Law and Chaos

The rule of law is under attack and the DOJ's prestige and presumption of regularity have crumbled. How do we fix this moving forward?   Akiva Cohen joins us to discuss GLOW Law (Government Lawyers Oversight Watchdog). Their objective is to hold attorneys accountable for acting unethically or illegally in service of POTUS & DOJ. GLOW also seeks to highlight instances of legal courage by government...

DOCKET ALERTS:   Trump's cronies on the Kennedy Center board have come up with a new reason to stonewall discovery in the lawsuit brought by Rep. Joyce Beatty: executive privilege .   A federal judge in Virginia dismissed the Trump DOJ's lawsuit challenging Virginia's law providing in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants.   Justice Sam Alito says you have to stop being so mean and buy his boo...

Today we're doing something a bit different. We're discussing the excellent book "By the Fire We Carry," by Rebecca Nagle and the fight for Cherokee sovereignty, through the lens of the 2020 Supreme Court cast McGirt v. Oklahoma.    By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land https://bookshop.org/p/books/by-the-fire-we-carry-the-generations-long-fight-for-justice-on...

In Georgia, DOJ celebrates its 26th courtroom loss in the battle to steal state voter rolls.   An Arizona appeals court overturned a manslaughter sentence because of an absolutely bonkers use of AI .   A judge in DC Superior Court dismissed vandalism charges against Olympic canoeist David Hearn with prejudice .   The Justice Department filed an ethics complaint against almost every judge in the Di...

Congratulations to now-former FBI director Andrew Bailey, who resigned this morning and got out of the way of whatever scandal is coming down the pike.   On Friday, a jury ordered Apple to pay $5.7 billion to a company called Taction for infringing its haptic patents .   The White House is still blocking CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the Oval Office and excluding CNN from pool duties. Does that vi...

DOCKET ALERTS:   ProPublica published a bombshell story about Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), who was allegedly the subject of an FBI corruption investigation until Trump killed it .   The Department of Homeland Security is still looking for the vote fraud. In July, they announced that they found over 250,000 illegally-registered voters in four states. By August, that number declined to just under 1...

DOCKET ALERTS:   Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh and the 11 other members of the Open Markets Committee voted to raise interest rates 0.25 percent, and Trump is pissed.   The New York Times published a blockbuster story , interviewing almost all of the federal judges in Minnesota about what it was like to hold the line during the Trump administration's immigration surge into the Twin Cities.   T...

DOCKET ALERTS:   This podcast won a victory today in its lawsuit against the Trump administration to kick loose the document the DOJ used as the basis for a frivolous ethics complaint against Judge James Boasberg in DC. Judge Abelson ordered the DOJ to produce discovery to us so we can evaluate the administration's claims that "Attachment A" isn't subject to the Freedom of Information Act.   The h...

DOCKET ALERTS:   The president is promising to send out $5,000 checks to every American if Republicans win the midterms.   The Fourth Circuit became the ninth appellate court to find that the Trump administration's mandatory detention policy for all immigrants without legal status is patently illegal.   The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to let it install US Attorneys without Senate...

DOCKET ALERTS:   New Jersey became the latest state to beat back a Trump administration challenge to its sanctuary jurisdiction laws.   After the Supreme Court's conservatives (less CJR) allowed Trump to build his ballroom, he's demanding to be able to go ahead and build the fascist arch.   A federal judge in Minnesota denied X.ai's motion to enjoin the state from enforcing a law barring AI nudifi...

DOCKET ALERTS:   The fight over Trump's attempt to seize control of state mail-in ballots is headed for the Supreme Court. After a hearing before Judge Indira Talwani, the government didn't wait for a ruling — and it didn't wait for the First Circuit to weigh in either. It immediately demanded that the justices step in. Justice Jackson, who sits over the First Circuit, did not issue an admin stay....

The J. M. Smucker Company notched a win in its trademark dilution case against Trader Joe's over the Uncrustable dupes. A judge in Ohio refused to dismiss the case or transfer it to California.    For the third time, Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected Trump's attempt to remove his hush money conviction case to federal court from New York State court.   The Supreme Court allowed Trump to build his mo...

DOCKET ALERTS:   Washington Post opinion writer Karen Attiah, who was fired for her remarks after the death of Charlie Kirk, has been reinstated to her job after winning in arbitration.   Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook responded to Trump's latest effort to fire her by pointing out that multiple members of Trump's own cabinet made the same paperwork error she did on a mortgage application, and...

