I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Monday, December 13th.

We wake up today into a world where, according to Dahlia Lithwick from Slate, Chief Justice

John Roberts has lost control of the Supreme Court.

She says Texas's bounty scheme for banning abortions worries the Chief Justice, but his conservative colleagues think it's just fine.

And she says the court on Friday handed states, other states, a roadmap for how to ban abortion without even deciding the

Texas case. And it's a world in which Jim Newell from Slate says the Democrats could have

gerrymandered away a seat from the Republicans in Congress but didn't do it, a world in which

Newell wrote a feature called This Week in Mark Meadows, and a world in which, as

Newell put it, Dr. Oz joins a robust list of Nutso Senate races already underway. Oh, and it's

a world in which Chris Wallace suddenly announced that he's leaving Fox and going to CNN, of all

places. Reportedly, he couldn't take Foxes increasingly off the rails conspiracy theory radicalism anymore.

And that's quite enough to get us going for today with both Jim Newell, senior politics writer for Slate and Dahlia Lithwick,

who writes about the courts and the law for Slate and hosts their podcast, Amicus.

Dahlia and Jim, thanks for coming on.

Welcome back to WNYC.

Hi, Brian.

Hi, Brian.

And Jim, be patient for a few minutes while I asked Dahlia about some of her reporting first.

And Dahlia, for one thing, this Texas abortion ban, regardless of the legal analysis,

is having real effects on countless Texas women and families right now

because five justices allowed it to stand while other judicial challenges continue.

So would you start so that we're grounded in humanity and not in the law

...