Kilmar Abrego Garcia's wife — who is also named Abrego Garcia — had been named to Time magazine's 100 most influential people of the year, while her husband remained in CECOT; a separate individual, Ramirez, had a 1997 removal order reactivated after she had voluntarily departed in 2011, and a judge ordered a Christmas Eve bond hearing.

The continuing resolution that kept the government open included language barring reductions in force through January 30 — and a judge issued a TRO blocking the State Department from firing workers because that shutdown deal language had the force of law.

The administration issued an executive order stripping collective bargaining rights from Treasury Department employees on national security grounds — and the DC Circuit was openly skeptical, with judges pressing the government on why Treasury workers specifically posed a national security risk.

The administration had been deporting people to third countries — not their home countries — and a judge issued a partial summary judgment requiring the government to give people notice and a chance to be heard before removing them somewhere they'd never chosen.

Prosecutor Lindsey Halligan — whose cases against both Comey and James were dismissed because she was improperly appointed — went back to the grand jury for a third attempt to indict Letitia James, and was rejected for the third time in a row.

The court ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia released by 5 p.m. — a habeas victory grounded in a simple but powerful argument: immigration detention is civil, not criminal, and the government can only hold someone while removal is actually imminent.

The J.G.G. contempt proceedings moved into declaration phase — Noem, Blanche, and Mazzara all filed declarations that the court found insufficient, and Reveni was ordered to appear in person at December 15-16 hearings.

The administration wanted to paint the Old Executive Office Building white to match the White House — and a judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the project because the building is a designated national historic landmark.

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Texas's new congressional maps were challenged as racial gerrymandering — but the state argued the lines were drawn for partisan reasons, not racial ones, and the Supreme Court let the maps stay in place while the case was pending.

Mississippi wanted to use a screen to block a six-year-old child accuser from seeing the defendant during testimony — and the question for SCOTUS was whether the Confrontation Clause requires some kind of individual finding before the state can take that step.

After six months of appeals, the door on contempt proceedings for the administration's failure to stop deportation flights to El Salvador is now "off its hinges" — the government told the judge the official responsible was Kristi Noem, and everyone involved must now file declarations about their role.

Cox Communications was hit with a billion-dollar copyright judgment for not terminating accounts of subscribers who pirated music — and the case raises questions that could reshape how much liability internet service providers bear for what their customers do.

A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard to the District of Columbia without congressional authorization — then stayed it himself for 21 days to give both sides time to appeal.

Prosecutor Lindsey Halligan confirmed in open court that she had replaced the original indictment approved by the grand jury with a new copy — and then, without presenting it to the grand jury, just told the foreperson to sign the new one — potentially meaning the charges against Comey were never validly filed.

It took from April to November for one of the first major challenges to the administration's funding freezes to make it to a federal appeals court — and Bryan used the timing to explain why he wasn't panicking about the pace of court challenges.

The same judge who had already rejected the administration's claim that Voice of America employees couldn't unionize for national security reasons was now looking at the same argument again — for a different department, with the same facts, from the same administration.

[NEEDS CONTENT — case not covered in November 14 transcript; Bryan may have addressed Veneno in a separate segment or on a different day]

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Federal agency out-of-office messages were quietly replaced with messages containing partisan political language — and a court gave the government two days to fix it.

The Supreme Court issued a stay allowing the government to issue passports showing only the sex assigned at birth — a temporary procedural order, not a ruling on the merits, but one with immediate real-world consequences for transgender Americans.

The DOJ keeps restarting the Comey prosecution clock — each time a new grand jury term expires or a judge pushes back, the government finds a procedural workaround to keep the case alive without actually moving it forward.

A court permanently enjoined a section of Trump's executive order that would have required states to give the federal government proof of which citizenship documents they checked for every voter — a power the Constitution gives to states, not Washington.

