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last week tonight

Believe it or not, two kids books about Mike Pence's family pet rabbit, Marlon Bundo, were just released.

But they tell wildly different tales.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

One of them, "Marlon Bundo’s Day in the Life of the Vice President," is a story created by the Pence family about their furry creature's experiences living in Washington.

Perfectly innocent. Right? Eh, not quite.

On a new episode of "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver," the TV host spotted something discouraging about Marlon Bundo's book tour.

It stops by Focus on the Family — a vehemently anti-LGBTQ group that opposes a number of basic human rights for queer people and has a history of supporting gay conversion therapy (a harmful practice that attempts to change a person's sexual orientation).

The vice president, who is one of the most anti-LGBTQ legislators in the country, is a big fan of the organization. Naturally.

— (@)

With that in mind, the "Last Week Tonight" team decided to make their own rabbit-inspired book too: "A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo."

"You’ll notice right away that our rabbit has a bow tie, so there’s that," Oliver pointed out about the differences between the two publications on the March 18, 2018, show. But there's an even more striking contrast: In "A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo," Marlon is gay. He falls in love with another boy rabbit in the garden.

Yes, the book is for kids. Yes, it's real. And yes, it's actually for sale.

[rebelmouse-image 19475957 dam="1" original_size="548x264" caption="GIF via "Last Week Tonight."" expand=1]GIF via "Last Week Tonight."

The best part? All of the proceeds from the "Last Week Tonight" book benefit two terrific groups helping LGBTQ people.

One is The Trevor Project, a crisis intervention nonprofit that helps struggling LGBTQ youth, and the other is AIDS United, an organization aimed at ending HIV/AIDS in the U.S.

"Those are two great reasons to buy this book," Oliver said. "Another is that selling more books than Pence will probably really piss him off."

"Last Week Tonight" has a page where you can find out how to get your own copy of "A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo," and you can watch Oliver's segment on the book below:

It's not quite Oprah yelling 'You get a car! You get a car!' It's better.

Just by pressing a button, John Oliver made the largest one-time giveaway in TV history — nearly $15 million.

All GIFs from "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver."

The money went to nearly 9,000 individuals, and while they won't be receiving a check or a fancy car, their lives will be getting so much easier thanks to Oliver and his team at "Last Week Tonight."

During his segment on debt buyers and collectors, Oliver focused on a specific kind of delinquency: medical bills.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2012 nearly 1 in 6 families in the U.S. has struggled paying their outstanding medical bills; 1 in 10 families weren't able to pay bills at all.

That's billions of dollars worth of debt from millions of people.

The fact that medical bills are a typically unexpected expense makes that particular form of debt ripe for a very opportunistic and surprisingly unregulated industry: debt collectors.

Here's how debt buyers and collectors work.

It starts with a debt. One of the examples Oliver used was the case of a man who was hospitalized for four days with respiratory issues, later finding out that his insurance wouldn't cover the cost. This left him with $80,000 worth of debt he had no way of paying.

If the debt goes unpaid, the hospital might sell the rights to collect on it to a third party (a debt buyer), and then they can go about trying to collect it.

The problem here is that there's very little documentation that goes along with the sold debt, making it hard to prove who owns it and whether or not it's been paid off. While there is a statute of limitations on debt collection, debt buyers bank on the fact that the average consumer doesn't know that and will continue to try to collect — some with less than friendly tactics.

Basically, it's a big, stressful, anxiety-inducing mess for the person at the center of it all.

To prove just how easy it is to get into the debt-buying business, "Last Week Tonight" started their own collection agency.

After paying $50 to start their own agency, with Oliver listed as the chairman of the board, the "Last Week Tonight" team was offered the opportunity to buy nearly $15 million in medical debt from a group in Texas. The price? A little less than $60,000.

In exchange, Oliver was given a spreadsheet with thousands of names, phone numbers, social security numbers, and debt amounts. If they wanted to, the "Last Week Tonight" agency could have set about trying to collect on the nearly $15 million.

But they didn't.

Oprah's famous car giveaway was valued at around $7 million. Oliver nearly doubled that.

And unlike Oprah's car giveaway, there won't be any adverse tax consequences for the people whose debt has just been forgiven.

So. Freakin. Cool. Right?

