OA1233 - We are not conspiracy theorist type people. But... yeah man I don't know. But also, so much more in these files to talk about. If you know anything about the federal government’s 2007 plea deal with Jeffrey Epstein you know that it was bad. But newly-released documents from the Epstein files show that it was actually much worse than that! Thanks to a newly-released legal memo, a draft indictment, and internal emails between prosecutors we now have a much better understanding of the disa...
Feb 06, 2026•1 hr 45 min•Ep. 1233
E21 - CONTENT WARNING / TRIGGER WARNING: references to child sex abuse, child sex abuse materials, survivor accounts Watch this episode on YouTube ! The Epstein Files have been released--or have they? Days after the Department of Justice’s delayed and poorly-redacted release of millions of new documents connected with the world’s most infamous sex trafficker, we sit down for a first look at what is (and isn’t) in here. We begin with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s attempt to fight for the...
Feb 04, 2026•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 21
OA1232 - Hey OA-ers, this episode was a Gavel Gavel bonus, but we wanted to be sure everyone was updated on what's going on with the Luigi Mangione trials. New York public defender Liz Skeen is here to break it all down! And since the judge made some rulings on 1/30, I've got an update for ya! Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!
Feb 02, 2026•57 min•Ep. 1232
OA1231 - The DHS funding battle is important, but really can't accomplish what you might hope it can. When it comes to the Fed, ALL OF A SUDDEN the court cares about the real world effects of their decisions. And a figure skating related footnote!
Jan 30, 2026•58 min•Ep. 1231
Part 2 of 2. OA 1230 - Seeing all the obstacles to holding government officials accountable, Congress created Section 1983, allowing citizens to sue for money damages for violations of their civil rights. We cover how that works, the one weird trick it uses to get around state sovereign immunity, and how that accidentally created the infamous qualified immunity doctrine that has made police seemingly unaccountable. We also discuss proposed reforms that might fix issues of qualified and sovereign...
Jan 28, 2026•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 1230
Part 1 of 2. OA 1229 - What happens when a government worker does you wrong? How is it different to prosecute and sue them? When does qualified immunity come in to play? We discuss the steps involved in prosecuting and suing someone for a simple battery, and how that differs for a regular person versus a state actor. We cover how and when defenses can be raised, federal and state sovereign immunity, suing in official versus personal capacity, the difference between absolute and qualified immunit...
Jan 26, 2026•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 1229
OA1228 - On this week's Rapid Response Friday: we take on all of your legal questions about this whole Greenland thing--including how a 1916 diplomatic treaty with Denmark also enabled some of Jeffrey Epstein’s worst crimes. Also discussed: what it took to finally force Lindsay Halligan to stop telling everyone that she was the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and how a Minnesota judge designed her unique order to protect Minneapolis protesters and observers from ICE’s lawless...
Jan 23, 2026•46 min•Ep. 1228
E20 - Detention Watch Network executive director Silky Shah has been organizing against ICE on the ground to fight throughout the agency’s entire 23-year existence. We are excited to welcome her and her unique perspective to Opening Arguments to discuss both the urgency and the hope of our current moment, the challenges faced by organizers and advocates, what lawyers can (and can’t) do in the face of a lawless system, and imagining life after ICE. You can also watch this episode on YouTube ! Unb...
Jan 21, 2026•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 20
OA1227 - Come play the worst ever round of the Connections game and figure out what on earth Tuskegee Alabama, the CDC, Southern Denmark University, and the West African country of Guinea-Bissau all have in common, as RFK Jr. continues his campaign of “just asking questions” that we already have the answer to. Black men untreated in Tuskegee syphilis study . Heller, J. (July 25, 1972; republished May 10, 2017). Associated Press. The untreated syphilis study at Tuskegee timeline . Centers for Dis...
Jan 19, 2026•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 1227
OA1226 - We begin with a review of the unprecedented lawsuit that Minnesota has filed against ICE with the extreme leftist radical demand that they obey the law and U.S. Constitution. How much power do states have to limit federal operations, and what are the chances a court order might put some guardrails on the largest enforcement operation in ICE history? We then consider the legal and political merits of articles of impeachment filed against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of He...
Jan 16, 2026•50 min•Ep. 1226
E19 - In the wake of Renee Nicole Good's murder, we've seen a terrible number of bad takes: from the events of that day, the overall purpose of I.C.E., and what the law says about where we go from here. Matt, Thomas, and Lydia come together to start with perhaps the biggest douchebag in the United States as part of our amuse douche (TM), followed by a pair of articles touching on why the Left was wrong about ICE in 2018 and is apparently at fault to this day for all horrors committed by ICE ( ey...
