Lawyers Guild, The - Wednesday, June 17, 2026

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1. The grace to shower, it's decreed, the people rule.
2. People have the power, people have the power.
3. Hi, this is Lisa Gay Hamilton and you're listening to KPFK, 90.7 FM in Los Angeles and 98.7 FM in Santa Barbara, the voice of mass dissent in Southern California.
4. Well, good afternoon, friend. Good afternoon, and welcome to this week's edition of the Lawyer's Guild Show.
5. I'm Jim Lafferty, along with my friend and co-host, Maria Hall, bringing you this week's show.
6. Maria, how are you, my dear?
7. I'm great, Jim. It's really good to be back. We've been out for a little while, but yeah, it just makes it all the more nice to be back.
8. And you've had a trial during that period of time. You've been busy.
9. Yes, very busy.
10. You've been busy. Well, it's been a few weeks since we've devoted our entire show to reviewing what's happening in the courts.
11. And so that's what we're going to do today. And it's certainly been a busy few weeks.
12. The Supreme Court has virtually demolished the Voting Rights Act and with it most House of Representatives seats held by black representatives.
13. And a variety of courts have considered a variety of legal issues having to do with actions taken by Trump.
14. And we're going to get into those as well.
15. So let's get to it.
16. As usual, when we cover the courts, we have as our special guest, Steve Rohde.
17. Now, Stephen Rohde is the author of two books, numerous articles and book reviews on constitutional law and history.
18. He's the former president of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and a special advisor on free speech and the First Amendment for the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
19. He is host of a new podcast, Speaking Freely, produced by Ms. Studios, and it's available on Spotify, iHeartRadio, and other streaming platforms.
20. I should mention that Steve Rohde is also, along with Maria Hall and myself, a co-host of the national public affairs show, Law and Disorder, it's called.
21. It's now airing in close to 200 radio markets in the United States.
22. And Steve, a warm welcome though back to this week's edition of the Lawyer's Guilt Show.
23. Thank you so much, Jim and Maria. It's great to see you both.
24. Well, Steve, get started here. An opinion has been rendered in the matter of the legality of that slush fund, that $1.8 billion slush fund that Trump has set up for people who he believes have been unfairly attacked by the judicial system or others. Where does that matter now, Stan?
25. Well, welcome to Taco Wednesday. Trump always chickens out. Unfortunately, he chickens out after causing terrible damage to the American people and to the world.
26. But this is one case of that nature.
27. By the way there are over 20 decisions pending before the United States Supreme Court in which oral arguments have been completed We are in the month of June which is decision month for the United States
28. Supreme Court. Huge decisions are bottled up at the court. We don't know what the delay is,
29. but I think the next few weeks there is going to be a tremendous impact in terms of what the
30. Supreme Court decides. But before we reach that, so far there have been 839 lawsuits filed
31. against the Trump administration since their second term began. And by and large, courts are
32. fighting back and will be covering several positive results today with a few sour notes.
33. So it's that anti-weaponization fund. Remember, it was slightly less than $8 billion because it was $1,776,000,000.
34. Gee, 1776 was the amount in billions.
35. And of course, it's because Trump all this year is trying to invoke the 250th anniversary of our country.
36. But that kind of fund is not standing up to judicial review.
37. Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia has officially enjoined that anti-weaponization fund.
38. fund. Now this came because Todd Blanch, the troubled nominee for Attorney General, which
39. we may cover later in this show, he told House lawmakers, we're not moving forward with the fund,
40. period. But the next day, President Donald Trump told reporters, I don't know, when asked whether
41. the fund was on hold or eliminated. Well, this judge would have none of that
42. prevaricating and so she held a court hearing and and grilled the Justice
43. Department attorneys on whether or not this fund was going into effect. Remember
44. this is because Trump wanted to pay people who have quote suffered
45. weaponization and lawfare at the hands of the federal government. Well, from his standpoint,
46. weaponization and lawfare means people who've been indicted by grand juries, tried and convicted
47. by average folks sitting on juries, given penalties and court sentences, and then Trump
48. pardoned all those people arising out of January 6th. That's just one category of who might have
49. been able to collect from the taxpayers in this billion-dollar fund. The judge pressed
50. the lawyer, in this case Andrew Block, and he answered that while the DOJ has not formally
51. rescinded its memo and when the judge pressed that lawyer and this is
52. embarrassing the lawyer stood in court and said I
53. don have the ability to speak directly to the Attorney General you are sending a US Attorney into court to speak for the United States government and he doesn speak to his boss Well the judge shot back I cannot
54. believe given the significance you don't have an answer. There's a huge gap in the record. Well she
55. would just have none of it so she issued a injunction if as and when they ever
