Ignorance of the law is no excuse! That's true for a traffic stop, and it's true if you want to participate in whatever's left of American democracy. If the events since the 2016 election taught us anything, it's that tuning out is not an option. Legal journalists Liz Dye and Andrew Torrez break down the week's most important courtroom stories, so you can keep on top of this crazy news cycle. Whether it's Texas giving two middle fingers to the Supreme Court, or Donald Trump in all the courts at once, we've got you covered.
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Joe Dye begins a series on the second phase of the redistricting wars at his Substack.
Multiple states are threatening to tax payouts from Trump’s slush fund at 100 percent.
The Trump Administration is suing Massachusetts for failing to give “confidential,” hard to trace license plates to ICE and CBP.
A panel of federal judges in Alabama once again rejected the state’s congressional map as an illegal racial gerrymander. The state has appealed to SCOTUS.
Don Lemon moved to unseal the grand jury transcript in the Cities Church protest prosecution. He cited the recently unsealed magistrate’s docket, showing the government’s wild overreach — not to mention incompetence — in its warrant applications, along with the many cases where courts have said the DOJ is currently lawless and entitled to no presumption of regularity.
The New York Times had a wild story this week about the Justice Department’s total loss of credibility with grand juries, including in Wyoming, where the US Attorney’s total violation of grand jury rules led to the dismissal of nine indictments.
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The US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois is reportedly investigating E. Jean Carroll for perjury. In a deposition in 2022, Carroll misspoke and said that her litigation was not being funded by anyone else. She later corrected the record to say that some of her fees were being paid by a nonprofit associated with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. The government is trying to do to that nonprofit what it’s done to the Southern Poverty Law Center, alleging that it somehow conspired to hide its activities by getting Carroll to lie under oath.
Meanwhile, the SPLC is moving to dismiss its case based on vindictive prosecution. Luckily it has eleventy-seven clips of Trump officials declaring that they’re on a revenge mission to take out the civil rights organization.
Attorney D. Hayden Fisher, who filed a bumptious SLAPP suit against locals in Norfolk who dared to disparage a MAGA-coded brewery for perceived anti-LGBTQ+ bias.
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We’ll revisit the implosion of the Broadview 6 prosecution. Turns out, the government’s main goal all along was to hide the corruption and misconduct at the heart of this case.
And Kilmar Abrego Garcia is free! Judge Waverly Crenshaw dismissed his criminal case on the basis of vindictive prosecution.
US v. Bellows [Maine Voter Rolls]
Ep 230 — DOJ Tiptoes Around The Sh*tpile!
Episode 230
Friday, May 22, 2026 • Duration 01:05:21
Congressional Republicans abstain courteously from blessing Trump’s ICE/CBP allocation after Trump torpedoes several sitting GOP politicians and demands cash for the ballroom and the $1.8 billion J6 slush fund. They’re heading home until June, TYVM.
DOJ indicts former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, age 94, for shooting down two flights of dissident exiles dropping leaflets back in 1996. Is this a prelude to Bay of Pigs 2?
Officials in Florida and Tennessee discover that the First Amendment applies to everyone, even people who criticize Charlie Kirk. Good thing it’s taxpayers picking up the tab for this little life lesson!
And Acting AG Todd Blanche adds a codicil to the slush fund settlement granting amnesty to Trump and his kids for past tax crimes — but not future ones! (Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.)
Judge Leo Sorokin in Massachusetts sanctions ICE for lying to the court about the time an immigrant detainee left the jurisdiction. This one will make you mad!
And the indictment against the “Broadview 6” for protesting outside an ICE detention center implodes after the grand jury transcripts reveal a dumpsterfire of impropriety and potentially sanctionable misconduct by the prosecution. Read this — but not after taking a giant swig of milk!
Ep 229 — Judicial Warfare
Episode 229
Tuesday, May 19, 2026 • Duration 57:31
The Supreme Court stayed a lower court decision out of Texas banning doctors from dispensing the abortion drug mifepristone.
The Colorado Supreme Court barred Children’s Hospital from cutting gender-affirming care, calling it a denial of treatment on the basis of sex and gender identity.
