Category: 3-LawSometimeCommentary

VR22 - Matt reports in just a few miles from--and this is true--Epstein Island to provide a recap of his recent visit to Minnesota days after Alex Pretti’s murder for the first major gathering of state legislators joining forces to stop federal overreach since 1814. How are the people of Minneapolis and their elected leaders holding up on the front lines of the Department of Homeland Security’s war on America, and what can we learn from their example? 

Finally, in today’s Vapid Response: professional centrist (and amateur constitutional scholar) Lionel Shriver explains how nearly three hours of research has convinced her that sanctuary jurisdictions, the people of Minneapolis, and Antonin Scalia have gotten it all wrong.

1. State Futures website

2. Video of the Minnesota Senate Rules and Administration Select Subcommittee on Federal Impacts to Minnesotans and Economic Stability hearing held Jan. 29, 2026

3. “There Should Be No Sanctuary From ICE,” Lionel Shriver, The Spectator (Jan 2025)

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Take a break from the downfall of democracy and instead get outraged at the deep injustice of a year-long feud over a bronze medal in women’s gymnastics. This story’s got everything: bravery, racism, the best and the worst of sportsmanship, bad blood that’s been brewing since the Cold War, and, somehow, the Swedish Federal Court. Come for the weird gymnastics scoring rules, stay for the legal analysis of international arbitration rules.

• Rory Carroll (August 5, 2024). Gymnastics - Biles bows to Andrade in floor final at Paris games. Reuters.

• International Gymnastics Federation, Code of Points

  • 2022-2024: https://www.gymnastics.sport/publicdir/rules/files/en_2022-2024%20WAG%20COP.pdf

  • 2025-2028: https://www.gymnastics.sport/publicdir/rules/files/en_1.1%20-%20WAG%20COP%202025-2028.pdf

• International Gymnastics Federation, Technical Regulations

  • 2024: https://www.gymnastics.sport/publicdir/rules/files/en_1.1%20-%20Technical%20Regulations%202024.pdf

  • 2025: https://www.gymnastics.sport/publicdir/rules/files/en_1.1%20-%20Technical%20Regulations%202025.pdf

• English press release from Swiss Federal Court.

Further reading:

• Richard McLaren, The CAS Ad Hoc Division at the Athens Olympic Games, 15 Marq. Sports L. Rev. 175 (2004).

• Video of the relevant floor routines, plus a time stamp for when they all attempt the infamous Gogean leap:

  • Rebeca Andrade: 0:55; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXKM8ThtYOE

  • Simone Biles: 0:53; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2m2UL5bljw

  • Jordan Chiles: 1:29; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU0769SvbWE

  • Ana Bărbosu: 1:06; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik01tvmwV9c

  • Sabrina Maneca-Voinea: 1:49; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuF-smKa4Vo

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• Leah: What a “Melania” Cinematographer Hoped to Accomplish, Isaac Chotiner (New Yorker); Bad Bunny’s Grammys speech; Melissa’s upcoming book (link below); Margaritaville Resort Times Square
• Kate: The Secrets of the Whales (Disney Plus); Liam Ramos Was Just One of Hundreds of Children at This Detention Center. Release Them All., Elora Mukherjee (NYT); Ian McKellen on Colbert

• Melissa: Should You Buy a Newspaper or a Yacht? By Alexandra Petri, How Autocrats Meddle With Elections, Anne Applebaum (The Atlantic); This Guy Sucked; Nuremberg; Mona Lisa Smile; Mrs. America; Fleece Puppy Bag (Zara)

• 3/6/26 – San Francisco
• 3/7/26 – Los Angeles

According to Marc Elias, Dahlia Lithwick’s guest on Amicus, “This week will be looked back on as a pivot point in terms of how the midterms play out.” Elias is a nationally recognized authority on voting rights, redistricting and campaign finance law. He is Chair of Elias Law Group and founder of Democracy Docket. 

In the past few weeks, Donald Trump’s election denialism has kicked into high gear, just as his poll numbers hit new lows. Elias tells us the FBI/DNI raid to seize ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, and Steve Bannon’s new threats to surround polling places with ICE officers in November, show an administration that is prototyping new mechanisms for election subversion and voter suppression. But the public has power in this scenario, especially if they start paying attention to elections and voting rights now, rather than the day before November 3rd, 2026.

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.

