PODCAST

Serious Trouble

Josh Barro and Ken White

An irreverent podcast about the law from Josh Barro and Ken White. www.serioustrouble.show

news news commentary

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18:39

Federal Censorship Commission

Serious Trouble ·

2025/09/19

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showDisney has “indefinitely” ceased airing Jimmy Kimmel Live under pressure from FCC chairman Brandon Carr and from Nexstar and Sinclair, two major owners of ABC affiliate stations, which themselves faced significant pressure from Carr. It is illegal for federal officials to “jawbone” private actors into punishing other private actors for their speech, but for relief to be possible, there has to be a pretty clear

39:54

Surprising Federal Crimes

Serious Trouble ·

2025/09/12

This week’s show takes a look at federal charges in the widely discussed Charlotte train murder case. Murder, of course, is not generally a federal crime, but because the murder happened on a train, the Feds have charged it as a violation of 18 USC § 1992, which prohibits “an act, including the use of a dangerous weapon, with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury to any person” in various transportation-related places, including on train tracks.Meanwhile, the Supreme Court will soon

37:13

Triple No Bill

Serious Trouble ·

2025/09/02

This week: Jeanine Pirro has returned to her roots as a prosecutor, but prosecutors in her office have failed to secure felony indictments in at least three cases they brought to grand juries, including the case of “Sandwich Guy” Sean Dunn, who will face only misdemeanor charges for launching a submarine sandwich at a CBP officer.Trump lost another appeal related to many of his tariffs (IEEPA!); Trump’s weird lawsuit against federal judges in Maryland was thrown out; Alan Dershowitz lost his appeal

43:57

Godmother of Greenpoint

Serious Trouble ·

2025/08/23

As Eric Adams says, New York is the Zagreb of America. People from all over the world come to New York to make their dreams come true. And sometimes, those dreams are illegal. Today we talk about the second indictment for longtime Adams consigliere Ingrid Lewis-Martin for taking a TV series cameo in exchange for impeding a street safety redesign that would have complicated access to co-defendants Gina and Tony Argento’s Broadway Stages in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Other aides are swept up in that case

38:03

I Threw The Sandwich, But I Did Not Throw the Panini

Serious Trouble ·

2025/08/15

Judge Paul Engelmeyer has refused the Trump administration’s request to release the grand jury transcripts from Ghislaine Maxwell’s prosecution. He notes forcefully that he’s reviewed the grand jury transcripts and there’s no there there — everything of interest disclosed to the grand jury became public at trial. Indeed, the only reason Engelmeyer considered releasing the transcript was that it would serve the public interest of showing the government had been lying about what’s in the transcript

43:27

Arenas Poker Club

Serious Trouble ·

2025/08/07

This week Ken and Josh discuss the next steps the Trump administration may be considering to deal with the Epstein mess: what to do about the files, what to do about the transcript of Todd Blanche's meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell, who was moved to a much nicer federal prison, has a colorable argument that her conviction should be thrown out because she was supposed to be covered by the sweetheart deal Jeffrey Epstein cut with federal prosecutors back during the Bush administration.Plus:

21:47

Ghislaine Looks for a Deal

Serious Trouble ·

2025/07/29

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showGhislaine Maxwell has sat for a meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who not very long ago was serving as President Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney. The idea seems to be that Maxwell could offer some “help” getting to the bottom of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal in exchange for some sort of leniency. That’s for free subscribers. For paying subscribers this week, there’s much more:* Emmanuel and

48:01

To Most People It's Extremely Tedious

Serious Trouble ·

2025/07/22

Donald Trump has sued the Wall Street Journal over its story saying he wrote a weird poem to Jeffrey Epstein and drew a caricature of a naked woman with his own signature as her pubic hair as part of a book wishing a happy 50th birthday to the New York financier. Ken and Josh discuss the suit, which looks more like an exclamation point on his claims that he never even liked that Epstein guy! than a serious effort to win damages from (or extort) the Rupert Murdoch empire. Meanwhile, Trump is seeking

48:14

Oh Mann

Serious Trouble ·

2025/07/10

This week, we discuss the mostly favorable verdict for Sean Combs, a.k.a. P. Diddy and his upcoming sentencing. In another bizarre sex-related case, two founders of OneTaste, a new-age-female-empowerment-business-slash-sex-cult, have been convicted of coercing their employees into sex acts.Also this week: an update on D.H.S. vs. D.V.D., a case where the Supreme Court’s orders have been fairly inscrutable and the litigants have now been deported to South Sudan; another shadow docket victory for the

