Category: 3-LawSometimeCommentary

VR4 - It’s a Boston doubleheader for this Vapid Response Wednesday as Thomas, Lydia, and Matt take on two truly awful takes from the pages of Matt’s hometown paper last week within 24 hours of each other. But first: a vintage amuse douche from Tucker Carlson on the evils of the National Guard’s occupation of DC--in January 2021 (and apparently no other time)!

Then in today’s main stories:

(1) Conservative opinion-haver Heather Mac Donald on why she supports Trump’s absolute right to send American military personnel to occupy American cities just because he wants to.

(2) Project 2025 collaborator Hillsdale College dispatches its finest journalistic mind to explain why Donald J. Trump (yes, that Donald J. Trump) is 2025’s best possible candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize (yes, that Nobel Peace Prize).

• Watch on YouTube!

• “Trump was right to send the National Guard to Washington,” Heather Mac Donald, Boston Globe (8/13/25)

• “Breaking down the White House lies about D.C.”, Radley Balko (8/13/25)

• “Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize,” John J. Miller, Boston Globe (8/14/25)

Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!

OA1183 - We continue our ongoing look at some of our favorite Warren Court-era Supreme Court cases with this one-line 1958 decision finding as a matter of law that one of the most important LGTBQ magazines in U.S. history was not publishing obscenity. We begin by trying to find anything resembling smut in the archived pages of ONE magazine before Matt explains a bit more about the history of obscenity law in the U.S. and how Roth v U.S. changed everything just before ONE’s cert petition was taken up. Jenessa gets into the proven psychological benefits of being allowed to be who you are in public, and we consider the state of obscenity law today and who still might want to use it.

• Roth v. United States | 354 U.S. 476 (1957)

• ONE, Incorporated v. Otto K Oleson: Appellant’s Opening Brief – The Tangent Group

• One, Incorporated v. Olesen, 241 F. 2d 772 - Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit 1957 - Google Scholar

• U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on writ of certiorariin On e, Inc. v. Oleson immediately reversing 9th Circuit (1/13/1958)

Complete run of One magazine from 1953-1957, Internet Archive

Kate and Leah recap the week's legal news, including argument calendars for the next SCOTUS term and President Trump's attempted federal takeover of Washington, DC. Then, it's our third annual State of The Uterus episode. Melissa and Leah talk with Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Lisa Beattie Frelinghuysen, founder of ClutchKit, about the current status of reproductive freedom three years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Finally, Leah talks about the authors of After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe, But Not Abortion.

Favorite Things:
Leah: Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancies in America, by Irin Carmon; track list and cover art for Taylor Swift's forthcoming The Life of a Showgirl; Ben Platt's cover of Diet Pepsi; Melissa's appearance on Nicole Wallace's podcast, The Best People; "Redistricting Texas Now is Illegal and the U.S. Department of Justice is the Reason Why," by Ellen Katz; and Laura Loomer's weird deposition in a case against Bill Maher

Kate: Vera, or Faith, by Gary Shteyngart; Parable of the Talents, by Octavia Butler; Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab; The Retrievals; "The Chadha Presidency," by Josh Chafetz; and "Trump, John Roberts and the Unsettling of American Politics," by David Dailey

Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025! 

• 10/4 – Chicago

Learn more: http://crooked.com/events

Order your copy of Leah's book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes

Get tickets to CROOKED CON November 6-7 in Washington, D.C at http://crookedcon.com

Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky

Law firms, universities, and businesses are bending the knee to the Trump administration at the slightest threat. Amid this shocking cowardice, blue states have been a bastion of defiance against the president’s escalating power grabs—with attorneys general leading the way. Mark Joseph Stern talks with New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, who has been on the frontlines of this battle since Day One. 

Want more Amicus? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

OA1182 - DC is under full federal occupation. California is putting the Trump administration’s unprecedented deployment of the National Guard to support federal immigration enforcement on trial. And a major challenge to a critical provision of the Voting Rights Act is on the line in front of the Supreme Court. It’s Rapid Response Friday, and we’re here for all of it.

Finally, Matt breaks down THE BIG FREEZE--a new collective approach to stopping the rapid coming expansion of ICE which every decent person can do something to be a part of. Nothing is inevitable, and none of us are alone.

