What happened?

Well, what happened is that things cooled down, actually, for quite a while.

As you said, over the summer, the federal government, the Department of Homeland Security said, we think there are 190,000 non-citizens on your voter list.

And California, like any good teacher, said, show your work.

Give us those numbers.

Tell us how you arrived there.

And as far as we know and reporting indicates, the federal government basically went quiet until after California started mailing out ballots in October.

How can they do that?

So how easy is it to deport someone who's already a citizen?

Well, not that easy, but also not impossible.

So when we talk about could she be denaturalized, that obviously is a different question we should emphasize than could she be deported when it comes to stripping somebody of their citizenship? That is a different proceeding.

So there could be and again, this is completely hypothetical.

There could be a person who commits a crime, but that does not automatically mean that they lose their citizenship again or that they're deported.

So what you need is a denaturalization process, and that can occur through a criminal proceeding or through a civil proceeding.

And generally speaking, the grounds for denaturalization are that you concealed a material fact, meaning a fact that matters, in the naturalization process, or you willfully misrepresented something that mattered in the naturalization process.

So what is your analysis of all this?

Did that seem to persuade any of the justices today?

So yes and no.

I think that 90,000 figure, frankly, sounded like it hit a bit as inflated in the room.

But there certainly are more than 60 similar suits that are pending right now.

And this case could answer the question as to whether those claims can go forward.

And again, basically what Boulder is arguing is that this is a simple nuisance case.

under state law, that these are companies that are costing cities and counties money.

So tell us about

What stood out to you about the trial testimony, the case the prosecution built and the close?

So I think what stood out to me is obviously that a lot is agreed upon in this case.

Everybody agrees how these killings took place.

Everybody agrees that Lindsay Clancy was suffering from severe mental illness.

And the question is, while hugely significant, Major, as you know, actually somewhat narrow.

As we just heard from Chanel in Massachusetts, the prosecution has the burden of showing that Lindsay Clancy was criminally culpable, and the standard is very high because she understood the wrongfulness of what she was doing, and she was able to comport her behavior within the law.

And what stood out to me is that everything the prosecution said leading up to this point is trying, of course, to get the jury to believe that to say.

So please pick up where you left off and you heard Caroline, I hope, and add whatever comments you might want to as well.

Jessica, do you agree with what David just said? And what do you think the Supreme Court, or how do you think the Supreme Court should have ruled here?

So I think the important thing to emphasize about what the Supreme Court did is that it is just procedural.

Exactly as David said, this is not about the merits of this argument.

We know that there were states who will challenge whether or not the Trump administration had the power to issue this executive order that deals with how we vote and mail-in balloting, and specifically different rules with respect to the Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security.

What the court did today is say that the challenge was brought too soon.

Now, I think that's no longer the case, again, for the reasons that David pointed out, which is that the Postal Service has now issued final rules.

The Court today did not say, "We think the Trump administration has the power to implement this executive order," or it doesn't.

Jessica, do you think this blindsided states? And what sort of legal challenges do you expect to see?

Jessica, what did the Supreme Court do and what effect, if anything, will it have on the upcoming midterm elections?

So two great questions.

I'll take them separately.

The Supreme Court, as you said, Major, is allowing this executive order to move forward while litigation continues.

We should emphasize here that the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of this challenge.

This is a procedural ruling, and the question deals really with whether those challenging the president's executive order are have the standing to do so, and if they brought the case too soon.

That was really the question before the court, whether or not those challenging the executive order were likely to succeed on those procedural arguments.

So why would an executive order supersede what has either happened through initiative or legislation?

How do you evaluate?

Well, I think that obviously it all comes down to whether or not the prosecution proved that, in fact, Lindsay Clancy did understand what she was doing and was able to comport her behavior within the bounds of the law.

We know that in Massachusetts, it's a little bit different than in other places, whereas the prosecution that has the burden of proving that, in fact, She understood that what she was doing was criminal or unlawful.

And again, that she could not comport herself within the law or that she could.

Now, what we have, I think, really is a battle of the experts.

We have some experts saying that this is psychosis.

