Ep 205 — Happy (All But One) Presidents Day!

plaza, which has never before been publicly acknowledged by ICE officials. He said people

are generally held there for less than 12 hours, and are often shifted back to the tenth floor as space becomes available. It is not my sense that it is overcrowded, Oster Riker said, adding that even though ICE didn't believe Kaplan's would have applied there, many of the provisions of it were in place on that floor, like providing adequate food. There you go, that is all the things. Welcome to Lawton Chaos, where a judge that presidents day we can trump four filth,

over presidents house in Philadelphia, and the house passed a lot of look at the motor rotor bill and courts are getting greedy, damn hired, having to tell the Department of Homeland Security that it has to abide by the Fifth Amendment, even when those ICE guys really don't want to. You got a lot to cover, so let's get after it!

“Hey guys, I'm Liz Diane with me as always, is Andrew Torres, Andrew how are you?”

I could, Liz, happy every president but one day. Hmm, yeah, which president you're going to? I don't know, did you have any sweet? I had a lovely weekend, it was a nice Valentine's day, how much of a meal too? All right, well we have a really interesting show today, courts were not open, so for once we did not

feel like we were getting punched in the throat by the news, but that did not stop one judge in Pennsylvania from telling Donald Trump to keep George Washington's name out of his filthy whore mouth. Is that a direct quote? I mean, more or less. We've got two stories about temporary immigration detention, both with these are good rulings. We will also break down Trump's

“vow to impose national voter ID for the midterm. Yeah, spoiler alert? No. No. And for subscribers,”

we've got a discussion of a rule barring ice from making warrantless arrests inside churches.

But first, okay. Let us celebrate president's day with some naked corruption. Just like

our president, Andy. The IP law firm, Gurban, parent, PLLC, notice some funny trademark applications filed for ID for president Donald J. Trump International Airport and also for Donald J. Trump International Airport and D. J. T. And what also applies, the Florida House and Senate both have bills pending to rename Palm Beach International Airport to Donald J. Trump International Airport. So, and shout out to Florida politics, blogger Jason Garcia at seeking rents for

catching the allocation in the Senate and House bills. Trump previously tried to get Chuck Schumer to agree to rename DELIS Airport and also Penn Station in New York for or him for Trump. He's been holding up transportation money for New York and he said he'd release it. If Schumer were just agree to rename everything for the Emperor God King. But no dice. I, weird place for Chuck Schumer to draw the line in the same. But okay, look, I guess the lesson is, no matter how corrupt and

stupid you think things are, they can always get worse. So, Gurban says that the U.S. government

would have to pay to license the name from Trump's LLC if the airport wasn't in fact renamed. At the $10 billion taxes, moving on to something nicer. On Friday, Denver District Court Judge Sarah Wallace ruled the Colorado's policy of coercing prisoners to work with threats of putting them in solitary confinement violates the state's constitutional ban on involuntary servitude. So, some packed that a little bit. In 2018, Colorado amended its state constitution. Previously,

it said their shall never be in the state either slavery or involuntary servitude except as a punishment for a crime, where of the party shall have been duly convicted. And that language tracks it directly mirrors the language of the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But amendment A removed that second clause, the exception allowing for slavery or involuntary

“servitude as punishment for a crime. It is honestly so astonishing to me that we allow for”

slavery in prisons. And it's so disgusting. It's stronger. Well, Colorado took the position that threatening to ticket prisoners for failure to work. And by ticket, they mean shackle them and put them in solitary confinement. That did not amount to coercion. Honestly, the results in the right, right? This opinion was not great. Judge Wallace said that the Bureau of Prisons obligatory work regulations were not facially illegal and that it was not coercion to withhold quote

privileges, like visits with family from prisoners who refused to work. But Judge Wallace allowed

practice wound up being discriminatory. So, yet, you had to have two strikes essentially to be sent