The DOJ is suing the DC Bar to stop it disciplining upstanding government lawyers like Ed Martin and Jeff Clark. The case has been assigned to Judge Richard Leon!!!
Elon Musk lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI.
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The DOJ’s effort to harass trans kids and their medical providers is escalating into a judicial crisis as Judge Reed O’Connor in the Northern District of Texas purports to bar Rhode Island Hospital from seeking redress in any other court or from “aiding and abetting” anyone else in seeking redress. Meanwhile in Rhode Island, Judge Mary McElroy says the Hospital does not have to comply.
Trump purports to “settle” his lawsuit against the IRS over the 2020 disclosure of his tax returns by establishing a $1.8 billion slush fund for the “victims of weaponization” of the DOJ under Biden. Is that legal? (.)
Ep 228 — Gerrymanders For Me But Not For Thee
Episode 228
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 • Duration 01:05:12
As Trump rants at “Neil and Amy” for betraying him in the IEEPA tariffs case, the next tariff battle is already taking shape.
Reuters legal reporters analyzed court stats in Minnesota and proved that federal prosecutions cratered during the immigration surge. So much for “cleaning up” crime.
Doofus of the Day: Pete Hegseth, who is vowing to put Senator Mark Kelly in jail … again.
Judge Melissa Dubose referred the head of the Civil Division at the US Attorney’s Office for Rhode Island for possible sanctions due to lack of candor. Chief Judge John McConnell appointed a special counsel to review.
The Virginia Supreme Court struck down the Democratic gerrymander on a technicality. Now the state’s legislators have filed a longshot at the Supreme Court.
Ep 227 — Presumption of Irregularity
Episode 227
Friday, May 8, 2026 • Duration 01:04:36
Kash Patel is not as think as you drunk he is … again. And if you tell someone about it, he’ll strap you to a polygraph.
The DC Circuit seems likely to side with Senator Mark Kelly in his lawsuit against Pete Hegseth for trying to steal his pension.
The DOJ subpoenaed a hospital in Rhode Island for medical records of kids receiving gender affirming care. While the parties were negotiating, the DOJ filed a petition to enforce in Texas, which their hand-picked Judge Reed O’Connor instantly granted. Now the hospital has appealed to the Fifth Circuit (ughhh) and the Rhode Island Child Advocate has filed a motion to quash in the District of Rhode Island.
Our Doofus of the Day is Chief Justice John Roberts. It won’t always be someone on the Supreme Court, but when you stand up in front of hundreds of lawyers to whine about how unfair it is that people think your obviously political Supreme Court is political, how could we resist?
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Ep 226 — SCOTUS and Louisiana Go Mask Off
Episode 226
Tuesday, May 5, 2026 • Duration 56:35
DOCKET ALERTS:
Sadly, recurring L&C segment “Justin Baldoni Teaches CivPro” is canceled. He and Blake Lively settled their civil suit today. Now we’ll just have to rely on Trump and his minions to show us how law does not work.
The DOJ subpoenaed a Rhode Island hospital for patient records on gender affirming care. When the hospital failed to respond (oh no!), the DOJ moved to enforce the subpoena … in Texas, before a hand-picked conservative jurist. Judge Reed O’Connor granted the motion, and now the hospital is seeking to block the demand in a Rhode Island federal court.
Trump says the War Powers Resolution doesn’t count because of the ceasefire. He’s full of s***.
Law and Chaos’s first inaugural Doofus of the Day is Justice Neil Gorsuch, who went on Fox News to hawk his book and tell us all about the Christian Founding Fathers.
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On Friday the Fifth Circuit purported to ban the abortion drug mifepristone nationwide based on a letter from HHS Secretary Robert “Bear Carcass” Kennedy implying that the dispensing protocol had been arbitrarily decided. On Monday, the Supreme Court stayed that order temporarily.
Ep 225 — SCOTUS Breaks Democracy
Episode 225
Friday, May 1, 2026 • Duration 59:26
Elon Musk discovers that filing a lawsuit against Sam Altman and sh*tposting about it on social media is a lot more fun than testifying
Alex Jones is back on his BS. He managed to delay a proposed deal to license InfoWars assets to the satirical news outlet The Onion. Again.
