This is Amicus Slate's podcast about the courts, the law, and the Supreme Court.

I'm Dahlia Lethwick.

And I'm Mark Joseph Stern.

The left treats the courts as a pathway to justice and the right treats the courts as a pathway to power.

These are very dangerous drugs. I mean,

the potential for harm to pregnant women is really significant. It's effective, it's essential,

it's safer than Viagra. If you hold positions that are not popular, you have to find ways

to shield yourself from that accountability. And that means fewer people being

able to vote. The Democrats, they've redistricted for years. And now we took our shot. And it

looks like we're going to pick up a lot of seats. And that's a good thing. Calais is one in a very,

very long line of decisions that was teed up after they felt like they had the

bulletproof majority of the court to enact this strategy where they could hold supreme

control and yet insulate themselves from the consequences.

When our communities are split apart, our maps are redrawn for political convenience,

we not only lose representation, but trust in the democratic process as a whole.

There was not a huge visceral response from the public, given the gravity of the decision. And we really need to

understand why if we're going to do better.

This is Mark Joseph Stern, Slate Senior Writer and Amicus co-host. I'm back from parental leave

for now and hopping into the host chair on Maine to bring you up to date with the Supreme Court's late Thursday decision to block the Fight and Fitz Circuit's nationwide ban on prescribing the abortion drug Miffa Pristone virtually and sending it through the mail.

Dahlia will be with us a little later for a conversation with writer, activist, and former president of Nairal Pro-Choice

Hogue, who will lay out all the ways the legal assault on medication abortion is part and parcel of attacks on the right to vote, and how failing to explain that to voters could be disastrous for the midterms and beyond. But first, it's

deja vu all over again as medication abortion returns to the Supreme Court. Here to talk

...