“into solitary confinement. And the guards in practice were using the policies in a way that wound”

up being coercive of inmates who chose not to work, right? So, if a prisoner refused to work, they would double count that way. You get a demerit for not working and also for refusing a lawful order from the guards or two different prisoners each refused to work. Even if they weren't talking to each other, both of them would get written up for advocating or creating a facility disruption in addition to the not working. And then the two penalties would get them sent to the

whole. That is the only part of how the policy was put into practice. The Judge Wallace said

amounted to involuntary servitude, but at least at something. I mean, it's a start. Okay, the next one is

a rage maker. Unlike the rest of our usual cherry fair here at Lankham. So, this one involves the House where George Washington and John Adams conducted official business in Philadelphia. It's known

“as President's House, appropriately this decision came out on President's Day. And, you know,”

I did not know much about this place until I read the ruling, but George Washington lived there with nine enslaved people. And those nine people rotated it in and out because Pennsylvania allowed slaves who were in the state for more than six months to petition for their freedom. So, these people were forced to go back to Mount Vernon periodically to ensure that they remained enslaved. Two of these people actually did escape eventually, Hercules Posey and Only Judge. And look,

so much of our debate about how this country we're going to be governed, revolved around slavery and what to do about this, you know, the peculiar institution, this House peculiar institution. So, in 2002, there was this huge debate in the city about how to acknowledge the glaring contradiction between our ideals and our real history. And so, the museum constructed this additional exhibit on what were essentially the slave quarters,

the exhibit commemorated the enslaved people who lived there and talked about their experience in

acknowledge the moral failure inherent in our first president owning slaves. But on January 22nd,

the National Park Service removed that exhibit on the enslaved people, along with almost every reference to slavery, it was pursuant to one of Trump's really vile executive orders and starting his flying monkeys to remove any reference to America as anything other than a shining city on the hill. Yeah, the city of Philadelphia sued. For the past two decades, the city has run the project collaboratively with the park service. They have a joint agreement to run to

operate and maintain the exhibit. And the city said that unilaterally ripping out the exhibit violated that agreement as well as the administrative procedure act. The case got assigned to Judge

“Cynthia Roof, who was a George W Bush appointee. I think she qualifies as an old bull. She certainly”

scored the park service. This opinion is furious and rightfully so. It literally begins with a George Orwell quote about history as a Palempsest. Scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly as often as was necessary. She compares the Trump administration to the ministry of truth. I mean, it should not wrong. Yeah. Substantably Judge Roofy or Judge Roof ruled that the city has a statutory right and expectation to mutual agreement on any changes or alterations to the

park, including the president's house to written agreement for placement of any monument or memorial and to consultation on all matters of importance to the park, removal of the president's house displays invaded this legally protected interest. And so she ordered the Trump administration to put the exhibit back as it was immediately. And look, it was a really moving order and since this president's day and we're all feeling a lot about the fate of the Republic. And do you want to

read the concluding paragraphs? Yes, I do. She says the city has established that the government actions to remove displays from the president's house are likely contrary to law. And, this courts recognize there was a substantial public interest in having governmental agencies abide by the federal laws that govern their existence and operations. Further, with the party's accepting the displays as historically accurate, there's a public interest in the preservation

exhibition of that history. Defendants, for their part, reasonally one argument for wine and junction would be inequitable. They argue that there's a public interest in upholding the federal government's right to convey its preferred speech. I, it's or well-earned rewriting. She continues. Restoration of the president's house does not infringe upon the government's free speech.

history of the greatest founding fathers' management of persons he held in bondage.

“President Washington's house would not merit designation as a historic site if he had not”

commanded the army that won the Revolutionary War, whose presence presiding over the constitutional

convention greased it with the gravitas and the spirit necessary to the creation of our government's foundational document and his restraint and modesty radiated strengthened wisdom that defines the ideal chief executive to this day. The government can convey a different message without restraint elsewhere if it's so pleases, but it cannot do so to the president's house until it follows the law and consults with the city. Yeah, okay, let's let's take a little break.

