some objections, some concerns, you know, and she says, I'm really new here.
I just got here. The composition of the court just changed. That will change. And she says at that point Justice Alito and a few of the others want to hear the case very soon. They want to hear it that term meaning a year before it was actually held, so they are ready to move with those justices with this colossal president. Justice as Alito, Thomas, and Gorsich all wanted to hear it very quickly, and she says, if you go and do that, I'm going to change my grant
vote to a deny. And then weeks later that's what she actually does, she votes against taking the case. So it's important to remember when we look at it. To go back to your original question, Katie, how did this happen? One of the key facts I'm going to tell you is that this case was greenlighted by a minority.
Of the court.
Two conservative justices did not want to take it, Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett, and it was all men who greenlighted this case, and they overrode the objections of every woman on the court, conservative and liberal.
What was Justice Kavanaugh's role in this, because he was a bit of a fly in the ointment for the conservative justices, right, Well, or is that overstating it?
Well, I think it's open to interpretation. Let's see what happened and then we can interpret it. So they're sitting there on January eighth, two days after this rupture in American democracy, they have to decide whether to take the case or not. It seems like they have the votes to go ahead. But then at a subsequent meeting soon afterwards, Justice Kavanaugh says, we should relist this case.
What does that mean?
It means we should just punt or pretend that we're punting because we have the votes to go ahead, but the time, like Justice Barrett has already said, the timing wasn't right for her. So what he's suggesting is just keep it on like a TBD list in.
The double put it on the docket if you will keep it on the docket because as on me or don't say that we're going ahead even though we privately know that we have the votes to grant.
And he says, this will allow us to watch cases play out in the lower courts. And so that's what happens, and that also opens, you know, a kind of window of persuasion. Some of the justices who don't want to take it go to work on Justice Barrett and Justice Kavanaugh, and as we know, Justice Barrett changes her vote. So what was he really doing there? Was he saying? I think the most obvious interpretation is that he really wanted to take this case. He was in favor of it,
but he wanted more time. He wanted it to look as if they were moving more slowly than they really were. I guess there's another you know, there's another possible interpretation, but it's hard to know what he really thought. I guess there's an interpretation also that he was buying time. Well, that makes sense to me now, you know, the reporting indicates that he wanted to go ahead. But we can't
read the Justice's minds. We don't know what they were thinking, and it's all a game of poker inside that building.
We have to take a quick break, but when we come back, we'll dig deeper into the dynamics of the court and the details of two cases that affected the Justice's decision to reconsider Row. If you want to get smarter every morning with a breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter Wake Up Call by going
to Katiecouric dot com. Is Justice Alito sam Alito kind of the leader of this whole movement to overturn Roe v. Wade, Because I know Neil Gorsich decided he agreed with him only ten minutes after right, talk about the timing and how those two were really important figures and all this.
So Justice Alito absolutely really propelled the court. He's one of nine justices. But when you look at the role he played first in rescheduling the case in the fall of twenty twenty, he wrote the majority opinion, it appears that he preservedulated it. We've seen evidence of some of the arguments he was making internally, and if you read his opinion, it's clear that he really wanted this to happen. So it's interesting he first shared his famous draft, the
draft that made the law. This is also the draft that leaked in February of twenty twenty two. This is now the second phase, the phase where they're actually deciding the case. And he shared it with the full court one morning, and Justice Gorsuch did an interesting thing, which is he said, yes, I'm signing on to this, I've no changes, ten minutes after Justice Alito sent it around
and it was a ninety eight page opinion. So does that mean he never even read the opinion before saying yes, I don't think so, we don't think so.
So were they in kahoots?
Well, it appeared that Justice Alito pre circulated the opinion among the majority before sharing it with the full which is not that unusual a thing to do. When you do that, you're trying to get buy in from the other justices. So he shared it with we think, we don't know exactly potentially, but it appears that he shared it with Justices Gorsage, Barrett at Kavanaugh, Thomas. Let's talk about the period of time between when the court agreed to hear the case and when they made the decision.
Can you take people through sort of what happened, because I think it still is such a mystery for people how the court operates.
Sure.
Well, two, there's the thing that sort of was like expected and routine, and then there was a real wild card in there as well. So the routine thing is that, you know, okay, the justices are taking the case. There are months and months of planning and build up. Both sides are filing briefs. They're amicus briefs being filed by people who you know, agree with one side or the other.
That's like friend of the court friends.
