Law and Chaos

DOCKET ALERTS:

We bid a fond goodbye to Ed Martin … well, fond-ish.

Liam Ramos, the little boy kidnapped by ICE in Minneapolis along with his father is back home after a judge in Texas granted his habeas petition. Read the scathing order here.

Judge Jia Cobb re-imposed a temporary restraining order barring DHS from excluding legislators from immigrant detention facilities.

Two immigrant rights groups challenged ICE’s homebrew arrest warrants.

The Trump administration finally got that perp walk of Don Lemon. Two weeks ago, a federal magistrate refused to issue an arrest warrant for Lemon, Minnesota journalist Georgia Fort, and three others who were present at the MLK Day protest at a church whose pastor David Easterbrook is an ICE supervisor. Now a grand jury has indicted all eight of the DOJ’s original targets.

Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the Sixth Circuit dropkicked the DOJ’s judicial ethics complaint against Chief Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court in DC. The complaint is based on leaked notes from a closed judicial conference in March, which Law and Chaos is suing to kick loose under FOIA. The Signalgate administration says it has no idea how this judicial record wound up on its servers.

Liz and Andrew sound off on Chief Justice Roberts forcing SCOTUS employees to sign NDAs.

Donald Trump sues the IRS — it’s like suing himself, but you get to foot the bill.

And we ponder whether Trump can legally burn down the Kennedy Center Make the Kennedy Center Great Again.

Plus for subscribers: Andrew’s got a deep dive into the Death on the High Seas Act and the lawsuit filed by survivors of two men murdered in the Caribbean boat strikes.

Justice Dept. demotes Ed Martin, stripping Trump ally of most authority
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/02/02/ed-martin-demoted-justice-department

Liam Ramos Habeas Order
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txwd.1172886492/gov.uscourts.txwd.1172886492.9.0_3.pdf

TRO Enjoining DHS from Excluding Legislators From Immigration Facilities
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.283200/gov.uscourts.dcd.283200.52.0.pdf

The Perp Walk Is The Point
https://www.lawandchaospod.com/p/the-perp-walk-is-the-point

US v. Armstrong [Don Lemon Indictment]
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.231103/gov.uscourts.mnd.231103.39.0_1.pdf

DOJ Attacks Judge, Claims Judicial Immunity For Itself
https://www.lawandchaospod.com/p/doj-attacks-judge-using-leaked-doc

Judge Sutton Dismissed DOJ Complaint Re Judge Boasberg
https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/internet/judicial_complaints/files/2025/06-25-90173(Chad.MO.pdf

Res Ipsa Media v. DOJ [L&C FOIA suit]
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71236135/res-ipsa-media-llc-v-department-of-justice

How the Supreme Court Secretly Made Itself Even More Secretive
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/us/supreme-court-nondisclosure-agreements.html

Trump v. IRS
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.706172/gov.uscourts.flsd.706172.1.0_4.pdf

Boat Strike Complaint
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.294916/gov.uscourts.mad.294916.1.0_1.pdf

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Docket Alerts:

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard led a raid on the Fulton County Election Hub and Operating Center in Atlanta. ProPublica got the warrant. Mo Ivory, a Democratic commissioner for Fulton County, breaks it down on Instagram.

In Chicago, Marimar Martinez has moved to unseal evidence from DOJ’s failed effort to prosecute her for getting shot by ICE.

Reuters reports that Marcos Charles, the top official in ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division, issued new guidance instructing ICE to target only immigrants who have been arrested or convicted of crimes. This would be a huge improvement, but DHS won’t comment.

Main Show:

Once again, this is all the Supreme Court’s fault. Specifically, its rulings in J.G.G. v. Trump and Trump v. CASA led directly to the mayhem in Minnesota. First the Court forced immigrants challenging their detention to file thousands of individual habeas cases. And then they drastically limited the power of federal judges to issue relief when it “discovered” that nationwide injunctions are illegal.

The Trump administration took this as an invitation to break the law, irrespective of how many courts tell them not to, on the theory that CASA means precedent doesn’t count any more. DHS dummied up a memo saying that actually everyone without a green card must be held indefinitely. This is a gross misstatement of the law, as literally hundreds of courts have already ruled. But the Trump administration says because of CASA, they can continue to lock up people who’ve lived here for decades, checking in with DHS, working, paying taxes, and taking care of their families.

Judges are deluged with habeas petitions, which differ from each other only in the particulars of the cruelty being visited upon the individual immigrant. After ICE failed to obey a court order to release a habeas petitioner, Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz in the District Court of Minnesota ordered Todd Lyons, the Acting Director of ICE, to either release the guy or show up and explain why he shouldn’t be held in contempt of court.

ICE released the petitioner, but Judge Schiltz was still furious. He published a list of 96 violations of court orders in January alone — and that’s only in Minnesota! Thanks, Chief Justice Roberts!

On the plus side, Judge Schiltz’s colleague Judge John Tunheim issued a TRO ordering ICE to release every refugee detained under the erroneous memo and quit kidnapping them and spiriting them away to Texas.

And for subscribers, we’ll discuss the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that bars Kristi Noem from unilaterally canceling temporary protected status for a million Venezuelans and Haitians.

