The Daily - An Anti-Abortion Campaigner on the Movement’s Historic Win

Episode Date: July 7, 2022

After Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, a group of conservative lawyers embarked on what would become a decades-long mission to reverse the ruling.One of those lawyers, James Bopp, explains how they succeeded and what comes next.Guest: James Bopp, general counsel for the National Right to Life Committee. Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision reflected a polarized nation: jubilation and relief on one side, outrage and grief on the other. Both sides quickly pivoted to the fights ahead.Reversing the ruling in Roe v. Wade, far from settling the matter, has instead kindled court and political battles across the states that are likely to go on for years.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, it launched a group of conservative lawyers opposed to abortion on a decades-long mission to reverse the ruling. long mission to reverse the ruling. Today, my co-host Sabrina Tavernisi talks to one of those lawyers about how they succeeded and why, for him, getting rid of Roe is only the halfway point in the battle for an abortion-free America. It's Thursday, July 7th. Right after Roe was overturned, I started calling people in the anti-abortion movement.

I wanted to know how they were thinking about their victory and how they understood what exactly had led them to it. And everybody kept pointing me to this guy named James Bob. Hi, Mr. Bob. How are you doing? Yeah, we're good. I'm glad we have a group chat conference call here. So we do things in teams. I know this might seem... I reached him in his home, outside of Indianapolis. Well, I'll say hi to Liz, Jessica, and Lisa. Hi! Bob is in his 70s. He's a champion of a number of conservative causes, including fighting campaign finance limits.

I was the lawyer that brought Citizens United, that overturned two precedents of the court. But the cause he took up first was fighting the right to abortion. He's been doing it for almost as long as Roe has been around. When I wasn't at Boy Scout camp or whatever, I would be going to Sunday church services at the Methodist church. Bob grew up in Indiana as the oldest of five kids. Oh, my dad was an anesthesiologist. He headed up the anesthetic practice at the local hospital in Terre Haute, Indiana. He had quite a few views on various subjects, overwhelmingly conservative. In those days, we would, of course, have dinner together with my mother and my father and eventually four younger sisters. We talked

about a lot of things at the table, but one of the things we talked about was what it meant to be a doctor. And one of the things he, of course, would explain that the Hippocratic Oath, you know, physicians shall do no harm, was a critical element of the ethical practice of medicine and, of course, abortion, except in rare instances such as to save the life of the mother, was doing harm to the unborn and therefore was unethical. He said he actually had wanted to be a doctor. To follow in my father, my uncle, and my grandfather's footsteps. But there was this problem.

Second semester organic chemistry at Indiana University convinced me to be a lawyer. Meaning you failed? Well, halfway through, the professor was literally with white chalk on a blackboard writing a formula, and I was thinking in my mind, I have no idea what he is talking about. And so he decided to go to law school instead. In his final year, he knew the Supreme Court had taken up Roe v. Wade. And one day, after his morning classes, he was driving home to eat lunch.

And I can see the field that I was driving past, heading to my apartment, when the noon news came on. We have just received a bulletin from the Associated Press from Texas. And, of course, the lead story was about the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court today legalized abortion.

It was very difficult to hear. The majority said that the decision to end the pregnancy during the first three months belongs to the woman and her doctor, not the government. Thus, the anti-abortion laws of 46 states were rendered unconstitutional. More on this story from George Herman. I was devastated that the court would not only take this, what I viewed to be unconstitutional step, creating a right to abortion where there was no right to abortion in the institution, but also the societal and the moral consequences, the deaths that would result. You know, I was thinking this has got to change, and I hope I'll have an opportunity to help do that. And after graduating from law school, Bob got to do just that. I got a call, and the call was from the president of Indiana Right to Life.

And then he became general counsel for the National Right to Life Committee, one of the oldest and biggest anti-abortion groups in the country. What's the conversation like in those early years after the Roe decision? I mean, what was the legal strategy people wanted to employ? Well, the big question for the first couple of years is whether or not the movement was going to recognize Roe v. Wade as the law of the land. Some were arguing that we shouldn't, and that proposing legislation that recognized it as the law of the land was immoral, and so as a result, we should only support prohibitions on abortion. That was one side.