56. try to revive this account she is stopping it in its tracks she found that
57. it was unlawful that there was no authority to issue such a fund that
58. Congress has defined the contours of when such funds can be established.
59. In issuing the injunction, she said if the government truly means what it means, then
60. she gave them one week to file a declaration under penalty of perjury.
61. Meanwhile that fund is dead.
62. The president and CEO of Democracy Forward, Sky Perryman, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a public statement,
63. quote, despite the administration's shifting explanations about the future of the slush fund,
64. the court order ensures that taxpayer dollars cannot be distributed through this unlawful scheme
65. while the courts fully consider the serious constitutional issues at stake.
66. We look forward to continuing this challenge on behalf of our clients.
67. Of course, it says nothing about the tax breaks that the part of it, when this all was announced,
68. that was announced as the second part of a proposal settlement that Trump had made to save himself and his family,
69. God knows how much in tax dollars. Right, Steve?
70. Right. And that was a sweetheart deal that Trump made with himself,
71. meaning he made it with his own DOJ to get a lifetime free pass on any tax violations.
72. Well, a judge took note of that because settlements in fraud of the court cannot be enforceable.
73. And the judge said in OSC and is holding hearings on whether that very settlement,
74. because the settlement purported to take jurisdiction away from the judge.
75. So we are going to hear a lot more about Trump's efforts, by the way, on behalf of himself, his family, and all of his business enterprises to shield themselves from IRS review.
76. And we're going to hear more about that.
77. Well, let's turn for a moment to the national parks.
78. In a stunning rebuke, a federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore historical information to exhibits at U.S. national parks.
79. On what grounds did the judge base her ruling?
80. Yes, this was a stunning decision and so important.
81. Many of our listeners will remember that back in 2025, shortly after taking office again,
82. Trump mandated national park workers, as he put it, to restore, quote, truth and sanity to American history.
83. Notice how often Trump betrays his own motives, which is to destroy truth and
84. sanity in American history Well his underlings immediately enforced that order It resulted in mass censorship that removed material honoring indigenous history atrocities
85. of slavery, the effects of climate change from several national parks, deeming those
86. messages, those accurate, important historical messages to be part of improper partisan agenda.
87. Well, under judicial review, U.S. District Judge Angel Kelly issued a preliminary injunction just last week.
88. She directed officials to restore the information to its original condition within three weeks to deliver reports indicating their progress and to halt any additional ongoing changes to these exhibits, which have existed for decades throughout our national park system.
89. She emphasized that these efforts from the Trump administration were an attempt to improperly rewrite American history in a more favorable light.
90. She stated the following, the beauty of history is the unvarnished storytelling of a time gone and by and the delivery of undeniable truths.
91. The government's stewardship of these park sites thus carries a responsibility to present history in full rather than in favored fragments.
92. Unfortunately, the government has disregarded those principles.
93. The administration seeks to share limited history by ordering the removal of all signs, displays, interpretive exhibits at national parks that do not align with its preferred narrative.
94. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum immediately had instituted that, but the lawsuit was filed by the National Parks Conservation Association and other conservation organizations back in February.
95. They allege this was unlawful censorship. It violated several federal statutes. It was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedures Act. The Trump administration is required to restore all of that history. And I love this.
96. The court set July 4th, 2026, the 250th anniversary, as the deadline for that decision.
97. Excellent.
98. The court concluded that because defendants deemed it important to strip the parks of these undeniable truths in anticipation of the 250th anniversary of our great nation, it's equally important that our shared history be honestly told and fully restored by the 250th anniversary to properly honor the remarkable achievements of the United States.