And we're back. Okay, it is Tuesday and we are so grateful to all our new subscribers. Let's thank them now on [email protected]. Thank you to Chris, Douglas, Kaly,

“Connor McFarlane, Jeff Bowen, Glyzi, thank you to Erin M. and Mitch the fish. Or maybe it's”

Mick the fish. I'm not sure. Mitch, Mitch the fish. Mitch the fish. Comey that. Okay. Thank you to Jen Phillips and to Tammy Dipen and Subsy and Catherine Mug. Thank you to Dennis Villasana and Lama Mama. Welcome to the new platform Howard Rosenman, John Sandercoc, Michel Holly, Ariopal, Jordan, and thank you to Joel C. Christ. And to those of you who signed up at patreon.com/law and cast pod. A big thank you to Paul Bowman Zachary Fontez, Resler Shelby Dave Modders, Aiden Kindle,

Benjamin Schuh and Peter Kaplan. Thank you all so much. We could not literally do this show without your support. And if you'd like to join them be among our ranks of our supporters, you know how to do that. Just head on over to law and cast pod.com or patreon.com/law and cast pod. Sign up to give us

“this little as a fucking episode. You will get these shout outs. You'll get the show ad for you'll get our”

goodies, our bonuses, our extended episodes, all of the great stuff that we give to those who help us do this job that you and I love so much. We do love it. It's a whole thing. Okay. Let's talk about two recent decisions regarding so-called temporary detention facilities. We've all read that I says taking the $75 billion allocated to it under the one big beautiful bill act. Okay. I'll build the hut and using it to buy up a bunch of abandoned warehouses for a nationwide network

of concentration camps. And yes, I have seen Jake Tapp are complaining about people calling

them concentration camps. And I do not intend to stop calling that because never again is right

fucking now Jake. Amen to that. So those warehouses have not come online as detention facilities yet. And so instead Homeland Security is jailing people in what are you domestically referred to as temporary facilities, particularly in places where they have done these immigration surges. So some of these temporary facilities are these vast tent cities in places like Texas, but others are just repurposed office buildings. They're basements. These are facilities that

were never meant to house more than a few people at a time. And not for more than 12 hours. And people have been stacked in these facilities for days or even weeks without beds, without windows, and courts have had to come in and order the government to provide basic hygiene, food, water, medical care because Homeland Security is essentially torturing these people as a tool to force them to agree to be deported. Yeah. So let's start in Minnesota where Judge Nancy Brazos

signed a temporary restraining water Thursday ensuring that detainees at the wipple building in Minneapolis get access to council commensurate with the guarantees provided by the fifth amendment. Wipple is one of those DHS office buildings. It is a temporary holding facility for processing immigrants. And that's been converted to basically medium term detention without adequate upgrades. Yeah. This is a really interesting order. Both for what it does and for what it says

about the way that courts perceive the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. The top line is the Judge Brazos barred ice from transferring anyone out of the state of Minnesota

for the first 72 hours of detention. That is critical since the government is disappearing people

into those aforementioned tent Gulags in Texas as quickly as possible. And even if a judge orders someone released, I saw them just ignores that order for weeks. So the purpose of the TRO is

essentially kidnapped to the fifth circuit. These guys are never ever going to beat that slave

“catcher analogy. So the TRO says that within an hour of their detention ice must provide detainees”

with their A numbers. That's the ID that allows their council to track them in the detainee lookup system. They also have to be provided with a list of legal services providers and free private phone calls with council and enough time on the phone that they can reach their families to say where they are. Detainees must be told whether being transferred to and given time before that transfer to call their families. And the government must provide private rooms for

council to meet with clients at Wipple during normal business hours and for four hours on weekends and holiday. Yeah, there are a couple of things in this order that really jumped out at me because

they seem emblematic of where we are. The first is the judge brought a really dragged

the government for saying that it would be too hard and too expensive to abide by the constitution. So she says in the order defendants allocated substantial resources to sending thousands of agents meaning ice and CBP agents to Minnesota detaining thousands of people and housing them in their facilities. Defendants cannot suddenly lack resources when it comes to protecting detainees constitutional rights. Your failure to plan is not the court's emergency. Right. And more than that,