The other side said that while we think Roe v. Wade's wrongly decided, it is the law of the land. Every judge in America will enforce it against any laws that are contrary to it. And as a result, we need to be supporting laws that would regulate abortion, but under the rubric of Roe v. Wade, maybe with a few adjustments as you go along, but under that rubric. So where did you fall between those two approaches? The one that won, the side that won. That is, whatever you think about Supreme Court decisions, they are the law of the land, and they get to decide what rights there are in the Constitution and what those rights mean. Now, I thought they were

wrong in Roe. There's not a right in the Constitution for an abortion, but they've decided that. So you just have to live with it. So basically, you felt that the other side was wrong in that it just was substituting its emotion and religious passion for reasoning and legal thinking. That's fair. Yeah. You saw that and decided that you would take this other approach. So explain to us, what were you doing in the beginning? Well, once you accept the premise that Roe v. Wade's the law of the land, you have to operate under it. And you want to ultimately reverse it if you can get the court to do that.

Then the issue is, what's your strategy? And that's really what I came in. And that is, how are we going to do this? And one of the first things I did was study Supreme Court overturning precedent. And the most successful, the most important of those strategies were by the NAACP to overturn Plessy versus Ferguson, the separate but equal decision, which they were successful in ultimately in Brown v. Board of Education, 1954. So I studied what they did. It took the NAACP nearly 60 years to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court decision that said racial segregation was constitutional under the separate but equal doctrine. And the way they did it was to bring a series of cases

that chipped away at the decision, attacking the equal part of separate but equal. And eventually, in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, all nine justices on the Supreme Court voted to overturn it. And if you look at the broad scope of their strategy, it was first recognizing that it would be incremental. In other words, it wouldn't be a flash in the pan, it wouldn't be all suddenly a 180, but it's highly likely it would be a series of cases that undermine, question, distinguish, ultimately maybe even, you know, drain the erroneous precedent of content until the court is finally willing, and underline the word willing, to overturn the precedent.

So you're saying that you were basically borrowing from the playbook of the civil rights activists. I mean, basically, that you're not going to get everything you want in a day. You have to build slowly over time, right decision is handed down, you then adjust to the decision. So the anti-abortion movement starts passing laws to undermine and chip away at Roe. And an early result of that was a case called Planned Parenthood v. Danforth. We'll hear arguments first this morning in number 74, 1151, and 1419, Danforth against Planned Parenthood. Missouri had passed laws requiring women seeking abortions to get their husband's consent. This question is really whether or not the husband has the right to control the medical treatment of his wife. And minors seeking abortions to get their parents' consent.

Which is the parental consent. This also interferes with the doctor-patient relationship. Planned Parenthood sued Missouri, saying the laws violated Roe. And... We hold that, as to that, they do not have standing. that as to that, they do not have standing. And as a consequence, we do not pass on the constitutionality of that particular section of the Missouri Act. The Supreme Court agreed, striking these laws down.

So when I got involved, how are we going to write regulations on abortion understanding what the court has just held? So Bob sees the court's decision and wonders, if they aren't going to allow a law that requires parental consent, what about parental notice? What if the minor just had to notify her parents? Because the Supreme Court said parental consent is a veto, and that's contrary to the right to abortion.

So, okay, well, what about notice? See, there is no veto in a notice. And so he crafts model legislation that states can adopt, making this tweak. So you had to tell the parents, but you didn't have to get them to sign off on it. Exactly. We could argue that this is constitutional because it's not consent, it's notice, and it involves less of a burden, and that otherwise this under Roe v. Wade, the state has authority to do this.

I mean, it seems so small on one level. Well, it may be viewed small in retrospect from today, and it does, but it was huge at the time, because we thought we were in a struggle of whether there's an absolute right to abortion or not. Were there any regulations that the court was going to uphold at all? Right. Getting them to uphold one regulation would have been a breakthrough of enormous consequences. And going smaller worked. Eventually, the Supreme Court allowed a version of this tweak.