99. Just terrific.
100. Well, Steve, from a legal standpoint, surely the biggest, if not one of the biggest changes in the law has been the, well, the rather pretty much total evisceration of the Voting Rights Act with such cases as Louisiana v. Calais, the Alabama case.
101. Talk to us about these cases and how it all started with Justice Roberts in the Shelby County case.
102. Yes, and thank you, Jim.
103. And I asked to take a few extra
104. minutes on this particular topic today because it is so important and it's
105. important the American people understand what's going on and how the arch
106. reactionary Republican controlled Supreme Court is weighing such waste to
107. the Voting Rights Act the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 four times it has
108. been reinstated and reinforced by Congress but in this recent decision
109. called Louisiana versus Calais one observer David Cole former national
110. director of the ACLU who writes for the New York Review of Books he said this
111. could be the most radical and far-reaching decision of the Roberts
112. Court, rivaled only by the 2022 elimination of the right to abortion. And I personally would add
113. Trump versus USA, granting Trump absolute criminal immunity. The 15th Amendment to the Constitution,
114. adopted shortly after the Civil War, forbids racial discrimination in voting. And the Congress
115. Congress at that time was confronted with what were so-called race-neutral mechanisms
116. to disenfranchise black voters, such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and property requirements.
117. On their face they may have appeared race-neutral.
118. They were obviously directed at disenfranchising newly enfranchised blacks and former enslaved
119. people.
120. When Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act, it wanted to remedy these forms of discrimination.
121. And it's important to take note of in detail what it did.
122. Section 2 permitted individuals to sue states or local governments for practices that diluted
123. minority influences.
124. four and five identified a handful of states and jurisdictions that had persistently and
125. systematically denied black citizens access to the ballot and required those jurisdictions to
126. obtain federal approval before making any change in their electoral systems of the statute worked
127. and over time minority citizens managed to obtain some measure of representation.
128. The courts continued to recognize and even though in one case in 1980, Mobile versus Bolden,
129. the court said that it was only intentional discrimination that was prohibited by the Voting
130. Rights Act. Well, right away, Congress in 1982 amended the Voting Rights Act to make it clear
131. that it forbade any practices to result in denying minority voters. It didn't have to be intentional.
132. It could result in denying them those equal protections. Well, that remained the law.
133. It continued for many years but unfortunately as you alluded to in 2013 in Shelby County versus Holder that conservative court at the time led by Justice Roberts essentially struck down
134. sections four and five of the Voting Rights Act, which had required federal approval of redistricting.
135. Judge Roberts said, we have reached a colorblind society and these states have improved their
136. voting practices and we don't need that federal supervision any longer.
137. But in that opinion, the court reassured Americans that Section 2 would afford remedies when
138. current discrimination justified them.
139. Well, then we got the Calais decision.
140. Calais came up through the Louisiana courts, a largely Republican-fashioned district map,
141. isolated black voters to a single district, whereas by population they deserved at least two more.
142. On April 29, the court handed down this deplorable decision.
143. As a pure formality, it said the Voting Rights Act violations can indeed justify using race to examine these remedial maps.
144. But they tortured the law.
145. They said they were simply updating.
146. That's their term.
147. They're updating an act of Congress.
148. But what they did is they reinstated the intentional requirement, which had previously been changed by Congress.
149. So the conservative Supreme Court is sitting as a super Congress.
150. They are, quote, updating statutes.
151. That's not their job.
152. They're supposed to interpret statutes according to the Constitution.
153. It's very clear from the dissent what's going on. Justice Kagan, this was a six to three decision with now the triumvirate of progressive women judges in dissent.
154. Justice Kagan said, this is a demolition of the Voting Rights Act. A state can, without legal consequences, systematically dilute minority citizens' voting powers.
155. And Rick Hazen, a very bright observer of election law, said that the Calais decision will go down in history as one of the most pernicious and damaging Supreme Court decisions of the last century.
156. And right away, within weeks after Calais, the Supreme Court gave a green light to a redistricting map in Alabama, and already Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Florida are flirting with redistricting in light of the Calais decision.
