Podcast appearances and mentions of Sonia Sotomayor

One religious freedom case at the Supreme Court isn't getting the sort of attention as others, despite how it's uniting groups that often disagree. So, why did the justices sound so skeptical in the courtroom? Amanda and Holly review this week's oral arguments in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections, which involves the remedy available to a man whose religious freedom rights were violated when he was in prison. The violation isn't in question, so why is the remedy? Amanda and Holly review the details in this case, play audio from key moments in the courtroom, and discuss the statute that protects prisoners' religious freedom rights: The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000.     SHOW NOTES Segment 1 (starting at 00:35): RLUIPA, RFRA, and this case Amanda and Holly previewed the Landor case earlier this season – watch their conversation on BJC's YouTube channel.    BJC joined a diverse group of organizations on a friend-of-the-court brief in this case on the side of Mr. Landor – click this link to read the brief and see the groups who found common ground.   RLUIPA is the acronym for the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, passed by Congress in the year 2000. The acronym is often pronounced "Re-loop-ah." RFRA is the acronym for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, pronounced "Riff-rah." For more on the 2020 decision in Tanzin v. Tanvir, read this article on our website: Supreme Court rules RFRA allows monetary damages against federal officials    Segment 2 (starting at 11:05): What happened in the courtroom? Arguments on behalf of Mr. Landor The Supreme Court heard Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections on Monday, November 10. Visit the Supreme Court's website to read a transcript or hear the audio from the courtroom.  We played four clips from oral arguments in this segment.  Zack Tripp's opening statement, representing Mr. Landor (from 00:15-2:02 in the audio of the arguments) Exchange between Justice Samuel Alito and Zack Tripp (from 20:00-21:25 in the oral arguments) Exchange between Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Zack Tripp (from 23:35-25:56 in the oral arguments) Exchange between Justice Elena Kagan and Libby A. Baird, assistant to the solicitor general (from 1:06:38-1:07:38 in the oral argument)   Segment 3 (starting at 31:31): What did the state of Louisiana argue? We played one clip from the oral argument during this segment: Exchange between Justice Elena Kagan and Ben Aguiñaga, the solicitor general of Louisiana (from 1:38:33-1:40:26) Read more about the arguments in this article by Amy Howe for SCOTUSblog: Court appears skeptical of prison inmate's religious liberty claim Video of our episodes are now on YouTube! Click here for the season 7 playlist.  Do you want special emails about the show? Click here to sign up for our email list!  Respecting Religion is made possible by BJC's generous donors. Your gift to BJC is tax-deductible, and you can support these conversations with a gift to BJC.