It was part of one of the first model laws that Bob wrote. He'd end up writing dozens more. I was writing model laws. I was figuring out, you know, how to comply, you know, and pass laws under each precedent as they are handed down. I was general counsel of the structure of all these state groups that would, of course, then take our model laws and get them adopted state by state. And then in the 80s, Bob says, things started to really shift. The anti-abortion movement was seeing some big wins,

especially when it came to government funding of abortion. First, Congress created a rule saying that federal funds, like those from Medicaid, could not be used to pay for most abortions. And the Supreme Court agreed. And then... Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court. There was a case called Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. This case represents

a direct appeal that involves a 1986 Missouri statute defining the rights of the unborn and regulating abortion in Missouri. The state of Missouri had passed a law restricting public money, employees, and hospitals from being used to perform abortions or counsel women on abortions. We contend the government is certainly not obligated in and of itself to become an advocate for abortion. Again, the court upheld these funding restrictions, this time on the state level. That meant that women would have to go to special clinics to get abortions, and that in most cases, they'd have to pay for it themselves.

It was the first big success in the Supreme Court after Roe v. Wade. You know, getting the government out of promoting abortion is very consequential. But what was important was not so much what was at stake in the case, but the decision that the court rendered. Bob says the Webster case revealed how some of the justices were viewing abortion as a right. Four members of the court said, in upholding Missouri's funding restrictions, that abortion was a liberty interest, not a fundamental right. What does that mean? Well, that's the whole ballgame. Liberty interest is just another way of describing everyday freedoms we have, right? We have a freedom across the street unless there's a

law that says we can't cross the street except at the corner. And that law will be upheld as a liberty interest if there's just a rational reason to have the law. 90% of our laws, 95% of our laws are governed by this very deferential, very forgiving standard that if just the government has a rational reason to do it, that's sufficient. If there's a fundamental right, now we're at the top. That's where the abortion right was. Fundamental rights are recognized as so core and valuable that the government has to have a really good reason to restrict them. These rights can be in the Constitution explicitly, rights like freedom of speech or freedom of religion, or implicitly, like abortion, as it was interpreted by the Supreme Court in Roe. And so by saying it's a liberty interest, they were saying, we just demoted it. We just demoted the right to abortion from a fundamental right

to an everyday liberty interest. And that says we have four justices prepared to overturn Roe v. Wade. To Bob, this was a sign that he might have an opening, that Roe might be vulnerable. Abortion rights lawyers were worried about that, too. And then, just three years later, in 1992, Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court, it looked like that might happen, that the court might overturn Roe in a case called Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Whether our Constitution endows government with the power to force a woman to continue or to end a pregnancy against her will is the central question in this case. This was a case out of Pennsylvania, which had put restrictions on abortion. Some of them will sound familiar. This court has already found that under the principles of Roe v. Wade, the bulk of the Pennsylvania statute is unconstitutional.

They required women to notify their spouses, minors to get parental consent, and everyone to wait 24 hours before getting an abortion. Planned Parenthood argued that all of these restrictions were infringing on their patients' constitutional right, their fundamental right to an abortion. The genius of Roe and the Constitution is that it fully protects rights of fundamental importance. is that it fully protects rights of fundamental importance. Government may not chip away at fundamental rights nor make them selectively available only to the most privileged women. Pennsylvania, in its argument, referred back to the Webster case, saying it was clear that abortion was no longer an absolute right.

It is the position of Pennsylvania that each of the five provisions is constitutional under the analysis that each of the five provisions is constitutional under the analysis that was applied by this court in Webster. Further, Roe v. Wade need not be revisited by this court except to reaffirm that Roe did not establish an absolute right to abortion on demand, but rather a limited right, subject to reasonable state regulations. They argued they could regulate abortion as long as there was a good enough reason.

And for them, making sure spouses and parents were aware, giving a woman enough time to think through such a big decision, those were good enough reasons. The test is, does it generally rationally advance the interest that the state is trying to protect? In this instance, it does. We thought that we had the prospect of seven votes out of a nine-member court. We had four that had said, it's a liberty interest, not a fundamental right. We had O'Connor, who had been

a vigorous opponent of Roe v. Wade in numerous dissents. In addition to that, we had new members of the court, such as Justice Souter. He had been on the pro-life side in every case. We just had reasons for each one of these. Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania versus Casey in a companion case will be announced by Justices O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter. However, instead of getting seven, we got four. Some of us as individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that can't control our decision. And we lost five to four.

Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code. And there was a bitter disappointment on the big issue because Kennedy, Souter, and O'Connor reaffirmed the right to abortion in Casey. We reaffirmed the constitutionally protected liberty of the woman to decide to have an abortion before the fetus attains viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the state.

So that was the bad news, and it was really important bad news for us. However, they also modified Roe v. Wade by adopting the undue burden test. We also hold the state has legitimate interest from the outset of pregnancy in protecting the health of the mother and the life of the fetus that may become a child, and that the state may further these interests so long as it does not unduly burden the woman's right to choose. long as it does not unduly burden the woman's right to choose. In other words, the court had adopted a new standard.

It ruled that states could regulate abortion as long as their laws didn't put an undue burden on women. That is, didn't prevent most women, most of the time, from getting an abortion. most women, most of the time, from getting an abortion. But the thing about undue burden is it's vague, and justices can interpret it differently. In this particular case, the court decided that requiring women to notify their husbands before getting an abortion was an undue burden, but that requiring women to wait for 24 hours

and minors to notify their parents was not. So this created a whole new opening for Bopp to craft more laws to test this new limit, laws he knew would eventually end up at the Supreme Court. Part of the strategy is the recognition that you've got to have the court deal with this repeatedly. You know, this is not a one-shot deal. You've got to keep presenting them cases, have them take up cases,

because that gives them the opportunity to question, distinguish, undermine, or as you've already heard, change the right to abortion. And so it's kind of like at each stop, you know, you get a rewrite of the right to abortion, which undermines it, inherently undermines it, because it demonstrates what so many people said when Roe v. Wade was handed down. It's just not grounded in the Constitution, and it's built on sand. Well, every time you get a decision, you have these shifting sands, and that undermines the precedent. So it seemed like Casey, of course, did reaffirm Roe, and that was bad for you guys, but actually it opened up this whole opportunity where states suddenly have this really big role.

That's correct. Casey provided us more opportunities to protect the unborn, pass regulations, get more court cases, and continue. We'll be right back. So ultimately, this incremental step-by-step approach that you outlined brought you pretty far, but not all the way. You needed a sympathetic Supreme Court to get there. Yes, and that has always been the requirement, that you have a sympathetic court, one that's willing to overturn Roe v. Wade. And we just had never had it. I made a promise to the American people. If I were elected president,

I would find the very best judge in the country for the Supreme Court. The nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch of Colorado to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is confirmed. Tonight, it is my honor and privilege to announce that I will nominate Judge Brett Kavanaugh. The nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh is confirmed. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died. The battle lines over

Justice Ginsburg's seat are being drawn. President Trump. It's official President Trump nominates Judge Amy Coney Barrett. The third Supreme Court Justice named by President Trump cementing a solid conservative majority on the court. The composition of the court has left the fate of abortion law in doubt. So this brings us to the Dobbs case. You've been working on abortion for 50 years. What does it mean to you that Roe was overturned? Well, it's the most consequential decision of the Supreme Court in my lifetime on, I think, the most important issue that has gripped the country in my lifetime. It could not be more consequential. One of the most radical doctrines ever accepted in the history

of the world is the Judeo-Christian idea that every individual human life has inherent value and is sacred. That is the fountainhead, the way that we look at people in America, and that is we don't judge a person's value or worth or entitlement to protection of the laws based upon their race, their sex. So laws against sex discrimination, racial discrimination, discrimination against people based on sexual orientation or whatever, all arises from that fundamental concept. Roe v. Wade was an assault on that. It was a direct assault because it treated human lives, because of their location in the womb, as not having the same value and protection that all human lives have been entitled to. Hopefully, we are now taking a turn to be able to put that in the past.

So, do you feel done? I mean, is it mission accomplished now? I have been working harder since Dobbs was overturned than I was before because now the abortion issue returns to the states. And there are 50 states, District of Columbia, to various territories that if we're going to protect the unborn, we need to pass legislation. I've prepared and I spent almost a month prior to the Dobbs decision. In fact, we circulated this model abortion law that I drafted about 10 days before

the decision so that people could start thinking about what the post-war world would look like as far as legislation and that we would be ready to move. And now it's in Indiana, we're having a special session. You know, they need an abortion law. South Carolina is having hearings. One of my associates is testifying. They're going to pass abortion laws. So now it's state by state what kind of regulations on abortion,

and we have our ideas about what would be the model comprehensive type law that they ought to look at. And what would be that model comprehensive type law? The high level is that it prohibits abortion except to prevent the death of the mother. And then we also put in the model rape and incest exceptions if the legislature wants those. It provides for criminal penalties against people who perform the abortion. It says that no women shall be ever subject to civil or criminal liability for having an abortion. And it provides for, in addition to the criminal penalties, civil remedies in order to make the law effective throughout the state. And let me pause you for one second, Jim, because I'm a little bit confused about the model laws.

