Dear listeners,
Last week, we talked about a court hearing that seemed to have gone well for Anthropic, and indeed, the hearing was swiftly followed by a preliminary injunction from Judge Rita Lin, barring various Pentagon actions against the AI company, including a supply-chain risk designation that threatened much of the company’s private business.
And there’s another big injunction, this one from Judge Richard Leon, who loves to use exclamation points in his orders! Judge Leon says Trump must stop work immediately on his ballroom! If he wants it built, Congress is going to have to pass a law authorizing it! But why does the National Trust for Historic Preservation even have standing to challenge the ballroom project? Their members don’t appear to suffer an especially particularized injury, beyond having to look at a building they think is ugly! Ken says standing is a doctrine judges just make up as they go along!
Plus, Donald Trump’s executive order defunding PBS and NPR is blocked, but since Congress subsequently acted to rescind their funding, the effect of enjoining the order is limited.
Free subscribers hear about those cases. For paying subscribers, there’s much more! Including:
Covington & Burling warned its client, ActBlue, that some statements ActBlue made in a 2023 letter to congressional leaders may have been misleading, and that ActBlue’s CEO probably needs her own lawyer to deal with her legal exposure around that fact. ActBlue responded by firing Covington & Burling. It’s a big old mess, and Ken describes how this kind of thing can happen when you represent an entity, and the entity’s legal needs don’t always line up with the legal needs of its executives.
A Colorado appeals court threw out Tina Peters’ nine-year sentence for voting machine tampering, saying the judge raised her sentence in response to her constitutionally-protected speech.
After his car accident, Tiger Woods issued a statement saying he will step away and “seek treatment.” It’s an implicit admission of DUI, but as Ken notes, he’s very unlikely to beat the rap on DUI anyway, and this is a situation where his PR need to speak up and take responsibility may actually outweigh his legal prerogative to shut up.
FBI agents are suing Kash Patel for wrongful termination, and taking the opportunity to tell embarrassing stories about Patel that may not be strictly germane to their litigation.
Some people who went to the Capitol for January 6 have filed a new class action lawsuit, apparently hoping to join in on the Trump settlement gravy train.
Be careful what buttons you click on LinkedIn.
And, by popular demand, Ken analyzes Clavicular’s predicaments.
We hope you enjoy this episode,
Josh
