Gregory G. Katsas

That becomes important.

When this first went to the circuit, Judge Katsas and Judge Rao, who are... conservative jurists, and many people think that Judge Rao is sort of in a very sort of performative state for the next thing that she might be elevated to.

They rule that the order from the judge was so important ambiguous that nobody could be in contempt in other words that there isn't going to be a contempt hearing because it's not possible to be in contempt uh because it's too ambiguous there's a dissent that says essentially are you freaking kidding me and why are you deciding this now because Like, it's clear that at least the government trial attorneys understood the rule.

And you're assuming that that these people that you're assuming the ambiguity.

And what happened last year is that people were volunteering, and so there were a lot of two Trump appointee panels 'cause that's who was volunteering, and they were month-long panels.

So you would get Naomi Rao, Gregory Katsas, and a normal judge-

Right

... sitting for an entire month's worth of emergency orders.

Uh, that case was the one where Trump tried to block the Associated Press from the White House because it would not change its style guide to say Gulf of America, and it got before a terrible panel at the D.C.

Circuit, two Trump appointees, Neomi Rao and Gregory Katsas.

They invented this distinction between the spaces accessible to the media generally and the more private spaces of the White House, and they said it was fine for Trump to exclude the AP from those private spaces as retribution, even on the basis of viewpoint discrimination.

Mm-hmm.

This was, um, the pan-- It was a two-to-one split panel.

Um, the majority was, uh, Naomi Rao and Greg Katsas, um, uh, both Trump appointees, and the dissenter was Karen LeCraft Henderson, who is also normally, uh, uh, very, uh, uh, conservative.

Uh, she's a, um, George H.W. Bush appointee to the appellate court and, uh, I think Reagan appointed her to the district court originally.

Um, and it involves, you know, there are these two statutes that, um, uh, relate to supply chain risk, this con- concept for...

Well, McFadden is not laboring under the impression that he's about to be nominated to the Supreme Court.

Unlike judges Naomi Rao and Gregory Katsas, who are on the D.C.

Circuit, they think that if Alito goes, maybe one of them will take his seat.

So they issued this FACACTA ruling in that AP case.

Circuit, two Trump judges and one Biden judge decided two to one to not give them back their access to like the Oval Office and stuff like that.

But they said specifically in that filing, and Steve Ladek brought this up, if you're worried about the Associated Press case, Steve Ladek said Judge Rao and Judge Katsas, the two Trump judges on the D.C.

Circuit, said that the reason they were doing this is because it wasn't the Brady Room.

They didn't revoke the credentials like they have for these three news organizations.

So there's no way this gets...

Even those two Trump appointees, Katsas and Rao, who are the bane of the DC Circuit Court's existence-

Yeah

... were like, "This is okay.