Are these model laws for red states? Haven't they already, for the most part, banned abortion? Yes, it's for states that want to adopt substantial protection for unborn children. Now, in a blue state or a purple state or where they might pass something or another, there's some of these provisions you could pull out and adopt even there. But the real focus is, all right, 50 states have the opportunity to pass restrictions on abortion that are substantial. This is for them. Let's try to do the best we can in making whatever states are willing be as pro-life as they can and have effective laws. And right now, there's probably, what, 30 of those? If things go well in the midterms,

there'll probably be 35, because you could see if things go well, Democrat governors that are standing in the way in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina could very well be defeated. You just don't know, but if that happens, you'd add them because they have overwhelming Republican legislatures. Now, the challenge is there's going to be sanctuary counties and cities throughout the United States, including in every red state. In Indiana, it's Indianapolis. The Marion County prosecutor has already said he will not enforce any criminal abortion law. Well, that's where most of the clinics are. Majority of the abortions are performed. And if we only used criminal penalties, there'd be abortion on demand throughout pregnancy in Indiana because of the non-enforcement of Indiana's abortion laws in Indianapolis.

laws in Indianapolis. So you've got to do something else to get around these lawless, radical Democrat prosecutors that are taking their discretion up to a much higher level, where they're now going to be the little king of their county and decide what laws are going to be applicable in their county. I mean, that's the job of the legislature, not them. going to be applicable in their county. I mean, that's the job of the legislature, not them. And that could also include, in addition to civil remedies, giving criminal enforcement authority to an attorney general or some other state official, multiple ideas that are in the model. So you have kind of your eye on essentially blue cities in red states where prosecutors might not enforce the law. 88 prosecutors in more than 30 states have already said that they will not enforce criminal

abortion laws in their county. Already said this. So this isn't hypothetical or theoretical or we wonder what they're going to do. They've already said what they're going to do. And so we have got to deal with that to make the law effective. How would you describe the ultimate goal of the movement? An abortion-free America except we're justified by the life of the mother. And the law is a tool for that.

And we just haven't had that tool because of Roe v. Wade until now. Well, now we have that tool. So as far as the movement is concerned, we're half done. Which part of the fight is going to be harder? The past 45 years that you were just fighting or the one you're about to enter? Probably the second part, the part we're about to have. The first part, we were more focused on the court and overturning a precedent. We were obviously passing state laws in a whole bunch of states and all that, but this is going to be the most difficult.

Why is the second part going to be harder? Why is this part going to be harder? Well, we've got to pass a lot of laws in a lot of places and get those laws to the place where they're effective. And that's going to be a real challenge in a lot of states. And that's going to be a big undertaking that this situation warrants for pregnant women and women that have children. And then the philosophical, restoring respect for all human life. That's going to be a task that people in all sorts of institutions and all will need to undertake.

I hope they will undertake, as opposed to continue to spread the notion that every life is relative. You know, lives, if you don't value them, they can just be taken willy-nilly. That idea is devastating our society. That idea is devastating our society. And Jim, what about this idea that Americans broadly have pretty complicated and conflicting views on abortion, right? Polling has been mixed for a very, very long time. It hasn't changed that much over the course of the decades. So wouldn't then the idea of an abortion-free America impinge on the rights of those that want it? Well, let's start with the conflicting views.