“I think this is the court saying that the emergency is entirely manufactured by DHS as an excuse”

to violate these immigrants civil rights in ways that are so unpleasant that they'll agree to either, you know, what they you famously call self-deport or be deported simply to get out of these

horrible illegal facilities. Ice is sitting on a $75 billion slush fund. It can afford to do

anything it likes, including provide detainees with access to council. If it finds that that administratively difficult, then maybe it should detain fewer people or as Judge Brousal puts it a bit more diplomatically than I would. The government suggests with minimal explanation and even less evidence that doing so that is providing due process would result in chaos. The Constitution does not permit the government to arrest thousands of individuals and then disregard their

constitutional rights because it would be too challenging to honor those rights. Yeah, what really

“jumped out at me was this footnote. Judge Brousal said the court had anticipated a potential knowledge”

gap between council and its client and for that reason, ordered someone from ice with authority to bind operations in Minnesota to be present for the mediation preceding the hearing and for the hearing itself. Tariah rich deputy field officer director for ice in Saint Paul attended but her presence did not appear to assist council in their ability to respond to the complaint and the motion. Where do you start? Yeah, so potential knowledge between council and its client.

To be clear, council is a justice department and the client is the Department of Homeland Security. In the before times, both of those agencies at least claimed to be trying to follow the law. The DOJ would relay judicial orders to the appropriate agency and those orders were filed. I mean, look, not all the time, but most of the time. And if a lawyer for the government represented something to the court, that something was probably true. Even in civil cases where

the DOJ was defending an agency action, it didn't just like say shit in court. And to be clear, we have talked about some of the most egregious political appointees at main justice lying to judges faces in particular true ensign. But I take your point. Most of the line prosecutors are not willing to look a judge in the eye and lie to their face, right? They just can't get true information from their client because their client is Donald Trump and his hand picked

Goons who have zero commitment to saying things that are factually correct, which has the effect of putting Department of Justice lawyers in the position of repeating their client's lies in court. And on top of that, the lawyers are the ones, most closely at hand to discipline when court orders get ignored. Right. We talked about Chief Judge Shelts in the District of Minnesota listening that 96 times in January alone when the government ignored court orders in that district.

Almost all of those were in habeas cases, by the way. That is immigrants snatched out of the community and then stashed at Wipple until DHS could disappear them to Texas. We didn't cover that immigration court lawyer who had been seconded to the US Attorney's Office in Minnesota and then had this crash out and open court because she couldn't get DHS to follow court orders. That hearing was actually a show cause hearing as to why the government shouldn't be held in contempt for its

failure to comply with all the habeas orders or if the court was going to hold somebody in

line attorneys are doing their best. The judge said basically like, who's fault does it?

Then when we say let somebody out of detention and bring them back to Minnesota, it doesn't happen. And the answer to that is that DHS doesn't care about following the law or court orders. This is just a happy to ignore DHS and let the prosecutors deal with it in court. If

“I'm actually act as a pain sponge with the judges. I think that's why Judge Brasal ordered”

quote, "Someone from ICE with authority to bind operations in Minnesota to be present for the mediation preceding the hearing and for the hearing itself. What she's trying to do is short-circuit that process that you just described and force homeland security to state on the

record what it intends to do, rather than sending in the department of justice with incomplete

knowledge to put its own credibility on the line." And I have to say that didn't work. Yeah. They sent Tariah rich, the deputy field office director for ICE in St. Paul, Minnesota. They showed up and simply said, "No, we're not going to provide immigrants with access to counsel. That would be too hard." Screw you, Judge Brasal. Yeah. That's not so far off of what she said. She said, "It would cause chaos to force DHS to force ICE to allow immigrants at

“Whipple to meet with their counsel in private rooms." And like, you know, "So what?" Right?”

That your chaos does not override the US Constitution, which is how you get a TRO and an eventually a preliminary injunction, which is what happens. Yeah. Okay. We will be back with

our second case out of New York after this brief ad break.