How are the federal courts faring during these tumultuous times? I thought it would be worthwhile to discuss this important subject with a former federal judge: someone who understands the judicial role well but could speak more freely than a sitting judge, liberated from the strictures of the bench.Meet Judge Nancy Gertner (Ret.), who served as a U.S. District Judge for the District of Massachusetts from 1994 until 2011. I knew that Judge Gertner would be a lively and insightful interviewee—based not only on her extensive commentary on recent events, reflected in media interviews and op-eds, but on my personal experience. During law school, I took a year-long course on federal sentencing with her, and she was one of my favorite professors.When I was her student, we disagreed on a lot: I was severely conservative back then, and Judge Gertner was, well, not. But I always appreciated and enjoyed hearing her views—so it was a pleasure hearing them once again, some 25 years later, in what turned out to be an excellent conversation.Show Notes:* Nancy Gertner, author website* Nancy Gertner bio, Harvard Law School* In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate, AmazonPrefer reading to listening? For paid subscribers, a transcript of the entire episode appears below.Sponsored by:NexFirm helps Biglaw attorneys become founding partners. To learn more about how NexFirm can help you launch your firm, call 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment@nexfirm.com.Three quick notes about this transcript. First, it has been cleaned up from the audio in ways that don't alter substance—e.g., by deleting verbal filler or adding a word here or there to clarify meaning. Second, my interviewee has not reviewed this transcript, and any errors are mine. Third, because of length constraints, this newsletter may be truncated in email; to view the entire post, simply click on “View entire message” in your email app.David Lat: Welcome to the Original Jurisdiction podcast. I'm your host, David Lat, author of a Substack newsletter about law and the legal profession also named Original Jurisdiction, which you can read and subscribe to at davidlat.substack.com. You're listening to the eighty-fifth episode of this podcast, recorded on Monday, November 3.Thanks to this podcast's sponsor, NexFirm. NexFirm helps Biglaw attorneys become founding partners. To learn more about how NexFirm can help you launch your firm, call 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment@nexfirm.com. Want to know who the guest will be for the next Original Jurisdiction podcast? Follow NexFirm on LinkedIn for a preview.Many of my guests have been friends of mine for a long time—and that's the case for today's. I've known Judge Nancy Gertner for more than 25 years, dating back to when I took a full-year course on federal sentencing from her and the late Professor Dan Freed at Yale Law School. She was a great teacher, and although we didn't always agree—she was a professor who let students have their own opinions—I always admired her intellect and appreciated her insights.Judge Gertner is herself a graduate of Yale Law School—where she met, among other future luminaries, Bill and Hillary Clinton. After a fascinating career in private practice as a litigator and trial lawyer handling an incredibly diverse array of cases, Judge Gertner was appointed to serve as a U.S. District Judge for the District of Massachusetts in 1994, by President Clinton. She retired from the bench in 2011, but she is definitely not retired: she writes opinion pieces for outlets such as The New York Times and The Boston Globe, litigates and consults on cases, and trains judges and litigators. She's also working on a book called Incomplete Sentences, telling the stories of the people she sentenced over 17 years on the bench. Her autobiography, In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate, was published in 2011. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Judge Nancy Gertner.Judge, thank you so much for joining me.Nancy Gertner: Thank you for inviting me. This is wonderful.DL: So it's funny: I've been wanting to have you on this podcast in a sense before it existed, because you and I worked on a podcast pilot. It ended up not getting picked up, but perhaps they have some regrets over that, because legal issues have just blown up since then.NG: I remember that. I think it was just a question of scheduling, and it was before Trump, so we were talking about much more sophisticated, superficial things, as opposed to the rule of law and the demise of the Constitution.DL: And we will get to those topics. But to start off my podcast in the traditional way, let's go back to the beginning. I believe we are both native New Yorkers?NG: Yes, that's right. I was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in an apartment that I think now is a tenement museum, and then we moved to Flushing, Queens, where I lived into my early 20s.DL: So it's interesting—I actually spent some time as a child in that area. What was your upbringing like? What did your parents do?NG: My father owned a linoleum store, or as we used to call it, “tile,” and my mother was a homemaker. My mother worked at home. We were lower class on the Lower East Side and maybe made it to lower-middle. My parents were very conservative, in the sense they didn't know exactly what to do with a girl who was a bit of a radical. Neither I nor my sister was precisely what they anticipated. So I got to Barnard for college only because my sister had a conniption fit when he wouldn't pay for college for her—she's my older sister—he was not about to pay for college. If we were boys, we would've had college paid for.In a sense, they skipped a generation. They were actually much more traditional than their peers were. My father was Orthodox when he grew up; my mother was somewhat Orthodox Jewish. My father couldn't speak English until the second grade. So they came from a very insular environment, and in one sense, he escaped that environment when he wanted to play ball on Saturdays. So that was actually the motivation for moving to Queens: to get away from the Lower East Side, where everyone would know that he wasn't in temple on Saturday. We used to have interesting discussions, where I'd say to him that my rebellion was a version of his: he didn't want to go to temple on Saturdays, and I was marching against the war. He didn't see the equivalence, but somehow I did.There's actually a funny story to tell about sort of exactly the distance between how I was raised and my life. After I graduated from Yale Law School, with all sorts of honors and stuff, and was on my way to clerk for a judge, my mother and I had this huge fight in the kitchen of our apartment. What was the fight about? Sadie wanted me to take the Triborough Bridge toll taker's test, “just in case.” “You never know,” she said. I couldn't persuade her that it really wasn't necessary. She passed away before I became a judge, and I told this story at my swearing-in, and I said that she just didn't understand. I said, “Now I have to talk to my mother for a minute; forgive me for a moment.” And I looked up at the rafters and I said, “Ma, at last: a government job!” So that is sort of the measure of where I started. My mother didn't finish high school, my father had maybe a semester of college—but that wasn't what girls did.DL: So were you then a first-generation professional or a first-generation college graduate?NG: Both—my sister and I were both, first-generation college graduates and first-generation professionals. When people talk about Jewish backgrounds, they're very different from one another, and since my grandparents came from Eastern European shtetls, it's not clear to me that they—except for one grandfather—were even literate. So it was a very different background.DL: You mentioned that you did go to Yale Law School, and of course we connected there years later, when I was your student. But what led you to go to law school in the first place? Clearly your parents were not encouraging your professional ambitions.NG: One is, I love to speak. My husband kids me now and says that I've never met a microphone I didn't like. I had thought for a moment of acting—musical comedy, in fact. But it was 1967, and the anti-war movement, a nascent women's movement, and the civil rights movement were all rising around me, and I wanted to be in the world. And the other thing was that I didn't want to do anything that women do. Actually, musical comedy was something that would've been okay and normal for women, but I didn't want to do anything that women typically do. So that was the choice of law. It was more like the choice of law professor than law, but that changed over time.DL: So did you go straight from Barnard to Yale Law School?NG: Well, I went from Barnard to Yale graduate school in political science because as I said, I've always had an academic and a practical side, and so I thought briefly that I wanted to get a Ph.D. I still do, actually—I'm going to work on that after these books are finished.DL: Did you then think that you wanted to be a law professor when you started at YLS? I guess by that point you already had a master's degree under your belt?NG: I thought I wanted to be a law professor, that's right. I did not think I wanted to practice law. Yale at that time, like most law schools, had no practical clinical courses. I don't think I ever set foot in a courtroom or a courthouse, except to demonstrate on the outside of it. And the only thing that started me in practice was that I thought I should do at least two or three years of practice before I went back into the academy, before I went back into the library. Twenty-four years later, I obviously made a different decision.DL: So you were at YLS during a very interesting time, and some of the law school's most famous alumni passed through its halls around that period. So tell us about some of the people you either met or overlapped with at YLS during your time there.NG: Hillary Clinton was one of my best friends. I knew Bill, but I didn't like him.DL: Hmmm….NG: She was one of my best friends. There were 20 women in my class, which was the class of ‘71. The year before, there had only been eight. I think we got up to 21—a rumor had it that it was up to 21 because men whose numbers were drafted couldn't go to school, and so suddenly they had to fill their class with this lesser entity known as women. It was still a very small number out of, I think, what was the size of the opening class… 165? Very small. So we knew each other very, very well. And Hillary and I were the only ones, I think, who had no boyfriends at the time, though that changed.DL: I think you may have either just missed or briefly overlapped with either Justice Thomas or Justice Alito?NG: They're younger than I am, so I think they came after.DL: And that would be also true of Justice Sotomayor then as well?NG: Absolutely. She became a friend because when I was on the bench, I actually sat with the Second Circuit, and we had great times together. But she was younger than I was, so I didn't know her in law school, and by the time she was in law school, there were more women. In the middle of, I guess, my first year at Yale Law School, was the first year that Yale College went coed. So it was, in my view, an enormously exciting time, because we felt like we were inventing law. We were inventing something entirely new. We had the first “women in the law” course, one of the first such courses in the country, and I think we were borderline obnoxious. It's a little bit like the debates today, which is that no one could speak right—you were correcting everyone with respect to the way they were describing women—but it was enormously creative and exciting.DL: So I'm gathering you enjoyed law school, then?NG: I loved law school. Still, when I was in law school, I still had my feet in graduate school, so I believe that I took law and sociology for three years, mostly. In other words, I was going through law school as if I were still in graduate school, and it was so bad that when I decided to go into practice—and this is an absolutely true story—I thought that dying intestate was a disease. We were taking the bar exam, and I did not know what they were talking about.DL: So tell us, then, what did lead you to shift gears? You mentioned you clerked, and you mentioned you wanted to practice for a few years—but you did practice for more than a few years.NG: Right. I talk to students about this all the time, about sort of the fortuities that you need to grab onto that you absolutely did not plan. So I wind up at a small civil-rights firm, Harvey Silverglate and Norman Zalkind's firm. I wind up in a small civil-rights firm because I couldn't get a job anywhere else in Boston. I was looking in Boston or San Francisco, and what other women my age were encountering, I encountered, which is literally people who told me that I would never succeed as a lawyer, certainly not as a litigator. So you have to understand, this is 1971. I should say, as a footnote, that I have a file of everyone who said that to me. People know that I have that file; it's called “Sexist Tidbits.” And so I used to decide whether I should recuse myself when someone in that file appeared before me, but I decided it was just too far.So it was a small civil-rights firm, and they were doing draft cases, they were doing civil-rights cases of all different kinds, and they were doing criminal cases. After a year, the partnership between Norman Zalkind and Harvey Silverglate broke up, and Harvey made me his partner, now an equal partner after a year of practice.Shortly after that, I got a case that changed my career in so many ways, which is I wound up representing Susan Saxe. Susan Saxe was one of five individuals who participated in robberies to get money for the anti-war movement. She was probably five years younger than I was. In the case of the robbery that she participated in, a police officer was killed. She was charged with felony murder. She went underground for five years; the other woman went underground for 20 years.Susan wanted me to represent her, not because she had any sense that I was any good—it's really quite wonderful—she wanted me to represent her because she figured her case was hopeless. And her case was hopeless because the three men involved in the robbery either fled or were immediately convicted, so her case seemed to be hopeless. And she was an extraordinarily principled woman: she said that in her last moment on the stage—she figured that she'd be convicted and get life—she wanted to be represented by a woman. And I was it. There was another woman in town who was a public defender, but I was literally the only private lawyer. I wrote about the case in my book, In Defense of Women, and to Harvey Silvergate's credit, even though the case was virtually no money, he said, “If you want to do it, do it.”Because I didn't know what I was doing—and I literally didn't know what I was doing—I researched every inch of everything in the case. So we had jury research and careful jury selection, hiring people to do jury selection. I challenged the felony-murder rule (this was now 1970). If there was any evidentiary issue, I would not only do the legal research, but talk to social psychologists about what made sense to do. To make a long story short, it took about two years to litigate the case, and it's all that I did.And the government's case was winding down, and it seemed to be not as strong as we thought it was—because, ironically, nobody noticed the woman in the bank. Nobody was noticing women in general; nobody was noticing women in the bank. So their case was much weaker than we thought, except there were two things, two letters that Susan had written: one to her father, and one to her rabbi. The one to her father said, “By the time you get this letter, you'll know what your little girl is doing.” The one to her rabbi said basically the same thing. In effect, these were confessions. Both had been turned over to the FBI.So the case is winding down, not very strong. These letters have not yet been introduced. Meanwhile, The Boston Globe is reporting that all these anti-war activists were coming into town, and Gertner, who no one ever heard of, was going to try the Vietnam War. The defense will be, “She robbed a bank to fight the Vietnam War.” She robbed a bank in order to get money to oppose the Vietnam War, and the Vietnam War was illegitimate, etc. We were going to try the Vietnam War.There was no way in hell I was going to do that. But nobody had ever heard of me, so they believed anything. The government decided to rest before the letters came in, anticipating that our defense would be a collection of individuals who were going to challenge the Vietnam War. The day that the government rested without putting in those two letters, I rested my case, and the case went immediately to the jury. I'm told that I was so nervous when I said “the defense rests” that I sounded like Minnie Mouse.The upshot of that, however, was that the jury was 9-3 for acquittal on the first day, 10-2 for acquittal on the second day, and then 11-1 for acquittal—and there it stopped. It was a hung jury. But it essentially made my career. I had first the experience of pouring my heart into a case and saving someone's life, which was like nothing I'd ever felt before, which was better than the library. It also put my name out there. I was no longer, “Who is she?” I suddenly could take any kind of case I wanted to take. And so I was addicted to trials from then until the time I became a judge.DL: Fill us in on what happened later to your client, just her ultimate arc.NG: She wound up getting eight years in prison instead of life. She had already gotten eight years because of a prior robbery in Philadelphia, so there was no way that we were going to affect that. She had pleaded guilty to that. She went on to live a very principled life. She's actually quite religious. She works in the very sort of left Jewish groups. We are in touch—I'm in touch with almost everyone that I've ever known—because it had been a life-changing experience for me. We were four years apart. Her background, though she was more middle-class, was very similar to my own. Her mother used to call me at night about what Susan should wear. So our lives were very much intertwined. And so she was out of jail after eight years, and she has a family and is doing fine.DL: That's really a remarkable result, because people have to understand what defense lawyers are up against. It's often very challenging, and a victory is often a situation where your client doesn't serve life, for example, or doesn't, God forbid, get the death penalty. So it's really interesting that the Saxe case—as you talk about in your wonderful memoir—really did launch your career to the next level. And you wound up handling a number of other cases that you could say were adjacent or thematically related to Saxe's case. Maybe you can talk a little bit about some of those.NG: The women's movement was roaring at this time, and so a woman lawyer who was active and spoke out and talked about women's issues invariably got women's cases. So on the criminal side, I did one of the first, I think it was the first, battered woman syndrome case, as a defense to murder. On the civil side, I had a very robust employment-discrimination practice, dealing with sexual harassment, dealing with racial discrimination. I essentially did whatever I wanted to do. That's what my students don't always understand: I don't remember ever looking for a lucrative case. I would take what was interesting and fun to me, and money followed. I can't describe it any other way.These cases—you wound up getting paid, but I did what I thought was meaningful. But it wasn't just women's rights issues, and it wasn't just criminal defense. We represented white-collar criminal defendants. We represented Boston Mayor Kevin White's second-in-command, Ted Anzalone, also successfully. I did stockholder derivative suits, because someone referred them to me. To some degree the Saxe case, and maybe it was also the time—I did not understand the law to require specialization in the way that it does now. So I could do a felony-murder case on Monday and sue Mayor Lynch on Friday and sue Gulf Oil on Monday, and it wouldn't even occur to me that there was an issue. It was not the same kind of specialization, and I certainly wasn't about to specialize.DL: You anticipated my next comment, which is that when someone reads your memoir, they read about a career that's very hard to replicate in this day and age. For whatever reason, today people specialize. They specialize at earlier points in their careers. Clients want somebody who holds himself out as a specialist in white-collar crime, or a specialist in dealing with defendants who invoke battered woman syndrome, or what have you. And so I think your career… you kind of had a luxury, in a way.NG: I also think that the costs of entry were lower. It was Harvey Silverglate and me, and maybe four or five other lawyers. I was single until I was 39, so I had no family pressures to speak of. And I think that, yes, the profession was different. Now employment discrimination cases involve prodigious amounts of e-discovery. So even a little case has e-discovery, and that's partly because there's a generation—you're a part of it—that lived online. And so suddenly, what otherwise would have been discussions over the back fence are now text messages.So I do think it's different—although maybe this is a comment that only someone who is as old as I am can make—I wish that people would forget the money for a while. When I was on the bench, you'd get a pro se case that was incredibly interesting, challenging prison conditions or challenging some employment issue that had never been challenged before. It was pro se, and I would get on the phone and try to find someone to represent this person. And I can't tell you how difficult it was. These were not necessarily big cases. The big firms might want to get some publicity from it. But there was not a sense of individuals who were going to do it just, “Boy, I've never done a case like this—let me try—and boy, this is important to do.” Now, that may be different today in the Trump administration, because there's a huge number of lawyers that are doing immigration cases. But the day-to-day discrimination cases, even abortion cases, it was not the same kind of support.DL: I feel in some ways you were ahead of your time, because your career as a litigator played out in boutiques, and I feel that today, many lawyers who handle high-profile cases like yours work at large firms. Why did you not go to a large firm, either from YLS or if there were issues, for example, of discrimination, you must have had opportunities to lateral into such a firm later, if you had wanted to?NG: Well, certainly at the beginning nobody wanted me. It didn't matter how well I had done. Me and Ruth Ginsburg were on the streets looking for jobs. So that was one thing. I wound up, for the last four years of my practice before I became a judge, working in a firm called Dwyer Collora & Gertner. It was more of a boutique, white-collar firm. But I wasn't interested in the big firms because I didn't want anyone to tell me what to do. I didn't want anyone to say, “Don't write this op-ed because you'll piss off my clients.” I faced the same kind of issue when I left the bench. I could have an office, and sort of float into client conferences from time to time, but I did not want to be in a setting in which anyone told me what to do. It was true then; it certainly is true now.DL: So you did end up in another setting where, for the most part, you weren't told what to do: namely, you became a federal judge. And I suppose the First Circuit could from time to time tell you what to do, but….NG: But they were always wrong.DL: Yes, I do remember that when you were my professor, you would offer your thoughts on appellate rulings. But how did you—given the kind of career you had, especially—become a federal judge? Because let me be honest, I think that somebody with your type of engagement in hot-button issues today would have a challenging time. Republican senators would grandstand about you coming up with excuses for women murderers, or what have you. Did you have a rough confirmation process?NG: I did. So I'm up for the bench in 1993. This is under Bill Clinton, and I'm told—I never confirmed this—that when Senator Kennedy…. When I met Senator Kennedy, I thought I didn't have a prayer of becoming a judge. I put my name in because I knew the Clintons, and everybody I knew was getting a job in the government. I had not thought about being a judge. I had not prepared. I had not structured my career to be a judge. But everyone I knew was going into the government, and I thought if there ever was a time, this would be it. So I apply. Someday, someone should emboss my application, because the application was quite hysterical. I put in every article that I had written calling for access to reproductive technologies to gay people. It was something to behold.Kennedy was at the tail end of his career, and he was determined to put someone like me on the bench. I'm not sure that anyone else would have done that. I'm told (and this isn't confirmed) that when he talked to Bill and Hillary about me, they of course knew me—Hillary and I had been close friends—but they knew me to be that radical friend of theirs from Yale Law School. There had been 24 years in between, but still. And I'm told that what was said was, “She's terrific. But if there's a problem, she's yours.” But Kennedy was really determined.The week before my hearing before the Senate, I had gotten letters from everyone who had ever opposed me. Every prosecutor. I can't remember anyone who had said no. Bill Weld wrote a letter. Bob Mueller, who had opposed me in cases, wrote a letter. But as I think oftentimes happens with women, there was an article in The Boston Herald the day before my hearing, in which the writer compared me to Lorena Bobbitt. Your listeners may not know this, but he said, “Gertner will do to justice, with her gavel, what Lorena did to her husband, with a kitchen knife.” Do we have to explain that any more?DL: They can Google it or ask ChatGPT. I'm old enough to know about Lorena Bobbitt.NG: Right. So it's just at the tail edge of the presentation, that was always what the caricature would be. But Kennedy was masterful. There were numbers of us who were all up at the same time. Everyone else got through except me. I'm told that that article really was the basis for Senator Jesse Helms's opposition to me. And then Senator Kennedy called us one day and said, “Tomorrow you're going to read something, but don't worry, I'll take care of it.” And the Boston Globe headline says, “Kennedy Votes For Helms's School-Prayer Amendment.” And he called us and said, “We'll take care of it in committee.” And then we get a call from him—my husband took the call—Kennedy, affecting Helms's accent, said, ‘Senator, you've got your judge.' We didn't even understand what the hell he said, between his Boston accent and imitating Helms; we had no idea what he said. But that then was confirmed.DL: Are you the managing partner of a boutique or midsize firm? If so, you know that your most important job is attracting and retaining top talent. It's not easy, especially if your benefits don't match up well with those of Biglaw firms or if your HR process feels “small time.” NexFirm has created an onboarding and benefits experience that rivals an Am Law 100 firm, so you can compete for the best talent at a price your firm can afford. Want to learn more? Contact NexFirm at 212-292-1002 or email betterbenefits@nexfirm.com.So turning to your time as a judge, how would you describe that period, in a nutshell? The job did come with certain restrictions. Did you enjoy it, notwithstanding the restrictions?NG: I candidly was not sure that I would last beyond five years, for a couple of reasons. One was, I got on the bench in 1994, when the sentencing guidelines were mandatory, when what we taught you in my sentencing class was not happening, which is that judges would depart from the guidelines and the Sentencing Commission, when enough of us would depart, would begin to change the guidelines, and there'd be a feedback loop. There was no feedback loop. If you departed, you were reversed. And actually the genesis of the book I'm writing now came from this period. As far as I was concerned, I was being unfair. As I later said, my sentences were unfair, unjust, and disproportionate—and there was nothing I could do about it. So I was not sure that I was going to last beyond five years.In addition, there were some high-profile criminal trials going on with lawyers that I knew that I probably would've been a part of if I had been practicing. And I hungered to do that, to go back and be a litigator. The course at Yale Law School that you were a part of saved me. And it saved me because, certainly with respect to the sentencing, it turned what seemed like a formula into an intellectual discussion in which there was wiggle room and the ability to come up with other approaches. In other words, we were taught that this was a formula, and you don't depart from the formula, and that's it. The class came up with creative issues and creative understandings, which made an enormous difference to my judging.So I started to write; I started to write opinions. Even if the opinion says there's nothing I can do about it, I would write opinions in which I say, “I can't depart because of this woman's status as a single mother because the guidelines said only extraordinary family circumstances can justify a departure, and this wasn't extraordinary. That makes no sense.” And I began to write this in my opinions, I began to write this in scholarly writings, and that made all the difference in the world. And sometimes I was reversed, and sometimes I was not. But it enabled me to figure out how to push back against a system which I found to be palpably unfair. So I figured out how to be me in this job—and that was enormously helpful.DL: And I know how much and how deeply you cared about sentencing because of the class in which I actually wound up writing one of my two capstone papers at Yale.NG: To your listeners, I still have that paper.DL: You must be quite a pack rat!NG: I can change the grade at any time….DL: Well, I hope you've enjoyed your time today, Judge, and will keep the grade that way!But let me ask you: now that the guidelines are advisory, do you view that as a step forward from your time on the bench? Perhaps you would still be a judge if they were advisory? I don't know.NG: No, they became advisory in 2005, and I didn't leave until 2011. Yes, that was enormously helpful: you could choose what you thought was a fair sentence, so it's very advisory now. But I don't think I would've stayed longer, because of two reasons.By the time I hit 65, I wanted another act. I wanted another round. I thought I had done all that I could do as a judge, and I wanted to try something different. And Martha Minow of Harvard Law School made me an offer I couldn't refuse, which was to teach at Harvard. So that was one. It also, candidly, was that there was no longevity in my family, and so when I turned 65, I wasn't sure what was going to happen. So I did want to try something new. But I'm still here.DL: Yep—definitely, and very active. I always chuckle when I see “Ret.,” the abbreviation for “retired,” in your email signature, because you do not seem very retired to me. Tell us what you are up to today.NG: Well, first I have this book that I've been writing for several years, called Incomplete Sentences. And so what this book started to be about was the men and women that I sentenced, and how unfair it was, and what I thought we should have done. Then one day I got a message from a man by the name of Darryl Green, and it says, “Is this Nancy Gertner? If it is, I think about you all the time. I hope you're well. I'm well. I'm an iron worker. I have a family. I've written books. You probably don't remember me.” This was a Facebook message. I knew exactly who he was. He was a man who had faced the death penalty in my court, and I acquitted him. And he was then tried in state court, and acquitted again. So I knew exactly who he was, and I decided to write back.So I wrote back and said, “I know who you are. Do you want to meet?” That started a series of meetings that I've had with the men I've sentenced over the course of the 17-year career that I had as a judge. Why has it taken me this long to write? First, because these have been incredibly moving and difficult discussions. Second, because I wanted the book to be honest about what I knew about them and what a difference maybe this information would make. It is extremely difficult, David, to be honest about judging, particularly in these days when judges are parodied. So if I talk about how I wanted to exercise some leniency in a case, I understand that this can be parodied—and I don't want it to be, but I want to be honest.So for example, in one case, there would be cooperators in the case who'd get up and testify that the individual who was charged with only X amount of drugs was actually involved with much more than that. And you knew that if you believed the witness, the sentence would be doubled, even though you thought that didn't make any sense. This was really just mostly how long the cops were on the corner watching the drug deals. It didn't make the guy who was dealing drugs on a bicycle any more culpable than the guy who was doing massive quantities into the country.So I would struggle with, “Do I really believe this man, the witness who's upping the quantity?” And the kinds of exercises I would go through to make sure that I wasn't making a decision because I didn't like the implications of the decision and it was what I was really feeling. So it's not been easy to write, and it's taken me a very long time. The other side of the coin is they're also incredibly honest with me, and sometimes I don't want to know what they're saying. Not like a sociologist who could say, “Oh, that's an interesting fact, I'll put it in.” It's like, “Oh no, I don't want to know that.”DL: Wow. The book sounds amazing; I can't wait to read it. When is it estimated to come out?NG: Well, I'm finishing it probably at the end of this year. I've rewritten it about five times. And my hope would be sometime next year. So yeah, it was organic. It's what I wanted to write from the minute I left the bench. And it covers the guideline period when it was lunacy to follow the guidelines, to a period when it was much more flexible, but the guidelines still disfavored considering things like addiction and trauma and adverse childhood experiences, which really defined many of the people I was sentencing. So it's a cri de cœur, as they say, which has not been easy to write.DL: Speaking of cri de cœurs, and speaking of difficult things, it's difficult to write about judging, but I think we also have alluded already to how difficult it is to engage in judging in 2025. What general thoughts would you have about being a federal judge in 2025? I know you are no longer a federal judge. But if you were still on the bench or when you talk to your former colleagues, what is it like on the ground right now?NG: It's nothing like when I was a judge. In fact, the first thing that happened when I left the bench is I wrote an article in which I said—this is in 2011—that the only pressure I had felt in my 17 years on the bench was to duck, avoid, and evade, waiver, statute of limitations. Well, all of a sudden, you now have judges who at least since January are dealing with emergencies that they can't turn their eyes away from, judges issuing rulings at 1 a.m., judges writing 60-page decisions on an emergency basis, because what the president is doing is literally unprecedented. The courts are being asked to look at issues that have never been addressed before, because no one has ever tried to do the things that he's doing. And they have almost overwhelmingly met the moment. It doesn't matter whether you're ruling for the government or against the government; they are taking these challenges enormously seriously. They're putting in the time.I had two clerks, maybe some judges have three, but it's a prodigious amount of work. Whereas everyone complained about the Trump prosecutions proceeding so slowly, judges have been working expeditiously on these challenges, and under circumstances that I never faced, which is threats the likes of which I have never seen. One judge literally played for me the kinds of voice messages that he got after a decision that he issued. So they're doing it under circumstances that we never had to face. And it's not just the disgruntled public talking; it's also our fellow Yale Law alum, JD Vance, talking about rogue judges. That's a level of delegitimization that I just don't think anyone ever had to deal with before. So they're being challenged in ways that no other judges have, and they are being threatened in a way that no judges have.On the other hand, I wish I were on the bench.DL: Interesting, because I was going to ask you that. If you were to give lower-court judges a grade, to put you back in professor mode, on their performance since January 2025, what grade would you give the lower courts?NG: Oh, I would give them an A. I would give them an A. It doesn't matter which way they have come out: decision after decision has been thoughtful and careful. They put in the time. Again, this is not a commentary on what direction they have gone in, but it's a commentary on meeting the moment. And so now these are judges who are getting emergency orders, emergency cases, in the midst of an already busy docket. It has really been extraordinary. The district courts have; the courts of appeals have. I've left out another court….DL: We'll get to that in a minute. But I'm curious: you were on the District of Massachusetts, which has been a real center of activity because many groups file there. As we're recording this, there is the SNAP benefits, federal food assistance litigation playing out there [before Judge Indira Talwani, with another case before Chief Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island]. So it's really just ground zero for a lot of these challenges. But you alluded to the Supreme Court, and I was going to ask you—even before you did—what grade would you give them?NG: Failed. The debate about the shadow docket, which you write about and I write about, in which Justice Kavanaugh thinks, “we're doing fine making interim orders, and therefore it's okay that there's even a precedential value to our interim orders, and thank you very much district court judges for what you're doing, but we'll be the ones to resolve these issues”—I mean, they're resolving these issues in the most perfunctory manner possible.In the tariff case, for example, which is going to be argued on Wednesday, the Court has expedited briefing and expedited oral argument. They could do that with the emergency docket, but they are preferring to hide behind this very perfunctory decision making. I'm not sure why—maybe to keep their options open? Justice Barrett talks about how if it's going to be a hasty decision, you want to make sure that it's not written in stone. But of course then the cases dealing with independent commissions, in which you are allowing the government, allowing the president, to fire people on independent commissions—these cases are effectively overruling Humphrey's Executor, in the most ridiculous setting. So the Court is not meeting the moment. It was stunning that the Court decided in the birthright-citizenship case to be concerned about nationwide injunctions, when in fact nationwide injunctions had been challenged throughout the Biden administration, and they just decided not to address the issue then.Now, I have a lot to say about Justice Kavanaugh's dressing-down of Judge [William] Young [of the District of Massachusetts]….DL: Or Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Kavanaugh.NG: That's right, it was Justice Gorsuch. It was stunningly inappropriate, stunningly inappropriate, undermines the district courts that frankly are doing much better than the Supreme Court in meeting the moment. The whole concept of defying the Supreme Court—defying a Supreme Court order, a three-paragraph, shadow-docket order—is preposterous. So whereas the district courts and the courts of appeals are meeting the moment, I do not think the Supreme Court is. And that's not even going into the merits of the immunity decision, which I think has let loose a lawless presidency that is even more lawless than it might otherwise be. So yes, that failed.DL: I do want to highlight for my readers that in addition to your books and your speaking, you do write quite frequently on these issues in the popular press. I've seen your work in The New York Times and The Boston Globe. I know you're working on a longer essay about the rule of law in the age of Trump, so people should look out for that. Of all the things that you worry about right now when it comes to the rule of law, what worries you the most?NG: I worry that the president will ignore and disobey a Supreme Court order. I think a lot about the judges that are dealing with orders that the government is not obeying, and people are impatient that they're not immediately moving to contempt. And one gets the sense with the lower courts that they are inching up to the moment of contempt, but do not want to get there because it would be a stunning moment when you hold the government in contempt. I think the Supreme Court is doing the same thing. I initially believed that the Supreme Court was withholding an anti-Trump decision, frankly, for fear that he would not obey it, and they were waiting till it mattered. I now am no longer certain of that, because there have been rulings that made no sense as far as I'm concerned. But my point was that they, like the lower courts, were holding back rather than saying, “Government, you must do X,” for fear that the government would say, “Go pound sand.” And that's what I fear, because when that happens, it will be even more of a constitutional crisis than we're in now. It'll be a constitutional confrontation, the likes of which we haven't seen. So that's what I worry about.DL: Picking up on what you just said, here's something that I posed to one of my prior guests, Pam Karlan. Let's say you're right that the Supreme Court doesn't want to draw this line in the sand because of a fear that Trump, being Trump, will cross it. Why is that not prudential? Why is that not the right thing? And why is it not right for the Supreme Court to husband its political capital for the real moment?Say Trump—I know he said lately he's not going to—but say Trump attempts to run for a third term, and some case goes up to the Supreme Court on that basis, and the Court needs to be able to speak in a strong, unified, powerful voice. Or maybe it'll be a birthright-citizenship case, if he says, when they get to the merits of that, “Well, that's really nice that you think that there's such a thing as birthright citizenship, but I don't, and now stop me.” Why is it not wise for the Supreme Court to protect itself, until this moment when it needs to come forward and protect all of us?NG: First, the question is whether that is in fact what they are doing, and as I said, there were two schools of thought on this. One school of thought was that is what they were doing, and particularly doing it in an emergency, fuzzy, not really precedential way, until suddenly you're at the edge of the cliff, and you have to either say taking away birthright citizenship was unconstitutional, or tariffs, you can't do the tariffs the way you want to do the tariffs. I mean, they're husbanding—I like the way you put it, husbanding—their political capital, until that moment. I'm not sure that that's true. I think we'll know that if in fact the decisions that are coming down the pike, they actually decide against Trump—notably the tariff ones, notably birthright citizenship. I'm just not sure that that's true.And besides, David, there are some of these cases they did not have to take. The shadow docket was about where plaintiffs were saying it is an emergency to lay people off or fire people. Irreparable harm is on the plaintiff's side, whereas the government otherwise would just continue to do that which it has been doing. There's no harm to it continuing that. USAID—you don't have a right to dismantle the USAID. The harm is on the side of the dismantling, not having you do that which you have already done and could do through Congress, if you wanted to. They didn't have to take those cases. So your comment about husbanding political capital is a good comment, but those cases could have remained as they were in the district courts with whatever the courts of appeals did, and they could do what previous courts have done, which is wait for the issues to percolate longer.The big one for me, too, is the voting rights case. If they decide the voting rights case in January or February or March, if they rush it through, I will say then it's clear they're in the tank for Trump, because the only reason to get that decision out the door is for the 2026 election. So I want to believe that they are husbanding their political capital, but I'm not sure that if that's true, that we would've seen this pattern. But the proof will be with the voting rights case, with birthright citizenship, with the tariffs.DL: Well, it will be very interesting to see what happens in those cases. But let us now turn to my speed round. These are four questions that are the same for all my guests, and my first question is, what do you like the least about the law? And this can either be the practice of law or law as an abstract system of governance.NG: The practice of law. I do some litigation; I'm in two cases. When I was a judge, I used to laugh at people who said incivility was the most significant problem in the law. I thought there were lots of other more significant problems. I've come now to see how incredibly nasty the practice of law is. So yes—and that is no fun.DL: My second question is, what would you be if you were not a lawyer/judge/retired judge?NG: Musical comedy star, clearly! No question about it.DL: There are some judges—Judge Fred Block in the Eastern District of New York, Judge Jed Rakoff in the Southern District of New York—who do these little musical stylings for their court shows. I don't know if you've ever tried that?NG: We used to do Shakespeare, Shakespeare readings, and I loved that. I am a ham—so absolutely musical comedy or theater.DL: My third question is, how much sleep do you get each night?NG: Six to seven hours now, just because I'm old. Before that, four. Most of my life as a litigator, I never thought I needed sleep. You get into my age, you need sleep. And also you look like hell the next morning, so it's either getting sleep or a facelift.DL: And my last question is, any final words of wisdom, such as career advice or life advice, for my listeners?NG: You have to do what you love. You have to do what you love. The law takes time and is so all-encompassing that you have to do what you love. And I have done what I love from beginning to now, and I wouldn't have it any other way.DL: Well, I have loved catching up with you, Judge, and having you share your thoughts and your story with my listeners. Thank you so much for joining me.NG: You're very welcome, David. Take care.DL: Thanks so much to Judge Gertner for joining me. I look forward to reading her next book, Incomplete Sentences, when it comes out next year.Thanks to NexFirm for sponsoring the Original Jurisdiction podcast. NexFirm has helped many attorneys to leave Biglaw and launch firms of their own. To explore this opportunity, please contact NexFirm at 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment@nexfirm.com to learn more.Thanks to Tommy Harron, my sound engineer here at Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to you, my listeners and readers. To connect with me, please email me at davidlat@substack.com, or find me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, at davidlat, and on Instagram and Threads at davidbenjaminlat.If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate, review, and subscribe. Please subscribe to the Original Jurisdiction newsletter if you don't already, over at davidlat.substack.com. This podcast is free, but it's made possible by paid subscriptions to the newsletter.The next episode should appear on or about Wednesday, November 26. Until then, may your thinking be original and your jurisdiction free of defects. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit davidlat.substack.com/subscribe