What is also important about the decision in Dobbs is a return to the issue of abortion around which there are conflicting views to the democratic process, which is how we sort out policy issues where there are conflicting views. That's the way we do that. And one of the damaging things about Roe v. Wade was that it took the abortion issue off the table as far as resolving it through a democratic process of compromise and balancing people's conflicting views, whatever, and sorting that out through the democratic process off the table and just a matter of judge for judges to decide, you know, people in black robes, you know, where do they get off? And now, if something is in the Constitution, that's their job, is to protect that and enforce

that. But to throw it in there and decide that they know how abortion policy ought to be set, which is what they've done all along. You know, well, should we have parental consent? Okay, well, that's a policy issue, isn't it? Well, they made it a constitutional issue that they get to decide based on the constitution rather than sorting out the public views on it state by state, which will vary. Okay. Now, obviously, reaching our goal of abortion-free America, except to save the life of the mother,

would only occur if there was consensus, not conflict. And so, is this achievable, ultimately? I don't know. But it's our goal. And whether or not it'll be achieved will depend upon the American people and their views on this. If a consensus does not arise, then we will continue to have some states where you have abortion on demand throughout pregnancy, and you'll have other states where abortion is hopefully limited to the death of the mother. That's the way democracy is. Some places right now, you can smoke weed on the street, okay? On another one, if you did that, you'd be arrested and go to jail. I mean, we have a lot of issues in which there are different solutions or approaches by different states. That's the nature of a democratic system. And having not one policymaker, which is a federal government, but having 50 states with substantial authority to determine public policy.

Just the way we live here in this wonderful experiment called America. I'm sure you're familiar, the abortion rights side would make the argument that state legislatures are, in fact, not representative of what people want on abortion because of gerrymandering. Views on abortion are mixed. The legislatures in the states in the South and the Midwest aren't. So kicking it back to the states, it might sound good on paper because it sounds like it's more democratic. But in fact, we know the outcome. Every governmental body that adopts their own districts will gerrymander those. They can't help themselves.

They're people too, right? And nothing more important than their re-election. The best way to be re-elected is to be, if you're a Republican, in most republican district or a democrat and most democrat so everybody does this and so what you're saying is it can go both ways yeah it goes both ways and it's just a feature of where it's a human process i mean in some ways it just seems fundamentally impossible to get to consensus because these views are so absolute in that it just seems like there's not that much overlap. Well, but things change over time. I mean, we had slavery in the United States. We had a whole race enslaved in the United States. We certainly reached a consensus that

there'll be no slavery. We reached a consensus that everyone's entitled to equal protection of the law. So people's attitudes and approaches and beliefs change over time. But that is obviously going to be one of the challenges of the pro-life movement to try to reach that consensus. Jim, I want you to think back to the young lawyer that you were. And now think of where you stand now. What's the lesson you've learned from 50 years of conservative activism? Well, I think the most important thing that I've brought to this as far as my own, what I've done in my own life and career is persistence. And a corollary to that is you're never defeated until you give up. A defeat is just a temporary setback. A victory

is just a temporary advancement. And, you know, I have given up on a few things over the years, obviously, but this is one. Organic chemistry. given up on a few things over the years, obviously. But this is one. Organic chemistry. Being a doctor. That was a real eye-opener right at the beginning of my career life. But it is that. Because that means a lot more is possible than you think at the time.

Because if you give up, then you foreclosed options that would have existed if you would have allowed yourself to think about options that would have existed if you would have allowed yourself to think about them that would have allowed you to continue. And so I rarely think about giving up on something. I'm always thinking about, well, Jim, thank you for your time. Thank you, Sabrina. It's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you very much. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. It is clearly now the will of the Parliamentary Conservative Party

that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new Prime Minister. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has resigned after more than 40 ministers and aides quit his government in protest of his leadership. The resignations were the latest fallout from revelations that Johnson gave a high-ranking position to a colleague, Chris Pincher, whom he knew had been accused of groping men. Johnson had originally vowed to try to stay prime minister,

but ultimately bowed to the pressure. The Times reports that he plans to stay in office until a successor is chosen over the coming months. And Donald Trump's former White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, has agreed to testify before the January 6th committee. His testimony is considered a major breakthrough for the committee because Cipollone fought to block Trump's efforts to overturn the election and witnessed firsthand Trump's behavior throughout the period leading up to and on January 6th. Today's episode was produced by Rachel Quester, Asta Chaturvedi, and Jessica Chung, with help from Stella Tan. It was edited by Lisa Chow and Liz O'Balin, contains original music

by Mary Lozano, Dan Powell, and Alisha Ba'iitub, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderland. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bilbaro. See you tomorrow.