I meant to update you over the weekend on what was a very eventful week, including another reporting trip to Texas - but I was too busy EDITING ENDNOTES for my book! The really sexy part of publishing…
Anyway, we’re awaiting a ruling in a major abortion pill lawsuit I've been covering for NPR. If you want to dig deeper, here’s a quick look at what might come next after the ruling, or a slightly longer discussion with the NPR Politics Podcast (I joined my old friends there on Friday), or an even more thorough discussion on WYNC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show.”
This morning, I taped a conversation with Amanpour & Company (airs on PBS and CNN) wrapping up what happened:
I’ve also been on MSNBC a couple of times…
(I had no good makeup in Amarillo; apologies for the pallor.)
And CNN’s Inside Politics on Sunday:
(Thanks to my husband for the hype and the screenshots.)
A quick behind-the-scenes:
The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the federal judge in this case, Trump-appointee Matthew Kacsmaryk, had quietly scheduled the hearing but was delaying releasing the details. It became clear pretty quickly that to find out what was happening in that courtroom, I’d probably need to be there.
So early Tuesday morning I was on a plane to Dallas, then Amarillo.
At 5 AM Wednesday, I was on the courthouse steps, just behind a handful of local residents who told me that they were interested in the case because of their opposition to abortion, and they’d heard they should come early.
Soon, other reporters began to arrive, and we - who’ve been covering these stories for months and years - put faces with names, or re-introduced ourselves to colleagues we’d met in passing. One reporter shared her hand warmers with me. We took turns running to our cars - strategically parked on the street in front of the courthouse - to get supplies and, as the sun came up, to stash away our phones before entering the courthouse.
Texas summers notwithstanding, I can report that Texas can be cold in March - especially before dawn, and especially when those giant winds start to pick up.
Another reporter I’d been huddling with for hours joked that we were learning a lot about “standing” and “exhaustion” - two legal terms that featured prominently in the case but felt much more colloquially relevant to us in that moment (you can read the full transcript here).
Finally, around 8 AM, the courthouse opened up and officers slowly began letting people in - first attorneys, then approximately 19 reporters and about the same number of members of the public. For more than four hours, we listened to both sides make their arguments, scribbling notes by hand (no recording allowed). During a break halfway through, feeling myself fading, I found a vending machine in the basement and chugged a diet Coke to stay awake.
Then, it was all over - and it was off to the races: writing, edits, filing for radio, the TV hit from outside the courthouse. And the next day, I was headed home:
Sarah, your persistence to cover this vital story is surpassed only by your expert reporting and analysis. You certainly have a full life (he said with only a slight hint of sarcasm. 😉)