Worries about him pulling some authoritarian move and refusing to step down the much more likely risk is a perfect storm not dissimilar to 2016 where polls are off in a certain direction and then that combined with the electoral system that already favors trump and his coalition by a few points, together puts trump close enough in battleground states where he can challenge the result in the courts and rerun the bush v. Gore playbook on its 20th anniversary. This is not some wild hypothesis. Donald trump has been explicit about that. I think its very important. I think this will end up in the Supreme Court. I think its very important that we have nine justices. I think its better if you go before the election because i think this scam that the democrats are pulling its a scam will be before the United StatesSupreme Court. And i think having a 44 situation is not a good situation. I think it will go before the Supreme Court. Thats what he says about the election. Thats the plan. Like trump said, it is part of the reason they are trying to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court and confirm her so quickly. He knows bush v. Gore laid the groundwork how to steal a president ial election. Whether you remember or not it was no question al gore had won more votes nationally but the outcome in florida was razor, razor thin and highly disputed based on ballot malfunctions and the notorious hanging chads and a brutal court battle whether to complete a recount that when completed might have shown gore pulling ahead. The conservative majority of the Supreme Court stepped in to actively stop a recount in florida before it might have shown a gore lead, and they did it based on a constitutional theory that was completely at odds with their own stated principles. They used the broadest possible reading of the equal protection because in the constitution, a reading that in the ruling itself the conservative justices had to go out of their way to say now were using this here but you cant use it for precedent. Its good for one ride only because they realized how ridiculous their own reasoning was. Thats how corrupt that decision was. And that is also how george w. Bush became president 20 years ago and it is notable that those people who participated in the bush v. Gore fiasco, those people who were the loyal foot soldiers of the conservative Movement Working to bring it about to put a president in office who lost the popular vote for the first time in over 100 years, a guy who probably lost the electoral college, too, those people are still around. Didnt go anywhere. In fact, a few of them are on the Supreme Court. One was john roberts who edited legal briefs produced each day by the bush team as the case was moving through the lower courts and played a crucial role in editing the final 50page Supreme Court argument prepared in just 24 hours. Good work, roberts. Justice kavanaugh was part of bushs legal team. Bush made him a judge at the u. S. Court of appeals. One was a young lawyer working for the Martin County republicans and they had a crazy situation. They were in a desperate attempt to make sure hundreds of absentee ballot request forms went out to households even though local republicans had actually removed the forms from the office of the supervisor of elections and added the required voter i. D. Numbers and sent them out. So they took them away from the election supervisor and, guess what, those lawyers did their job. They got those ballots to count. 673 would have been uncounted. In a state that bush won by 537 votes. If youre not good at math, thats the margin of victory. And as senator Amy Klobuchar pointed out today that young lawyer who helped make sure the ballots got counted was Amy Coney Barrett. Many argue that bush v. Gore, and back to your earlier work, hurt the courts legitimacy. If you are confirmed, the Supreme Court will have not one, not two, but three justices you, Justice Kavanaugh and chief justice roberts, who worked on behalf of the Republican Party in matters related to the bush v. Gore case. Do you think thats a coincidence . Senator klobuchar, if youre asking me whether i was nominated for this seat because i worked on bush versus gore for a very brief period of time as a young associate, that doesnt make sense to me. I know. You said you wouldnt recuse. That isnt what i said. Youre right. You said you wouldnt announce your decision on recusal and you wouldnt commit to recusing. But, again, the public has a right to know three of these justices have worked on the republican side on a major issue related to a president ial election. Is it a coincidence . I dont think its a coincidence. Participating in bush v. Gore, working to get the candidate who did not get the popular vote was the crowning achievement for an entire generation of Young Lawyers who then grew up to have plum assignments. This is a longstanding tradition thats only intensified. This current generation of Movement Activists are working hard to suppress the vote, to undermine the legitimacy and follow the president s marching orders to intimidate people at the polls and make it harder to vote. The Washington Post reports in a conservative Training Seminar j. Cristhian adames urged the activists not to worry about the criticism that might come their way. Be not afraid of the accusations that youre a voter suppressor, a racist and so forth, adams says. Hes quoting john paul there. Another tape obtained from a training session. Im fighting every single day from now to the