Today, I'm joined by Gracia Sotomayor, an inspiring speaker, author, artistic cyclist, and graduate of The Big Talk Academy. Born in Lima, Peru, Gracia discovered artistic cycling through a magazine photo and was captivated by the concentration and control required. With no resources available in Spanish, she taught herself and eventually moved to Germany to master the sport. She has competed in the UCI Cycling World Championships and became the first person to translate the official rulebook into Spanish. As an ambassador for artistic cycling, Gracia has promoted the sport across Latin America and been featured in international media. Through her speaking, she shares how embracing inner power, taking unconventional paths, and helping others can lead to personal transformation and lasting impact. In this episode, we'll explore: Why allowing yourself to feel your emotions fully builds self-trust The importance of sharing your story and how it opens doors for others Building genuine connections through being authentically yourself  How to trust that you're capable of doing something rather than playing the underdog or diminishing yourself Her current favorites: Book: What's Your Dream, Speaker: Coach Stormy, and Podcast: A Bit of Optimism  More from Gracia Sotomayor Her talk on The Big Talk Academy Stage in NYC Website: https://www.graciasotomayor.com/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/graciasotomayor/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracia-sotomayor-v/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gracia.sotomayor/  More from Tricia  Publish your book with The Big Talk Press Join me LIVE for my Free Monthly Workshop Explore my content and follow me on YouTube Follow me on Instagram  Connect with me on Facebook  Connect with me on LinkedIn  Visit my website at TriciaBrouk.com

¡SOTOMAYOR regresa con nuevas canciones y un nuevo álbum! WABI SABI

Hablamos con Roberto Sotomayor, concejal de Medio Ambiente de Paracuellos de Jarama, sobre la jornada de reforestación con Bosquia

watch the full podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiON4oIFxLc&t=4sBecome a Member and Give Us Some DAMN GOOD Support :https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX8lCshQmMN0dUc0JmQYDdg/joinGet your Twins merch and have a chance to win our Damn Good Giveaways! - https://officialhodgetwins.com/Get Optimal Human, your all in one daily nutritional supplement - https://optimalhuman.com/Want to be a guest on the Twins Pod? Contact us at bookings@twinspod.comDownload Free Twins Pod Content - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_iNb2RYwHUisypEjkrbZ3nFoBK8k60COFollow Twins Pod Everywhere -X - https://x.com/HodgetwinsPodInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/hodgetwins/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/twinspodYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX8lCshQmMN0dUc0JmQYDdgRumble - https://rumble.com/c/TwinsPodSpotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/79BWPxHPWnijyl4lf8vWVuApple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/twins-pod/id1731232810

In this episode, Womb Healer Carolina Sotomayor talks about how reiki helped her conceive her son and how she's helped over 100 women conceive through reiki. We also discuss why everything leads back to the womb - and how healing wounds within the womb lead women back to their joy, inner peace & professional bliss.Carolina's Links:WebsiteWork with CarolinaHer PodcastInstagramPlease note: The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Light Within are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host. Ready to reclaim your body, your power, and your peace? Start here: 1.

