Opening Arguments

Latest Episodes:

What Can We Do To Stop ICE? Aug 15, 2025

Show notes

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!

“ICE Is No Gestapo!” Complain Gestapo Enthusiasts Aug 13, 2025

Show notes

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!

Project 2025, Six Months Later Aug 11, 2025

Show notes

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!

Why the Whole Alligator Alcatraz Thing Is Somehow Worse Than It Sounds Aug 08, 2025

Show notes

OA1180 - We begin with some much-needed reminders that good things are still happening and the rule of law is still (mostly) holding on before turning to a recent Trump executive order on homelessness which reads like something out of a (not very good) Batman movie. Jenessa explains how this development fits into the history of long-term institutionalization of vulnerable and unhoused people in the US as we work through what this thing is actually trying to do. In an unfortunately not-at-all-unrelated story, Matt then breaks down the situation with Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” (aka “Gator Gitmo”), the pending challenges to this completely new (and totally illegal) approach to state-based immigration detention, and where this is all going.

Finally, in today’s footnote: has ChatGPT finally made its first hallucinatory appearance in a judicial opinion? We investigate not just one but two recent instances of federal judges who have now joined the many lawyers caught using AI to do their homework.

“Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” The White House (7/25/25)
Complaint in Friends of the Everglades v. Noem, filed 6/27/25
Complaint in C-M. v Noem, filed 7/16/25
Defendants’ Unopposed Motion to Clarify in Mississippi Association of Educators et al v. Board of Trustees (7/22/25)
Judge Henry Wingate’s order in Mississippi Association of Educators v. Board of Trustees declining to clarify decision of July 20, 2025 (8/1/25)
Defendant’s letter to Judge Julien Neals in In re CorMedix Securities Litigation (7/22/25)

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

NYTimes lets awful Harvard Law prof lie his ass off for some reason Aug 06, 2025

Show notes

VR2 - Vapid Response Wednesday returns live on video for another round of bad-faith legal takes from the American right’s leading--well, let’s just go with “minds.”

We begin with a quick check-in on the divided state of the U.S. “sovereign citizen” movement via a short explainer video in which one of its leading grifters denounces a whole new set of grifters who are promoting the concept of an “American State National.”

We then plumb new depths of dumbassery from Harvard Law school professor/crypto-theocrat Adrian Vermeule. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Vermeule has called out the true villains of the American judiciary: lower court judges who aren’t doing exactly what Adrian Vermeule imagines the Supreme Court has told them to do. Matt breaks down why this column doesn’t provide a single example of the trend it purports to be exposing, and Lydia has the details on one of MAGA’s favorite legal scholars. Who is Adrian Vermeule, what is “Catholic integralism,” and why is a man who has previously gone to so much effort to hide his true beliefs behind “common-good Constitutionalism” showing his entire ass in the pages of the NYT?

Then, we preview a *patron-only* bonus where we go into overtime to witness the spectacle of Alan Dershowitz’s lengthy but extremely unconvincing arguments as to why everyone should be required to sell him pierogi under force of law. If you want to be sure to not miss that, you'll have to go to patreon.com/law!

Watch this episode on YouTube! https://youtu.be/-GyGbd-GUbs
"What is the difference between American National and American State National?" Kelby Smith (Youtube link)
“Someone is Defying the Supreme Court, But It’s Not Trump,” The New York Times, Adrian Vermeule (7/25/25)
SCOTUS shadow docket order in Trump v. Wilcox (05/22/2025)
SCOTUS shadow docket order in Noem v. Doe (05/30/2025)
SCOTUS shadow docket order in DHS v. D.V.D. (06/23/2025)
SCOTUS shadow docket order in DHS v. D. V. D. (07/03/2025)
Harvard Students' Letter to Administration re: Vermeule (11/09/2020)
Vermeule Responds to Harvard Law Faculty's Letter to Students re: The Rule of Law under the Trump Administration (03/30/2025)

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

To support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

LEARY V. US (1969): Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Everything You Thought You Knew About Timothy Leary Aug 04, 2025

Show notes

OA1179 - Dr. Timothy Leary is best remembered today as the Harvard psychologist who told America to “turn on, tune in, and drop out” with psychedelics in the 1960s. But did you know that “the High Priest of LSD” was also one of the most famous people ever to bring a criminal case to the U.S.. Supreme Court? Jenessa shares her scientific perspective on Leary’s “research,” and Matt explains how a minor California marijuana possession charge led to Leary’s unbelievable life on the run as an international fugitive across four continents and his eventual association with not just one but three of the era’s most notorious radical groups. We then review Dr. Leary’s conviction under the Marihuana [sic] Tax Act of 1937 and how Leary v. U.S. changed everything about drug enforcement. (Also discussed: the unexpected origin of the Beatles song “Come Together,” the benefits of podcasting on acid, and what psychedelic research and regulation might have looked like in an alternate Leary-free timeline.)