SNAP benefits run out tonight — Halloween. States sued the USDA to force it to tap the Long-Term Emergency Fund, which has $5.5 billion set aside for exactly this kind of situation. The government's argument: it was designed for hurricanes, not shutdowns. Their own brief, page 6, section D: they admit the language was added for this purpose, and the only reason it's never been used for a shutdown is that in January 2019 the shutdown ended before they had to. The judge: "If you don't have money, you tighten your belt. You are not gonna make everyone drop dead because of a political game somewhere."

Kilmar Abrego Garcia's civil judge was scheduling November hearings when news reports said the government was planning to deport him to Liberia in 72 hours. Judge: if that's true, why are we scheduling anything? Government assured her they'd wait for her permission. She also demanded an answer on why they weren't sending him to Costa Rica, which he requested. Nobody had a good answer. The timing also bothered her: trying to deport him right before his criminal evidentiary hearing "did not pass the smell test."

The Ninth Circuit granted en banc rehearing of Oregon v. Trump and vacated the three-judge panel's decision. All 29 judges voted; about 11 will now rehear it. The panel's key factual finding — that 115 FPS officers (25% of all FPS nationwide) had been redeployed to Portland — may have been undercut by discovery: the actual highest count in Portland was 31, and that was only briefly. And as of today, the original district court trial on the merits begins. Three-day trial that could moot a lot of the en banc questions.

Bryan attended a discovery hearing Monday in Smith v. Trump — seven police officers injured on January 6th suing the Trump campaign for inciting violence. The hearing was about privilege: which documents the defendants can withhold. The core problem: whether a document is privileged often depends on which hat the sender was wearing at the moment — White House employee or campaign staffer — and nobody has records of those hours. The judge: I'm not going through these one at a time. But I can't just take your word for it either.

The AP kept calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico after Trump renamed it. The White House kicked them out of the press room. Now it's at the DC Circuit, with argument November 24th. The government's position: it's a small room, we don't have to let everyone in. AP's position: you can't kick us out specifically because you didn't like what we printed. Bryan: the legitimate question is who gets to decide — but retaliatory exclusion is different from just choosing not to invite someone.

Chicago Headline Club v. Noem had a dramatic week. CBP Commander Gregory Bovino was caught on video throwing tear gas into a crowd in Little Village — including at what appear to be journalists with large cameras. The TRO requires warnings before tear gas; especially for journalists. No warning appears to have been given. Some officers in the video appear without ID numbers. Bryan: "Don't follow the shiny thing." Whether protesters were peaceful is a messier question. Gassing journalists without warning is not. Bovino ordered to appear in person October 28.

The shutdown firing game of cat and mouse continued. The TRO blocking the administration from firing furloughed workers has now been modified twice in one week. The government keeps finding agencies not named in the order and trying to fire those employees before the judge notices. The judge's response: define "federal agency" as a list of specific departments on a quarter-page roster. Bryan: "Maybe these agencies will dress up as something not on the list for Halloween and see what they can get away with."

Bryan opened with a lighter one — a bizarre third-party filing that appeared in a closed AFGE v. OPM case. A person with no connection to the case filed something incoherent about a family law matter in California, a missing car in North Carolina, and something about Ted Cruz. The real heart of the filing: he wanted the return of his sacred thread, which marks the beginning of a lifelong spiritual journey in Hinduism. The judge dismissed it. Bryan: "I hope the guy manages to get his car and sacred thread back, although it appears they've been lost since 2008, so I'm not super optimistic."

SCOTUS denied cert in Thomas v. Humbold — a challenge to Humboldt County's code enforcement system, where appeals go only to other code officers, not a jury. Justice Gorsuch wrote a statement on the denial: "civil juries play a critical role in checking government overreach." And then he telegraphed what comes next: "probably time we came around on this one too." Bryan: "a really good example of how a statement or a dissent from a denial can still be important and worth paying attention to."

Donald Trump's DOJ indicted John Bolton — his own former national security advisor. The charges: keeping classified documents in his home and using Signal to discuss national security matters with family members who didn't have clearance. Sound familiar? Bryan: "If none of these situations are ringing any bells, maybe do a little reading." He pled not guilty. Unlike Comey and James, this one was brought by a lawfully appointed prosecutor. Bryan: "The guy has been one of the biggest tightasses in national security for decades. The odds that he haphazardly threw classified documents around... the Jets have a better chance of winning the Super Bowl."