Un militar ha fallecido esta mañana en la Base Álvarez de Sotomayor de Viator, en Almería, durante unos ejercicios en el campo de maniobras. Hay además otra persona herida.También esta madrugada ha fallecido el hombre de 53 años que resultó herido grave el miércoles en Gibraleón, en Huelva, después de caerle encima la estructura de un toldo por el temporal.Todo en el comienzo del fin de semana de Todos los Santos y día de los difuntos, algo atípico al no haber puente. Hoy es además la noche de Halloween con numerosos dispositivos de seguridad en toda la comunidad.Escuchar audio

Santi Rivas nos ayuda a repasar algunos conceptos básicos del vino de Jerez, Eugenio Camacho nos propone dónde comer en la Capital Española de la Gastronomía 2026. Elisa Muñoz nos cuenta los secretos gastronómicos del disco conjunto del Canijo de Jerez y Los Estanques, y hablamos de la serie 'Sin Gluten' con la actriz Najwa Khliwa y la guionista Araceli Álvarez de Sotomayor.

Patriots, crank the volume for a dynamic showdown on Joe Oltmann Untamed today Dive into the No Kings Protest frenzy, sponsored by the Communist Party and far-left crews like DSA and Freedom Socialist Party—Gavin Newsom's endorsement got roasted, and a young firebrand scorched Trump's "king" label in a viral clip. We'll unpack Senator Johnson's rally scoop, expose NAACP's race-based district push, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's wild "disabled voters" claim, plus Sotomayor's smacked-down defense—get ready for unfiltered truths that light up the absurd!Ignite the conversation with our powerhouse guest E.M. Burlingame—a Green Beret, author, and cultural revolution fighter—who's storming in to torch the U.S. judicial system's rot! With his Special Forces grit and insights from the Cultural Revolution in America, E.M. will unpack cartels' grip on courts, foreign agitators manipulating outcomes, and how pathocracy breeds poverty and violence. We'll grill him on reintroducing empathy to justice, building a better system, and mobilizing the public without chaos—his Substack wisdom and X takes will arm you to fight back!Wrap with Fun Friday flair: liberals regretting their U.S. exit, Minneapolis mayor's "Baddies for Omar" cringe, Mexico deporting migrants south, and a black panelist claiming immunity from racism—plus Antifa's clown-nosed arrests and White House trolls! Honor Tina Peters in our Fax Blast fury—demand her release from political prison. This isn't just talk; it's your spark for action—tune in and let's fuel the revolution!

The Supreme Court takes center stage as Justices clash over redistricting and race. KBJ makes a shocking comparison, Sotomayor gets schooled, and Speaker Mike Johnson isn't backing down. Fetterman points the finger at his own party, Bernie and AOC hold a town hall, and Zohran Mamdani keeps dodging.We also break down Candace Owens vs Australia, Tucker & Candace's latest controversy, Kamala's awkward interview, and a Pelosi spat that has everyone talking.SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS TO SUPPORT OUR SHOW!Upgrade your wallet today with Ridge Wallet! Use code CHICKS at checkout to get 10% off right now at https://www.Ridge.com/ChicksGet your free Jumpstart trial bag, just pay for shipping, and check out Dr. Black's new book. Visit https://RuffGreens.com/Book to purchase your copy today!Change your October from cyber-scary to cyber-secure with 60% off Webroot Total Protection at https://Webroot.com/Chicks Only with our URL. Live a better digital life with Webroot.Grab your starter kit today with up to 43% off your entire order from MUDWTR, plus FREE shipping and a FREE rechargeable frother using code CHICKS at https://MUDWTR.comScore 15% off with code CHICKS and give yourself that glow-up with the BON CHARGE Red Light Face Mask at https://BonCharge.com/Chicks (It's self-care that literally lights up your face!)VISIT OUR WEBSITE DAILY! https://chicksonright.comSUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST: https://link.chtbl.com/BtHbvS8C?sid=y...JOIN OUR SUPPORTER COMMUNITY ON LOCALS: https://chicksontheright.locals.com/JOIN OUR SUPER DOUBLE AWESOME SECRET BUT NOT SECRET EXCLUSIVE GROUP:   / 388315619071775Subscribe to our email list: https://politics.chicksonright.com/su...GET OUR BOOK! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08H5D3CF1/...Venmo: @chicksonrightPaypal: https://www.paypal.me/chicksonrightGet exclusive Chicks merch here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/InRealLifeC...Even more Merch: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/chickson...Thank you for the Superchats! Watch live to donate and be recognized!Facebook: Chicks on the RightFacebook Group: Chicks on the RightTwitter, IG, Parler, Rumble: @chicksonright

And this is in defense of racial gerrymandering, somehow. Let's dive in! Gregg Jarrett is here, too, to discuss the ramifications of this Supreme Court case.

Hosts Kevin and Alex navigate a rainy, warm Thursday, providing weather, sports, and political updates. Senator Tim Sheehy's "common sense" approach to politics—secure borders, safe streets, cops are good, criminals are bad, boys are boys, and girls are girls—is praised as the antidote to Washington's chaos. The Supreme Court's debate on redistricting is featured, with a critique of Justice Sotomayor's views. In a bombshell report, Sandra Smith discusses how drug cartels are placing bounties on the heads of ICE agents. The show also features Bridget Riedel giving a surprising lesson on equine genetics, and Steve Carney offers an update on deer hunting and fishing conditions, noting the lack of ducks due to warm weather.   Political & Social Headlines Common Sense Warrior: Senator Tim Sheehy is hailed as a common-sense rock star, with hosts praising his simple statement of core American values: "Secure borders, safe street, cheap gas, cops are good, criminals are bad, boys are boys, and girls are girls". His background as a Navy SEAL and successful businessman who doesn't have to be in politics is highlighted. Cartel Bounties: A report from Sandra Smith's America Reports details how drug cartels are putting bounties on the heads of ICE agents. Nancy Pelosi's "Shut Up" Moment: Former House leader Nancy Pelosi is heavily criticized for her physical and cognitive state, particularly after snapping "Shut up!" at a reporter asking a simple question. The Race Card & Redistricting: The hosts criticize Democrats for using race in redistricting, arguing that voters of all colors are tired of victimhood and affirmative action.   Agricultural & Outdoors Report Equine Genetics Class: Bridgette Readel gives a surprise lesson in livestock genetics: A Mule is the product of a male donkey (jackass) and a female horse (mare). A Hinny is the offspring of a male horse (stallion) and a female donkey (jenny). Mules and hinnies are almost always sterile. Hunting & Fishing: Outdoors expert Steve Carney is seeing "scrapes" (where bucks paw the ground and rub scent) in the woods, indicating that the rutting season (best hunting) is about three weeks away. He notes that duck hunting is pathetic due to the lack of cold weather , but fishing is excellent as it's the best time of year for walleye.   Weather, Sports, and Culture Rainy Thursday: The morning starts with rain and thunder, and is expected to reach a high of 69°F. Drivers are warned…

How a grassroots organization in New England is encouraging parents to get a traditional landline telephone for young children instead of a cell phone. Plus, the school board in Danville reluctantly agrees to hold a special election on whether to close the town high school, a new policy prioritizing daycare for employees of Mount Snow in Dover has some parents who don't work at the resort scrambling for alternatives, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor will speak at UVM later this month, and Rutland's mayor celebrates the passage of a new multimillion dollar infrastructure bond.

(Día Mundial contra la Pena de Muerte) «... Fidel Murillo... se unió a nuestro grupo en los Llanos de Río Grande.... El hombre venía con una fama de ladrón, salteador de caminos y haciendas, incluso se rumoraba que debía ya varias vidas. Al parecer, andaba huyendo de la columna que comandaba el Coronel Sotomayor, quien tenía orden de capturarlo. »Este Coronel Sotomayor fue el que había tratado de apresarme; y al no dar conmigo mandó a quemar mis ranchos en El Cacao, y guindar por los cabellos a mi viejita, tal como también había hecho con la madre de Murillo.... »El Capitán Sotomayor, a cargo de treinta hombres, tiene la misión de capturar[me] a [mí,] Victoriano Lorenzo, indio montaraz que anda alzado por las montañas de Penonomé... y su cholada.... Según informes fidedignos, no son muchos y andan mal armados, por lo que será fácil someterlos. »A eso de las cuatro de la tarde de ese mismo día, nos dio alcance la “Columna Campo Serrano”, comandada por el Coronel Sotomayor, y ahí mismo, en los Llanos de Río Grande, trabamos combate.... Un fuego nutrido, intenso, empezó a salir de ambos bandos, causando bajas y heridos de lado y lado.... Uno de los tiros dio directamente en el ojo izquierdo del Coronel Sotomayor, quien cayó muerto al instante, produciendo la rendición total de la tropa enemiga. »Una vez que llegamos hasta donde estaban los veinte soldados con las manos en alto (algunos agitaban pañuelitos blancos), Fidel Murillo se adelantó con un machete y de un tajo le cortó la cabeza al Coronel Sotomayor.   »Enseguida di orden de que se le pusiera bajo arresto, por irrespeto al cadáver de un militar caído en combate.... »Finalmente decidí soltar a Murillo, después de hacerle dar unos azotes y advertirle que no volviera a decir que pertenecía a mi ejército o que actuaba en su nombre. »Él siguió cometiendo sus fechorías, cada vez más graves.... Por el General Heliodoro Vernaza me enteré [de] la última «hazaña» del malhechor...: »“[Abusó] carnalmente de una niña, sobrina mía, General Lorenzo —declaró Vernaza—, y yo le pido encarecidamente que se le dé a este forajido el castigo que se merece. De no ser así, no sé con qué cara voy a presentarme ante mi familia, principalmente mi pobre hermana, quienes esperan que el Ejército de la Revolución, bajo cuyo nombre se ampara este sinvergüenza, le dé un castigo ejemplar.” »—No se preocupe, General Vernaza, enseguida reuniremos al Estado Mayor, para considerar la denuncia presentada por usted.... »La decisión del Estado Mayor, y no mía... fue la de fusilar a Fidel Murillo, allí mismo, en la Plaza Pública de Santa Fe... a las cinco de la tarde.»1 En medio de la injusticia de haber sido acusado el General Victoriano Lorenzo del homicidio de Fidel Murillo, en este cuento histórico escrito por el profesor panameño Juan Antonio Gómez, en su obra titulada Del tiempo y la memoria, sobresale la justicia pronta y severa que se hace en el caso de una niña víctima de abuso sexual. Menos mal que, si bien la justicia actual suele ser muy lenta y tolerante comparada con aquella de hace ya más de un siglo, Dios hará justicia en el juicio final. Pues Jesucristo mismo advirtió que al que hace tropezar siquiera a un solo niño, «más le valdría ser arrojado al mar con una piedra de molino atada al cuello».2 Carlos ReyUn Mensaje a la Concienciawww.conciencia.net 1 Juan Antonio Gómez P., Del tiempo y la memoria (Cuentos históricos) (Panamá: Editorial Portobelo, 2005), pp. 79,80,81. 2 Lc 17:2; Mt 18:1-5; Mr 9:36-42

Editor's Note: This episode was previously uploaded with the incorrect audio. We apologize for the error. Sarah Isgur and David French kick off the episode by examining a conversion therapy case before the Supreme Court—one that, surprisingly, few seem to be talking about. Where are the sensational headlines claiming that the rights of LGBT youth are under direct threat, or that religious freedom is on the verge of extinction? The Agenda:—‘Independent as hogs on ice.'—Chiles v. Salazar—Viewpoint discrimination in therapy—Justice Sonia Sotomayor's interesting hypothetical—‘There are multiple failures of IQ tests that have led to this moment.'—Mail bag!—State courts v. federal courts Advisory Opinions is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch's offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—click here. If you'd like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member by clicking here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sarah Isgur and David French kick off the episode by examining a conversion therapy case before the Supreme Court—one that, surprisingly, few seem to be talking about. Where are the sensational headlines claiming that the rights of LGBT youth are under direct threat, or that religious freedom is on the verge of extinction? The Agenda:—‘Independent as hogs on ice.'—Chiles v. Salazar—Viewpoint discrimination in therapy—Justice Sonia Sotomayor's interesting hypothetical—‘There are multiple failures of IQ tests that have led to this moment.'—Mail bag!—State courts v. federal courts Advisory Opinions is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch's offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—click here. If you'd like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member by clicking here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Un trágico incidente rompe la calma y la complicidad entre una trabajadora de casa particular y la niña a la que cuida todos los días. Basada en la novela homónima de Alia Trabucco Zerán, Dominga Sotomayor firma un thriller psicológico en que María Paz Grandjean y Rosa Puga Vittini se lucen en los roles protagónicos. Estrenada mundialmente en el Festival de San Sebastián, tuvo un paso por la cartelera del Cine Arte Alameda antes de su llegada a Netflix este 10 de octubre.