Yeah, exactly, they're saying the court must do this. You know, for this reason, the lawyers are preparing their oral arguments because they're about to argue a historic case. So all of that is proceeding when boom, this Texas case comes along. That is extremely unorthodox. Here you have Mississippi trying to overturn Row. And by the way, during this time, Mississippi
expanded its question. Its first brief early in the process said it's not necessary for the court to overturn Row to go ahead with this fifteen week rule by Mississippi. During this time period that we're talking about now they say, actually, we're trying to overturn all of Row. And this is kind of an unorthodox thing to do because they're changing
the question. And Adam and I point out that there are other cases where the court is actually rejected the entire thing by saying to the lawyers, hey, you changed the question, it's cool.
But they didn't.
They didn't.
So wait, let me just go back real quickly. They tried to change it from the fifteen week rule to what so Mississippi, when they pose the case say we're just trying to do this fifteen week cut off for abortions. We are it is not necessary to overturn Row. Then, during the merits phase, they file another brief saying, Justices, you've got to go all the way here an overturn row.
It's like they sends to opportunity and expanded their question. Now, normally, I feel like I'm going on Michael Barbara on you. Normally you can't do that. You're saying that. A lot of times if it changes midstream, the justices or the court will say, no, you can't do that.
You risk the justices dismissing the case as improvidently granted if you do that. However, in this case, it's at the justice's discretion, and in this case they went ahead. So what about this Texas law? So, even as mississid be is on its way to turn truro, Texas steps in with a much more provocative law than Mississippi's. Texas has what's called a heartbeat bill, banning abortion around the time you hear a heartbeats, which is six seven weeks.
Now.
The funny thing is that a lot of women don't know they're pregnant. Then you can't even do an abortion if it's too early. But not only that, the law has this incredibly unusual structure where regular people, uber drivers, doctors can be sued for helping to provide the abortion, and by doing that, the drafters of the law actually
made it immune from review by the federal courts. They found this kind of loophole that said, the Supreme Court actually can't rule on whether this law is constitutional or not, even though this this law it contravenes Row. And so this case comes to the Supreme Court in an emergency application. This is totally different than the Court's regular procedures. It's like a last minute thing. This is the Texas Law.
Two days before the Texas Law is supposed to go into effect, more or less overturning Row in the second most populous state in the entire country. Abortion providers in Texas come to the Supreme Court and say, you've got to stop this. This is illegal, this is improper. And the Court becomes kind of frozen over what to do. And this was part of our reporting as well. It's this last minute application. It's August thirty first. Four of the justices, led by Justice Alito, want to go ahead.
Four of the justices, led by Justice Roberts, Chief Justice Roberts, want to stop it, and Justice Gorsitch doesn't vote in time. So the Court doesn't make a decision or announce anything before the law goes into effect, goes into effect, and then only the next day does the court issue a decision allowing it to go ahead. Says we're not we're not intervening.
And by the way, the Texas law would even make it a crime to Let's say I had a friend who needed an abortion, and we both lived in Texas, and I drove her to a nearby state where she could terminate her pregnancy. I could be charged with criminal activity. Right.
It's not like you're not going to be put in jail for, you know, a criminal offense, but you can be subject to a lawsuit. And so there is this feeling that like, wait a second, things are moving even more quickly than people even realized.
And more severely and maybe more right.
And also it doesn't look good for Roe at that point. You know, people are starting to say, if the court is allowing this Texas law to go ahead, they're not going to stop Mississippi.
Let's talk about the leak, because that is a big part of your reporting. Yeah, who do you think leaked the decision?
And why I you know, I don't know, and I can't tell you it's going to be it's going to be interesting to see Kiti, whether history ever figures it out, or whether anybody ever comes forward absent photographic evidence, it is really really tough to say. I think the question that is almost more interesting is, and this is what Politico never told us, what was the motive? What was
the motive? Because you know, there are two sides here, right There are people who were outraged that the right to abortion was overturned, and there are people who saw it as a must, a necessity, the crowning achievement of the conservative legal movement. And so there are essentially two theories.
There's this theory that a liberal did it to raise alarm bells about what was about to happen, and then there's a theory that a conservative did it in order to make it a runaway train, in order to help lock in the votes and prevent a compromise. And one of our discoveries in our reporting was that the compromise efforts underway at the court were more extensive than anybody knew.
Let's talk about that, because I haven't mentioned just a Briar's role in all this exactly, and tell us what was going on behind the scenes.
Well, listen, I don't know how people listening and hearing this today would feel about this. But what if the court had stopped at fifteen weeks? What if we were living in a reality today that said you can have an abortion up until fifteen weeks. That's what Chief Justice Roberts wanted to do. I mean, he basically said, this is the rule in a lot of other democracies, you know, he wanted His position was that he wanted to allow Mississippi to go forward with its law, but essentially stop
there at least for the time being. And part of what's interesting is that it turns out that Justice Bryer, a lifelong liberal, was considering joining that position, which only would have had symbolic value. It wouldn't have been legally, it wouldn't have changed the legal outcome. But what would have changed it is that, because of the Court's kind of unusual mass, the Chief Justice only needed one vote
from the conservative side to make that the law. So if he had been able to win over Justice Barrett or Justice Kavanaugh, say, we would be living with the fifteen week rule today and Roe would still be partially intact. It would be sort of smaller and more limited, but it would still exist.