Bryan just came out of the CHC v. Noem hearing. The judge was upset. She's been watching the news and not seeing the identification identifiers she ordered. Her solution: all federal agents deployed to Chicago must now wear body cameras — turned on. Government's excuse: the existing videos were shot at bad angles. Judge: "Okay, well, we'll fix that." And then she said something that made the courtroom go quiet: "There's a very easy solution to this problem. Just basically stop violating the First Amendment."

The Supreme Court rejected Alex Jones's appeal and left the $1.4 billion Sandy Hook judgment in place. Bryan's focus wasn't the merits — it was the brief. The 240-page petition opens by accusing the lower courts of imposing a "death penalty sanction." But after reading the whole thing, Bryan couldn't find any actual death penalty law. He finally googled it. Jones's lawyer meant the judgment metaphorically "felt like" a death penalty. Bryan: "Alex, buddy, you just submitted this in the Supreme Court. How do you think they're going to respond to that?"

Pete Hegseth stopped paying for the buildings, supercomputers, and support staff that universities use to do DOD research. He called all of it "indirect costs" — and then called "indirect costs" wasteful. A judge issued a final judgment on Friday that he's wrong, has to pay, and cannot use the knowledge gap about accounting terminology to get out of it.

Donald Trump's DOJ indicted New York Attorney General Letitia James — the same AG who took him to court over his real estate fraud. Bryan's framing: this is the same playbook as Comey, the same prosecutor, and the same constitutional problem. Lindsey Halligan, who brought the charges, may not have been lawfully appointed to do it.

Two Massachusetts sanctuary cities — Chelsea and Somerville — asked a court to block the Trump executive order that would withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities. The court said no — not yet. Because so far, nobody has actually taken away any money. You can't get an injunction against something the government hasn't done yet.

SCOTUS released its end-of-summer cert denial list. The headline: Ghislaine Maxwell's bid to overturn her conviction was denied. The less-noted story: Laura Loomer's lawsuit against Facebook — which alleged a conspiracy between Zuckerberg, a Prokhor and Gamble executive, and Hunter Biden's laptop to keep her out of Congress — was also denied. 49 pages of conspiracy. Flat out denied.

Trump federalized the Oregon National Guard and deployed them to what he called "war-ravaged Portland" — attacked by Antifa, he said, with federal officers viciously assaulted. The judge he himself appointed looked at the actual record and found the president's claims were "simply untethered to the facts." TRO issued. Administration appealed. Then tried to deploy the California National Guard instead to get around the order. By midnight, the judge had issued a second TRO covering all National Guard.

Quick update in the TPS case: the court just expanded who's in. Citizens of Nepal, Nicaragua, and Honduras are now certified class members and will be included under the existing preliminary injunction. The timing matters — Nicaraguans just lost their protections under a separate parole program a couple of weeks ago. This case becomes the backstop.

The DOJ's civil division is shut down. So yesterday it filed nearly identical motions in case after case — copy-paste requests to stay all proceedings pending restored appropriations. One case pushed back. The refugee plaintiffs in Pacito said: our clients are stuck outside the country right now. The longer this stays paused, the longer they wait. They'll agree to 14 days. After that, they need to talk.

James Comey was indicted yesterday on two counts — both tied to the same claim: that he lied to a senator about authorizing a leak. That's the case they got. But there was a third count the DOJ tried to get the grand jury to indict on — and the grand jury said no. Bryan's read on why that matters: that third count is probably why they brought this case at all. And the grand jury's refusal to indict is about as clear a signal as you get that there was almost no evidence for it.

Eight Inspectors General got fired on January 24th without the 30 days notice or case-specific reasons to Congress that the Inspector General Act explicitly requires. The judge agreed the firings were illegal. She denied the injunction to get their jobs back. Because even if she reinstated them, the president could start the clock again — give the 30 days notice, give Congress the reasons — and fire them all over again. The statute doesn't protect the jobs. It just slows down the exit.