It's been another remarkable stretch in the world of courtrooms where Donald Trump's legal battles have made headlines across the country. Here we go right to what's happened for Donald Trump in the past few days and right up to this moment, September 28, 2025.Just days ago, the Supreme Court issued an order in Trump v. Slaughter—this case is all about Trump's removal of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter without cause earlier in the year. That's significant because it challenged an almost century-old precedent from the Supreme Court's decision in Humphrey's Executor, which restricts a president's ability to remove FTC commissioners unless there's proven inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance. President Trump didn't claim any of those grounds, just policy differences. A federal judge had ordered Slaughter to be reinstated. The lower court's ruling was then stayed by the Supreme Court. The justices decided, in a 6-3 vote, that Trump's action could stand, at least for now, while the case moves forward. They ordered the parties to prepare for oral arguments this December. Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, issued a dissent, pointing to the statutory protection Congress gave FTC commissioners and warning about threats to the independence of agencies like this. The implications could be dramatic if the Court ends up narrowing or overturning the protection set in 1935, potentially reshaping not just the FTC but other independent agencies.Meanwhile, Trump's legal schedule remains packed with deadlines and developments. In the D.C. election interference case, Trump has been filing motions on presidential immunity and on dismissing charges using a slew of statutory arguments. Most deadlines for pretrial filings have been put on pause until October 24, as Judge Tanya Chutkan, who returned to jurisdiction after the Supreme Court's ruling on immunity, issued a scheduling order. The battle continues over whether Trump should be shielded from prosecution for acts taken while in office. These are questions the courts are wrestling with right now, and will be through the end of this year.In Florida, the classified documents case has advanced after Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the superseding indictment, arguing that the appointment and funding of Special Counsel Jack Smith was unlawful. The government appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, and now both sides are filing briefs, with friends of the court chiming in too. Oral arguments and decisions from that appeal could affect the timeline for any trial, or even its scope.Trump is also tangled up in New York—with appeals on last year's civil fraud judgment and the criminal conviction, where Justice Juan Merchan is now weighing a motion to set aside the jury's verdict, citing presidential immunity in light of the Supreme Court's recent guidance. A decision is expected from Justice Merchan in November.In Georgia, Trump and his codefendants are pushing appeals about disqualifying District Attorney Fani Willis, and all those appeals will be heard together, with oral arguments scheduled soon at the Court of Appeals.There has even been a class action suit filed by groups like the ACLU and NAACP, following a Supreme Court decision in CASA v. Trump, challenging aspects of the Trump administration's policy actions.As you can hear, it's a legal whirlwind that touches multiple corners of the country and asks fundamental questions about presidential power, agency independence, and the limits of the law. Come back next week for more, and thanks again for tuning in. This has been a Quiet Please production and for more check out Quiet Please Dot A I.Some great Deals https://amzn.to/49SJ3QsFor more check out http://www.quietplease.aiThis content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

This Day in Legal History: Sandra Day O'Connor Sworn in to SCOTUSOn September 25, 1981, Sandra Day O'Connor was sworn in as the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court, breaking a 191-year gender barrier in the nation's highest judicial body. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, O'Connor's appointment fulfilled a campaign promise to appoint a woman to the Court and was confirmed by the Senate in a unanimous 99-0 vote. A former Arizona state senator and judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals, O'Connor brought to the bench a pragmatic approach rooted in her Western upbringing and legislative experience.Her arrival on the Court was not merely symbolic—it signaled a shift in the perception of women in positions of legal authority and reshaped the public's view of judicial legitimacy. Though she identified as a moderate conservative, O'Connor quickly became a pivotal swing vote in many closely contested cases. Her jurisprudence favored case-by-case balancing over rigid ideological lines, particularly in areas such as abortion rights, affirmative action, and religious liberty.In the landmark Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) decision, O'Connor co-authored the controlling opinion that reaffirmed the core holding of Roe v. Wade, while allowing for certain state regulations. She also cast decisive votes in cases involving Title IX, voting rights, and the Establishment Clause. Her influence was especially pronounced in a Court that, during much of her tenure, was deeply divided ideologically.O'Connor's presence helped pave the way for future female justices, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Her swearing-in marked not just the inclusion of a woman's voice on the bench, but a redefinition of judicial neutrality and consensus-building. O'Connor retired in 2006, but her legacy remains foundational to the evolution of the modern Supreme Court and its relationship to gender and law.Apple Inc. and US Bank have both exited enforcement actions by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) years earlier than originally scheduled. The terminations, posted on the CFPB's website, end the agency's oversight of their compliance with prior settlements. Apple was previously penalized, along with Goldman Sachs, for misleading Apple Card customers and mishandling service issues, resulting in a combined $89 million in penalties and restitution. Though Apple had been subject to five years of compliance monitoring, that obligation was lifted after less than one year. Goldman Sachs remains under CFPB monitoring.US Bank faced enforcement in 2023 for freezing unemployment benefit accounts during the COVID-19 pandemic and was required to pay $20.7 million in penalties and customer redress. Its five-year monitoring period has also ended prematurely. These terminations follow a recent trend of the CFPB closing enforcement cases early, including those involving Navy Federal Credit Union and Toyota Motor Credit Corp., as the agency braces for budget-related staffing reductions. The CFPB, Apple, and US Bank have not commented publicly on the decisions.Apple, US Bank Latest to Exit CFPB Enforcement Actions EarlyThe U.S. Department of Justice is continuing its investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James over alleged mortgage fraud, reportedly following pressure from President Donald Trump. The probe, led by senior DOJ official Ed Martin, is based in the Eastern District of Virginia and focuses on whether James misrepresented her residence status on mortgage applications. The case originated from a referral by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, though James denies any wrongdoing.The investigation had previously stalled after Erik Siebert, the former U.S. attorney overseeing the matter, concluded there wasn't sufficient evidence to press charges. Siebert resigned last week amid internal pressure, and was replaced by Lindsey Halligan, a Trump-aligned attorney recently sworn in as interim U.S. attorney. Trump intensified calls for action with a now-deleted Truth Social post demanding prosecution.Attorney General Pam Bondi, who appointed Martin as a special attorney, has publicly supported continuing the investigation. Her office emphasized that the case was ongoing and not being reopened, signaling a firm stance on pursuing alleged fraud against the government. Halligan, formerly Trump's lawyer in his classified documents case, has not commented on the James probe.Letitia James Mortgage Fraud Probe Is Moving Ahead at DOJ (1)Two Black men, Alan Swanson and Willie Bennett, have received a combined $150,000 settlement from the city of Boston after being wrongly accused in a 1989 murder case that intensified racial tensions. The case involved the killing of Carol Stuart, a pregnant white woman, whose husband falsely claimed they had been abducted by a Black man. Swanson and Bennett were arrested and publicly identified as suspects, though they were never formally charged. The husband later took his own life after his story unraveled, and his brother admitted to helping hide the murder weapon.Bennett will receive $100,000, and Swanson will receive $50,000. In 2023, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu formally apologized to both men following renewed public attention from the HBO series Murder in Boston, which revisited the case and its racially charged aftermath. The episode remains a painful example of how institutional bias and racial profiling distorted justice and harmed innocent people.The settlement also reflects broader efforts by U.S. cities to confront historic injustices in the wake of national reckoning following the 2020 police killing of George Floyd.Black men wrongly linked to 1989 Boston murder get $150,000 settlement | ReutersThe Arizona Supreme Court has rejected a proposal that would have allowed individuals without full law licenses to represent or prosecute criminal defendants after completing a shortened training path. The plan, developed by the Administrative Office of the Courts, aimed to address attorney shortages in rural areas and ease the burden on public defender and prosecutor offices by offering a faster, more affordable route to limited criminal practice. Participants would have undergone two semesters of criminal law classes, a nine-month supervised practice period, and passed a specialized exam.However, the proposal faced strong opposition from prosecutors and public defenders, who warned it could lower public confidence in indigent defense, depress pay rates, and lead to constitutional challenges. Critics also argued the plan might reinforce negative perceptions about the quality of representation for low-income defendants.Arizona already allows non-lawyers to perform limited legal work in areas like family and landlord-tenant law, but this proposal would have been the first to extend that model into criminal defense. The state will continue exploring alternative licensing routes, such as the Lawyer Apprentice Program, which offers a path to licensure for law graduates who fail the bar exam by placing them in supervised legal work for two years.Arizona nixes fast-track lawyer licensing plan for criminal cases | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Only Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas have questioned the Trust Doctrine and Plenary Powers Doctrine. They all call themselves "justices", so where is the justice and where are Jackson, Kagan and Sotomayor?

JOIN OUR COMMUNITY! Exclusive Members-only content & perks! Only ~17 cents/day! $5/month! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-GqXHAdxVUVMw2F_7h_X3Q/join LEARN HOW TO BE HARD TO CONVICT if you're ever compelled to use force in defense of yourself, your family, or your property. 100% FREE "Hard to Convict Webinar," taught PERSONALLY by me: lawofselfdefense.com/hardtoconvictThe great and powerful President Donald J. Trump SCORED ANOTHER WIN at the US Supreme Court today, bringing his record at SCOTUS to 19-0 this year. This case involved the firing by Trump of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter this past March.  Slaughter sued in federal court to be re-instated to her position—demanding that an unelected, black-robed, tyrannical, inferior district trial court judge order the elected Article II Executive Branch president, elected by the whole of the American people, to delegate AGAINST HIS WILL the executive authority granted exclusively to him by the Constitution.  DC District Court Judge Loren AliKahn immediately issued a preliminary injunction ordering Trump to do exactly that. On September 4 a three judge panel ruled 2-1 to leave that order in place, but with a powerful dissent by Judge Rao, which I covered in detail at the time in THIS live stream:“Another Day, Another Pack of Federal Judge LIES!”https://youtube.com/live/qw7fzqdSSVoToday the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision stayed Judge AliKahn's preliminary injunction, doing away with the order to Trump to reinstate Slaughter on the FTC board, and effectively leaving Trump's firing of Slaughter in effect.  The three dissenters in the SCOTUS ruling were the usual crones, Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson.Join me LIVE at 6 PM ET as I break it all down in plain English!I'm Andrew Branca, a 34-year attorney and member of the Supreme Court bar. My personal mission is to deliver to all of you political and legal analysis that is exuberantly pro-America as envisioned by our Founders, pro-Constitutional order, pro-WESTERN civilization, pro-meritocracy, pro-AMERICAN family, and adamantly opposed to everyone and everything degenerate and barbaric that undermines those great American values. America, and all of western civilization, is currently in a desperate and existential war against enemies foreign and domestic.  All of us are called upon to save our great nation and western cultural tradition from a destruction that would cast ourselves, our posterity, and indeed the world into a dark ages for centuries to come.And I invite each of YOU to join me in this desperate but worthy mission to save our great nation.  The easiest way to do that? SUBSCRIBE! SUBSCRIBE! SUBSCRIBE! And even better, BECOME A CHANNEL MEMBER! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-GqXHAdxVUVMw2F_7h_X3Q/join  : -)Intro song: "Back in the Saddle," Tone Seeker & Dan "Lebo" LebowitzEpisode: 1018

A mini-Epstein-Trump documentary video is projected on Windsor Castle as Trump and Melania arrive for their Royal Visit; Kash Patel is greeted with a Legal AF Video as he's cross examined about Epstein in the House Judiciary Committee; Pam Bondi's law school education is questioned by Justice Sotomayor; Lisa Cook is still on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and votes on rates as Trump loses again; Dr. Monarez testifies that RFK Jr. effectively ordered her to lie about the anti-vax recommendations of the CDC's board; and Trump sets himself up for a big federal sanction for bad faith failing against The NY Times. Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo join forces to brief our audience on these burning issues and so much more on the top rated Legal AF podcast. Support Our Sponsors: Soul: Go to https://GetSoul.com and use code LEGALAF to get 30% OFF your order! Qualia: Head to https://qualialife.com/LEGALAF and use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout for 15% off your purchase! Magic Spoon: Get this exclusive offer when you use promo code LEGALAF at https://MagicSpoon.com/LEGALAF Smalls: Head to https://Smalls.com/LEGALAF and use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout for 50% off your first order PLUS free shipping! Subscribe to Legal AF Substack: https://substack.com/@legalaf Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kash Patel flames out and Fox News throws him an anchor not a life preserver during his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing testimony. Pam Bondi forgot that “hate speech” is just protected first amendment speech that she can't prosecute, and Justice Sotomayor tells her so.  Why hasn't Brian Kilmeade been prosecuted by Pam Bondi for “hate speech” for calling for the “lethal injection” of unhoused Americans? Trump is on a fast track to another federal court sanction for bad faith lawsuit filing with the new “$55 billion dollar” defamation suit filed by Trump against the New York Times.  And will the Epstein pedophile scandal take down 2 Administrations, as Trump visits the UK Prime Minister at the worst possible time.  Michael Popok is at The Intersection to provide his unique brand of commentary. Uplift: Elevate your workspace and energize your year with Uplift Desk. Go to https://upliftdesk.com/legalaf for a special offer exclusive to our audience. Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGALAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Check out The Popok Firm at: https://thepopokfirm.com Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN?sub_confirmation=1 Legal AF Substack: https://substack.com/@legalaf Follow Legal AF on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/legalafmtn.bsky.social Follow Michael Popok on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mspopok.bsky.social Subscribe to the Legal AF by MeidasTouch podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/legal-af-by-meidastouch/id1580828595 Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Compare and contrast as ACB and Sotomayor ride (media) circuit. ----- Amy Coney Barrett and Sonia Sotomayor are both hitting the talk shows and it's highlighting how awkward the nation's relationship with the Supreme Court really is. Barrett went on Fox and accurately stated that the Constitution prohibits Trump running for a third term. Then the host offered a "wink wink" prompt and she started backpedaling. Meanwhile, Sotomayor went on Colbert and bent over backward to give her conservative colleagues the benefit of the doubt, requiring Colbert to step in and remind us of the fire in Sotomayor's dissent. Two very different media hits, but a consistent reminder that the justices just aren't willing to forge a genuine connection with the public over media. Also, Ropes & Gray maintains a single-tier partnership (for now) and Megan Thee Stallion case introduces the world to process servers taking things up a notch.