I'm curious, and I know you're not a doctor, neither am I of course, but don't most women get abortions in that time tame? Anyway, I think that's absolutely so much misinformation about quote unk quote late term or even worse, partial birth abortions that compromise. So few abortions that take place in this country, and when they do, it's usually because the life of the mother is in danger and
there's something seriously wrong with the fetus. Yeah, and so that would have precluded all these states from enacting much more draconian laws.
Correct, Yeah, I think the states would have continued to challenge a fifteen week rule. You know, there's one theory that says that a fifteen week rule was only a gateway to a ten week rule, which would have been an eight week rule, which would have been a six week rule, and then you have no.
Right then abortion after that law. Right exactly, But maybe not. I mean, maybe that would have play came maybe or not. It's so hard to talk in hypotheticals. And also, the abortion debates in this country are so thunderous that it seems like wishful thinking that you know, after all these years, this country could just you know, say, okay, fifteen weeks. You know, the referee is blowing the whistle, like you know, the this is done and we're moving on to the next issue.
But we don't know. I mean, look at what's changed with politics in this country since Roe was overturned. You know what would have been the political after effect of a fifteen week rule. We can't you know, we can't know.
Talk about the leak and how that basically nullified any attempts at the compromise that Justice Roberts and Brier were considering this fifteen week ban.
So the reason why these votes are secret is so justices can change their minds. It's to preserve their privacy. I mean, it's the deliberative process is supposed to have a sanctity to it because, no matter our political backgrounds, we really want the justices to be engaged in thoughtful contemplation and debate and to really do what they feel is right. And sometimes that can mean changing your mind or shifting your position. So this was a really grave
breach for that reason. You know, the Court has called it an assault on the deliberative process, and I think that's right. Because it wasn't just the outcome that was leaked. It wasn't like somebody said, Katie Rowe is going to be overturned. The entire opinion was leaked. I mean, that is so unthinkable. And what happened is that it rendered the efforts to compromise kind of hopeless. Now, who knows
how much hope they had to begin with. We really can't say, because you know, it would require a kind of like truth serum. I think for one of the justices to know every thought that was going through their minds. But we do know that some of the justices were trying to persuade others and that just didn't work once everything became public.
Why, I mean, why for.
A justice to change their minds after the votes and the opinion had become public. It would have looked like they were bowing to public pressure, which they never want to look like they're doing.
So the decision had them pretty much boxed into their view. Right, I would say, it's solidified what already seemed to be happening. So this term, the Supreme Court is going to decide whether to limit access to a key abortion drug. What do you think is going to happen.
I can't tell you exactly, but it's very dramatic, and I'm glad you mentioned it, because what we have to understand is that this is now the most common method of abortion in this country. Our old image of you know, going to a clinic and priasurgery is somewhat.
Is antiquated at this point, although I think it's only it still happens, but I think more than fifty percent of abortion use a pill that will terminate the pregnancy.
And so now this question is back with the justices, which is not what they said would happen in his majority opinion from Dobbs, just as Alito says, we're throwing this back to the States. The people are going to decide we are washing our hands of abortion dissians. Well, I think they, I mean, they chose to take the case because I think they essentially have to. You know,
this is really controversial. There's a lot of disagreement. So basically the Supreme Court has to decide whether these really strict restrictions on these abortion drugs that were put in place by a lower court are going to stand or not. And remember that this is a different set of legal issues. This is about the FDA and what drugs were approved. So it's you know, the Court said that it was wanted to get less involved in abortion questions, but it appears to be getting more involved.
After this break. Jody's take on what the outcome of the twenty twenty four presidential election could mean for the future of the Supreme Court and of course, abortion rights. I shudder to think about the composition of the Supreme Court if Donald Trump is re elected, because that means even more conservative justices. Who is the next to retire, Jody, and how could his reelection impact the composition of the court.
You know, it's a really interesting question, in part because of the very complicated and not straightforward question of what happened with the first three judges he appointed. President Trump said that he was going to put in place justices who would automatically overturn Row. I mean, he did, But did they do it automatically or not? I don't know. That's part of why it's so interesting that Justice Barrett didn't vote to take the case, and in general, they
didn't take his marching orders. Remember that this court reviewed a lot of election cases in which President Trump wanted them to stand by the idea that he had really won the twenty twenty election. They didn't do that. They rejected his ideas over and over again. And of course now they're about to face an even more dramatic, arguably set of election cases. And so he appointed very conservative justices, but not justices who took his dictates in an edge
to his chagrin. Prom but much to his chagrin, and on January sixth, he actually gave a speech saying, I regard these justices as disloyal to me. I fought for them. He was especially talking about Justice Kavanaugh because of the sexual misconduct allegations during his nomination. So your question is a great one, but before we get to that, I kind of think we need to focus on this earlier question of b what are the.
