Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Thursday, June 22, 2017, The Lump of Coal Edition.

I'm Emily Bazelon. I'm hosting the show this week because David Plotz is, I don't know where David is, but he's not here with us. That's okay, though. We have with us, John Dickerson from Face the Nation. Hey, John. Hi. And subbing in for David, we are thrilled to have with us this morning, Julia Yafi, who is a staff writer at the Atlantic. We're so glad you're here. On this week's Gab Fest, first, we will dissect the results of the elections,

the special elections in Georgia and South Carolina. Democrats are in mourning because of the loss of

John Ossif, their darling in the Georgia sixth. Republicans are feeling excited and relieved.

What are the lessons from this special election as well as the less

tended to, but still interesting one in South Carolina? Then we will talk about the Senate

health care bill. Mitch McConnell and the Republican leadership have been conspiring to prevent us

from having any kind of substantive discussion, but we're going to try to do that anyway.

The Republicans say they will release this bill today, but we're going to try to do that anyway. The Republicans say

they will release this bill today, perhaps by the time you listen to the show. But the key

provisions may be in flux through next week. This is pretty much unprecedented for a bill of this

scale. So we will talk about what is going to happen. And then it's June. So that means it's the time of year for

Supreme Court blockbuster decisions. For such a long time, the Supreme Court only had eight

members and wasn't taking any big cases. However, the court announced this week that next term,

it will hear a challenge to partisan gerrymandering from Wisconsin that indeed looks

like quite a big case. So we'll talk about that case and how it's likely to come out and what the

issues it raises are. Plus, we'll have cocktail chatter and in Slate Plus, we'll talk about some of those

smaller Supreme Court decisions. There were two on free speech this week, one about

trademarks that disparage people, and one about a law that banned social media use by sex offenders.

If you're not yet a Slate Plus member, go to slate.com slash gabfest plus to sign up.

This was the most watch, the most soaked in money special election since November.

About the money part, maybe ever, Republican Karen Handel beat Democrat John Ossoff by 52% to 48% in the Georgia 6th district.

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