Leary v. US, 395 U.S. 6 (1969)
Letter from the American Medical Association opposing passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 (7/10/1937)
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Timothy Leary, Richard Nixon and the Hunt for the Fugitive King of LSD, Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis (2018)

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

Entrenched Power Hates It When Actual Progressives Are in Office Aug 01, 2025

Show notes

OA1178 - Our conversation with former San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin continues with a closer look at the accomplishments of his term, what progressive prosecutors can realistically expect to be able to do within the constraints of the current system--and why they are the last people who should expected to do it--and what was really behind the 2022 recall campaign which removed him from office.

Chesa Boudin’s faculty page at UC Berkeley Law
Chesa Boudin’s academic publications, SSRN

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

Alan Dershowitz tries to pull a literal "nothing to see here" on Epstein Jul 31, 2025

Show notes

VR1 - Welcome to Vapid Response Wednesday! Rather than explaining law in the news as we have for years on Rapid Response Friday, Thomas, Lydia, and Matt are going on the offensive in this live video series to respond and react to the stupidest takes that we can find--and we’ve got just the guy for our first pick! We begin with former Jeffrey Epstein defense attorney Alan Dershowitz’s recent piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he literally claims that “there is nothing more to see here” on the Epstein case while filling in the facts of what we know from reliable reporting and court records. What is Dersh not telling us here about his own involvement with Epstein, the unbelievably corrupt federal non-prosecution agreement which he secured for his client in 2007, and all of the other many reasons that he might not be a trustworthy source on this question? We then take on one of Matt’s all-time favorites: a well-known 1996 video presentation from far-right immigration restrictionist organization NumbersUSA in which founder Roy Beck takes the stage to set the Guinness world record for Biggest Strawman Made Entirely Out of Gumballs.

“The Inside Scoop on Jeffrey Epstein,” Alan Dershowitz, The Wall Street Journal (7/15/2025)
“Alan Dershowitz: Devil’s Advocate,” Connie Bruck, The New Yorker (7/29/2019)
“Immigration, World Poverty, and Gumballs,” NumbersUSA (originally distributed in 1996, uploaded to YouTube in 2010)

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

Chesa Boudin Grew up Visiting His Parents in Prison. He Later Became San Francisco DA. Jul 29, 2025

Show notes

OA1177 - We are excited to welcome former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin for the first half of this unique two-part interview! Chesa is a very notable representative of the “progressive prosecutor” movement. His time as SF DA shows both the promise of this movement, and the limitations. But before we dig into all that, we begin with Chesa’s unique background as the child of incarcerated parents and how this experience inspired him to dedicate his life to bringing a new approach to the criminal legal system.

Chesa Boudin’s faculty page at UC Berkeley Law
Chesa Boudin’s academic publications, SSRN

To support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

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

The Trump-Epstein Legal Breakdown You Didn't Know You Needed Jul 25, 2025

Show notes

OA1176 - Six years after his death in a filthy Manhattan jail cell, Jeffrey Epstein’s disgusting ghost is now haunting Donald Trump--his former “best friend” of more than a decade. What are the “Epstein files” and why has the demand to see them turned MAGA world against itself now? We go beyond the headlines to explain how one of the most notorious criminals in recent American history has become this week’s top legal story so long after his death, and why DOJ’s recent efforts to cover for Trump should constitute a ten-alarm scandal. We then review Trump’s attempt to sue the Wall Street Journal for revealing his surprisingly artistic birthday wishes to his “pal,” why his administration is so intent on unsealing grand jury records which DOJ knows can’t be released, how this whole mess has reached the point that the Supreme Court might actually have a good legal reason to reverse Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell’s conviction (!), and why Trump might be about to pardon Maxwell even if it doesn’t. Also discussed: the history of Epstein’s astonishing 2007 non-prosecution agreement and its legacy, the real “Epstein files” that no one has been talking about, and how the President of France might be about to righteously bankrupt MAGA mouthpiece Candace Owens.