A California Court of Appeals published an opinion specifically to warn other courts about what it found in one attorney's appellate brief: nearly all of the legal quotations were fabricated. Cases that don't exist. Cases that exist but don't say what's attributed to them. Quotes attributed to real cases that appear nowhere in those cases — or anywhere else. All of it generated by AI. The attorney's client lost. The attorney was fined $10,000. The court called it "very conservative" because he seemed genuinely sorry.

New York just dropped two of the most serious charges against Luigi Mangione — both terrorism enhancements. The court looked at what "terrorism" actually means under New York law, looked at what Mangione was accused of doing, and said: it doesn't fit. Intent to terrorize has a very specific statutory definition. Drawing public attention to corporate greed is not it. He still faces a plain murder-two charge and a federal case — and the federal case raises a Fifth Amendment question the Supreme Court already addressed in 2019, badly.

Trump's January executive order blocked essentially all refugees from entering the US. The people suing are refugees who had already been approved to come here — they just weren't here yet. Last week the Ninth Circuit sent some of them a message: you're still waiting. But the contractors who care for those refugees, including unaccompanied minors? The government told the court eight months ago they were "just looking for new contractors." The circuit court said: no more waffling. Those contracts are back.

A Trump-appointed judge just released an opinion in the unaccompanied minors case. The first paragraph describes children being woken up in the middle of the night and driven to an airport. The government's story — that they were reuniting kids with parents who asked for them back — crumbled completely: the Guatemalan Attorney General couldn't find parents for most of the eligible children, and none of the ones located had actually asked for their kids to come home.

Yesterday was the filing deadline for expedited discovery motions in the National Guard case. There was also a flurry of amicus briefs — red state coalitions, blue state coalitions, the NAACP, law enforcement — everybody with an opinion on how DC residents should live. The hearing on the motions was today.

Trump sued the New York Times for $15 billion — not for one thing, but four: that NBC (not the Times) launched his celebrity career, that the paper reported on his family's tax fraud, that it characterized him as having "a lifetime of scandals," and that it falsely quoted his former chief of staff warning he would "rule like a dictator."

Congress passed laws creating seven agencies: the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Minority Business Development Agency, and five others. A presidential executive order shut them down. The 4th Circuit said no — not because the president doesn't have power, but because these agencies were created by Congress, and the Take Care Clause means the president executes the laws Congress writes, not the ones he prefers. Bryan's frame: people misread "Take Care" as giving the president power. It's the opposite. It's a leash.

A new executive order required states that run benefit programs to certify that no benefits go to non-citizens. Implemented with zero public input, zero APA procedures. States and their subgrantees faced the threat of federal enforcement if they couldn't restructure their social safety nets — almost overnight. The judge issued a preliminary injunction and named what she saw: "This government's new policy across the board seems to be this: show me your papers."

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the tariff case. They'll consolidate Trump v. VOS and Learning Resources v. Trump and hear arguments in the first week of November — briefs due in weeks. The main question: did the president use IEEPA — the emergency tariff law — in a way Congress intended? Bryan: "This may be one of the first big substantive tests between the branches before the court in this Trump term. Most prior SCOTUS decisions have been procedural or temporary victories. We may finally find out what this court is really made of."

The district court issued an order: immigration officers cannot stop people in seven Southern California counties without reasonable suspicion. SCOTUS stayed that order — six justices agreed, five didn't say why. The one who did was Kavanaugh. His four factors for reasonable suspicion in Southern California: proximity to the border, people gathering in certain locations to find work, work that doesn't require paperwork, and speaking Spanish. Bryan: "These are his factors. Just to be clear." Also: Kavanaugh cites a 1975 case for the proposition that ethnicity alone can't be the basis. "But it can be a relevant factor when considered along with other salient factors."