Hundreds of judges reject Trump’s mandatory detention policy, with no end in sight
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/05/trump-administration-immigrants-mandatory-detention-00709494

Fulton County Election Hub Warrant
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26513986-1-28-26-fulton-warrant/

Marimar Martinez Motion to Unseal
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ilnd.487595/gov.uscourts.ilnd.487595.100.0.pdf

Exclusive: ICE officers in Minnesota directed not to interact with 'agitators' in new orders
https://www.reuters.com/world/ice-officers-minnesota-directed-not-interact-with-agitators-new-orders-2026-01-29/

J.G.G. v. Trump
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a931_2c83.pdf

Trump v. CASA
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a884_8n59.pdf

Tobay Robles v. Noem
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72120823/tobay-robles-v-noem

Judge Tunheim TRO
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.230526/gov.uscourts.mnd.230526.41.0.pdf

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Hats off to Minnesota! The Twin Cities kicked Greg Bovino’s a** so hard he’s limping back to California and then retiring altogether. We’ll discuss the Trump administration’s apparent pivot on the invasion of Minneapolis and the many legal cases pending there.

First up, Minnesota v. Noem, where the state is trying to convince Judge Katherine Menendez to order DHS out of Minneapolis. Their Tenth Amendment argument got a big boost from Attorney General Pam Bondi, who actually sent Governor Walz a letter offering to pull back ICE’s goons if the state would surrender its legal rights.

Then we’ll discuss Minnesota’s lawsuit to preserve the evidence from the murder of Alex Pretti. The FBI says they’ve got it locked down, but Judge Eric Tostrud isn’t so sure.

Finally we’ve got a deep dive into the DOJ’s effort to turn a protest at a church into a criminal conspiracy to oppress Christians.

Show Links:

Minnesota v. Noem
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72132615/state-of-minnesota-v-noem/?order_by=desc

Bondi-Walz Letter
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.230268/gov.uscourts.mnd.230268.114.1_1.pdf

Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension v. Noem
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72185880/minnesota-bureau-of-criminal-apprehension-v-noem/

US vs SEALED [Nekima Levy-Armstrong]
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72181995/united-states-v-sealed/?order_by=desc

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An ICE whistleblower reveals a secret memo where DHS lawyers say agents can arrest people in their homes without a warrant. The Fourth Amendment says otherwise! And the Supreme Court’s conservatives were extremely unimpressed with Trump’s plan to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook on Truth Social. We’ll break down Wednesday’s oral argument in detail but first, we’ve got approximately one million ...

DOCKET ALERTS (Dun dun DUNNNN):

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Watch it for yourself here.

The Justice Department arrested three people in relation to the protest on January 18 at Cities Church in St. Paul. Nothing has appeared on the docket, but the DOJ claims to have charged them under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994, meant to protect women seeking abortion care.

The Eighth Circuit administratively stayed District Judge Katherine Menendez’s preliminary injunction barring DHS goons from brutalizing protesters.

A jury in Chicago took just three hours to acquit a man of trying to hire someone to murder CBP’s head thug Greg Bovino. Don’t drunk text!

Donald Trump’s latest trollsuit targets JP Morgan Chase and its CEO Jamie Dimon. It’s filed in state court in Miami and seeks $5 billion for tortious debanking.

Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson secured a standstill order barring the government from looking at the computers and hard drives it seized from her house in Virginia as part of its investigation into classified leaks by government contractor Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones.

The Fifth Circuit, sitting en banc, reheard a challenge to Louisiana’s HB71, which required every public school classroom to display the Ten Commandments. Background here.

Judge Paul Engelmayer rebuffed a request by Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna to enforce the Epstein Files Transparency Act and order the government to disclose all materials on Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Remember this next time you hear some rightwing pundit railing against “activist judges.”

And we bid a fond farewell to Lindsey Halligan, who finally quit trying to pass herself off as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Well … fond-ish. After getting benchslapped by a federal judge and seeing her job posted online by the chief judge in EDVA, she finally took the hint.

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Breaking! The president is bugf*** insane! But first … docket alerts. Dun-dun-DUNNNNN.

We’ve reached the “yelling at chestnuts for being lazy” stage of the presidency, as Trump barks out ever-nuttier orders.

Meanwhile in Texas, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk managed to moot the appeal of an LGBTQ+ student group at West Texas A&M which sued in 2023 to enjoin their school’s ban on drag shows. All he had to do was rush out an opinion in 48 hours saying that drag shows are not expressive conduct covered by the First Amendment. And lie about Fifth Circuit precedent!

TG we have at least one good legal development, this time out of Minnesota!

For the main show, we’ll break down the legal implications of Elon Musk building a chatbot in his own abusive troll image. Will the Take It Down Act put a stop to AI generation of deepfake CSAM and NCII?

Meanwhile over at the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Kristi Noem and her minions are a wee smidge confused about the Fourth Amendment. If you can even believe it! But even a blind squirrel gets a nut once in a while. DHS wins a round against legislators seeking to inspect ICE detention facilities thanks to some creative accounting. But the victory may be short-lived.]

And subscribers will get another visit with that Overstock.com weirdo Patrick Byrne, who managed to lose a defamation case against the most defamation-proof defendant in America. Guest starring: Stefanie Lambert.

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