DESCRIPTION:   It's a special episode today. We'll spend the whole show diving into the debacle of eBay, a $50 billion company, launching a harassment campaign against a middle-aged couple in Massachusetts. Come for the corporate bigwigs sending live roaches by mail, stay for the national security kerfuffle. It's a wild story, and it even has a happy ending. Steiner v. EBay https://www.courtlisten...

DOCKET ALERTS:   US Attorney Jeanine Pirro wants to leave the door open to re-charging David Hearn for damaging the reflecting pool, although she concedes that literally everything she said in her original indictment was a lie.   Pirro is also doing her darnedest to keep a lady locked up for the high crime of spraypainting .   Judge Reed O'Connor is trying for a third time to allow manufacturers t...

DOCKET ALERTS:   The Supreme Court denied Trump's motion for rehearing in the first E. Jean Carroll case. Time to pay up, creep!   Federal Judge Lynn Winmill invalidated Idaho's abortion ban insofar as it contains no exception to preserve the health of the pregnant person — including mental health. Along the way, he took apart the Supreme Court's hack historical analysis in Dobbs.   DOOFUS OF THE...

DOCKET ALERTS:   The Kennedy Center board of trustees is back on its BS. After being ordered to take Trump's name off the side of the building, they've now voted again to put it back on. They also voted to close the facility for two years. Rep. Joyce Beatty, who brought the lawsuit that forced them to back off the first time, vows to fight on.   Meanwhile musician Chuck Redd was just awarded $252,...

DOCKET ALERTS:   Todd Blanche was confirmed as permanent attorney general after Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy remembered that he's an unprincipled hack.   Trump's lackey Will Scharf is being promoted from staff secretary to White House Counsel in advance of the midterms.   The White House is once again trying to fire Federal Reserve Board Member Lisa Cook after the Supreme Court blocked it the fi...

DOCKET ALERTS:   Todd Blanche advanced out of the Judiciary Committee and faces a vote by the full Senate on whether to confirm him as Attorney General. Will Republicans defy—JK,LOL.   Journalist Katie Phang's lawsuit against Blanche for failing to disclose all documents required under the Epstein Files Transparency Act hit a snag when the government just plum forgot to file an answer to her compl...

Andrew is flying solo today. He's got three stories about the petty incompetence of this administration. First, we start off with the likely impending confirmation of Todd Blanche as Attorney General after the DOJ finally put in writing that the $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization" slush fund is dead. The Trump tax giveaway is still alive, though, and that means so is Judge Williams's investigation a...

It's our semiquincentennial! And we're celebrating with a long-form interview with Zach Everson, research director of the Trump Accountability Project. Zach joins us to discuss how cryptocurrency powered Donald Trump's massively successful grift of billions of dollars, and what we can do about it. Along the way, we also discuss the proposed CLARITY ACT , and how the fake ethics provisions added by...

DOCKET ALERTS:   The Paramount-Warner Bros. merger is on hold well into next year. The parties stipulated that the merger would not go through pending trial in the antitrust case brought by twelve state AGs, despite massive financial penalties for Paramount if the deal is delayed. Meanwhile, the Writers Guild of America has filed a similar antitrust action , which has also been assigned to Judge A...

DOCKET ALERTS:   After SecDef Hegseth ordered testosterone testing for all troops over 30 and offered hormone replacement therapy to all, Judge Ana Reyes ordered the government to explain how this is different from the healthcare for trans men which they just banned.    On Tuesday, a judge in Florida ordered Trump to turn over his financial records to the BBC in his defamation trollsuit . Turns ou...

DOCKET ALERTS:   Minnesota passed the "Grandparents' Happy Hour" law making it legal to serve wine to grown adults in assisted living. Skol!   The DOJ's Civil Division got tossed out of court in Massachusetts because it failed to respond to a motion to dismiss its lawsuit over the state's refusal to issue undercover license plates to ICE.   Former Olympian David Hearn moved to dismiss the charge t...

DOCKET ALERTS:   This week, the Senate confirmed Jeffrey Kuntz as a judge in the Southern District of Florida, making him the second former Florida state jurist who did Trump a solid in his trollsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board and got himself promoted to the federal bench. Also this week, the Senate confirmed Matthew Schwartz to the Second Circuit, making him the third of Trump's personal la...