• DC Home Rule Act (President’s emergency authority over Metropolitan Police at p.85)

• Declaring a Crime Emergency in the District of Columbia – The White House

• Complaint in Newsom v. Trump (6/9/25)

• “THE AMERICAN GESTAPO IS HERE (and there is only one way that we can stop them now),” Matt Cameron, DEPORTNATION (8/15/25)

Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!

VR3 - It ’s Thomas, Lydia, and Matt versus the entire National Review editorial board! Join us as we take on the conservative magazine’s recent op-ed on why it is extremely rude to compare masked American federal agents of today who refuse to identify themselves as they grab innocent families off of the street and shove them into unmarked vans bound for concentration camps to masked Nazi German agents of 1933-1945 who refused to identify themselves as they grabbed innocent families off the street and shoved them into vans bound for concentration camps. Matt explains with historical examples why ICE is not NOT the Gestapo as we consider what we can learn from Nazi history.

We celebrate the recent return of Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the US after his illegal deportation to El Salvador with a take so bad that it is hard to believe that the whole thing wasn’t actually published in The Onion. What was the audience for this willfully obtuse Newsweek op-ed praising the DOJ for finding a way to bring Abrego Garcia back other than the fact that the Supreme Court told them to, and what is this trying to say to them? Has this thing already aged worse than Stephen Miller?

Finally: updates from Martha’s Vineyard (last week’s patron-only story) as Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz and his crusade to bring down the considerable weight of the law against people who refuse to serve him tasty Polish food.

WATCH US ON YOUTUBE!

• ”ICE is No Gestapo,” The Editors, National Review (8/6/25)

• "Why Was Kilmar Abrego Garcia Returned to the US?", Thomas G. Moukawsher, Newsweek (6/11/25) 

• “Alan Dershowitz once again denied pierogi as Martha’s Vineyard residents chant ‘time to go,’” Justin Baragona, The Independent (8/7/25)

Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!

With all our recent discussion on Skrmetti, and questions of scrutiny as applied to gender dysphoric individuals, the question of where women’s rights stand in this morass deserves new attention.  Professor Jill Hasday has written an important book, We the Men, which is deeply relevant to these discussions.  To what extent does inequality persist in the law?  When Courts seek to answer this question, they often cite the great progress that has been made.  Professor Hasday hypothesizes that this very celebration of progress tends to obscure the remaining issues, and may in a sense pre-empt the scrutiny required.  The echoes of Skrmetti are profound, and Professor Hasday joins us for a lively discussion of these issues and many others - including that recent bugaboo, the Geduldig case, which rears its ugly head once again.  CLE credit is available for lawyers and judges from podcast.njsba.com.

OA1181 - In this episode recorded almost exactly six months into the Trump administration, we check in on the progress of the Heritage Foundation’s infamous playbook to remake every part of the federal government in the second Trump administration. What is Project 2025, and who was behind it? How many of its goals have already been accomplished, how many are in progress, and what’s left?  

• Mandate For Leadership: The Conservative Promise, The Heritage Foundation (2023) 

• Project 2025 Tracker

Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!

Melissa and guest co-host Imani Gandy of Rewire News Group break down the week’s legal happenings, including how Texas Democrats are attempting to thwart that state’s gerrymandering efforts, college admissions in the age of Trump, and more Epstein fallout. Then, Melissa chats with Duke Law Professor Brandon Garrett about his book, Defending Due Process: Why Fairness Matters in a Polarized World. Finally, Leah speaks with University of Michigan Law Professor Richard Primus, author of the new book The Oldest Constitutional Question: Enumeration and Federal Power. Check out Imani’s podcast Boom! Lawyered.

Hosts’ Favorite Things:

Melissa: Tom Lake, Ann Patchett; The Midnight Library, Matt Haig; How the George Floyd Protests Changed America, for Better and Worse, Justin Driver (NYT)

Imani: Palisade Peaches; Revenge; Death Stranding; Brit Box

Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025! 

10/4 – Chicago

Learn more: http://crooked.com/events

Get tickets to CROOKED CON November 6-7 in Washington, D.C at http://crookedcon.com

Buy Leah's book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes

Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky

Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025! 

• 10/4 – Chicago

Learn more: http://crooked.com/events

Order your copy of Leah's book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes

Get tickets to CROOKED CON November 6-7 in Washington, D.C at http://crookedcon.com

Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky

Continuing our long slog through the end-of-Term opinion dump, it's fraud day! We dig into Kousisis v. United States and Thompson v. United States, two interesting federal criminal law puzzles.