Law and Chaos

The J. M. Smucker Company notched a win in its trademark dilution case against Trader Joe's over the Uncrustable dupes. A judge in Ohio refused to dismiss the case or transfer it to California. 
 
For the third time, Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected Trump's attempt to remove his hush money conviction case to federal court from New York State court.
 
The Supreme Court allowed Trump to build his monstrous bunker ballroom.
 
DOOFUS OF THE DAY: George Santos managed to get himself banned for life by Kalshi after he got caught better on his own attendance at the State of the Union.
 
MAIN SHOW:
 
Judge Rita Lin granted summary judgment to Anthropic in its case against the Defense Department. After the company objected to the use of its product for autonomous lethal targeting and mass surveillance of Americans, Pete Hegseth set out to destroy its business. He failed.
 
Judge Indira Talwani refused to stay her own order blocking the Post Office from implementing Trump's demand to seize control of mail-in ballots. 
 
Prosecutors in Minnesota hope to criminalize protest by claiming that an entire network of people engaging in First Amendment-protected protest are responsible if one of them eventually commits a crime. Pursuant to a Trump directive known as NSPM-7, the DOJ instructed operatives to infiltrate and surveil affinity groups espousing "extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment." None of which is a crime! They've charged 15 protesters in Minnesota as part of a conspiracy that includes major unions and the DSA — all of which they've snooped on using administrative warrants from DHS.
 
SUBSCRIBER BONUS:
A gestational surrogate from Alaska is trying to steal a sick baby. And Ken Paxton wants to help her do it!
 
J.M. Smucker Co v. Trader Joe's
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71631587/jm-smucker-company-v-trader-joes-company/
 
People of The State of New York v. Trump
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67326478/people-of-the-state-of-new-york-v-trump/
 
Anthropic PBC v. U.S. Department of War
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72379655/anthropic-pbc-v-us-department-of-war
 
US v. Sant [D. Minn. docket via CourtListener]
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73489661/united-states-v-sant/
 
National Park Service v. National Trust for Historic Preservation [Supreme Court order]
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/26a203_2b8e.pdf
 
League of Women Voters v. Trump
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73133197/league-of-women-voters-of-massachusetts-v-trump/?
 
NSPM-7
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/
 
Show Links:
https://www.lawandchaospod.com/
BlueSky: @LawAndChaosPod
Threads: @LawAndChaosPod
Twitter: @LawAndChaosPod

DOCKET ALERTS:
 
Washington Post opinion writer Karen Attiah, who was fired for her remarks after the death of Charlie Kirk, has been reinstated to her job after winning in arbitration.
 
Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook responded to Trump's latest effort to fire her by pointing out that multiple members of Trump's own cabinet made the same paperwork error she did on a mortgage application, and no one is accusing them of fraud.
 
Judge David Hittner, an 87-year-old Reagan appointee, struck down Texas's drag ban, finding that it would necessarily criminalize a lot of performances that are not obscene … including ones by Dolly Parton.
 
DOOFUS OF THE DAY:
 
Mike Lindell, the crackpot pillow pumper, lost his bid to be the Republican gubernatorial candidate in his home state of Minnesota. And he missed the deadline to pay for a recount. But he's not letting that stop him! He's suing everyone in sight demanding they surrender proof that the entire thing was rigged.
 
MAIN SHOW:
 
Florida Republicans are embroiled in a massive corruption scandal involving $10 million in taxpayer dollars for children's prescriptions, laundered through First Lady Casey Desantis's charity, and used for partisan political purposes, including defeating a marijuana legalization referendum. CBS in Miami got the grand jury report.
 
Judge Fernando Rodriguez, Jr. rebuffed Minnesota's motion to force Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to extradite ICE agent Christian Castro. Castro shot a man in Minneapolis and then lied about it, including filing a false police report. He was indicted in Minnesota, but Texas refuses to sign an extradition warrant, and now Castro has been released from jail.
 
Judge Cooper held a hearing today on the future of the Kennedy Center, after the board voted again to chisel Trump's name into the marble on the front of the place.
 
Judge Indira Talwani ordered the state plaintiffs to file an amended complaint in their effort to block the Trump administration seizing control of mail-in voting pursuant to Trump's executive order. Last week, the Supreme Court's conservatives blocked Judge Talwani's prior injunction on the theory that the states hadn't yet been harmed when they filed their original complaint.
 
SUBSCRIBER BONUS:
 
Update on Tuesday's hearing in our FOIA suit to get the evidence in the DOJ's ethics complaint against Judge Boasberg.
 
The Washington Post Fired Me. I Fought—and Won My Job Back.
https://karenattiah.substack.com/p/the-washington-post-fired-me-i-foughtand
 
Extragrams LLC v. Paxton [TX drag ban]
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67660604/extragrams-llc-v-paxton
 
Walz v. Abbott [S.D. Tex. extradition case; docket via CourtListener]
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/74662182/walz-v-abbott/
 
Trump v. California [Supreme Court order re: voter lists EO]
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/26a124_hgci.pdf
 
League of Women Voters v. Trump [D. Mass. voter list case before Judge Talwani; docket via CourtListener]
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73133197/league-of-women-voters-of-massachusetts-v-trump/
 
Grand jury finds DeSantis administration "misappropriated" $10 million in taxpayer money to Hope Florida
https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/grand-jury-report-hope-florida/
 
Res Ipsa Media LLC v. DOJ
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71236135/res-ipsa-media-llc-v-department-of-justice/


Show Links:
https://www.lawandchaospod.com/
BlueSky: @LawAndChaosPod
Threads: @LawAndChaosPod
Twitter: @LawAndChaosPod

DESCRIPTION:
 
It's a special episode today. We'll spend the whole show diving into the debacle of eBay, a $50 billion company, launching a harassment campaign against a middle-aged couple in Massachusetts. Come for the corporate bigwigs sending live roaches by mail, stay for the national security kerfuffle. It's a wild story, and it even has a happy ending.
Steiner v. EBay
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/60073359/steiner-v-ebay-inc
US v. Baugh
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18602070/united-states-v-baugh
Show Links:
https://www.lawandchaospod.com/
BlueSky: @LawAndChaosPod
Threads: @LawAndChaosPod
Twitter: @LawAndChaosPod

DOCKET ALERTS:
 
US Attorney Jeanine Pirro wants to leave the door open to re-charging David Hearn for damaging the reflecting pool, although she concedes that literally everything she said in her original indictment was a lie.
 