election. Im more optimistic about the president s chances. I think were going to do well with younger voters. The democrats shut down all these campuses. Foolish for them. It will remove ballot harvesting opportunities. And all their voter fraud they usually do on college campuses. Theyre actually removing half a million votes off the table. Please keep the campuses closed. Its a great thing. Whatever. We dont want those half Million People voting. That fine young man is charlie kirk, a member of the movement, a made man, so to speak. The first speaker for the Republican National convention in august. If i ask one thing 20 years from now, please, i beg you, spare me how we can trust him to be a fairminded member of the Supreme Court. To talk about the president s plan to push the Supreme Court, im joined now by brian fallon, cofounder and executive director, in 2016 served as the National Press secretary for Hillary Clintons campaign and Legal Correspondent for slate she wrote about the heartlessness of Amy Coney Barretts originalism. Brian, let me start with you because you have been in the trenches of the judicial fights for a while. Ive watched and seen how it radicalized you over time. I think you have appreciated the full scope of what the movement has built. Is that fair . What do you say when you watch a possible bush v. Gore lawyer possibly ascend to the court . This is the culmination of a 40year project. That began with the founding of the Federalist Society and the animating impulses that have driven this movement to take over the courts. Well, sure, it is about overturning roe and it is all about expanding the view of the Second Amendment and thats what helps build the foot soldier army at a Grassroots Level on taking over the courts. One of the other big things its about is about entrenching republican political power. I thought it was interesting though john roberts chose his spots carefully, departed from the conservatives on a certain number of cases, one of the places hes been remarkably almost 100 consistent in voting with the conservative bloc is when it comes to voting related cases, election law matters. Hes a consistent, reliable vote for the republicans and just this week as the hearings are going on while were participating in this charade and asking questions of Amy Coney Barrett that she has no intent to answer, its siding with the Trump Administration on this request to prematurely suspend the census so we can have a massive undercount of people of color contributing to the rigging of congressional districts for another ten years. So my point to democrat s is, w have to realize what were up against here. Donald trump is saying the reason he wants to shove this nominee through is hes intending to contest the Election Results and needs the fifth vote from Amy Coney Barrett because he doesnt even trust john roberts. Democrats approached as they would any other set of hearings and theyre missing the ball in terms of exactly whats at stake here. I think its democratic rule thats in jeopardy if Amy Coney Barrett gets on the court. One of the frustrating fictions is theres a concerted Legal Movement. Its not a conspiracy, its an out in the open project, and there are people who publish articles about returning the conception to the era prenew deal about what you can and cant regulate and theyre very open about it. Theres a project to do that and there are very smart, good writers who come up through the pyramid of this project. When they get to the top as a judge, the presence is they get this like men in black thing where they lose all prejudices and beliefs and put on the robe and they become blind justice. Its very hard for me to swallow. Am i too cynical . No, i dont think so. I just want to flag, because you said you watched brian get radicalized, i think ive gotten radicalized since the last time i saw brian when he couldnt get me to pledge i believed in structural court reform. Ive just been gone gobsmacked, chris, in what ive seen the last couple of weeks. I want to add two data points to your introduction and what you just said now. One is that weve heard leonard leo all week, Sheldon Whitehouse has been very clear about the machinery that you describe and how the Federalist Society is written off as a debate society. A benign place for likeminded conservatives to float ideas. In may it was revealed leonard leo actually were funneling money to this incredibly orwellian, creepy honest new elections project. This was sending money to an effort to suppress the vote in states and spending huge money moving from this judicial project to voter suppression. It goes right to your introduction, chris, theyve given up on selling conservative ideas, on grooming young conservative judges. Now theyre all out going to colorado and florida and michigan and spending money writing letters, threatening elections officials, ads saying vote fraud, people are cheating. Its suppressing the vote, and its anathema to what the Legal Movement was to say were going to give up and pour dark money at suppressing the vote. It suggests theyve given up on the project of persuasion and going all out for minority rule. Theres something fascinating about how all this works. I dont want to overstate the case. I dont know how Amy Coney Barrett will rule on the aca case. These are people that have a certain amount of intellectual vanity, they might have a certain amount of integrity. Theres lots of cases that dont have a clear ideological valence theyre asked to rule on so