The Trump administration just lost a TPS case about Venezuela on Friday. By Monday, they'd filed a motion to dismiss an essentially identical TPS case about Haiti, making the same argument. Bryan: "Even though they just lost a case on the exact same grounds, the administration went ahead and filed a motion to dismiss this one anyway." Meanwhile, they've also filed a motion for a stay pending appeal in the Venezuelan case — where their argument is: "Please stay this law that was specifically designed to provide stability to the people it covers."

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The Posse Comitatus order issued Wednesday doesn't take effect until a week from Friday. But California isn't waiting. They immediately filed for a new preliminary injunction asking for the National Guard back — because the original emergency no longer exists. The federal government responded by extending the deployment another 90 days past election day. California: that might be the point. Trump had said he wanted the military to "handle" the last election. The military's own policy prohibits even the perception of voter coercion. California asked for an expedited schedule.

The 5th Circuit essentially overturned the Trump administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1789 against Venezuelans. The court said: you are not at war with Tren de Aragua. You are not at war with Venezuela. Congress never declared war. The president cannot invoke this 1798 wartime detention law without an actual declaration from Congress.

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Garcia's attorneys filed a second petition in his criminal case in Nashville asking the court to enforce the rule that says parties can't publicly trash the defendant before trial. The problem: the "parties" include Homeland Security, who aren't in the courtroom but are part of "the United States" in the caption. The judge wasn't sure last time whether he had jurisdiction over them. He'll have to figure that out.

"All citizens of Utah should be outraged at their activist judiciary, which wants to take away our congressional advantage." That was Trump's tweet after a Utah judge — appointed by a Republican governor — struck down Utah's new congressional maps. The legislature had ignored its own state's 2018 voter-approved independent redistricting law. The judge: rewarding the violation would "nullify the people's 2018 redistricting reform." New maps due September 24th.

There is an epidemic of rogue ham sandwiches running wild in Washington DC. Federal prosecutors are having a tough time getting grand juries to indict defendants arrested by federal officers since the DC federal takeover. Particularly when the arrest was for filming ICE agents. Bryan: "This might be the Fifth Amendment in action right here."

Kilmar Abrego Garcia showed up for his immigration check-in in Baltimore. They took him the moment he walked in. His lawyers were ready. Emergency hearing with the civil Maryland judge. The judge confronted DOJ about this: are you offering Costa Rica if he pleads guilty in Tennessee, and Uganda if he doesn't? Because that sounds like either bribery or blackmail. The judge issued an oral ruling: Garcia stays in the US. And she made the DOJ attorney agree on the record that an oral ruling was binding — because last time someone gave DOJ an oral ruling, they deported the person anyway and said they didn't know oral orders counted.

The sanctuary cities case added a lot of new plaintiffs, and the court expanded the injunction to cover them — the government didn't present any objection beyond repeating its original ones. Then the court had to decide whether a specific HUD grant was covered by the injunction. The question: was there enough of a nexus between the grant and the immigration enforcement condition the government was using to withhold it? Answer: no. The grant must be paid. To a lot more plaintiffs now.

A judge in New Jersey ruled that Alina Haba — Trump's personal lawyer and interim US Attorney for New Jersey — was illegally employed as a prosecutor. She'd been shuffled through interim positions for over 120 days without Senate confirmation. So anything she signed is not legally binding. She's been disqualified from prosecuting, supervising prosecution, even supervising anyone who supervises prosecution. Anyone acting under her is subject to disqualification too.

Mississippi divides its Supreme Court election districts east to west — and one of those lines cuts the historically Black Mississippi Delta region right in half. A federal district judge said yesterday: that's how Mississippi has avoided electing Black justices for essentially its entire history. Time for it to end. Redraw the maps.

The Trump administration canceled a bunch of NIH research grants, then got a court order telling them to keep paying while the case is decided. They tried to get the appeals court to stay that payment order. The appeals court said no: "A stay would result in the setback of life-saving research by years, if not decades." Money is flowing — at least some of it.

About 19 states plus DC filed a brand-new lawsuit against the Department of Justice yesterday. The target: the 1984 Victims of Crime Act — money Congress authorized for funeral expenses, witness protection, and forensic exams. The president is holding it unless states agree to change their immigration laws. Bryan: "This may be one of the ones we remember in a few years."