And we're back. Okay. So our second case about the temporary, and you can hear the scared quotes, temporary detention is in New York. The case is captioned, "Barko, Mercado, be known." And it has to do with these, this temporary facility on the 10th floor at 26 federal Plaza, often referred to as 26 fat. So, on September 17, Judge Louis Kaplan issued a preliminary injunction ordering DHS to provide basic safety and hygiene requirements for the detainees

institute maximum occupancy and medical care and access to counsel. And then on November 25th, the plaintiffs filed a motion for contempt and sanctions because they said DHS had made minor changes that felt far short of compliance with the TRO. There were still no toothbrushes or changes of clothes. There was not enough blankets, there was insufficient food, and wholly inadequate access to counsel. Louis were calling and trying to speak to clients and being told that the next

available slot to meet with their client was a week out and often the client was deported by that. Yeah. The ask here is really interesting because the plaintiffs are clearly trying to leverage the government's obvious and defiant non-compliance into greater visibility into what's happening inside that building. They want homeland security to provide weekly logs saying exactly who is inside these holding rooms including their A numbers, how long they've been there,

plus a tally of how many attorney phone calls went out. They want someone from DHS to swear under oath every week that the government is complying with Judge Kaplan's order. And they want the right to inspect and photograph the facility, which I am all for it, but that's a big ask. Right. DHS is fighting tooth and nail to keep out members of Congress and they're not

“letting them take photographs in their ether. So I think civilian access with photographs is”

well, it would be a lot. They also want monetary sanctions to try to expect that one. They're not going to get, but I totally agree with you that they're dragging this process out to maximize discovery because they want access to the facility. The more they know about what's going in there, they're stronger the position they're going to be in. Yeah. And it raises public awareness. So the parties here have jointly agreed to delay a hearing. But I must say, the signs for their

government are not good. Maybe read a little bit from one of Judge Lewis Kaplan's opinions. He says it is well known that defendants have been extremely resistant to allowing outsiders access to the holdrooms at 26 fed even excluding members of Congress from conducting oversight visits, putting to one side whether defendants resistance to such efforts suggests a desire to prevent their treatment of detainees from becoming public cough cough. And the court doesn't

not at this juncture draw such an inference cough cough. The inescapable fact is that defendants resistance to any public oversight leaves plaintiff with few means of getting hard evidence

for preliminary injunction, they'll short of a full complete and candid disclosure of the relevant

“facts whether it certainly are not. Their factual submissions were incomplete and in significant”

respects. This is a judge who trusts the government not at all not the Department of Justice and certainly not the Department of Homeland Security wait for it. So this is from a local New York outlet called the city says on Monday Heather Gregorio an attorney for Wang Hecker LLP which is working with make the road New York described a recent deposition of William Joyce, the deputy field office director of ISIS New York office. In it, Joyce admitted that immigrants

are being held on another floor at 26 fed or ISIS not abiding by the judges rules. During the deposition, Joyce acknowledged the immigrants are being held on other floors of the building and that the judges preliminary injunction did not apply to the other floors in the agency's interpretation. Gregorio told Judge Kaplan quickly turned to Jeffrey Osterreich or the chief of the

“civil division to the US attorney's office for the Southern District of New York who was representing”

the Trump administration. Are they being held on other floors, Kaplan asked him? The short answer is yes, Osterreicher replied. Osterreicher went on to describe four additional holding rooms

on the ninth floor of 26 federal plaza which has never before been publicly acknowledged by

ISIS officials. He said people are generally held there for less than 12 hours and are often shifted back to the tenth floor as space becomes available. It is not my sense that it is overcrowded Osterreicher said adding that even though I didn't believe Kaplan's order replied there, many of the provisions of it were in place on that floor like providing adequate food. I, you hear my, there you go, like that is all the things, right? That is Homeland Security

defying court. You cannot say, oh, we thought this order only applied on the tenth floor and not in the secret space we've been hanging on the ninth floor, right? It is the hyper-technical parsing of laws and orders in a way that is absurd and, of course, in the government's favor, while broadly ignoring the Constitution for everyone else and, as you were highlighting, it is the Department of Justice having to face the judges, right? I do not envy Osterreicher here,

while, you know, Homeland Security just gets to craft these policies in a vacuum. I also have to say, hey, that notwithstanding that, I would not try any of that in front of Judge Kaplan. He has been on the bench since the late Kritatius, I have 1994. I mean, squarely in old bull territory. Maybe maybe shade it into Can Tanker's old goat territory? Yeah, he, he is not, and if you're listening,