Pahua is the musical project of Mexico City–based producer, singer, and DJ Paulina Sotomayor, known for weaving electronic beats with Latin American folk traditions. Pahua will be giving a free performance on September 20 for West Lafayette, Indiana's Global Fest. Pahau rose to prominence in 2015 with Sotomayor, an electronic music duo featuring her brother Raul. She launched her solo career in 2020, quickly gaining attention for her ability to blend hip hop and house, with traditional sounds from Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina and Colombia. Pahua has carved out a unique space in the international electronic music scene, earning festival appearances and collaborations across Latin America and beyond.

Compare and contrast as ACB and Sotomayor ride (media) circuit. ----- Amy Coney Barrett and Sonia Sotomayor are both hitting the talk shows and it's highlighting how awkward the nation's relationship with the Supreme Court really is. Barrett went on Fox and accurately stated that the Constitution prohibits Trump running for a third term. Then the host offered a "wink wink" prompt and she started backpedaling. Meanwhile, Sotomayor went on Colbert and bent over backward to give her conservative colleagues the benefit of the doubt, requiring Colbert to step in and remind us of the fire in Sotomayor's dissent. Two very different media hits, but a consistent reminder that the justices just aren't willing to forge a genuine connection with the public over media. Also, Ropes & Gray maintains a single-tier partnership (for now) and Megan Thee Stallion case introduces the world to process servers taking things up a notch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I want to speak about Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo — a Supreme Court ruling that affects not just law, but who we are as a nation — and especially about one justice's dissent that stands as a moral compass in the storm.The Ruling: What HappenedIn Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, the Supreme Court's conservative majority stayed an injunction that had barred ICE in Los Angeles from arrests based solely on factors like race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or accented English, being found in certain locations, or working certain types of low-wage jobs. The district court had found that ICE was relying on those four factors alone in many cases, which the Fourth Amendment forbids.The Supreme Court permitted the government to resume those kinds of detentions under that standard, even though no detailed majority opinion was published. The public only knows who is responsible, and the full force of what's allowed now, because of Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent.Justice Sotomayor: Her Wisdom and Her WordsJustice Sotomayor's dissent is not just a legal disagreement. It is an act of truth-telling. She writes:“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.” These words cut to the heart of what is at stake. They force us to acknowledge that policy, when unrestrained, can touch innocent lives in ways that tear at the fabric of justice.She continues:“Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.” In those few words, she reminds us that rights do not defend themselves. They depend on someone speaking up even when the cost is high, even when the majority is quiet.Why Her Dissent Matters* Naming the harm: Justice Sotomayor does more than identify legal error. She names the human toll — people seized because of their appearance, language, type of work. She calls out the injustice by telling us plainly: “looks Latino … speaks Spanish.” Those are not abstractions, but people's lives.* Moral clarity: The phrase “while our constitutional freedoms are lost” is chilling because it suggests we are already losing them — or letting them slip away. She doesn't wait for them to go; she challenges us not to.* Courage in dissent: In the face of a decision made without full court procedure—without argument, without a signed majority opinion—she stands alone (joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson) to preserve the idea that constitutional protections mean something. She does not allow the marginalized to be erased by silence or ambiguity.Lessons & Charge for UsWe learn from her that:* Words have power, especially when spoken in courage. Her dissent is more than dissent — it is a warning. It is a mirror for what America promises to be.* Constitutional rights depend on vigilance. The language of the law is fragile if those sworn to uphold it remain silent.* Each generation must defend justice. Her dissent is an invitation: not to be mere spectators, but participants. To ensure that rights aren't conditional on language, race, or job, but universal.Conclusion: Her Voice, Our ResponsibilityJustice Sotomayor has raised her voice in this case with precision, force, and conviction. Her words—“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job” — will echo long after this ruling unless we do more than remember them.As she says, “Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.” Let us not stand idly by. Let us take her dissent as our rallying cry. To speak, to organize, to defend what should never have to be defended: equal justice under the law.Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit affordingyourlife.substack.com

Notes and Links to Cynthia Miller-Idriss' Work       Cynthia Miller-Idriss is the author of Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right and Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism. She is an opinion columnist for MSNBC and writes for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, Politico, USA Today, The Boston Globe, and more. Buy Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism   Cynthia's Website   At about 1:25, Cynthia talks about the run-up to Pub Day, and how it's different than for her previous books At about 3:00, Pete asks Cynthia about the unfortunate “timeliness” of her work, especially the book At about 5:45, the two discuss seeds for the book, as Cynthia expands on the Turning Point Suffragist Museum and its history and importance At about 7:35, the two discuss the not-so-distant history of misogyny and Simone de Beauvoir, and rising "hostile sexism and misogyny” in the social media and outside world At about 9:55, Cynthia talks about the silence that often is pervasive regarding “gender policing” how misogyny must be central in more explorations of violence  At about 12:05, Cynthia shares some insightful and profound quotes from young people regarding gender norms and expectations At about 16:35, Pete and Cynthia discuss Eliot Rodger and a recent school shooter and the ways in which the “warning signs” were so numerous for a long period of time, but resources are often hard to tap into, even from well-meaning parents and adults and friends  At about 21:25, the two discuss The Death of Expertise and ideas of “alternative facts” and a pervasive lack of trust in “experts” and government At about 23:00, Cynthia responds to Pete's noting that she purposely avoids naming past shooters At about 25:00, the two lay out the book's structure  At about 24:25, Pete reports some eye-popping stats of misogynist violence  At about 26:05 Cynthia and Pete reflect on the profound quote from the book that contemporary girls have “more freedom but less power, and boys less freedom and more power” At about 24:40, Cynthia discusses masculinity/sexuality paradigm shifts  At about 29:35, Cynthia and Pete laugh and almost cry regarding fitness as being claimed by the masculine right, such as with jeans-clad RFK At about 30:35, the two reflect on the moral arc of the universe and disturbing trends with Gen Z men At about 32:20, Cynthia responds to Pete reflecting on Trump voters and his misogyny and fixed and demanding gender rigidity and policing  At about 34:15, Pete notes the “intersectionality” of Christian nationalism and masculinity, and Cynthia expands on the adherents' beliefs At about 36:15, the two discuss ideas of “containment” and visceral hatred and misogyny in hate email and chants and lashing out at women  At about 37:20, Cynthia talks about the data that charts female elected officials and hateful attacks, including from online vitriol and memes At about 39:35, Cynthia talks about people downplaying and excusing male behavior  At about 40:55, More discussion of women needing to be in the home/domestic sphere and women as a “safety net” in parts of the West, especially in the US, even up to Taylor Swift At about 42:30, Cynthia uses an anecdote from Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation to illustrate racist/sexist policing of women and women of color At about 44:50, “bonding through slurs” and online gaming's influence on misogyny and young men is discussed At about 48:30, The two discuss some stunning (or not) numbers about the way Andrew Tate is viewed At about 49:35, Cynthia responds to Pete's question about what sets Andrew Tate apart  At about 52:10, Scapegoating of sexual and racial minorities is discussed, and the “spiral” of keeping children safe and QAnon, anti-vax, etc. At about 54:40, Cynthia responds to Pete asking about possible remedies in her book, and how one avoids “preaching” in talking to those who have been radicalized online and off At about 57:00, Cynthia talks about multifaceted remedies for a multifaceted issue At about 58:00, Cynthia puts a puzzling and "hilarious" and telling interaction with a young man into perspective At about 1:02:05, Cynthia shouts out resources provided in the book's appendix, and how proceeds from the book often benefit and highlight local gender-based violence organizations       You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode.       Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. His conversation with Hannah Pittard, a recent guest, is up at Chicago Review.     Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl      Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, DIY podcast and extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!    This month's Patreon bonus episode features an exploration of flawed characters, protagonists who are too real in their actions, and horror and noir as being where so much good and realistic writing takes place.    Pete has added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show.     This is a passion project, a DIY operation, and Pete would love for your help in promoting what he's convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.     Please tune in for Episode 298 with Robert Paylor, an Inspirational speaker, quadriplegia survivor, resilience expert, and author. His book is Paralyzed to Powerful:  Lessons from a Quadriplegic's Journey.    This episode airs on September 23.    Please go to ceasefiretoday.org, and/or https://act.uscpr.org/a/letaidin to call your congresspeople and demand an end to the forced famine and destruction of Gaza and the Gazan people.

Actor and singer Anthony Ramos joins Jenna as co-host! Style experts stop by the studio to break down the biggest looks from the 2025 Emmy Awards—from best-dressed duos to top trends and more. Plus, Justice Sonia Sotomayor shares her new children's book, inspired by life lessons from her mother, whom she calls her “first and greatest teacher.” And, comedian Michelle Buteau stops by to talk about her upcoming stand-up tour. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

OA1189 - The Supreme Court's next term may not start until October, but their infamous shadow--sorry, “interim”--docket is in rare form as they issue snap decisions on everything from exactly where one 14-year-old boy can pee to just how openly racist ICE gets to be. Matt and Jenessa review which major precedents the conservative majority is ignoring to enable Trump's worst policies this week before getting on to some Epstein-related legal updates and a radical new development from the Board of Immigration Appeals with massive implications for Trump's mass deportation plans.  Finally, Matt drops a footnote to address one of our nation's least pressing legal questions: is it really true that a wedding in Kentucky can be legally officiated by a dead bear once described as “filled to the brim with cocaine”? SCOTUS order in Trump v. Slaughter  (9/8/2025)  SCOTUS order (with Kavanaugh concurrence and Sotomayor dissent) in Noem v. Vasquez-Perdomo (9/8/25) Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 21 I&N 216 (BIA 2025) Kentucky Revised Statute 402.070  P.S. Matt messed up his audio and is very sorry about it!

"The View" co-hosts react to conservative activist Charlie Kirk being shot and killed on a college campus in Utah on Wednesday as politicians from both sides of the aisle speak out against the violence and urge Americans to come together. Then, ABC News Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman joins us from Utah Valley University with the latest following conservative activist Charlie Kirk being shot and killed on the college campus Wednesday. The co-hosts weigh in and reflect as today marks the 24th year since 9/11. Later, the co-hosts discuss a potential reconciliation between Prince Harry and King Charles after they met. America Ferrera joins "The View" and reacts to Justice Sotomayor's dissent in a recent Supreme Court, she looks back on her role in "Ugly Betty" and shares the true story behind her film, "The Lost Bus." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trump's GOP allies are trying to deny the existence of the Epstein birthday note even after it was released by the House Oversight Committee, and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor did not mince words in her dissent to the court's decision to allow ICE to target all Latinos regardless of citizenship status. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor discusses the court's frequent use of the so-called “shadow docket” and explains why she issued a strong dissent to the court's ruling on ICE's powers. Justice Sotomayor's latest book, “Just Shine! How To Be A Better You” is available now in English and Spanish.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

(Sept 10, 2025)Auto loan delinquencies signal bigger trouble. Alleged gender wage gap widens. After blistering dissent, Sotomayor talks Supreme Court with Colbert.  Inside the fight over the recycling label on your milk carton.

'The View' co-hosts react to files from the Jeffrey Epstein estate being released, which includes a book of messages that is said to contain a 2003 letter Pres. Trump allegedly signed for Epstein's 50th birthday, which Trump denies. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor joins "The View" to discuss her message to Americans after Monday's immigration ruling and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Then, she discusses the inspiration behind her new children's book, "Just Shine!" Queen Latifah joins and looks back on her 1993 hit song "U.N.I.T.Y" and inspiring a generation of female rappers, the ending of her show "The Equalizer" and discusses honoring Quincy Jones at this year's Oscars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of Passing Judgment, Jessica Levinson unpacks two recent Supreme Court emergency decisions. First, she discusses the Court's move to allow ICE raids in Los Angeles to proceed, highlighting the legal debate over what constitutes reasonable suspicion for immigration enforcement. Next, she examines a ruling permitting President Trump to fire an FTC commissioner, raising questions about presidential authority over executive agencies.Jessica then dives into a major Federal Circuit Court decision striking down President Trump's expansive tariffs, explaining why the court found he lacked statutory authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). With the Trump administration seeking Supreme Court review, Jessica explores what these rulings mean for executive power, immigration, and international trade.Here are three key takeaways you don't want to miss:1. 1. Supreme Court Emergency Docket Decisions: Jessica opens the episode with a breakdown of two new decisions from the Supreme Court's “emergency docket.” These aren't full decisions on the merits, but rather interim rulings that signal how the Court may eventually decide, and have real practical effects in the meantime.2. The Federal Circuit Court's Landmark Ruling on Tariffs: Jessica explains a recent and highly significant Federal Circuit Court decision regarding President Trump's use of reciprocal tariffs. The court held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the president to impose sweeping tariffs as he did.3. The Core Legal Issue: Presidential Authority Under the IEEPA: A central theme is whether the IEEPA grants the president power to impose tariffs. The court found it does not, highlighting that the statute's language does not include terms like "tariff," "duty," or "tax," distinguishing it from other statutes where Congress has explicitly delegated tariff authority.Follow Our Host: @LevinsonJessica