Thirty-four more jurisdictions moved to join the existing sanctuary cities case. The court's response: not a full merge, but an expedited scheduling order as a compromise. What started as a manageable case is turning into a behemoth.

A retired cop spent 37 days in jail for posting a Facebook meme quoting President Trump about a school shooting 695 miles away. The sheriff admitted on camera he knew it wasn't a threat. Perry County just paid him $835,000 to go away.

The final oral argument day of the Supreme Court's 2025-2026 term opened with the question Bryan had been waiting for since the chaos began: can the Trump administration unilaterally cancel Temporary Protected Status for Syrian nationals?

A law written in 1789 that nobody used for 170 years is now the basis for suing an American tech company for helping China track down members of a religious group.

The police got a warrant. Then they went back to Google twice more without getting new warrants.

A judge spent more ink formatting the opinion to reach ten pages than he did on the actual legal reasoning. The legal reasoning didn't need much.

Mr. Lau committed a crime before he came back through customs. The question isn't whether the border agent was correct — he was — it's how correct he had to be at the time.

The judge opened with "unserious leaders are unsafe" and did not get more diplomatic from there.

A man sold unregistered securities, got convicted criminally, served 21 months — and then the SEC made him give back his profits too. He says he didn't hurt anybody. The question is whether that matters.

Carrie Lake lost on the merits, the appeal became pointless, and the court dismissed it. Maybe they just pay the $43 million and move on.

Anthropic lost in the DC Circuit — but Bryan wasn't that worried about it.

A court looked at ten claims against the president, said one is covered by immunity. The other nine? Game on.

For about 85 years, this question was settled. Then a lawyer and a political scientist published a book in 1985 — and here we are.

The question isn't just whether Mississippi screwed up. It's whether Mississippi screwed up enough — because a federal law says "wrong" isn't good enough to rescue a death row case.

Pete Hegseth wanted to keep his evidence about why Anthropic is dangerous a secret. The judge looked at it and said: there's nothing here that looks sensitive.

The judge stayed up late, and the result was a preliminary injunction that covered all three government communications at once.

The Department of Justice burned Pete Hegseth at his own hearing — and then tried to get the case dismissed for it.

The DOJ lawyer walked into court and threw Pete Hegseth under the bus before the judge could say a word.

A federal judge just ordered the Pentagon to let journalists back into the press room. The First Amendment found the door.

The Trump administration sued California over a law requiring chickens to have more room — and a Trump-appointed judge dismissed it because the government couldn't prove it was actually hurt.

RFK Jr. pulled COVID, hepatitis B, and flu vaccines off the federal childhood schedule — and a federal judge stopped it within days, finding the government hadn't followed the process that exists for exactly this kind of change.

A federal appeals court judge wrote a dissent about transgender rights using language so offensive that his own colleagues put a formal rebuke in the record.

The Interior Department canceled contracts with environmental groups because of how they hired their own unrelated internal staff — and a judge said that looks a lot like punishing a business for its protected choices.

The Department of Defense demanded that Anthropic strip the safety limits from its AI — the ones that prevent it from targeting American citizens and running lethal drone strikes without any human in the loop — and when Anthropic refused, the government declared it a national security threat.

The court ordered the government to start refunding overturned tariffs — but the computer system that collects tariffs can't separate the illegal ones from the rest, and the man in charge says he needs more time.

After the Supreme Court overturned the IEEPA tariffs, roughly 1,000 companies filed for refunds. The government told the lower court to wait. The court said no.

Elon Musk bought 9% of Twitter before he told anyone — and the SEC's disclosure case survived his motion to dismiss.

The trial paused overnight. The judge told the defendant he couldn't discuss his testimony with his lawyers. He lost at trial, appealed on Sixth Amendment grounds, and fought all the way to the Supreme Court. Jackson wrote the opinion: the restriction was constitutional.

The Trump administration has been skipping directly to Step 4 of the statutory deportation-destination waterfall — "anywhere we feel like" — without trying Steps 1 through 3. A judge just issued a final order saying that's not allowed.