157. It is a terrible decision. It shows how the court is simply manipulating the law to reach predetermined results. Luckily, people are still fighting back in individual states and going after these maps.
158. And ultimately the answer is to get out and vote.
159. In every state, if we have super majorities who are voting
160. that are far beyond any accusation of voter fraud we can get the kind of results that the people deserve Well if you just tuning in you listening to KPFK 90 FM The Lawyer Guild Show I
161. Maria Hall here with my co-host, Jim Lafferty, and we're interviewing constitutional law scholar,
162. Stephen Rohde. Well, Steve, a New York Times headline read last week,
163. quote, more Trump losses in court and a federal judge in hot water, end quote.
164. So let's take a look at a few of those Trump losses and also the reasons why that federal judge is in hot water.
165. But let's start with the case where a federal judge struck down the fee the Trump administration wanted employers to pay for hiring skilled foreign workers.
166. Talk about that and why did the judge rule as he did?
167. Yes, this was another act by Trump, a transparent act to punish employers who are seeking visas for skilled foreign workers.
168. But in Trump's hands, Leo Sorokin from the Federal District Court in Massachusetts issued a 42-page opinion that acknowledged that it was Congress that had the exclusive power to levy taxes.
169. and that a $100,000 fee for a nominal application to grant a visa for skilled foreign workers was essentially a tax.
170. It was not a regulatory payment.
171. The 20 states sued to end the policy in December,
172. and Letitia James, who was one of those attorneys general from New York,
173. said every day thousands of people with H-1B visas serve New Yorkers as doctors, teachers, and other skilled workers.
174. As a result, the court had maintained that Trump, and this was true of the tariffs case a few months ago, only Congress can impose taxes of this nature.
175. This was falling hardest on highly educated professionals who had seen the program as a secure route to life in America.
176. federal judges have repeatedly found that Trump's efforts to restrict immigration programs are at
177. odds with federal immigration law a ruling on Monday came just days after another federal judge
178. avoided a policy in which the Trump administration had directed U.S.
179. citizenship and immigration services to freeze application for work permits.
180. So this is another slap in the face of Trump at this stage.
181. Well, speaking of immigration, Steve, let's consider the case where a federal judge struck
182. down a series of measures the administration has been using to make it harder for legal
183. immigrants to stay in the country.
184. Yes, this was a very important ruling.
185. What Trump was up to as late as last November, the US Citizenship and Immigration Service
186. had suspended the processing from a particular set of 39 different countries This agency had shunted thousands of applications to a filing cabinet where they sat untouched
187. even though each applicant had paid a fee
188. to the government to decide their case.
189. Well, this federal judge has ruled that that is unlawful.
190. He also struck down related policies,
191. two of which were aimed at people
192. who come from one of those 39 countries,
193. and a third which had imposed a blanket halt
194. on asylum decisions at that agency.
195. The Trump had imposed these policies
196. back in December of 2025,
197. after there was a tragic shooting
198. of two National Guardsmen in Washington
199. by a troubled Afghan special forces soldier.
200. So then seizing on Afghan, the Trump administration
201. claimed that these applicants were on welfare
202. from failed nations, from prisons, mental institutions,
203. gangs, and drug cartels.
204. Well, the court would have none of it.
205. They've ordered the processing of these applications
206. to go immediately, that the Trump administration cannot single out like Afghanistan, Haiti,
207. Somalia, and others.
208. This was a 135-page decision by Judge John McConnell, the District Court of Rhode Island.
209. And it's an important decision.
210. It's well documented.
211. it's meant to be implemented immediately
212. but of course we can expect an appeal from the Trump administration
213. well maybe what we should do is take our station identification break right now
214. so as not to interrupt the next question
215. let's do that let's take our station break
216. and we'll be right back with you here on the Lawyers Guild Show
217. Thank you.
218. the scene, who offer analysis and details often overlooked by the soundbite-driven media more and
219. more controlled by Trump-friendly oligarchs. So if you want facts and information to inform
220. a motivated majority to save our democracy before it's stolen next November, tune in
221. Mondays to Thursdays at 5 p.m. and on Sundays at 11 a.m. for your background briefing here
222. on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and worldwide at kpfk.org.