We have others saying this is a woman who was struggling mightily, who was clearly suffering, but it doesn't rise to that legal threshold that we just talked about.

What is this under Massachusetts law?

Your thoughts?

Exactly as you said, that this case is taking on more than just the tragedy at hand.

We are having a conversation about mental health issues that people can experience after having children.

postpartum psychosis.

We are having conversations about the mental health system.

And frankly, I think the defense is putting the mental health system a bit on trial in the sense that they're saying that what Clancy received was this fragmented treatment that did not truly treat her and that did not truly understand the depth of her pain and the depth of her illness.

And what they're seeing is that she saw a couple of people over Zoom, even one mental health professional, the psychiatrist, the day before this tragedy occurred.

And under the law, there's a serious crime here and it must be prosecuted to the fullest.

At a certain point, does that just rule the day?

Well, that shouldn't rule the day, but certainly it's going to play into the reality, which is the Trump administration is saying, "We can't put the toothpaste back in the tube," that in fact, we're almost there, we're two-thirds of the way there.

It's too hard to undo everything that's been done before.

Now, having said that, as you know, there are very real separation of powers concerns here.

There's a big question as to whether or not Congress authorized the president to undertake this project.

And so when it comes to a constitutional harm, in my view, the answer shouldn't be, "Well, they just went ahead and did it anyway, so let's this, let's let this one slide by." Having said that, the Trump administration is seeking emergency relief here, and certainly one of the things that the justices will look to is to see essentially who's going to be most harmed by allowing the construction to continue or forcing it to stop, and what the balance of equities dictates in this case.

Bottom line, how do you think the Roberts US Supreme Court, with the 6-3 majority conservative, how do you think they're gonna rule?

So I will answer and not answer your question this way, by saying there actually is another argument here that I think would allow the Supreme Court to avoid all of the thorny questions we just talked about, because these are thorny questions.

And what's next, Jessica?

So what's next is a couple of things.

Obviously, in federal court, Mangione is going to be sentenced.

And I think part of his decision to decide to plead guilty is that he wants to not just avoid trial, but he's hoping that the judge views his acceptance of responsibility as a mitigating factor.

We know that he was facing up to life in prison obviously he wants the judge to give him far less than that and then what's next in another case well in the new york case he is also facing murder charges and i think that's part of the reason you might have seen this guilty plea is that what he's hoping and i think this is an uphill battle but we already know he's filed a brief for his lawyer's half what he's hoping Is it under New York's double jeopardy law that the entire murder case is tossed out? Now, we can talk about why I think that's an uphill battle, but that was scheduled to begin September 8th.

I don't think it will because I think there will be a lot of litigation about that particular double jeopardy law.

But that's the thing we look to next.

Why do you believe it's an uphill battle, Jessica?

What say you?

So, I mean, you are better about this than I am in the sense of what is the media landscape going to look like in five or 10 years? I mean, how much will it be me and you versus an AI agent, you know, describing what I might say or asking the questions that you might ask? But I think what you're bringing up, again, is this really important point, which is every time there's new technology, we have this decision to make about how much, if at all, we want to regulate it and how we do that.

And we saw that back in the dark ages of the internet, the early 1990s, Congress basically made a decision that when it comes to online content that you were mentioning and social media that Congress couldn't even envision, there's basically the best thing to do is hands off because we don't really understand and we want to allow for innovation.

But I think what we're now seeing, and that's why we have a lot of these different lawsuits, for instance, that parents bring on behalf of children who they say have used social media in a way that has caused mental health and other issues, is that we're trying to find all these legal ways to say, okay, maybe not no regulation.

So is it going to be a tort suit? Is it going to be a new state law? Is it going to be a new federal regulatory system? And I mean, you and everybody watching at home will see very clearly.

I don't have an answer to this question.

I'm just offering that this is something that repeats.

Visit SpinQuest.com for more details.

Jessica, what did we learn this week?

So what we learned is essentially a preview of the prosecution's case, much of which we'd already heard about.

So we knew that the roommate's testimony was going to be key.

We knew that there was allegedly a note left by Tyler Robinson for his roommate.