We're hearing from the family at the center of a confrontation at a Phillies game last week over a home run ball. Drew Feltwell came up with the ball after a scrum in the crowd and gave it to his son Lincoln. But a woman confronted Drew grabbing his arm and demanding the ball. Feltwell told CBS News Correspondent Cristian Benavides giving up the ball was worth much more than the souvenir. For our latest edition of "Never too Late" CBS News Bay Area Anchor Anne Makovec caught the acting bug at a young age, but life took her in a different direction. Recently, she got a chance to pull off something bold and become part of a "Beautiful" CBS soap opera. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has made it her mission to help all children shine. The justice is a best-selling children's book author. Her latest is "Just Shine!: How to be a Better you." It tells the story of her mother, Celina, who helped everyone around her shine their brightest. She tells us all about it. The one and only Oprah is here to reveal her newest book club selection, only on CBS Mornings! For a very special talk of the table. One of the biggest names in stand-up comedy, Nate Bargatze is about to take another big step. The 46-year-old has been on an absolute tear. He sold more than 1.2 million tickets to his "The be Funny Tour" last year. It made him the highest-grossing comedian in the country. This Sunday may be his biggest gig yet. He's hosting the 77th Emmy Awards here on CBS and streaming on Paramount+. Actor Rain Wilson is now taking on a very different role from Dwight Schrute in "The Office." In a new action comedy called "Code 3." Wilson stars as Randy an underpaid, burned-out paramedic on his last 24-hour shift. What starts as a routine day spirals into a night full of chaos and emergencies. It's darkly comedic and deeply human and he tells us all about it. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Marc Cox Morning Show opens with Marc and Dan discussing Lara Trump's speech at the Missouri Right to Life banquet before 1,100 attendees, focused on fundraising to overturn Amendment 3 and the debate over initiative petition reform. They also cover Missouri abortion laws, the Charlotte murder of Iryna Serhutska, and a Supreme Court ruling upholding ICE enforcement. Hour 2 features Hans von Spakovsky on constitutional interpretation, Supreme Court rulings on immigration, and commentary on justices Amy Coney Barrett, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. John Lamping joins to talk Missouri politics, Amendment 3, and initiative petition reform. Political commentary includes Chuck Schumer's economic criticism and Democratic policies, plus local stories like the Miss America pageant and a stolen St. Louis food truck. Hour 3 begins with Todd Piro's humorous take on New York tax hikes, tax migration, and lifestyle differences between New York, Florida, and Missouri. Then Marc and Dan host 2A Tuesday with Luis Valdes of Gun Owners of America, covering constitutional carry, teachers carrying in schools, Florida's gun and ammo tax holiday, and the repeal of discriminatory gun laws. The hour closes with a Buck Don't Give a ____ segment on RFK Jr.'s claims about healthcare incentives and pharmaceutical influence. Hour 4 brings in Eben Brown of Fox News Radio on the Supreme Court's 6–3 ruling lifting restrictions on immigration raids in Los Angeles and the federal trial of Ryan Wesley Routh, accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump. Ryan Wiggins joins the conversation to weigh in on government subsidies, rising health insurance premiums, and the broader impact of government intervention in healthcare, education, and housing.

Marc and Dan talk with Hans von Spakovsky about constitutional interpretation, Supreme Court rulings on immigration, and the role of justices like Amy Coney Barrett, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. They also discuss ICE enforcement in Los Angeles, RFK Jr.'s push to investigate pharmaceutical companies, Lara Trump's speech at the Missouri Right to Life fundraiser, and a new IP reform bill.

This Day in Legal History: A. Lincoln Admitted to BarOn September 9, 1836, Abraham Lincoln was licensed to practice law by the Illinois Supreme Court, setting in motion a legal and political career that would ultimately reshape American history. At the time, Lincoln was a 27-year-old former store clerk and self-taught frontier intellectual, with no formal legal education. Instead, like many aspiring attorneys of the era, Lincoln "read law" by apprenticing under established lawyers and studying foundational legal texts such as Blackstone's Commentaries and Chitty's Pleadings. His relentless self-education and growing reputation for honesty earned him the nickname “Honest Abe,” long before he entered the national spotlight.Shortly after being admitted to the bar, Lincoln moved to Springfield, Illinois, where he set up a law practice. His first lawsuit came less than a month later, on October 5, 1836, marking the beginning of a legal career that would span over two decades. Lincoln took on a wide variety of cases—ranging from debt collection and land disputes to criminal defense and railroad litigation—and traveled extensively on the Illinois Eighth Judicial Circuit.His courtroom demeanor was marked by clarity, logic, and moral conviction, attributes that would later define his presidency. Practicing law not only gave Lincoln financial stability but also honed the rhetorical and analytical skills that would serve him in legislative debates and national addresses. His legal work with the Illinois Central Railroad and other corporate clients exposed him to the country's economic transformation, deepening his understanding of commerce, labor, and the law's role in shaping society.Lincoln's rise from rural obscurity to respected attorney mirrored the American ideal of self-made success, and his legal background profoundly shaped his political philosophy. It was as a lawyer and legislator that he began to articulate his opposition to slavery's expansion, using constitutional and moral arguments that would later guide his presidency and the Union's legal stance during the Civil War.His legal reasoning and insistence on the rule of law would ultimately be central to the Emancipation Proclamation, his wartime governance, and the framework for reconstructing the nation. The law gave Lincoln the tools to interpret and preserve the Constitution, even amid its greatest crisis.Lincoln's admission to the bar on this day in 1836 was not just a personal milestone—it was a foundational step toward the presidency and toward a redefinition of American liberty and union that would endure for generations.Events ripple in time like waves on a pond, and Lincoln's admission to the bar in 1836 is one such stone cast into history. Had he not secured that license—had he not taught himself law from borrowed books and legal treatises—it is likely he never would have risen to national prominence or attained the presidency. Without Lincoln's leadership in 1860, the United States may well have fractured permanently into separate nations, altering the course of the Civil War and leaving a divided continent in its wake. That division would have profoundly reshaped global affairs in the 20th century. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the fact that there was a United States powerful and unified enough to confront the Nazi war machine in 1941 traces, in part, to a frontier shop clerk's grit, discipline, and determination to study Blackstone's Commentaries by candlelight.A Florida state appeals judge who sided with Donald Trump in a high-profile defamation case against the Pulitzer Prize Board has been confirmed to the federal bench. On Monday, the U.S. Senate voted 50–43 along party lines to approve Judge Ed Artau's nomination to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Artau is now the sixth Trump judicial nominee to be confirmed during the president's second term.Artau joined a panel earlier this year that allowed Trump's lawsuit to proceed after the Pulitzer Board declined to rescind a 2018 award given to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election. In a concurring opinion, Artau criticized the reporting as “now-debunked” and echoed calls to revisit New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court precedent that has long protected journalists from most defamation claims by public figures.The timing of Artau's nomination has drawn scrutiny from Senate Democrats, who argue it raises ethical concerns. Artau reportedly began conversations about a possible federal appointment just days after Trump's 2024 victory and interviewed with the White House shortly after issuing his opinion in the Pulitzer case. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the confirmation a “blatant” example of quid pro quo, while others questioned Artau's impartiality.In response, Artau defended his conduct during his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, stating that ambition for higher office alone doesn't disqualify a judge from ruling on politically sensitive cases and that he holds no personal bias requiring recusal.Florida judge who ruled for Trump in Pulitzer case confirmed to federal bench | ReutersAfter 21 years, one of legal academia's most influential blogs is shutting down. The TaxProf Blog, launched in 2004 by Pepperdine Law Dean Paul Caron, will cease publication by the end of September following the closure of its longtime host platform, Typepad. Caron said he isn't interested in rebuilding the site on a new platform, though he hopes to preserve the blog's extensive archive of nearly 56,000 posts.Initially focused on tax law, the blog evolved into a central hub for news and commentary on law schools, covering accreditation, rankings, faculty hiring, admissions trends, and more. It maintained its relevance even as other law professor blogs declined in the wake of Twitter's rise. Caron's regular posts made the site a must-read in the legal education world, often mixing in personal reflections and occasional commentary on religion.The closure also casts uncertainty over the broader Law Professor Blog Network, which includes around 60 niche academic blogs also hosted on Typepad. At least one, ImmigrationProf Blog, has already begun looking for a new publishing home.Reactions across the legal academy reflected the impact of the blog's departure. One law school dean likened it to daily sports reporting for legal education—a constant, trusted source of updates and debate.Groundbreaking law blog calls it quits after 21 years | ReutersThe U.S. Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration in a contentious immigration case, allowing federal agents to resume aggressive raids in Southern California. The Court granted a request from the Justice Department to lift a lower court order that had restricted immigration stops based on race, language, or occupation—factors critics argue are being used to disproportionately target Latino communities. The ruling, delivered in a brief, unsigned order with no explanation, permits the raids to continue while a broader legal challenge proceeds.The case stems from a July order by U.S. District Judge Maame Frimpong, who found that the administration's actions likely violated the Fourth Amendment by enabling racially discriminatory stops without reasonable suspicion. Her injunction applied across much of Southern California, but is now paused by the Supreme Court's decision.Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by the Court's other two liberals, issued a sharp dissent, warning that the decision effectively declares all Latinos "fair game to be seized at any time," regardless of citizenship. She described the raids as racially motivated and unconstitutional.California Governor Gavin Newsom and civil rights groups echoed those concerns. Newsom accused the Court of legitimizing racial profiling and called Trump's enforcement actions a form of "racial terror." The ACLU, representing plaintiffs in the case, including U.S. citizens, denounced the raids as part of a broader “racist deportation scheme.”The Trump administration, meanwhile, hailed the decision as a major legal victory. Attorney General Pam Bondi framed it as a rejection of “judicial micromanagement,” and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing separately, argued that while ethnicity alone cannot justify a stop, it may be used in combination with other factors.This ruling adds to a series of recent Supreme Court decisions backing Trump's immigration agenda, including policies that limit asylum protections and revoke humanitarian legal statuses. In Los Angeles, the raids and the use of military personnel in response to protests have escalated tensions between the federal government and local authorities.US Supreme Court backs Trump on aggressive immigration raids | ReutersA federal appeals court has upheld an $83.3 million jury verdict against Donald Trump for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, rejecting his claims of presidential immunity. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the damages appropriate given the severity and persistence of Trump's conduct, which it called “remarkably high” in terms of reprehensibility. The ruling noted that Trump's attacks on Carroll grew more extreme as the trial neared, contributing to reputational and emotional harm.The lawsuit stemmed from Trump's repeated public denials of Carroll's allegation that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. In 2019, Trump claimed Carroll was “not my type” and said she fabricated the story to sell books—comments he echoed again in 2022, prompting a second defamation suit. A jury in 2023 had already found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in an earlier case, awarding Carroll $5 million. That verdict was also upheld.Trump's legal team argued that his 2019 comments were made in his official capacity as president and should be shielded by presidential immunity. The court disagreed, citing a lack of legal basis to extend immunity in this context. Trump also objected to limits placed on his testimony during trial, but the appeals court upheld the trial judge's rulings as appropriate.The $83.3 million award includes $18.3 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive damages. Carroll's legal team expressed hope that the appeals process would soon conclude. Trump, meanwhile, framed the ruling as part of what he calls “Liberal Lawfare” amid multiple ongoing legal battles.Trump fails to overturn E. Jean Carroll's $83 million verdict | ReutersMy column for Bloomberg this week takes aim at the so-called "Taylor Swift Tax" in Rhode Island—an annual surtax on non-primary residences valued over $1 million. While the headline-grabbing nickname guarantees media coverage, the underlying policy is flawed, both economically and politically.Rhode Island isn't alone—Montana, Cape Cod, and Los Angeles have all attempted to capture revenue from wealthy property owners through targeted taxes on high-end real estate. But these narrowly tailored levies often distort markets, suppress transactions, and encourage avoidance rather than compliance. LA's mansion tax, for example, dramatically underperformed because property owners simply didn't sell.The appeal of taxing second homes is clear: they're luxury assets often owned by out-of-staters with little political influence. But that lack of local connection also makes them an unreliable revenue base. It's relatively easy to sell, reclassify, or relocate a vacation property, particularly for the affluent. And when policies hinge on fuzzy concepts like "primary residence," they invite loopholes and enforcement challenges—especially when properties are held by LLCs or trusts.Rhode Island's new tax could drive potential buyers to nearby Connecticut, undermining its own housing market and revenue goals. If states want to tax wealth effectively, they must resist headline-chasing and instead build durable, scalable policies: regular reassessments, vacancy levies, and infrastructure-based cost recovery. These methods avoid the pitfalls of ambiguous residency tests and create more predictable revenue streams.And because discretionary wealth is mobile, real solutions will require cooperation—harmonized assessments, multistate compacts, and shared reporting. But more fundamentally, states looking for progressive revenue should aim higher—toward income and wealth taxes—rather than tinkering at the margins with weekend homes.Rhode Island Should Shake Off ‘Taylor Swift Tax' on Second Homes This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