223. This is Chris Hedges, and you're listening to KPFK 90.7 FM, heard globally at kpfk.org.
224. And we are back with you here on the Lawyer's Guild Show. I'm Jim Lafferty, along with my co-host Maria Hall.
225. And we are spending the entire hour today talking about some very important cases having to do with the Trump administration and law in the country.
226. Our guest, of course, is Steve Rohde,
227. institutional scholar and author. Maria, I know you wanted to ask Steve about a case that's on
228. your mind. I do. Thank you. Well, this weekend, or yeah, I guess it was already this weekend,
229. many of us were watching the Kennedy Center and just kind of watching the scaffolding go up.
230. So the status of Trump's name on the Kennedy Center went through a couple of ups and downs.
231. Tell us, Steve, where does the matter stand and is it fully resolved?
232. Well, this is so important because these performative acts by the president to, in this case, put his name above John F. Kennedy's name at the Kennedy Center was shameful in its origins.
233. A lawsuit was filed against it and a federal judge ordered last Friday for the Trump administration or the head of the administration of the Kennedy Center to remove Donald Trump's name.
234. Much like a sporting event, many of us watched a live camera trained on that sign.
235. At one point, the Justice Department delayed until late the following night, claiming they needed 12 more hours to remove it.
236. But they removed it.
237. The Justice Department filed a certification in federal court one hour before the extended deadline that said President Donald Trump's name has been removed from all physical signage on the Kennedy Center building and grounds.
238. The Trump administration had taken a last-minute effort to block that.
239. They went all the way up to the Federal Court of Appeals last Friday, and that court denied the request for an administrative stay.
240. In an earlier filing, the DC Circuit, they had argued that removing his name would stall fundraising, prevent repairs from taking place, and confuse the public.
241. Well, again, these courts are having none of this from him.
242. Congress created the Kennedy Center.
243. The courts made very clear that only Congress could change the Kennedy Center
244. and that the founding document had called it the Kennedy Center and prevented any change to that name.
245. Fortunately, his name has now been removed from printed materials, press releases, signs, brochures, letterheads, and all the rest.
246. But in a mean-spirited act, they covered up the remaining sign that identified the Kennedy Center.
247. I just went on a live feed. A group has a live camera trained on the Kennedy Center. Unfortunately, the camera was not operating at the time. And as of the last check, the signage blocking Kennedy's name has not been taken down because it would be too humiliating to Trump for the world to see that his name was removed.
248. It has been removed.
249. Soon that signage will come down This is another although kind of a frivolous example but a really important example that Congress makes the laws and the president is supposed to implement them and the courts
250. are standing up for that proposition.
251. Yes, indeed.
252. And Steve, the Trump Justice Department, though, has issued a bunch of subpoenas to the major
253. banks in the country.
254. on behalf of what it's calling a debanking inquiry.
255. What is a debanking inquiry?
256. And why should we care about this move by the Justice Department?
257. This is today's example.
258. We've had scores of them over the last year of a total abuse of the DOJ
259. because they do have the unilateral power to issue subpoenas.
260. And what's happened here is that federal prosecutors in Washington have issued subpoenas to several U.S. banks, such as J.P. Morgan, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, seeking records tied to allegations that customers were denied banking services or had accounts shut down for, quote, political reasons.
261. Well, what's going on here? What's been going on is that under the law, these banks are legally required to monitor criminal conduct and money laundering.
262. And in connection with January 6th and other activities, there were banking transactions that involved the perpetrators of the insurrection on that day.
263. These banks were then lawfully required to suspend or close those accounts under a law passed by Congress on the theory that the banks should not facilitate that kind of criminal activity.
264. instead of enforcing those kinds of laws, the DOJ is turning around.
265. And this is part of a pattern.
266. So now the banks are the target of criminal investigations
267. because they followed the law in closing these accounts.
268. These are only alleged to be political matters
269. because Trump treats January 6th as a political matter
270. where once again weaponization by law was taking place.
271. The banks are fighting back.
272. They're contesting these subpoenas in court.
273. But I just wanted to bring attention to this case
274. as one more example of the kind of abuse that's going on at the DOJ.