We knew that there was going to be DNA evidence.

We heard about that DNA evidence today.

Maybe the biggest takeaway from today is you have that forensic expert, again, testifying for the prosecution, saying that it is at least one trillion times more likely that the DNA found on the rifle came from Tyler Robinson and somebody else than two unknown individuals.

And what was the... disposition of the defense attorneys in this process and how much of a role did they have in either disputing or trying to recontextualize what was presented?

Help my audience understand what it was and what happened.

So this is a hearing to make sure that there is enough evidence for the prosecutors to be able to move forward.

This is a multi-day hearing.

In some cases, you have a very complicated case and prosecutors decide, let's do it quickly.

Let's do it in 45 minutes.

In this case, the prosecutors have said that they have a number of witnesses.

We heard from some today, for instance, from a university police officer.

And what role does the defense, if any, play in a proceeding of this kind, Jessica?

He wrote, "Congress should today start working on ending expensive and unfair to our country birthright citizenship." But can he do that? Well, Jessica Levinson's a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School in California.

I think President Trump's post is a misunderstanding, frankly, of what the majority concluded today.

A thin majority of the court looked not just at a federal law, but also at the Constitution, and specifically the 14th Amendment that was put into our Constitution after the Civil War, and concluded that the Constitution requires if you're born on US soil, you are a US citizen, and that's not something that can be undone by a Congressional statute.

There are only really two routes to change that understanding.

One is another Supreme Court case that would overturn the decision the court just made today, or a constitutional amendment.

But you cannot, by statute, change what the Constitution means.

It's not been a great week for him at the Supreme Court, has it? He's not always got what he's wanted there.

I think this has been a mixed week for the president when it comes to the end of the Supreme Court term.

Jessica, start with the one on TPS, temporary protective status.

So let's see if I'm a problem today.

So temporary protective status.

Never.

We have a majority of the court saying here two things.

But the primary thing is that when it comes to a decision by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, to end temporary protected status for a group, maybe it's Haitians, maybe it's people from Syria, that that decision is not reviewable by federal courts, at least with respect to non-constitutional claims.

Meaning the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security says, I'm ending this program and It's not up to judges to second guess that.

And on the second decision from the court dealing with asylum and this idea of how close you have to be or what a port of entry is or whether you're in Mexico, outline that for us.

Psychiatric defense as a lay person, I think, is that the same as an insanity defense?

It's a good question.

So this varies a little bit state by state, but essentially what they were going to argue is that there was an extreme emotional disturbance that is different from what you and I are used to talking about, which is insanity.

So when it comes to this particular defense in a state case in New York, What it would have done is brought down the charge from second-degree murder to a manslaughter charge.

So it wouldn't erase culpability.

It would just say that there's less culpability and, of course, less punishment that would go along with it.

When it comes to the insanity defense, it's, of course, known as the insanity defense, but the full term is generally culpability.

How unusual would it be for an experienced set of lawyers to pursue and tell the court it was going in one direction and then abruptly reverse?

What, if anything, should we conclude from that?

Well, I think partly exactly that, Major, which is you're facing 18 charges and all the risks that go along with trial, and instead what you can say is, "I'm going to plead guilty to one count of actually retaining classified information," not even disseminating the information.

I think what we see play out here is what plays out as you know in courtrooms throughout the country, which is most cases don't go to trial, in part because the defense knows the risks of going to trial.

In this case, John Bolton faced decades in prison.

Now, as a result of this plea deal, he likely faces either zero time and probation or up to six years in prison.

I think that has to feel, or he assumes this felt like a safer and better bet at this point.

And if this plea agreement is authorized by the court, and there's no reason to assume it won't be, it's important to note that John Bolton is not pleading guilty to sharing, to not handing it off to any foreign nation, adversary or friendly, and for his larger life after this is all adjudicated, that matters.

It does matter, as you're exactly right to emphasize.

And what are the merits of the case? Is it a challenge to an FDA alteration of an existing policy that occurred during, if I remember correctly, COVID 2021?

That's exactly right.

So there was a change to the FDA rules.