Jan 14, 2026•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 19
OA1225 - Jenessa is here to dig deeper into Van Buren v. United States as we explore the implications and meaning when legislative deliverables, legal analysis, work industry, and general common sense push and pull in different directions. We had a lot of questions and comments on the original Van Buren episode from the community, so we thought it would be fun to spend some more time and battle it out! Reviving Lenity - Daniel Harawa, SCOTUSBlog (Dec 26, 2025) US v Rodriguez, 628 F.3d 1258 (11th...
Jan 12, 2026•1 hr 57 min•Ep. 1225
OA1224 - In this episode recorded only hours after an ICE officer killed U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis with extreme impunity, we contrast mirror-universe opposite views of immunity and impunity: the Trump administration’s response to this tragedy as opposed to everything that they have done to rewrite the history of January 6, 2021 for this week’s fifth anniversary of the insurrection. And in today’s footnote: will Lindsay Halligan be the first lawyer in US history to have a bar ...
Jan 09, 2026•57 min•Ep. 1224
OA1222 and OA1223 - Actual sane coverage of Trump's kidnapping of a foreign leader OA NYC correspondent Liz Skeen joins Thomas and Matt for this emergency episode recorded the day after the US bombed Caracas in a truly unprecedented military operation to kidnap Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife and transport them to Brooklyn to stand trial on federal narco-terrorism charges. We field dozens of patron questions as we try to understand how any of this could possibly be legal. How do...
Jan 06, 2026•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 1223
OA1222 - Actual sane coverage of Trump's kidnapping of a foreign leader PART 1 OA NYC correspondent Liz Skeen joins Thomas and Matt for this emergency episode recorded the day after the US bombed Caracas in a truly unprecedented military operation to kidnap Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife and transport them to Brooklyn to stand trial on federal narco-terrorism charges. We field dozens of patron questions as we try to understand how any of this could possibly be legal. How does t...
Jan 05, 2026•54 min•Ep. 1222
Since it's been a while since we last did a GG crossover, I wanted to share the new trial we are doing over there! It's a new Gavel Gavel trial! We are excited to announce that we will be producing a totally new full trial re-enactment working from our EXCLUSIVE access to the transcript of the federal prosecution of Sean Dunn, better known to the world as the “Sandwich Guy” after being federally charged for assaulting a CBP officer with a fully-loaded 12-inch Subway sandwich on the streets of DC...
Jan 02, 2026•53 min•Ep. 1220
Here's a preview of Law'd Awful Movies!!! If you'd like the full thing, become a $2+ patron at patreon.com/law! LAM 1010 - After taking a break with a couple of things we actually enjoyed ( Juror #2 and My Cousin Vinny ), Law’d Awful Movies returns to form with the first two episodes of USA’s uniquely terrible adaptation of John Grisham’s classic 1995 legal thriller The Rainmaker . Thomas, Lydia, and Matt review the show’s bizarre and often cowardly divergences from the source material, its AI-l...
Dec 31, 2025•54 min•Ep. 1010
OA1220 - What’s an FBI agent to do when a notorious low life reports a local cop is asking for a bribe? Turn him into a confidential information of course, and see how far you can get that dirty cop to go. A tale of two assholes, steadily making each others’ lives worse and worse, while one is wearing a wire. Now, why does the Supreme Court care about any of this? Half the conviction hinges on whether this cop “exceeded authorized access” under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), and no one...
Dec 29, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 1220
OA1219 - This year we are celebrating Boxing Day by not doing whatever people are supposed to do on Boxing Day and talking about weed instead. Did Donald Trump really just finish out 2025 by doing something good for US drug policy? We hotbox some Time Machine to revisit Matt’s analysis from last May of Joe “Grandaddy Purple” Biden’s announcement that he was initiating the long process to have the federal government to reclassify OG Kush from its current legal status as Green Crack down to the sa...
Dec 26, 2025•47 min•Ep. 1219
E18 - Congress required the Department of Justice to release (nearly) everything it had from the investigations into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell by December 19th, so of course they pretended to do that on time on Friday afternoon and then waited until everyone was just about to start heading home for the holidays before actually dumping 30,000 pages of anything resembling actual substance into the record on Tuesday morning. We review and discuss new revelations on how much more time Tr...