275. Mm-hmm. Well, Steve, can you update us on the controversy over Todd Blanche and the U.S.
276. Attorney General office? Yes, and that follows directly from what I've been talking about.
277. So now, after Pam Bondi's shameful, well, it was shameful conduct, but we celebrated her
278. resignation as Attorney General, Donald Trump is now elevating acting Attorney
279. General Todd Blanch to lead the Justice Department and he would become the 83rd Attorney General if he was approved Blanch did start his career as a paralegal in the criminal division of the Justice Department He worked in the U Attorney Office as a
280. paralegal, then an assistant U.S. attorney and a supervisor. He did work as a criminal defense
281. lawyer, and in fact, his most famous criminal defendant was Donald Trump. Blanche represented
282. him in three of his criminal cases. Blanche has gone on, however, to do the bidding of Donald
283. Trump and, at the time, Pan Bundy in enforcing the true weaponization of the law that's really
284. going on here, which is one of the most tragic misuses of the DOJ in American history.
285. It is the DOJ that has been turned into a political instrument to go after Donald Trump's
286. enemies.
287. They've failed but sought to indict Comey.
288. They've re-indicted him now because of his 86-47 beachfront display when he used that meme.
289. this is a Department of Justice that has broken the really centuries-long principle
290. that the DOJ is not the personal law firm of the president
291. to do his bidding and to pursue any acts of political retribution
292. that, in this case, Donald Trump wants to pursue.
293. I'm anticipating a very rigorous Senate hearing of Todd Blanche when he appears before the Senate.
294. There's even questions that have arisen because Attorney General Pam Bondi kind of threw Todd Blanche under the bus in an interview
295. when she said she had delegated oversight over the process of releasing the Epstein files to Todd Blanche.
296. There are scores of questions surrounding the release of the Epstein files,
297. the failure to redact the names of the victims, the selective release that continues to dribble out.
298. We know in the Senate that even Republican Senator Tom Tillis and John Cornyn have said they'll be asking tough questions.
299. You know, in the Senate, there's only a 53 to 47 balance, meaning that Todd Blanche cannot lose the support of more than three Republicans.
300. Senator John Fetterman, who has been quite quixotic and sometimes voting with the Republicans instead of the Democrats,
301. but John Fetterman has confirmed that he will vote no on Blanche when he comes up.
302. Senators Adam Schiff Senator Adam Schiff has stated that Todd Blanche has allowed the president to abuse the Department of Justice to go after his political enemies I watching for a thorough investigation of Todd Blanche and I eager to see the
303. Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee to seriously expose the wrongdoing that Todd
304. Blanche has engaged in during those hearings. Well, I wonder, Ken Paxton, the candidate Ken
305. Paxton as ActBlue Fundraising. This lawsuit, why did the judge halt the Ken Paxton ActBlue
306. Fundraising? What's that? This is worth examining because it raises other examples. You know,
307. what Trump is doing spreads like a cancer. So it goes beyond the federal government out into the
308. states and Texas is certainly one example of that. So the current news is that a federal judge
309. last Thursday blasted Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's well-known history of filing
310. retaliatory lawsuits when blocking his fraud case against the democratic fundraising platform
311. act blue many of your listeners know that act blue as as well as so many other progressive
312. organizations has been targeted by the federal government and lawsuits have been filed including
313. one by Ken Paxton when he was Attorney General of Texas.
314. They have alleged improprieties by ActBlue.
315. ActBlue is the predominant source through which people make contributions largely to
316. the Democratic Party.
317. So this is an attempt on the federal level by Trump to isolate, to limit the effectiveness of Act Blue.
318. And that's what Attorney General John Ken Paxton was trying to do.
319. Well, U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns granted Act Blue a preliminary injunction barring Paxton from continuing to litigate his case in Texas against Act Blue.
320. This came in a scathing 15-page ruling.
321. The judge suggested the probe by Paxton was merely brought to kneecap Paxton's political opponents,
322. specifically Democratic State Representative James Tallarico,
323. who is running against Paxton to represent Texas in the Senate.
324. and Tallarico has raised record-breaking sums in doing so.
