Pushkin.

Oh, yay, oh, yay, oh yay, oh yay.

May 2018, the United States Supreme Court strikes down the federal law that has effectively banned sports gambling in nearly every state.

What happens next, happens faster than anyone imagined.

It happens in so many places at once that it's basically impossible to follow it all in real time.

I ended up picking Mississippi and Kansas as the two states that I really decided to focus on

and merely was just there becoming a part of the furniture as the lobbyists were working

their magic.

That's Eric Lipton, New York Times reporter, who with his colleague Ken Vogel just sat and watched as lobbyists

created the conditions for a new industry to emerge overnight. Sports gambling.

And, you know, buttonholing various legislators, getting them to introduce language that they wanted

into the gambling bills, changing the tax rates, getting provisions

included that would allow them to entice betters with free bets that they wouldn't have

to pay taxes on.

Eric knows that state capitals are where the action is. He started his career covering state

governments for local papers.

When he returns to his old beat, he sees right away how much lonelier state capitals are,

because his old job, state house reporter, now barely exists.

There were times when I was in the state capital where I was pretty much the only reporter there while they were debating, you know, sports betting.

And I would stay until they wrapped up two in the morning as the session was closing and they were trying to get the bill

passed. And there were no other reporters present. It's like if you do something at the federal

level, there's going to be a lot of people watching still. A lot of reporters who will cover national politics.

...