September 7, 2018

An important reminder on last night's 'All In': Birth Control is at risk with the Kavanaugh nomination.

And those who say "that won't happen" never thought Trump could be elected.

Rebecca Traister notes that Trump has pledged openly to end Roe with his Supreme Court nomination.

REBECCA TRAISTER: This is the vow and this is the guy who is going to come through. This is the problem of this administration of the federalist society, all of it. He used language today. He used language as contraception as the abortion-inducing drug. That is a big tell on where his ideological feelings on this. It is also an absolute dog whistle to a far right and it lays on the table like this is what we are talking about with this guy. We know what we are getting. This is who this man is and that the use of the abortion-inducing language is such an incredible telegraph. Birth control was only legalized in this country for married people in 1965. And for unmarried people in 1972.

CHRIS HAYES: In the line of cases that eventually gives us roe.

TRAISTER: For single people, it is a year before Roe. Right before the time period. The language that he used to today gave us a clue about where he is ideological.

HAYES: Vanita, what jumped out at you at the hearings?

VANITA GUPTA: I have to say these hearings are stunning. The reason is the country has never seen anything like it before. They are a complete sham. It is incredible that the Republicans are trying to confirm a supreme court justice where everything is at stake. Racial justice, LGBT rights, the whole gamut. And the senators have a job to do. They have to be able to thoroughly vet a nominee. And yet all of these documents are being hidden. Millions of pages are hidden today. Let's not get confused about what happened today. The night before the first day of the hearing, 40,000 documents 12 hours before they start to get released to Senate Democrats. Today, just a handful of documents are released to the government. Making decisions about deciding what the American, what US Government documents should be revealed to the American public. That is why you saw Democrats unite in complete protest around what is essentially a sham and corrupt process to jam a nominee through who is going to carry through a harmful agenda for America across the gamut.

HAYES: One of the things throughout this time, you can feel Democrats and protesters straining against the math and do what they can. Part of this reality, the scene is people getting dragged out one by one.

TRAISTER: I would argue that it is having an impact. We are learning so much. Kamala Harris pressing him last night about whether he talked to the guy from the law firm, he was, we learned about he was struggling. It looked like to not -- I have no idea what the truth was, but he looked like a man who was caught.

That was an incredible moment, the protest, the reaction to the protest. We are also learning what the Senators are about. Those protesters getting up there and screaming and getting dragged out. Orrin Hatch, there was a woman who was yelling, "I will die without healthcare."
He (Orrin Hatch) said, "Get this loud mouth out of here." Ben Sasse using the word, "Hysteria."

Women did die. Women did die when abortion was illegal. Women willing to get arrested because women will die again. This is not hysteria, and it is showing us what these guys think of this form of protest. Today Kennedy said, Kavanaugh brought in a girl's basketball team, keep in mind the same day he is calling contraception "abortion-inducing drugs." And when the protesters yelled, Kennedy said "this isn't how democracy is supposed to work." The resistance to the protest from the people in power is telling us a lot about the people in power. That has had an impact in the past. That is what we saw in '91. That is what energized people to run in 1992 and have a Year of the Woman there.

GUPTA: You know, Chris, all eyes right now after today's testimony need to be on Senator Collins and Senator Murkowski. They care about Roe v. Wade. And in light of the testimony that came out today, how they could even think about voting for Kavanaugh and there is another deeper thing that is happening, we are all witnessing the breakdown of our democracy. You have got a Congress where you have got congressional and the one thing that we have is the sense that the courts, the Supreme Court over time has been a backstop and has advanced and protected the rights of African Americans, of LGBTQ Americans, the backstops. This process, the most corrosive thing, is calling into question the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and I think that is going to have a long lasting impact far beyond these hearings, and it is at a point where we are at a constitutional crisis. And we need to understand what is at stake.

HAYES: I agree with that. We are at a constitutional crisis. That is the case. That is the ambient temperature in the room.

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