325. The judge said the following,
326. the truth is plain and captured in Paxton's own declarations.
327. The lawsuit was filed in retaliation for
328. and in an attempt to suppress ActBlue's efforts to fund Tallarico's campaign.
329. Paxton had opened that probe against ActBlue in 2023 to determine whether it had run afoul allegedly of any state laws.
330. He filed a suit in the Texas court in April.
331. claiming the platform allowed shadowy donors to make fraudulent contributions through gift cards and prepaid debit cards.
332. But ActBlue, which is a Massachusetts-based company, filed suit in Boston federal court to stop Paxton.
333. It claimed that Paxton's complaint was rife with false and inflammatory allegations and was filed in the wake of a huge $2 million funding day for Tallarico.
334. Judge Stearns is a Bill Clinton appointee in the District of Massachusetts.
335. He ruled that ActBlue was likely to succeed in proving that Paxton's lawsuit violated
336. free speech protections under the First Amendment.
337. The judge called Paxton's bad faith overwhelming, citing the Attorney General's own statements
338. in numerous interviews since the case was filed.
339. The judge said the following,
340. Paxton's public statements in the wake of filing the case against ActBlue
341. reveal his true motivation.
342. While a prosecutor is entitled to a large degree of prosecutorial discretion
343. and has a right to make a considered public accounting of his actions,
344. Paxton did not hesitate in drawing a connection
345. between the lawsuit and his candidacy for Senate.
346. Stearns didn't buy Paxton's accusation that ActBlue was misrepresenting itself to consumers.
347. The judge ruled the platform does nothing more than facilitate political donations from private donors who seek out its convenience, anonymity, and aggregation of the benefits bestowed on choosing political candidates.
348. So the judge compared Paxton's ActBlue probe to his investigation into the progressive media watchdog Media Matters.
349. That probe, too, was shut down after a D.C. circuit panel found uncontested evidence that Paxton subpoenaed Media Matters in retaliation for the watchdogs' critical reporting of Elon Musk and X.
350. So I'm pleased this pattern of cases in which federal judges and this is there's jurisdiction for this. It's extraordinary because you have a judge in Massachusetts restraining a civil case in Texas.
351. But under the statute, that Act Blue resides in Massachusetts and had the right to seek that relief. The judge found that he had jurisdiction and he enjoined what Paxton was doing.
352. As it stands, Paxton's case against Act Blue has ground to a halt and those proceedings are frozen.
353. And the judge barred Paxton from bringing any new civil state civil enforcement action premised on the same conduct.
354. This is how judges today in these last two years anyone who enjoined a proceeding like that would assume that the litigants would understand that that was the nature of the injunction But this judge as others have had to think ahead to the kind of deceptive manipulation that Trump and many Republicans are
355. engaging in. And so this judge had to anticipate and enjoin Paxton from bringing any new civil
356. enforcement actions premised on the same conduct. That's an important race in Texas, which
357. politically many of us are following. But certainly it also is important that the judiciary is playing
358. a role in monitoring these cases and not allowing them to proceed because, as was true with Comey
359. and the others, the very pendency of these cases is costly. It's a burden on the
360. individuals and organizations involved. And the earlier, the better that these frivolous cases
361. can be dismissed. That's a pattern I'm seeing in these 839 cases across the country,
362. and I hope it continues. Well, we have time for about one more question about a case.
363. and we did want to get over to the U.S. Supreme Court. So the U.S. Supreme Court rendered an
364. opinion in a case where a third grader was ordered by school officials to remove a hat
365. that said, come and take it. It was a gun theme. So how did the court rule and why?
366. Yeah, this is troubling from a First Amendment standpoint. And this tests our sense of the
367. First Amendment because what was involved here was a student who had worn a t-shirt
368. on a day called Hat Day and it was given the called the Great Kindness Challenge
369. on this particular hat day in 2022.
370. The image was of an AR-style rifle and the phrase, come and take it.
371. The student said that he did this to honor his father, who was a gun enthusiast,
372. and it was simply a T-shirt.