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OA1233 - We are not conspiracy theorist type people. But... yeah man I don't know. But also, so much more in these files to talk about. If you know anything about the federal government’s 2007 plea deal with Jeffrey Epstein you know that it was bad. But newly-released documents from the Epstein files show that it was actually much worse than that! Thanks to a newly-released legal memo, a draft indictment, and internal emails between prosecutors we now have a much better understanding of the disagreements within US Attorney for the District of Southern Florida Alex Acosta’s office as they finalized the terms of a much-too-friendly agreement between the US government and a billionaire pedophile which a federal appeals court would later call “a national disgrace.” Matt has the receipts for this special emergency episode.

You can also watch this episode on YouTube!

1. Steve Bannon’s Interview with Jeffrey Epstein (directly downloaded from the DOJ)

2. Investigation into the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida’s Resolution of Its 2006–2008 Federal Criminal Investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and Its Interactions with Victims during the Investigation (Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility, 2020)

3. Incident Report (Palm Beach Police Department, 2006) 

4. Epstein indictment draft (United States Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida, 2007)

5. Appendix in The People of the State of New York v. Jeffrey E. Epstein (2013)

6. Opinion - Alex Acosta acted with professionalism and integrity in handling the Jeffrey Epstein case (Miami Herald, 2/16/2019) 

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In a wide-ranging episode, we finish looking back - and in doing so, we look into the near future as well.  The birthright citizenship case will be heard in oral argument on April 1, and we go back to our reaction to the executive order.  Unitary executive matters are awaiting court rulings; we look back at our back and forth with Steven Calabresi.  Meanwhile, audience questions on court term limits and the virtues of virtue are addressed, and there are more tidbits to enjoy.  

We're back for another live show at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, hosted by the Northwestern Federalist Society! We discuss the term's two Second Amendment arguments -- first recapping the oral argument in Wolford v. Lopez, featuring Hawaii's law about getting consent to bear arms on private property; and then previewing the oral argument in United States v. Hemani, about the ban on possession of guns by drug users.

E21 - CONTENT WARNING / TRIGGER WARNING: references to child sex abuse, child  sex abuse  materials, survivor accounts

Watch this episode on YouTube!

The Epstein Files have been released--or have they? Days after the Department of Justice’s delayed and poorly-redacted release of millions of new documents connected with the world’s most infamous sex trafficker, we sit down for a first look at what is (and isn’t) in here. We begin with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s attempt to fight for the right to party with Jeffrey Epstein before evaluating the DOJ’s efforts to comply with its Congressional mandate to release the files more than a month after they were supposed to. We also look at a heartbreaking journal from an anonymous survivor to  try to understand before Matt pulls out some selections from keyword searches which implicate Elon Musk, mega-financier Leon Black, magician David Copperfield,  sitting Secretary of the Treasury Howard Lutnick, former Obama administration lawyer Kathy Ruemmler, and many more.  Also: what to make about the wilder allegations you may have heard involving Donald Trump, and what it means to “be in the Epstein files” at all.

NEXT TIME: the most disgusting plea deal in American history somehow gets… worse? 

1. Epstein Files Transparency Act, PL 119-38 (11/19/2025)

2. Epstein Library search page, DOJ.gov

3. (CW/TW) Anonymous survivor’s  journal, removed from DOJ Epstein Library but backed up to Archive.org on 2/1/26 (CW/TW)

• Leah: Streets Of Minneapolis, Bruce Springsteen; The Blood-and-Soil Nationalism That Killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good, Ta-Nehisi Coates (Vanity Fair); Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong, Adam Serwer (The Atlantic); Chris Hayes’ reporting from MN
• Kate: This May Be the Only Path to Accountability for the Minneapolis Shootings, Barry Friedman and Stephen I. Vladeck (NYT); Who Gave ICE Permission to Trample the Constitution? Amicus (Slate); JVN Hair; Migrations, Charlotte McConaghy
• Melissa: His and Hers, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model (Netflix); King of the North

• Martin Luther King Jr.'s Life of Struggle Outside the South, Jeanne Theoharis 

• 3/6/26 – San Francisco

• 3/7/26 – Los Angeles

OA1232 - Hey OA-ers, this episode was a Gavel Gavel bonus, but we wanted to be sure everyone was updated on what's going on with the Luigi Mangione trials. New York public defender Liz Skeen is here to break it all down! And since the judge made some rulings on 1/30, I've got an update for ya!

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