You can learn more about credit buyers by watching the video from "Last Week Tonight," posted below.

And here's what you can do to fight back.

You probably know somebody who's had an abortion.

According to 2008 data, 1 in 3 women will have one, meaning that odds are that even if you don't think you know anybody who's had an abortion, you probably do. And for the sake of those 1 in 3 women, it's worth paying attention to what John Oliver had to say on last night's episode of "Last Week Tonight" about the recent attacks on abortion rights.

GIFs from "Last Week Tonight"/YouTube.

These attacks are called TRAP laws, and they're forcing abortion clinics around the country to close at a rapid rate.

Since 2010, individual states have enacted more than 280 new restrictions on abortion. That startling number is what's led to the closing of somewhere around 70 abortion clinics across the country, and in many cases, leaving just one or two clinics open statewide.

These laws, often referred to as Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP), are usually presented as though they're being passed for the sake of women's health. They're not.

Let's make something really clear: Abortion is a very safe procedure. In fact, there's more risk in carrying a pregnancy to term than in having an abortion.

And even though this (often nonsurgical) procedure is considered safe by medical standards, TRAP laws target clinics with strict regulations that go beyond what's medically necessary to carry out an abortion procedure.

There are two types of regulations: restrictions that directly affect the clinic and restrictions that directly affect the person seeking the procedure.

In the end, they all affect the person seeking the abortion, but it's a two-pronged attack. In some states, laws specify things like the size of procedure rooms, the width of corridors, or the distance a clinic must be to a hospital.

Some states require that doctors who provide abortions have admitting privileges at hospitals, which are both unnecessary and hard to come by.

The other type of regulations, the ones that affect patients directly, include things like mandatory waiting periods between consultation and the abortion procedure, being forced to undergo unnecessary procedures like ultrasounds, being forced to watch that ultrasound, and being read a script by the doctor with medically dubious information.

These are all meant to deter and shame the person seeking the abortion from getting one.

But luckily, there's something you can do about this.

You can vote.

With one Supreme Court vacancy (and more likely coming in the next few years), whoever winds up sitting in the Oval Office come January 2017 will have a huge impact on whether TRAP laws become a way to effectively outlaw abortion or if they'll be thrown out for placing an undue burden on the person seeking an abortion (which they do).

One case is set to be heard next month — Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole . With more challenges to Roe v. Wade certainly to come in the following years, it's important to know where the presidential candidates stand on abortion, even if not for yourself, but for the 1 in 3 women who will need those services.

last week tonight

John Oliver is selling a kids book about Mike Pence's rabbit. But there's ... a twist.

Believe it or not, two kids books about Mike Pence's family pet rabbit, Marlon Bundo, were just released.

On a new episode of "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver," the TV host spotted something discouraging about Marlon Bundo's book tour.

With that in mind, the "Last Week Tonight" team decided to make their own rabbit-inspired book too: "A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo."

The best part? All of the proceeds from the "Last Week Tonight" book benefit two terrific groups helping LGBTQ people.

Watch John Oliver forgive nearly $15 million in debt with the push of a button.

It's not quite Oprah yelling 'You get a car! You get a car!' It's better.

Just by pressing a button, John Oliver made the largest one-time giveaway in TV history — nearly $15 million.

During his segment on debt buyers and collectors, Oliver focused on a specific kind of delinquency: medical bills.

Here's how debt buyers and collectors work.

To prove just how easy it is to get into the debt-buying business, "Last Week Tonight" started their own collection agency.

Oprah's famous car giveaway was valued at around $7 million. Oliver nearly doubled that.

You can learn more about credit buyers by watching the video from "Last Week Tonight," posted below.

Watch John Oliver powerfully take on absurd abortion restriction laws.

And here's what you can do to fight back.

You probably know somebody who's had an abortion.

These attacks are called TRAP laws, and they're forcing abortion clinics around the country to close at a rapid rate.

Let's make something really clear: Abortion is a very safe procedure. In fact, there's more risk in carrying a pregnancy to term than in having an abortion.

There are two types of regulations: restrictions that directly affect the clinic and restrictions that directly affect the person seeking the procedure.

But luckily, there's something you can do about this.

Watch John Oliver's fantastic segment from last night's show below:

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