It’s been a big week for some of the dumber litigation we follow around here. It’s not all dumb — we start with an update on California’s litigation over the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles, where the state has gotten relief at the trial court level but faces a tough road in the appeals courts. And we look at a case in Boston where a federal judge has blocked, for now, the cancellation of certain grants the National Institutes of Health have deemed excessively DEI-related.

Then we have updates on Mike Lindell, who says the $2.3 million defamation judgment against him is actually a victory; Michael Avenatti, who appealed his sentence and got it reduced very slightly (rare win!); and various Proud Boys, who made the mistake of hiring a felon to be their lawyer; some weird drama at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, where Judge Stephen Menashi is really annoyed his colleagues didn’t want to reopen the E. Jean Carroll litigation. And we look at juror drama at the P. Diddy trial. And — most excitingly — Josh makes Ken talk about the Real Housewives.

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Donald Trump has activated the National Guard in California over the objections of Governor Gavin Newsom, and Newsom has sued, claiming the activation is illegal. Ken and Josh discuss Newsom's chances of prevailing against the president's broad authority to use the military for various purposes. Meanwhile, union leader David Huerta has been charged for his actions of civil disobedience. One of Huerta’s legal problems stems from his choice to yell at the federal agents, “What are you going to do, arrest all of us?”

Also this week: Trump has gotten stays from appeals courts blocking the implementation of unfavorable rulings in cases about the IEEPA tariffs and the disfavoring of the Associated Press at White House events. Kilmar Abrego Garcia is back in the U.S. to face trial, the Young Thug RICO saga has finally breathed its last whimper, some Proud Boys are seeking their own settlement payout from the Trump administration, and the Trump DOJ is devoting a surprising amount of legal firepower to a civil rights action against a coffee shop owner / Hamas fanboy in Oakland (who, it seems, really did illegally discriminate against Jewish customers).

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In the ongoing defamation trial of Mike Lindell, who accused Dominion Voting Systems employee Eric Coomer of personally conspiring to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump, Lindell isn't bothering to argue that his claims were true. Instead he's saying he believed them at the time he said them. Is that a good defense?

Plus: a federal appellate decision upholding an injunction against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's efforts to harass the pressure group Media Matters for America over its campaign against Elon Musk, an unsuccessful lawsuit against the University of Pennsylvania claiming the school fostered an anti-semitic environment, the Trump administration's odd dealings with the Harvard Law Review, and a look at a couple of articles about the ongoing fallout from the decisions by major law firms to settle with the Trump administration over its transparently illegal executive orders against them. We also have updates on ongoing litigation over Trump's tariffs, and a look at the seven-year sentence for 87-year-old disgraced lawyer Tom Girardi.

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This week’s show is heavy on economic policy. Yay! We discuss a ruling from the U.S. Court of International Trade that many of Trump’s beloved tariffs are illegal and then, a strange shadow-docket order in U.S. v. Wilcox, a case about the National Labor Relations Board that raises a key economic question: Does that mean the president can fire the entire Federal Reserve Board, too?

For paying subscribers: an update on the administration’s dealings with Big Law, updates about the Mahmoud Khalil and Kseniia Petrova cases, the Francesca Gino saga, and about Trevor Kirk, the LA County Sheriff’s deputy convicted of using excessive force who the Trump administration is trying to keep out of prison.

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This week, we look at the indictment of Judge Hannah Dugan and the end of Ed Martin's reign at the US Attorney's office for the District of Columbia. For paying subscribers, we have an update on family business at the Sean Combs trial, where James Comey's daughter Maurene is facing off against Mark Geragos's daughter Teny. We have updates about new rulings about the Alien Enemies Act, about Marco Rubio's efforts to personally revoke the visas of students who annoy the administration, and about the frog embryos case. To get the full episode, go to http://www.serioustrouble.show and become a member. Thank you!

This week on the show: Jury selection for Sean Combs' eight-week RICO trial, which is moving along very quickly for for a complex federal criminal case.

Plus: a ruling in the Alien Enemies Act cases, a ruling that gets at the heart of the policy question: whether there is an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” that triggers presidential powers under the law in the first place. It's a strange one.

Another long-running case where ICE contends it doesn’t matter that it violated a court order about how to remove a person due for deportation, since he’d still be removable even if they did everything right.

Long-Suffering Federal Judge Beryl Howell takes a shot at the many firms that chose to settle with the Trump administration instead of fighting. Meanwhile, the firms that settled have been insisting that they agreed to very little, and we may be about to get some information about how true that is.

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We've got a lot for paid subscribers this week: Updates on several removal cases, a look at the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan, our first look at the litigation over Trump's tariffs, a cautionary tale about what happens when you accidentally file your internal deliberations about the weakness of your case on the public court docket, some forecasts for George Santos's time in federal prison, a discussion of why Sarah Palin lost (again) in her case against The New York Times, and more. If you want to upgrade to hear all of that, go to https://www.serioustrouble.show.

This week, Ken and I have a discussion of Harvard’s lawsuit fighting the Trump Administration’s effort to punish the university for failing to submit to what amounted to a demand to place the university in a kind of federal receivership. We look at the Supreme Court's middle-of-the-night, weekend rebuke to the Trump administration, ordering a halt to Alien Enemies Act removals from the Northern District of Texas. The subtext of this order is that four of the court’s conservatives have noticed the administration’s nose-thumbing over the orders in the Abrego Garcia case and aren’t pleased about it. In other cases, Trump is trying to use his position as president to get out of paying the larger of the two judgments E. Jean Carroll won against him. The AP is learning that the relief it obtained in theory from Trump’s retribution means little in practice. And Nadine Menendez will soon be relieved of the need to take her Mercedes C-Class to the dealership for servicing.