The judge presiding over Trump’s shakedown case against the IRS for the wrongful disclosure of his tax returns in 2020 has appointed a whole squad of lawyers to serve as amici. They’ll brief the issue of whether the court has jurisdiction to preside over a case where the president appears to be suing himself.
James Comey has been indicted again. This time his “crime” is posting a picture of seashells arranged to say “8647.” It is exceptionally stupid, but we will break it down in exceptional detail.
Ep 224 — Musk v. Altman … May The Best Asteroid Win
Episode 224
Tuesday, April 28, 2026 • Duration 01:01:15
Never one to let a good crisis go to waste, Republicans are insisting that the lone gunman at the White House Correspondents Dinner means that Trump can — in fact, must! — build his illegal ballroom. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche tweeted out a demand for the National Historic Trust to drop its lawsuit. The Trust told him to get bent.
Trump’s shakedown of the IRS hit a snag as a federal judge in Florida said she may not have jurisdiction over a case where the plaintiff and the defendant are the same person — Donald Trump.
And EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is being so weird at Congress. Is he bad at law, or just lying?
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It’s a courtroom brawl between Elon Musk and Sam Altman over the past and future of AI. Musk claims he was swindled out of seed money by claims that OpenAI would be operated as a non-profit, only to watch the company pivot to a trillion-dollar for-profit enterprise. The jury is empaneled, and the trial begins this week.
The Supreme Court heard oral argument Monday in Chatrie v. US. The case involves law enforcement's use of “geofencing” data to find criminal suspects based on their cell phone location data. Should the government have to get a warrant to collect that info? What should those warrants look like?
Ep 223 — They Started It. We Finished It. (Ft. Joe Dye)
Episode 223
Friday, April 24, 2026 • Duration 01:07:08
Capitol police officer Shauni Kerkhoff has sued Glenn Beck’s outfit The Blaze for defamation after they said she “kinda walked like a criminal” – and she’s brought out the big guns. The Trump administration funneled another $1.25 million in taxpayer dollars to campaign stooge Carter Page. The Fifth Circuit hit us with another terrible decision, this one permitting states to force public schools to display the Ten Commandments. We wrote about it on the blog, and it’s even worse than you imagine.
Meet the new tariffs! Same as the old tariffs! (Illegal.) And NO the administration can’t keep collecting them right now because they’re too busy trying to figure out how to refund the last batch of illegal tariffs to figure it out.
The 11th Circuit has joined two other circuit courts of appeal in ruling that the Trump administration cannot use the mandatory detention provisions of the Immigration and Naturalization Act to hold any immigrant, anywhere in the US, for any length of time and with no opportunity for a bond hearing.
The DOJ is so desperate to hire lawyers that they’re offering signing bonuses and tipping current employees with “retention incentive allowances” to keep them from fleeing. Turns out, competent lawyers don’t like harassing trans kids for sport and indicting Democratic politicians on spurious grounds.
Judge Coleen McMahon ruled that DOGE illegally dismantled the National Endowment for the Humanities when the bros fed the grantee database into ChatGPT with an instruction to find grants were “DEI.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center says the government’s public lies about the case — lookin’ at you, Todd Blanche — are so egregious that the court should hand over the grand jury transcript.
Judges in Rhode Island and Texas are dueling over the DOJ’s subpoena for the medical record for transgender minors.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Alina Habba — what even is her job these days??? — both appeared on TV and undermined the Comey seashells case.
Democratic candidate Lindsay Garcia and a local voter have sued Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry over his executive order that suspends that state’s primary elections – but only for the US House of Representatives races.
And for subscribers: US Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro is ready to pick up the slack for Justin Baldoni. Today she’ll teach us how Munsingwear vacatur doesn’t work.
In Re: Administrative Subpoena 25-1431-032 [Texas action]
Finally, we’ll cringe our way through the DOJ’s latest motion in the ballroom case — it’s the most inappropriate, unprofessional thing we’ve ever seen, including from pro se litigants.
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