Previously, you needed an in-person appointment to get mifepristone.

During COVID, obviously it was much harder for people to have in-person appointments, and so the rule was temporarily changed.

It was, I believe, in 2023, right after the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v.

Wade, that the FDA said that that change in the regulation could actually become permanent.

[laughs]

Jessica, tell me what this means, what Friday's lower court ruling through the Supreme Court's actions mean for women.

So what this means is, as of today, the FDA rule that's been in place since right after COVID started remains in place.

What are we talking about? When COVID hit, the FDA essentially changed and or relaxed its regulations when it comes to obtaining mifepristone.

You don't have to go in person.

You can have a telehealth appointment.

You can also get mifepristone through the mail.

Those were temporary relaxations of the regulations that were put in place, and then they became permanent.

In addition to what you just laid out, what more do we expect from Louisiana as they make their case?

What did the conservative justices decide?

I think the strange thing about this case is that it feels like it has something to do with abortion, and in some ways it does, but in other ways, it actually has nothing to do with abortions.

So what's happening here are there are a couple of different federal laws.

There's a federal law that says that if you're qualified for your state's Medicaid program, then you can go to any qualified provider.

Back in 2018, South Carolina's governor signed an executive order saying basically, "We don't want Planned Parenthood to be a qualified provider anymore." Now, we should remember at this moment that federal funds can only be used for abortions in very rare circumstances, rape, incest, the life of the mother.

And so South Carolina is trying to essentially take Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program, so Planned Parenthood doesn't get reimbursements for a whole host of things, including cancer screenings, for instance, and well women's visits, et cetera.

Now, the question was, can a private individual and Planned Parenthood sue when you have this federal law saying you can go to any qualified provider? I know it took a long time to explain that.

What's at stake in this case?

It's March, which means we're a little more than halfway through the Supreme Court's term. What are some of the other big cases on the horizon that you're keeping an eye on?

I think at this point, one of the biggest cases of the term is the Skrmetti case, which was already argued, and that's a case dealing with states' ability to limit gender-affirming care for minors. And that's a case that obviously is not just a hot button issue, but it has serious implications for other states, um, for individuals who want this type of care, and it will give us a little bit of an indication, I think, about the justices' thinking when it comes to the Equal Protection Clause. I will say, the other thing that we're looking for is actually the thing that we started talking about, which is when I looked at the cases that the justices decided to take this term, and many others did as well, it looks like maybe a little bit of a light term. Certainly, they are continuing to hear important cases. But I think that they know this might not be the last Trump-related case that they hear.

Right. I think that that leads to my next question, which is that, are there other cases making their way through the courts right now that the Court will likely have to step in on? Because we're already seeing, there's a lot of legal wrangling over DOGE, legal wrangling over any number of actions by the Trump administration. Are we going to see them step in like we saw with the USAID decision?

Yes, and we should be clear that the Court hasn't really stepped in on the USAID decision. They just looked at whether or not they were gonna grant emergency relief. But in answer to your larger question, absolutely. I mean, there have been so many suits in response to these executive actions. Now, we should tell people who are listening and watching, it doesn't mean that these cases will be heard this term. I mean, we should be looking at a horizon of a year or two for some of these cases. We know that they kind of bounce up and down through the federal court system. But, you know, if we look back to the first days of the Trump administration, we are still litigating birthright citizenship. We're still talking about funding freezes and the Impoundment Act. We are looking at the firing of federal employees. We're looking at DOGE and how DOGE is operating. So, there are many issues that the Court may have to, at some point, decide. And what I would just flag for everybody is, in a lot of these cases, there's kind of a two-step process. The first is more of a procedural question. Did the federal government, and specifically, the executive branch, did they go about trying to undertake this action in the right way, for instance? Is this the right agency, and/or is the executive order itself so vague that they need to go back and start again? And then, there's the deeper, more substantive question of things like, does the chief executive, does the president have the power to say, "We're not spending those funds," or does the president have the power to issue an executive order trying to, um, in my mind, change our understanding of birthright citizenship? So, long answer to yes, yes, and absolutely yes.