its not a perfectly predictable thing. One of the things you see happen, brian, everyone is associated with this moral kree cretant donald trump and he says i am putting you on the court to overturn roe, take away the aca and give mean the election. And if you point that out, everyone goes to the fainting couch. How dare you impugn the integrity of this wonderful judge. Maybe he has a better sense of whats up than everyone else does. Theres an utter contradiction to how republicans play this game. If youre coming up through the ranks of the Federalist Society youre encouraged tacitly to audition for these judicial vacancies by giving prominent speeches at the Federalist Society functions where you speak out on all the touch stone issues the Federalist Society likes to keep eyes on. Sobreak, sobreak, so brett kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, its no coincidence they criticized john roberts. They had to get on Donald Trumps short list, get the eye of leonard leo. Then they become the dog that catches the bus. Then they go through these confirmation hearings and have to disown all their past statements and the republicans themselves campaign on the idea theyre going to insist on holding these judicial nominees to overt explicit commitments to overturn roe v. Wade. Hawley has been preening for a 2024 president ial run. He said he would only support somebody who said they thought roe was wrongly decided. Now hes in a position to square that with Amy Coney Barrett pretending she doesnt know how she would rule on roe. Mitch mcconnell has to down play the aca lawsuit that will be argued the week after november. He said no one expects the aca to be overturned. Thats what all these republican state attorney generals are in court arguing for. So its a total contradiction. Nobody should pretend this is on the level. Believe what they said the first time. The thing they want to say you take seriously our arguments, the ones were making in court, we would be monsters. That cant be the case. Thank you both for making some time with us. Appreciate it. Tonight, how did one texas county pull off a recordshattering first day of early voting . One of the central vig yofigure the Success Story tells us what went right, next. Ess story tell went right, next look here, its your very own allinone Entertainment Experience xfinity x1. Its the easiest way to watch live tv and all your favorite streaming apps. Plus, x1 also includes peacock premium at no extra cost. This baby is the total package. It streams exclusive originals, the full peacock movie library, complete collections of iconic tv shows, and more. Yup, the best really did get better. Magnificent. Xfinity x1 just got even better, with peacock premium included at no additional cost. No strings attached. It is day two of early voting in the state of texas and there are once again huge lines as people line up to cast their ballots. The turnout is record shattering. Here is the difference between this election and last election in texas. Its a graph comparing the first day of inperson early voting in six texas counties in 2016 and the first day of early voting in 2020. The numbers are pretty similar in dallas county, tarrant and barrett and travis counties but turnout doubled on day one in Denton County on the far right and nearly doubled in Harris County on the far left. Those blue bars, you see those . Nearly 5 Million People live in Harris County. Sit the Third Largest county in the entire country. It includes the city of houston. It used to be solidly republican. George w. Bush won that county handily in 2004 by ten points. In 2008 and 2012 the county went blue. Obama edging out a narrow, narrow victory both times. In 2016 Hillary Clinton absolutely dominated beating donald trump there by 12 points. The 2018 midterms you might remember orourke won that county by nearly 17 points. Clearly something is going on in Harris County, texas. They set a new record for early voting yesterday, over 128,000 people casting ballots. By lunch time today another 50,000 people had voted early. This means that in the first 1 1 2 days voters cast 14 of the total number of ballots cast in the entire 2016 election. Weve heard so many stories about voter suppression, local officials making it harder to vote. Harris county is what it looks like when a local government is devoted to making it easier to vote. Someone who has been fighting to make that possible is Harris County judge hidalgo im happy to have on. Judge, its great to have you become on the program. Ive been watching both the images and following lawsuits but looking at the numbers what is going on in your county . What steps has your county government taken affirmatively to make it easier to vote in Harris County . Well, thank you, chris, for having me. I think what were seeing is the best example of if you build it, they will come. We have been working i got into office about a year and a half ago and weve been working since day one to make voting more accessible. Weve invested over 30 million in election safety and accessibility. Compared to 2016, back then it was around 4 million. Thats what it is. It is tripling the number of early vote locations, drivethrough voting, mail ballot tracking. None of this sounds revolutionary but weve been at war with the texas gop every step of the way. Ultimately the community has come out and taken advantage and i hope that will continue. You tripled i want to make this clear, you tripled the number of early voting locations so part o