21:49

Nationwide Injunctions Are Enjoined

Serious Trouble ·

2025/07/01

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showFor all subscribers: a discussion of the Sean Combs jury deliberations and a look at the 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. CASA that says trial courts (generally) can no longer issue nationwide injunctions. As Ken and I discuss, the ruling is sure to greatly change how aggressive executive branch actions get litigated, but the exact nature of the change is not yet clear.Paying subscribers also get a look at Gavin

39:51

One-Way Ticket to South Sudan

Serious Trouble ·

2025/06/26

More shadow docket news on this week’s show: The Supreme Court’s conservative majority blocked an order from a federal judge in Boston that had imposed due process requirements when the Trump administration tries to deport migrants to countries other than their countries of origin. As is often the case with shadow docket orders, the judges in the majority did not explain their reasoning, leaving the lower courts without clear guidance on what to do next: was the order blocked because the class of

42:38

Of And Concerning

Serious Trouble ·

2025/06/19

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

43:29

Newsom v. Trump

Serious Trouble ·

2025/06/13

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

47:38

The Lindell Defense

Serious Trouble ·

2025/06/06

In the ongoing defamation trial of Mike Lindell, who accused Dominion Voting Systems employee Eric Coomer of personally conspiring to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump, Lindell isn't bothering to argue that his claims were true. Instead he's saying he believed them at the time he said them. Is that a good defense?Plus: a federal appellate decision upholding an injunction against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's efforts to harass the pressure group Media Matters for America over its

26:16

My "I Didn't Make the Fed Unconstitutional" Shirt Is...

Serious Trouble ·

2025/05/30

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showThis week’s show is heavy on economic policy. Yay! We discuss a ruling from the U.S. Court of International Trade that many of Trump’s beloved tariffs are illegal and then, a strange shadow-docket order in U.S. v. Wilcox, a case about the National Labor Relations Board that raises a key economic question: Does that mean the president can fire the entire Federal Reserve Board, too?For paying subscribers: an update on

14:56

Itty Bitty Diddy Committee

Serious Trouble ·

2025/05/16

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showThis week, we look at the indictment of Judge Hannah Dugan and the end of Ed Martin's reign at the US Attorney's office for the District of Columbia. For paying subscribers, we have an update on family business at the Sean Combs trial, where James Comey's daughter Maurene is facing off against Mark Geragos's daughter Teny. We have updates about new rulings about the Alien Enemies Act, about Marco Rubio's efforts to

47:19

Voir Diddy

Serious Trouble ·

2025/05/07

This week on the show: Jury selection for Sean Combs' eight-week RICO trial, which is moving along very quickly for for a complex federal criminal case.Plus: a ruling in the Alien Enemies Act cases, a ruling that gets at the heart of the policy question: whether there is an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” that triggers presidential powers under the law in the first place. It's a strange one.Another long-running case where ICE contends it doesn’t matter that it violated a court order about how to

28:39

Please Forget My Oopsie

Serious Trouble ·

2025/05/02

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showWe've got a lot for paid subscribers this week: Updates on several removal cases, a look at the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan, our first look at the litigation over Trump's tariffs, a cautionary tale about what happens when you accidentally file your internal deliberations about the weakness of your case on the public court docket, some forecasts for George Santos's time in federal prison, a discussion of why Sarah

43:20

The Emerging Presumption of Irregularity

Serious Trouble ·

2025/04/23

This week, Ken and I have a discussion of Harvard’s lawsuit fighting the Trump Administration’s effort to punish the university for failing to submit to what amounted to a demand to place the university in a kind of federal receivership. We look at the Supreme Court's middle-of-the-night, weekend rebuke to the Trump administration, ordering a halt to Alien Enemies Act removals from the Northern District of Texas. The subtext of this order is that four of the court’s conservatives have noticed the

40:51

Please Explain What You Mean By 'Effectuate'

Serious Trouble ·

2025/04/12

The Supreme Court is getting increasingly involved in the sprawling litigation over Donald Trump’s many aggressive executive orders. In J.G.G. vs. Trump — the case seeking to prevent removals under the Alien Enemies Act — the high court issued an emergency ruling saying detainees are entitled to due process but they must seek it through petitions for habeas corpus in the jurisdictions where they are actually being held. Is this a rebuke to the administration, relief, or neither?We also discuss the

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