PODCAST

Serious Trouble

Josh Barro and Ken White

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

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All Episodes

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

26:09

Venue and Jurisdiction

Serious Trouble ·

2025/04/04

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showThere has been a cat-and-mouse game about venue in several of the cases brought by people protesting the Trump administration’s efforts to remove their visas and remove them from the country. For example: if you thought your client was in New York when you filed your lawsuit, but he was really in New Jersey, and now he’s in Louisiana, should the case be transferred to New Jersey, or to Louisiana? It sounds technical

47:06

Please Don't Hit Me

Serious Trouble ·

2025/03/27

Paul Weiss is the third law firm to come under attack from the Trump administration and the first one to cut a deal, agreeing to certain terms about its practices in exchange for Trump withdrawing an executive order that effectively aimed to bankrupt the firm. The firm had different things to say about the agreement than Trump did — and we discuss what a capitulation like this might do for its business, staffing and more at Paul Weiss and throughout Big Law.Plus: Columbia University has similarly

45:07

Please Take Judicial Notice that Drake Is a Little Bitch

Serious Trouble ·

2025/03/20

The latest, most brutal entry in the rap battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake comes in the form of a motion to dismiss. Drake, you will remember, sued Lamar’s record label (which is also Drake’s record label) for defamation, alleging that Lamar’s hit single “Not Like Us” defames him by calling him a pedophile. But as UMG’s attorney Rollin Ransom points out, rap battles are well known to feature hyperbolic accusations and insults that are not necessarily factual, which means they are unlikely to

30:22

At Least Everyone Knows How to Pronounce It Now

Serious Trouble ·

2025/03/14

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showFor all subscribers: we have a discussion of President Trump’s jihad against Perkins Coie, and Long-Suffering Federal Judge Beryl Howell’s lack of patience for it. And we talk about the arrest of green card-holder Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University — and the efforts of the Trump Administration to expel him using little-used but very broad powers for the Secretary of State to expel aliens on the grounds that their

40:29

Short Staffing

Serious Trouble ·

2025/03/05

Acting US Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin continues to make bizarre and political use of the DOJ for Trump’s political purposes — this time, he's trying to impanel a grand jury to hear evidence about heated political remarks Sen. Chuck Schumer made in 2020 about Supreme Court justices. It hasn't worked, and neither has his effort to get a magistrate judge to approve a warrant to freeze the bank account of an environmental organization. Plus: why lawyers working on EO litigation may

39:50

The New George Santos

Serious Trouble ·

2025/02/27

The Trump administration continues to ice out the Associated Press, and now the AP is suing. We discuss how the administration changed its argument (not great, from a policy perspective, but it may actually put the White House on stronger legal ground). Ed Martin — the conservative activist serving as acting US Attorney for the District of Columbia, whom Trump has named to be the permanent US Attorney for that district — continues to send out weird, threatening letters about non-criminal behavior by

38:13

Not Like U.S. Attorneys

Serious Trouble ·

2025/02/19

Emil Bove's weaponization of the Justice Department is leading to resignations, including of a former protégé; Pam Bondi's bark is worse than her bite; Alex Spiro is a good lawyer. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.serioustrouble.show/subscribe

42:42

Everyone Is Fired

Serious Trouble ·

2025/02/05

This week: more firings — dozens of DOJ line prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases. Trump’s flurry of executive actions has drawn a flurry of litigation, much of it related to the Administrative Procedure Act. States and grantees are suing to stop the OMB funding pause, and finding success so far. Unions representing government workers are suing Elon Musk’s access to their information. Several anonymous FBI agents are even suing to stop disclosure to Trump officials of which cases they worked

34:42

Settlements and Separations

Serious Trouble ·

2025/01/31

Just a week and a half back into the presidency, Donald Trump has seen to it that various federal prosecutors who were involved in prosecuting him have been fired. Can he do that? Also: the DOJ continues to drop cases against defendants who enjoy Trump’s political favor, so other defendants and convicts are trying to curry Trump's favor, including former Sen. Bob Menendez, who was just sentenced for a bribery scheme that didn’t even involve a Mercedes E-Class. And Meta has paid a large settlement to

21:22

Thank You For Suing, Drake

Serious Trouble ·

2025/01/24

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showIt's the first Serious Trouble of the new Trump administration. We start with a discussion of pardons: the ones Joe Biden gave on his way out of office and the ones Donald Trump gave on his way in.For premium subscribers: the Jack Smith reports (the one about the January 6 prosecution which was released publicly, and the one about the documents prosecution, which Judge Aileen Cannon has blocked from being released

30:19

Unconditional Discharge

Serious Trouble ·

2025/01/14

The Supreme Court declined to save Donald Trump from being sentenced in his New York criminal case, but the justices said that decision was in part because there wasn’t much to save him from: Judge Juan Merchan had indicated that he would sentence Trump to an unconditional discharge, i.e. no punishment. In other Trump-criminal-case-wind-down news, Judge Aileen Cannon has continued to make trouble for DOJ officials seeking to release parts of a report about Trump’s two federal criminal prosecutions

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