Justices going to do with these elections? Well, says, let's backtrack and actually talk about that, Jody, because that's certainly something I wanted to discuss with you, knowing what you and Adam uncovered about the inner workings of the Supreme Court, what do you think they are going to do when they hear in February this Colorado case that, says Donald Trump, because of Article fourteen, Section three of the Constitution about dealing with insurrectionists, that he cannot be on the state
ballot for president of the United States. You know, a lot of people say, if they're the strict constructionists they claim to be or originalists, right, and they follow the letter of the law when it comes to the Constitution, they will agree with Colorado. What's your sense.
Nobody knows. It's a great question, because it is pretty clear that January sixth was an insurrection.
And there's no requirement to be convicted of that.
Well, so what Adam Adam Leptak has written is that, of course it's impossible to know, but based on his reading of the law and his knowledge of the justices, he's indicated that he thinks it's a little He thinks the justices may be reluctant to keep a candidate off the ballot, really just on the principle that it's the people who are supposed to decide elections. However, it's one of the other cases, this immunity case, in which President Trump is.
If you're president, you're immune to criminal prosecution.
Adam thinks the justices may not go for that. So we'll see, We'll we'll say well, we'll see. But for the first time since Bush v. Gore, it really looks like a presidential electionist in the justices' hands.
It's going to be so interesting to watch. And one last question, Jody, because it really has to do with the Supreme Court and the lack of transparency or as you said, the opacity I guess, of the of the High Court. There have been a lot of questions about the behavior of one particular Supreme Court justice, and that is Clarence Thomas. And if he has made too many compromises. We don't have to get into all the details here, but gifts and whether or not he's been influenced by
certain outside interests, et cetera, et cetera. What is happening in terms of making sure the Supreme Court had and by the way, in public opinion polls, views of the High Court have declined, right and approval ratings, if you will. What happening in terms of ensuring that the justices are ethical?
So there's a new ethics code, but it's soft. On the one hand, it's a real change, it's a real advance. They put out something publicly and remember that you know, part of what is really surprising about the Supreme Court is that they're actually bound by fewer rules than other federal judges, which kind of makes no sense because you say, how could the people with the highest responsibility have a.
Lost amount of safeguard lower standard?
That's right, and so there is an ethics code now, but it lacks an enforcement mechanism. Some of the language is open to interpretation. It's still basically an honor system
and a voluntary basis. But listen, this is why reporting on the court is so important, and Pro Publica has done so much work on this issue at the times other publications, and I think there's just a renewed feeling that we have to watch and understand the justices because they have so much power, and even in our system of checks and balances, their power is that their power lacks a lot of the usual checks.
For people watching or listening to this who believe in a woman's right to choose, do you see this Ever sort of turning around. Do you see something akin to row Ever being reinstated.
It's a better question for a legal expert, but I think we're seeing it on the political side. I mean, look at what happened in Ohio. You know, there were just massive efforts, you know, to also Kansas. Yeah, exactly. I mean we're just seeing that. You know, Adam and I never really talked about politics and he was elected and ballot referendums and stuff during our reporting because we
were entirely focused on the court. But you could argue that, you know, would just Alito and his colleagues did succeeded legally, of course, but members of the Republican Party. I'd be fascinated to talk to a Republican political official and here his or her response to our story and what the court did, because there are some Republicans who feel this has been a disaster.
For them right politically, and yet I think it's also been seen as a huge triumph exactly that took years and years and years for the anti abortion movement in this country.
Yeah, I think that's right.
So maybe they're reaping what they sewed politically. These Republican officials, they wrote on the wins of anti abortion quote quote unquote pro life advocates, and now maybe be careful what you wish for, because I think it's so extreme and it's going so ex dream that now there's a backlash to that whole movement, I think, I hope anyway.
I think that's part of why it's so important and fascinating to understand the history, because you say, to yourself, Okay, look at Chief Justice Roberts's fifteen week compromise. He looked lonely. It looked like a losing proposition. What would this country look like if it had prevailed. I don't know. Hard to say, but we probably wouldn't see the political reaction we have seen.
Jody, Thank you so much. Thank you explaining this complicated topic in such an understandable way. It's so important that Americans pay attention and understand how government works, so I hope they'll listen and learn from this.
Thank you for your great questions, Katie, Thanks for listening.
Everyone. If you have a question for me, a subject you want us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out. You can leave a short message at six oh nine five point two five five five, or you can send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me Katie Kuric and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martx, and
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