News from the Supreme Court today….In a 6-3 decision, it blocked a federal judge's ruling that restricted federal officers' ability to conduct immigration stops in the Los Angeles area…. The Court also received… a formal request from the White House to let it hold back 4 billion dollars of congressionally approved foreign aid. The appeal comes after a federal judge ruled last week that the administration must spend the money… -On Capitol Hill, multiple media accounts this afternoon say Congressional leaders are trying to de-escalate a standoff over the Sept. 30 government funding deadline, with both Republicans and Democrats saying they'd be open to a short-term bill that wouldn't include substantial funding cuts…. Meanwhile, Senate Republican leader John Thune is taking the first steps to change rules on executive nominations… This after Democrats blocked several of the president's picks before August recess…. -From the Washington Post…A divided Supreme Court on Monday lifted a ruling by a lower-court judge who placed limits on immigration raids in the Los Angeles area after finding federal agents were indiscriminately targeting people based on race and other factors… The justices sided with the Trump administration, which argued that a temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge was hampering its ability to crack down on illegal migration and that the stops by authorities were not unlawful…. The Post goes on to write…The majority did not offer a rationale for the decision, which is common in cases decided on the Supreme Court's emergency docket…. But Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion that illegal immigration is a major issue in the Los Angeles area…. He added…“To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court's case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a ‘relevant factor' when considered along with other salient factors… Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Kentanji Brown Jackson sharply disagreed… Justice Sotomayor wrote “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job…Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.” That from The Washington Post… Now….we'll hear what California Attorney General Rob Bonta had to say about the decision coming up… But now to the White House request to hold back 4 billion dollars in federal aid… NBC News' Lawrence Hurley reporting today… The case marks a showdown over to what extent the president can refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated, a brewing issue as the Trump administration has embraced a sweeping view of presidential power since taking office again in January…. In the new filing, Solicitor General D. John Sauer described the case as raising “a grave and urgent threat” to the power of the presidency…. Under the Constitution, it is the job of Congress to allocate funds that the president can spend…. While the Trump administration has said it wants to withhold the 4 billion dollars…it has said it plans to spend another 6.5 billion dollars that Congress appropriated... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 allowing federal agents to detain people based on race, accent, or place of work. Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned the decision puts Latinos at risk regardless of citizenship, while civil rights groups called it “racism with a badge.” Attorney General Pam Bondi hailed the ruling as a victory, vowing roving patrols will continue. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed with the latest news from a leading Black-owned & controlled media company: https://aurn.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Become a Member and Give Us Some DAMN GOOD Support :https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX8lCshQmMN0dUc0JmQYDdg/joinwatch the full episode here - https://youtu.be/TiON4oIFxLcGet your Twins merch and have a chance to win our Damn Good Giveaways! - https://officialhodgetwins.com/Get Optimal Human, your all in one daily nutritional supplement - https://optimalhuman.com/Want to be a guest on the Twins Pod? Contact us at bookings@twinspod.comDownload Free Twins Pod Content - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_iNb2RYwHUisypEjkrbZ3nFoBK8k60COFollow Twins Pod Everywhere -X - https://twitter.com/TheTwinsPodInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetwinspod/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/twinspodTikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@twinspodYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX8lCshQmMN0dUc0JmQYDdgRumble - https://rumble.com/c/TwinsPodSpotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/79BWPxHPWnijyl4lf8vWVu?si=03960b3a8b6b4f74Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/twins-pod/id1731232810

Follow along with slideshow visuals HERE. ENCORE ALERT! The Feminist Buzzkills are out on a summer break! But, no need to fear – we're leaving y'all with some extra brain juice to keep you company while we're offline. We're dropping an ENCORE POD EPISODE of when we collabed with the iconic “Boom! Lawyered” hosts Imani Gandy and Jess Pieklo IN DC and broke down SCOTUS' Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic arguments back in April. It went a little something like this… ATTENTION BUZZKILLAHSSSSS! WE DID A LIVE THING – in DC! Yep. Your “Feminist Buzzkills” joined forces with the “Boom! Lawyered” pod for an epic live show! After getting word that SCOTUS was hearing a case that could result in eliminating any healthcare provider from Medicaid payments if they provide abortion, we geared up for battle for one super-sized show with the amazing “Boom! Lawyered” hosts Imani Gandy (Rewire Editor-at-Large) and Jess Pieklo (Rewire Senior Vice President, Executive Editor.) We break down what this case means, and fill you in on all the outrageous tricks clown lawmakers across the country are playing trying to destroy access to reproductive care. It was a packed show full of rage and shenanigans and the DC crowd LOVED IT!  This episode unpacks the arguments in Medina v Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, a case that could upend Medicaid beneficiaries ability to enforce their rights under the public benefit program all because conservatives hate abortion. We get into the history of efforts to kick Planned Parenthood out of the Medicaid program, the bad faith arguments made by conservatives to the Court as they try to do so again, and how a bad decision in the case could impact way more than access to abortion. Recorded LIVE at the Black Cat in DC, we gotta give a huge shout out and special thanks to the Black Cat crew for making the space for our loud asses AND for everyone who showed up! Tune in for the legal brilliance, the laughs, the knowledge, and some actions you can take to be the change you wanna see in this world.  Times are heavy, but knowledge is power, y'all. We gotchu.  Scared? Got Questions about the continued assault on your reproductive rights? THE FBK LINES ARE OPEN! Just call or text (201) 574-7402, leave your questions or concerns, and Lizz and Moji will pick a few to address on the pod! OPERATION SAVE ABORTION: WE DID A THING EARLIER THIS MONTH! The Feminist Buzzkills took some big patriarchy-smashing heat to The Big Easy and recorded a live workshop that'll train you in coming for anti-abobo lawmakers, spotting and fighting against fake clinics, AND gears you up on how to support abortion patients and providers. We turned it into a podcast episode so you can listen to it HERE. P.S. You can still join the 10,000+ womb warriors fighting the patriarchy by listening to our past Operation Save Abortion pod series and Mifepristone Panel by clicking HERE for episodes, your toolkit, marching orders, and more. HOSTS:Lizz Winstead IG: @LizzWinstead Bluesky: @LizzWinstead.bsky.socialMoji Alawode-El IG: @Mojilocks Bluesky: @Mojilocks.bsky.social CO-HOSTS:Imani Gandy IG: @angryblacklady / Bluesky: @angryblacklady.bsky.socialJessica Pieklo IG: @hegemommy / Bluesky: @hegemommy.bsky.social CO-HOST LINKS:Rewire News Group IG: @rewirenewsgroup / Bluesky: @rewirenewsgroup.comBoom! Lawyered NEWS DUMP:The Supreme Court Struggles With Whether to Wound Medicaid to Spite Planned ParenthoodAAF Pays Dr. Chuck Schumer a Visit AAF Pays Dr. Michelle Fischbach a VisitSeventeen States Attack HIPAA and Reproductive Health Privacy5 Takeaways From Tuesday's Elections, Including Bad News for Elon MuskWisconsin Voters Approve Constitutional Amendment to Enshrine Voter ID Law EPISODE LINKS:Operation Save AbortionOSA WORKSHOP: Start at 30:15 for the workshopExpose Fake ClinicsBUY AAF MERCH!EMAIL your abobo questions to The Feminist BuzzkillsAAF's Abortion-Themed Rage Playlist SHOULD I BE SCARED? Text or call us with the abortion news that is scaring you: (201) 574-7402 FOLLOW US:Listen to us ~ FBK PodcastInstagram ~ @AbortionFrontBluesky ~ @AbortionFrontTikTok ~ @AbortionFrontFacebook ~ @AbortionFrontYouTube ~ @AbortionAccessFront TALK TO THE CHARLEY BOT FOR ABOBO OPTIONS & RESOURCES HERE!PATREON HERE! Support our work, get exclusive merch and more! DONATE TO AAF HERE!ACTIVIST CALENDAR HERE!VOLUNTEER WITH US HERE!ADOPT-A-CLINIC HERE!EXPOSE FAKE CLINICS HERE!GET ABOBO PILLS FROM PLAN C PILLS HERE!When BS is poppin', we pop off!

In 1985, Charles McCrory found his wife, Julie Bonds, brutally murdered in their Andalusia, Alabama, home. Just two small marks on her arm—misrepresented in court as a definitive “bite mark”—became the sole forensic evidence used to convict him for her murder.A forensic odontologist, famed for testifying at Ted Bundy's trial, claimed the impressions matched McCrory's like a fingerprint. Yet decades later, that same expert fully recanted the testimony, acknowledging the scientific consensus now recognises bite mark evidence as unreliable “junk science”.With no blood, no DNA, and hair in the victim's hand that didn't match McCrory's, his conviction rested entirely on this flawed forensic interpretation. Over 40 years later, even as two independent forensic dentists testified that the so called bite mark was never human, Alabama courts repeatedly denied him a new trial, judging that his lengthy imprisonment still stood, and that procedural hurdles outweighed modern scienceIn July 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case. Justice Sotomayor warned that wrongful convictions like his, based on “faulty science,” are startlingly common and urged state and federal lawmakers to enact stronger safeguards to prevent miscarriages of justice.One Minute Remaining LIVE in Melbourne get your tix now Join the One Minute Remaining Jury via Appl + HERE and get OMR early and ad free for as little as $1.69 a week!Become a Jury member on Patreon and find us on Facebook here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1985, Charles McCrory found his wife, Julie Bonds, brutally murdered in their Andalusia, Alabama, home. Just two small marks on her arm—misrepresented in court as a definitive “bite mark”—became the sole forensic evidence used to convict him for her murder.A forensic odontologist, famed for testifying at Ted Bundy's trial, claimed the impressions matched McCrory's like a fingerprint. Yet decades later, that same expert fully recanted the testimony, acknowledging the scientific consensus now recognises bite mark evidence as unreliable “junk science”.With no blood, no DNA, and hair in the victim's hand that didn't match McCrory's, his conviction rested entirely on this flawed forensic interpretation. Over 40 years later, even as two independent forensic dentists testified that the so called bite mark was never human, Alabama courts repeatedly denied him a new trial, judging that his lengthy imprisonment still stood, and that procedural hurdles outweighed modern scienceIn July 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case. Justice Sotomayor warned that wrongful convictions like his, based on “faulty science,” are startlingly common and urged state and federal lawmakers to enact stronger safeguards to prevent miscarriages of justice.One Minute Remaining LIVE in Melbourne get your tix now Join the One Minute Remaining Jury via Appl + HERE and get OMR early and ad free for as little as $1.69 a week!Become a Jury member on Patreon and find us on Facebook here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kimberly Atkins Stohr hosts #SistersInLaw to expose the malfeasance at the DOJ by highlighting questionable firings and sentencing, including the killer of Breonna Taylor and Maurene Comey.  Then, the #Sisters call out the SCOTUS for initiating the death of the Department of Education with their recent ruling, break down Justice Sotomayor's dissent, and what the future of our children's schooling might look like.  They also keep us informed about the latest developments in the Epstein drama and examine how the controversy could impact our politics.   Get the brand new ReSIStance T-Shirt & Mini Tote at politicon.com/merch #SistersInLaw Spin-off Shows Are Here! Check out Jill's New Politicon YouTube Show: Just The Facts Check out Kim's New Politicon Podcast: Justice By Design Add the #Sisters & your other favorite Politicon podcast hosts on Bluesky Get Barb's book, Attack From Within, coming out in paperback! Joyce's new book, Giving Up Is Unforgivable, is now available for pre-order!  Get your #SistersInLaw MERCH at politicon.com/merch WEBSITE & TRANSCRIPT Email: SISTERSINLAW@POLITICON.COM or Thread to @sistersInLaw.podcast Get text updates from #SistersInLaw and Politicon.  Mentioned By The #Sisters SOTOMAYOR'S DISSENT- LINDA M C MAHON, SECRETARY OF EDUCATION, ET AL. v. NEW YORK, ET AL. From Joyce's Substack - Following Orders Support This Week's Sponsors Flamingo: Keep smooth this summer with Flamingo, the razor built for your body and mind. Get 25% off your first order at shopflamingo.com/sisters with code: SIL Thrive Causemetics: Get the Liquid Lash Extensions Mascara and a mini-sized Brilliant Eye Brightener at a special set price with free shipping
available when you go to thrivecausemetics.com/sisters Osea Malibu: Get 10% off your order of clean beauty products from OSEA Malibu when you go to oseamalibu.com and use promo code: SISTERS10 Blueland: For 15% off your order of green cleaning products, go to blueland.com/sisters Get More From The #SistersInLaw Joyce Vance: Bluesky | Twitter | University of Alabama Law | MSNBC | Civil Discourse Substack | Author of “Giving Up Is Unforgiveable” Jill Wine-Banks: Bluesky | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Author of The Watergate Girl: My Fight For Truth & Justice Against A Criminal President | Just The Facts YouTube Kimberly Atkins Stohr: Bluesky | Twitter | Boston Globe | WBUR | The Gavel Newsletter | Justice By Design Podcast Barb McQuade: Bluesky | Twitter | University of Michigan Law | Just Security | MSNBC | Attack From Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America

Only Congress can create or close a government agency like the Department of Education. However, the six right-wing Supreme Court Justices ruled that Trump can continue his efforts to close the Department of Education even though it clearly violates the doctrine of separation of powers.Justice Sotomayor authored a powerful and persuasive dissenting opinion, exposing the illegality and unconstitutionality of what Trump is doing, and highlighting the danger to American democracy when the Supreme Court condones Trump's lawlessness.If you're interested in supporting our all-volunteer efforts, you can become a Team Justice patron at: / glennkirschner If you'd like to support Glenn and buy Team Justice and Justice Matters merchandise visit:https://shop.spreadshirt.com/glennkir...Check out Glenn's website at https://glennkirschner.com/Follow Glenn on:Threads: https://www.threads.net/glennkirschner2Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glennkirschner2Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glennkirsch...Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/glennkirschn...TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/glennkirschner2See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this episode of “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered,” a new poll shows that a majority of Americans don't believe the government's explanation of Jeffrey Epstein's death. Even the Trump administration is now trying to cover it up, and Americans aren't buying it. Then, one of Joe Biden's doctors from his time as president has pleaded the Fifth in a congressional hearing when asked if he knew about Biden's mental decline. Next, the Supreme Court justices are infighting after Justice Sonia Sotomayor was left confused by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissent. Finally, former staff members for New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani are not the most moral of individuals.   Today's Guests: Sara is joined by Jason Buttrill, head writer and chief researcher for Glenn Beck, and Blaze News editor in chief Matthew Peterson.   Today's Sponsors:   Birch Gold: Just text my name, SARA, to the number 989898, and Birch Gold will send you a FREE info kit on gold.   CraftCo. Flying Ace Spirits: Buy online at http://www.flyingacespirits.com and use code BLAZE for free shipping. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tonight on The Last Word: The Supreme Court gives Donald Trump even more power one year after the immunity ruling. Also, Trump family business interests raise ethical concerns. Plus, Trump wields tariffs to stop Canada taxes on tech giants. And a Republican lawmaker in a red state says that state won't survive the Trump budget bill. Laurence Tribe, Tim O'Brien, Rep. Chris Pappas, Mini Timmaraju, and Rep. Kelly Morrison join Ali Velshi.