Pirro is also doing her darnedest to keep a lady locked up for the high crime of spraypainting.
 
Judge Reed O'Connor is trying for a third time to allow manufacturers to sell ghost guns, no matter what the Supreme Court says.
 
We're still waiting on the Supreme Court to say whether Trump can keep building his ballroom, or will have to cease above-ground construction as lower courts have ruled.
 
MAIN SHOW:
 
FCC Chair Brendan Carr is trying to burn down ABC for crimes of woke. But after he demanded that the ten local affiliates owned by the network renew their licenses early — likely a prelude to putting them out of business — ABC's parent company Disney swung into action. They sued the agency for retaliation in violation of the First Amendment.
 
The DOJ's "8647" indictment of James Comey is circling the drain. The government filed its responses to various motions today, and they are … creative! They quote at length from Comey's novel and his appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. 
 
In January, ICE agent Christian Castro shot Minnesota man Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis and then filed a false report claiming that Sosa-Celis attacked him with a snow shovel. The charges against Sosa-Celis were quickly dropped, and in May state officials charged Castro with second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime and court issued a warrant for his arrest. By then, Castro was in Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott — the Law and Chaos DOOFUS OF THE DAY — has refused to extradite him to Minnesota as mandated by the Constitution's Extradition Clause. And so now Minnesota has sued Texas in federal court. 
 
US v. Hearn Reply In Support of Motion to Dismiss Without Prejudice [via Marcy Wheeler]
https://legacy.www.documentcloud.org/documents/28565563-260818-hearn-dismiss-reply
 
US v. Farris [spraypaint lady]
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/74650269/united-states-v-farris/
 
Vanderstok v. Blanche [ghost guns]
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/64886994/vanderstok-v-garland
 
National Park Service v. National Trust for Historic Preservation [SCOTUS Docket]
https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/26a203.html
 
ABC v. FCC
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/74661956/american-broadcasting-companies-inc-v-federal-communications-commission/
 
US v. Comey [docket via CourtListener]
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73256624/united-states-v-comey/?order_by=desc
 
Walz v. Abbott
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/74662182/walz-v-abbott/
 
Show Links:
https://www.lawandchaospod.com/
BlueSky: @LawAndChaosPod
Threads: @LawAndChaosPod
Twitter: @LawAndChaosPod

DOCKET ALERTS:
 
The Supreme Court denied Trump's motion for rehearing in the first E. Jean Carroll case. Time to pay up, creep!
 
Federal Judge Lynn Winmill invalidated Idaho's abortion ban insofar as it contains no exception to preserve the health of the pregnant person — including mental health. Along the way, he took apart the Supreme Court's hack historical analysis in Dobbs.
 
DOOFUS OF THE DAY: Josh Autenrieth, who bombed spectacularly on his first and only outing as an expert witness. During deposition, the plaintiffs lawyer Daniel Moye caught Autenreith fabricating his entire report exonerating 3M with the help of ChatGPT. Then Moye forced to testify for the plaintiffs at trial. On the stand Autenrieth discovered that there was a public link to all his chats live on the internet. Shout out to 404 Media for this wild story.
 
MAIN SHOW:
US Attorney Andrew Boutros in Chicago continues to embarrass himself and demean his office. The New York Times reports that his office has been harassing the family of Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over Trump's false business records case in Manhattan. Merchan's daughter worked for a political firm in Illinois, and so Boutros decided he would use this as a lever to try to shake loose all kinds of political communications. And it turns out the same lawyers who worked on the Broadview 6 case, Matthew Skiba and William Hogan, had their prints all over this one.
 
Luigi Mangione pled guilty in federal court to two counts of stalking. But he did so in such a way as to make it much harder for the state to prosecute him for murder. Was this done with the connivance of the feds to get back at Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg?
 
Seyb v. Members of the Idaho Board of Medicine
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68527351/seyb-v-members-of-the-idaho-board-of-medicine/
 
'Show How 3M Is 0% at Fault:' Expert Witness Used ChatGPT to Write Report Defending Company in Deadly Explosion Lawsuit
https://www.404media.co/show-how-3m-is-0-at-fault-expert-witness-used-chatgpt-to-write-report-defending-company-in-deadly-explosion-lawsuit/
 
Prosecutors Examined Firm With Tie to Judge in Trump Hush Money Trial
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/us/politics/prosecutors-examined-firm-with-tie-to-judge-in-trump-hush-money-trial.html
 
US v. Mangione [federal court docket via CourtListener]
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69908890/united-states-v-mangione/
 
Luigi Mangione Pleads Guilty To Stalking, Admits To Murder Anyway, Argues This Makes Trial Double Jeopardy
https://abovethelaw.com/2026/08/luigi-mangione-pleads-guilty-to-stalking-admits-to-murder-anyway-argues-this-makes-trial-double-jeopardy/
 
Show Links:
https://www.lawandchaospod.com/
BlueSky: @LawAndChaosPod
Threads: @LawAndChaosPod
Twitter: @LawAndChaosPod