“Judge Kaplan, not someone I would make mad if I could possibly avoid it. I mean, I think he's”

pretty clearly mad now. I did agree. Okay, so for our final story, let's talk about all the ways that the Trump administration wants to interfere with the 2026 midterms to try and stay off what should be the crushing defeat that they ought to suffer. If we just ask people in a democracy, hey,

do you like what the government is doing? The answer is overwhelmingly. No, not at all.

Let's talk about the kind of founding myth of this bullshit, which is that there are thousands, or maybe millions of illegal aliens voting in US elections. After Trump won the Electoral College vote in 2016 and lost the popular vote, Trump claimed that he actually won it if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally. He won California, which is a myth. So Trump's never was off by millions of people. And as far as we can tell, the actual number of non-citizens who vote

in federal elections is zero. The 40 states have certified that. The Heritage Foundation, the O.G. kind of conservative, sane washer went looking for vote fraud. They compiled a database of election crimes over 20 years. They found 23 total cases of non-citizens voting in any election at any level. We're Republican Governor Brad Raffinsberger and Georgia Commission to study that found as many as 1,634 non-citizens attempted to register to vote. But literally every single one of them

were flagged by the system, none made it through. So there are no illegal non-citizen voters,

ridiculous. It is kind of amazing that this entire theory rests on millions of non-citizens

risking jail time and deportation to do something that, you know, half the eligible Americans can't even be bothered to do, right? Like, to be clear, non-citizens voting is a crime. 18 USC sections 6/11. It is punishable by up to a year in jail. And it is similarly illegal to claim to be a US citizen when you're not to lie on your voter registration application. And of

beginning removal proceedings to deport you, right? So, not that people are not going to jail for

right? People are not getting deported. Like, non-citizen voting is not a thing. What is a thing? Is pretending that non-citizen voting means we need to safeguard our elections in ways that just so happen to disproportionately burden millions of people who would otherwise vote in ways that this administration would not like. Right. So last Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted 2018 to 2013 to pass S1383 the Save America Act. That was strictly party lines with just one

defection Democrat Henry Quay R of Texas, the indicted and now pardon felon. Although he didn't switch parties. So that was a good tracer. All right. We're going to break all of this down for you

after our last ad break. Unless you were a subscriber, pay tree on dot com slash lawncast spot or

law and cast spot dot com in which case you will not be having an ad break not today and not ever. And we're back. Okay. I don't want to be overly alarmist. I mean, there's a lot to be a alarm. But the Save America Act is almost certainly going to die in the Senate. A similar but less egregious version of the bill was introduced in 2025 and it didn't pass the sense. So that's a

“good thing. But I think it's important to talk about the provisions in these bills to highlight”

the multiple fronts on which this administration is trying to undermine our democracy really at every stage of the process. Right. Republicans want to make it harder to register to vote. They want to make it harder to carry out the act of voting after you've registered. They're also trying to suppress the vote by intimidating state and local elections officials into trimming legitimate voters off their voter rolls and just in general by flooding the zone with

misinformation. So it is a sustained assault on democracy from start to finish. Okay. So let's start with voter registration because most of our audiences from the United States and so having to register to vote doesn't seem weird to you. But it is. Right. I mean, look, if you're a U.S. citizen before you can vote, you have to opt in to this system and become a registered voter and otherwise you can't vote. And if you don't vote for several election cycles, states will purge you from the eligible

“voter registration rolls and force you to go through the process all over again. If you want to vote”

in the future, if you show up at the wrong polling place, they don't let you vote or maybe they let you cast a provisional ballot and the federal government does nothing to try and identify non-registered voters and sign them up. In fact, one of the reasons that Trump said that the 2020 election was stolen was because there was all of this concerted voter outreach and he said, well, you know, allowing people to register to vote in the park introduces an element of fraud. So, you know, it doesn't count.