The National Endowment for Democracy has all its 2025 money now. What they don't have is any of their 2026 money, which Congress also appropriated. The administration keeps telling courts everything is fine while telling the Endowment it isn't.

Judge Eileen Cannon granted Trump's motion to permanently suppress Volume 2 of Jack Smith's report — while the earlier order denying intervenors' access is still being briefed on appeal in the Eleventh Circuit. She issued the second suppression order anyway. Bryan: "She has put the stand before the taco."

In 1960, Cuba nationalized Exxon's oil refineries and gas stations. Sixty years later, Exxon wants six to seven hundred million dollars back. The question is whether a US court can drag the Cuban government in to answer for it.

[NEEDS TRANSCRIPT REVIEW]

A power is something the government does TO you. A right is a shield you hold AGAINST the government. That distinction is everything.

An executive order to "restore history" by removing signs that discussed slavery at a presidential museum resulted in a court order to put them back. The signs are about George Washington's enslaved household staff. The feds complied immediately — which Bryan did not expect.

Bryan sat through both hearings himself. Zubayar al-Bakoush — an alleged co-conspirator in the 2012 Benghazi attack — was extradited to the US last week and arraigned yesterday. He pled not guilty on all eight counts.

Pam Bondi tried to indict six sitting members of Congress for saying soldiers don't have to follow unconstitutional orders. The grand jury threw it out. Bryan's response: "I love that Fifth Amendment."

The court just denied the government's motion for a protective order that would have shielded Elon Musk from being deposed in the USAID/DOGE case. He's coming in.

Ghislaine Maxwell was called before Congress and invoked her Fifth Amendment right — but use immunity exists precisely to strip that shield away.

Federal courts are coming for the headlines — here's the constitutional architecture before the action starts.

The people who wrote the Federalist Papers won the argument about whether to adopt the Constitution — and the people who lost left their fingerprints all over it anyway.

The reason tariffs don't violate the 10th Amendment is that the 10th Amendment guards the federalism wall — and a tariff fight is Congress vs. President, not federal vs. state.

The 10th Amendment says power not given to the federal government belongs to the states — but four different eras of Supreme Court history disagree on whether that means anything at all.

A three-judge panel just let the government keep using pepper spray on peaceful protesters — over one judge's objection — by staying a lower court order that said it couldn't.

The Justice Department is hemorrhaging prosecutors while simultaneously ramping up enforcement — and sending emails begging lawyers to come work for Lawyer Corp at less than Costco wages.

We've been arguing about what the President is actually allowed to do since 1793 — and in 1952 the Supreme Court gave us four different answers in the same case.

[NO COVERAGE FOUND — confirmed 2026-06-12]

Hawaii made it a crime to carry a concealed weapon onto private property without the owner's express permission — and the Supreme Court didn't sound convinced it could do that.

Dwayne Barrett committed one armed robbery. The government wanted to punish him three times. The Supreme Court said two of those punishments had to run at the same time — but Justice Gorsuch thinks we should be asking a bigger question about whether any of this is constitutional.

Federal agents shot a man in Portland after a traffic confrontation — then charged him, without body cam footage, on the agency's word alone.

Lindsay Hecox wants to withdraw the case she won — and Idaho won't let her, because it's still bound by the Ninth Circuit ruling in her favor.

A right-wing influencer's fraud video triggered a White House executive order — and five states went to court to keep their daycares open.

OPM gave the DOJ access to a federal database full of your personal information. OPM asked the court to dismiss. The court said: you still have five DOJ employees in there — no.

Wyoming's Supreme Court just struck down the state abortion ban — unanimously — under the Wyoming Constitution's right to make your own health care decisions. The federal Dobbs ruling didn't factor in. This was state law, decided on state constitutional grounds.

Before Christmas, Judge Boasberg ruled that the government violated the constitutional rights of hundreds of Venezuelans it deported to El Salvador without due process — and gave the DOJ until 5 p.m. today to file a plan to fix it. They asked for seven more days. He said no.