373. Well, officials at Robert Kerr Elementary School in Duran, Michigan, said that the HATS message could be disruptive, particularly for students who had transferred to the district after a school shooting 50 miles away in 2021, which at the time was the deadliest in state history.
374. The lower courts had reviewed this case, the parents of the student who was disciplined for wearing that t-shirt, but the district court and the Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit ruled against the student.
375. The three-judge appellate court said that the disruption concern was reasonable because of that prior school shooting, the age of the students, and the Hatt's, quote, provocative message.
376. Now this tested an earlier case from 1969 which I know you and Jim are aware of called the Tinker case Tinker was a group of brave students who at the height of the Vietnam War
377. wore black armbands to school to signify their opposition to the Vietnam War.
378. That's all they did. They did nothing more to disrupt the school affairs.
379. And the Supreme Court, in a famous decision, the Tinker decision, essentially said students don't check their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse door.
380. Now, they did set up this test that if the speech and certainly conduct of students was disruptive to the process of the school administrators,
381. I mean, the teaching of students, that in those limited circumstances, the conduct or speech could be restricted.
382. There have been other cases in which these rules have been tested.
383. In 2007, a high school said that a student in Alaska did not have a First Amendment right
384. to hold up a banner with the message,
385. Bong Hits for Jesus, at a parade down the street.
386. He wasn't even in school.
387. He wasn't disrupting anything.
388. He held up a rather bizarre sign,
389. which in testimony he later had trouble explaining,
390. Bong Hits for Jesus.
391. But that was a troubling precedent to begin with. I find this one equally troubling that simply a t-shirt, people, the court has said in other decisions, they can avert their eyes if they do not want to look at a particular t-shirt.
392. The test of a case like this, where you and I might agree that the case promoted gun use and was promoting the Second Amendment, but just test it out if someone wore a T-shirt promoting the First Amendment or LGBTQ rights or something you or I might agree with.
393. We've always got to test First Amendment cases by the principle at stake, not by the content of the speech.
394. Unfortunately, it takes four judges for the Supreme Court to take a case.
395. And on June 8, the Supreme Court declined to review these lower court rulings.
396. so they stand.
397. And that, in my view,
398. that student's First Amendment rights
399. remain violated.
400. It's a bitter pill
401. when we talk about the First Amendment,
402. but I think we have to understand
403. the ultimate value
404. that if we go down the road
405. of school officials or governments
406. or city councils
407. dictating the political messages
408. people can express,
409. then we are in deep trouble.
410. Well, let me ask our board op and engineer, how are we fixed for time?
411. Are we just about out of time How much time do we have left I can see the clock but I don know what you have in store for us Mr Borda Well I don know if they can tell us that right now either
412. Two minutes or so.
413. A couple minutes left. Did you have some last thoughts, Steve?
414. Well, I do in this vein. And I want to announce on this show that on July 4th,
415. ICUJP and a group of partners, LA Progressive, our friends Dick and Sharon, the Left Coast Forum,
416. the Interfaith Council are mounting an alternative to the jingoistic way that Donald Trump
417. is expected to promote July 4th.
418. ICUJP, public speakers and others,
419. we are gathering at the Orange Grove Friends Meeting Hall
420. at 520 East Orange Grove Boulevard,
421. that's a Quaker meeting hall, from 10 to noon.
422. We're declaring our independence
423. from the tyranny of Donald Trump and the travesties he's committed.
424. You know, the American people 250 years ago this July 4th
425. declared their independence from one tyrant,
426. and so we want to declare our independence from this tyrant.
427. There'll be speakers like Mimi Kennedy and others,
428. Daniel Tam, Rick Benyales, Sharon Kyle,
429. I beg your pardon, Dick Price, Anthony Manousis and others.
430. There'll be readings of the words of Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Dr. King.
431. This will be a celebration, but it will counter that kind of whitewashing of American history that, in fact, we talked about on today's show.
432. So I encourage people to put July 4th on the calendar and join us.
433. Absolutely. What a wonderful suggestion, Steve.
434. And I thank all of you for listening. This is Jim Lafferty thanking you again for being our guest today. Steve Rohde, as always, friends who are listening, we'll be back with you again next week. Same time, same place here on wonderful KPFK Free Speech Radio.
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