Which is crazy. No other democracy doesn't like that. Every other country takes an opt out approach. Right. You are registered to vote automatically. In fact, in several countries, universal voting is compulsory, non-boding is a crime sort of, not really one that's enforced. Yeah, but I think the larger point is that the baseline result of these structural choices that are already built into the system is that as we see, statistically, far fewer people vote in the United States and

our elections than in other democracies. That makes our process much more susceptible to capture by, say, a political party that doesn't actually have the broad support of the people. For a long time, both of our political parties, at least gave lip service to the idea that that that that was a bad that that higher voter turnout rates would be good. So, in the early 1990s, as voter participation rates plummeted to their lowest in our nation's history, about half the

eligible population for presidential elections and about a order for off-cycle, non-presidential elections. Congress got together in bipartisan fashion and they passed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. It was signed into law by President Clinton. And that's commonly known as the motor voter bill. We talked about it on the show before. The whole point was, obviously, to make it

“easier for people to register to vote because you have to go to the DMV to get your driver's license”

and you know, you're holding all of your documents there. So, fine, the first major thing the

law did was require every state to offer voter registration wherever they issue driver's licenses. That's 52 USC 20504. The second thing the bill did was provide a uniform mechanism for voter registration by mail, which has now been expanded to include online. That's 52 USC 20508. It creates

narrow. Yeah. And we should say, the motor voter law worked. It still works today. Overall,

“voter registration rates are up 10% since it's passage. Most people today register to vote”

either online using the 20508 form or at their local DMV. And that's all thanks to the motor voter law. That's where all three of my children I took to get their driver's licenses and they

register to voter originally. Yeah. And that brings us back to the say that. The first 26 pages of it

are an effort to undermine both of those provisions in the motor voter law by requiring you to provide proof of citizenship in person to register to vote. And that proof of citizenship is defined particularly narrowly. It has to be either a real ID compliant driver's license, which all states are now complying with it. But lots of older driver's licenses are not real ID compliant. A passport, less than half of Americans have, or your birth certificate. Yeah. And to be clear,

real ID is a is a kind of early requirement imposed by the federal government because they said, if you didn't have a real ID, you couldn't fly. Yeah. And they had to push it back. It was a it was related to this. It was making it harder to get your driver's license because they wanted to push back on states who allow non-citizens to get driver's licenses. Right. Obviously, if you are

getting your driver's license, you don't have a driver's license. I mean, at least the first time.

Unless then half of Americans have a passport. So I like many Americans. My birth certificate and my driver's license do not match. So under this scheme, I guess I would have to bring my marriage license with me to vote. I mean, I look, I have a real ID. I'm not stupid. But this is going to present specifically problem is for American women who tend to take their husband's name. I can't imagine how a trans person who changes their name and gender ID marker is going to make this work.

I mean, or I suppose if I were a trans person or a person who changed my name in some other non-marriage

“way, I could bring my documents. But I think that this is going to be, it look, it's abusive”

to force people to out themselves if they want to vote. And it's going to be subject to abuse by bigoted registrars. And I think we should emphasize just how far this will be. The League of

Conservation Voters estimates that over 70 million people do not have a birth certificate that

matches their ID. Most of them are in your category list. But that's okay. The save act has you covered because it says that the states can accept your maiden name for voter registration. If you also present with your voter application documentation that would constitute documentary proof of United States citizenship, IE, your birth certificate, and you provide and here I just want to quote from the bill directly. Through a process established by the state, right? That means

in the future. Additional documentation as necessary to establish that the name on the documentation is a previous name of the applicant. So yeah, what that means is this bill passes, states have to