Dec 24, 2025•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 18
OA1218 - What happens to your first amendment rights when you work for the government? Do you give it all up when you walk in the door? How do we balance the individual right of the worker to speak, against the government’s need to have a functioning work place? Pickering v Board of Education (1968) sets us up to understand how this all works… and why a teacher criticizing Charlie Kirk on their personal Facebook page probably isn’t a fireable offense. Patrons got exclusive content at the end of ...
Dec 22, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 1218
OA1217 - Well, we recorded a bit late to make sure we caught Trump's "announcement" thingy and it was... nothing. But that's good! Matt also takes us through more travel bans that are going into effect and have been way underreported on. But The Federalist has a piece saying not only is this all great, but Trump should proudly adopt 1920s immigration policy . There is no quiet part anymore. But fortunately, Matt has a fun footnote for us to bring us back up!...
Dec 19, 2025•53 min•Ep. 1217
We begin with a delightful amuse douche from the lawyer of Colorado election tamperer Tina Peters unconditionally demanding her release from state prison because Donald Trump said so before a deep dive into our main story: an absurdly bad take from the New York Times --in both a lengthy print story and an episode of The Daily podcast--on how Joe Biden’s unwillingness to be a border fascist got a border fascist elected. Matt breaks down the real causes of the uptick in asylum seekers to the U.S. ...
Dec 17, 2025•1 hr 45 min•Ep. 17
OA1216 - We welcome incarcerated journalist and advocate Christopher Blackwell, calling from his home at the Washington Corrections Center. Chris is the co-founder and Executive Director of Look2Justice, a non-profit which empowers and advocates currently and formerly incarcerated people through an “inside-out” organizing model. He is also a writer whose work has appeared in (among other places) The New York Times, the Washington Post , The Boston Globe , and The Nation, and is a co-author of th...
Dec 15, 2025•48 min•Ep. 1216
OA1215 - We examine why the potential merger of Warner Brothers Discovery with either Netflix or Paramount would almost be certainly illegal under better circumstances before mourning the imminent loss of the independence of the one government agency which is supposed to stop this kind of thing. What exactly is the Federal Trade Commission, and why was destroying it a top priority for Project 2025? We then take a closer look at this week’s oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter , in which the Supr...
Dec 12, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 1215
VR16 - This week on Vapid Response: it’s the Hat and the Hammer, with the return of both New York Times token religious conservative columnist Ross Doot-hat and Newsweek editor-at-large Josh Hammer. We begin with a savory amuse douche in which a Christian influencer preaches against making policy based on “toxic empathy” before reading Josh Hammer taking her up on the joke by explaining why the U.S. military has the absolute right to kill anyone Josh Hammer wants dead. Finally, Ross Douthat stop...
Dec 10, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 16
OA1214 - As the end of 2025 approaches, we are finding real cause for hope in how federal courts have been handling the Trump administration’s unprecedented assault on the rule of law. In the first of what will be at least two parts, Matt and Thomas speedrun through just a few of the many wins--both big and small--that we have seen in a wide range of categories. Just Security ’s Litigation Tracker Farewell Messages by Recent DOJ Alumni “The Unraveling of the Justice Department,” Emily Bazelon, T...
Dec 08, 2025•47 min•Ep. 1214
OA1213 - Thomas is back for an action-packed Rapid Response Friday! This week: we compare the letter that just earned the former President of Honduras a pardon of his conviction for definitely being involved with narcotrafficking against the Trump administration’s excuses for murder on the high seas of Venezuelans suspected to be involved with narcotrafficking--and if House Speaker Mike Johnson actually has a point in blaming Barack Obama for all of this. Matt then takes a quick look at Steve Ba...
Dec 05, 2025•51 min•Ep. 1213
Today on Vapid Response Wednesday: weeks after designating “Antifa” a “domestic terror organization,” the White House hosted a panel of MAGA luminaries to update the President on the not-at-all-made-up threat to the nation posed by a thing which demonstrably does not exist. We begin with a short amuse douche , in which Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn is concerned about the extremely real Portland “Antifa hit list”--a thing which definitely exists exactly as described! Matt then explains why t...
Dec 03, 2025•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 15
OA1212 - What’s a cop to do when he stumbles onto a crime, and the evidence points to someone he knows all too well? In today’s deep dive, friends become suspects, concerned parents become FBI agents, and laptops become lost jungle detritus. This criminal case out of the US District Court of the Northern Mariana Islands (a US territory in the Pacific) may not have reached the Supreme Court, or have any particularly important precedent, but what it lacks in prestige it makes up for with a fact pa...
Dec 01, 2025•52 min•Ep. 1212