“invent a thing and then you have to show up with your marriage license and whatever else that's”

the states ask for or you know, get to register to vote. Yeah, it's interesting to me. I've had I believe it was with the state bar, but it could have been for a passport renewal. They needed an original copy of my marriage license for which I had to go to the courthouse in Baltimore City and pay an extra $10 or whatever it was to get to get a certified copy of it. I think now I'm thinking about it. It was my passport. And it's such a sertax on women which look for me, I've lived

in the same city my whole life. So it wasn't that big a deal for me to go to the Baltimore City courthouse and get my marriage license for a lot of people though who have moved around. That's not going to be so easy. Yeah. So the save act in addition to all of those provisions would also got the register by mail provision of the motor voter law. So that current model form 20508 that you talked about Liz, that's the one that the federal government created. It requires you to attest

that you are a citizen under penalty of purgery and subject to the criminal provisions that we've talked about. The save act says that affidavit isn't good enough. No state, it would be permitted to accept that model registration form without also requiring each voter to include a photo copy of or present that documentary proof of citizenship right a copy of that either real ID or their breath certificate. I mean, it's it's it's just designed to make that register by mail provision

impossible. Right. And it's designed to make it harder to register to vote. Right. Because when people

in 2020 and said that it you know invalidated the election result. But the save act doesn't stop there. Once you have registered to vote, the law will require you to provide and show ID whenever you

“show up to pass your vote, which is not legal right now. And if you want to vote by mail,”

subsection 303A2 says that the state or local official may not accept any ballot for any federal office unless you submit a copy of your ID or this complicated procedure states are supposed to develop where you look sign an affidavit that you can't get a copy of your ID and you provide the last four digits of your social security number plus an affidavit from a whatever, you know,

something TVD that sounds suspiciously like the Pennsylvania law, which always every cycle

winds up getting thousands of votes tossed because people forget to sign it in the right place or they don't date it and for whatever that they screw it up in ways that have nothing to do with the validity of their ballots. Yeah. I think that's an excellent comparison. And we're not done. Because the Save Act also requires states to purge non-citizens from its voter rolls. And that sounds bad, but I have to tell you this particular subsection is even more

pernicious than the usual efforts, right? So what would become 52 USC section 20507 subsection J4 requires every state to submit its voter rolls to the Department of Homeland

Security through this completely bort system that is also confusingly called Save because I

guess they only thought of like three acronyms. Anyway, the Save System is supposed to detect non-citizens. Its error rates are off the charts, right? But look, even if it were 100% accurate and it is not close, the federal government cannot force states to turn over its voter rolls, right? It's lost in court at every single turn when it's tried to do that. Right. And we've talked about all of that litigation, right? The civil rights division under

Army Dillon is suing, unsuccessfully, all of these states to force them to turn over their un-retracted voter rolls, including driver's license and social security numbers. And the court said, "Hell, no." And here this law would force the states to do just that. Yeah. Okay. So those things that we've talked about, they have a lot of new sites have picked up and sounded the alarm on some or all of these provisions. I don't have to flag another part of the

“save act that I think has not gotten a lot of attention. And I think this one is going to show up”

in future efforts to change the law. So the voter law has a provision that applies. If a state doesn't let you register to vote at the DMV, that section is 52 USC section 205 10. It's near the end. And so what happens is you bring your complaint to the attention of the chief election official of the state. Now that that's usually the Secretary of State. Whoever runs is in charge of voting in the state. And then if the Secretary of State doesn't fix the problem, let you register to vote

within 90 days. Or if you are obstructed at all within 30 days of an election, you don't have to

ask the Secretary of State first. You can go immediately sue the state and force them to let you

register. So this provision is called a private right of action. It says, "Hey, if you're getting stonewall by state officials, you can go into a court and vindicate right." So it's a really, really good

“thing. And it's a really important provision in subsection. See, which says that if you win,”

you can recover your reasonable attorneys fees, including your litigation expenses and the cost of bringing that lawsuit. That's not typical in the American system ordinarily in America. Each side pays their own legal fees and costs. But that provision is there to incentivize lawyers to represent poor people who are denied the right to register to vote. Yeah, right. And maybe you can see where this is going. The save act would amend that section 20510 to add, quote,

including the act of an election official who registers an applicant to vote in an election for federal office who fails to present documentary proof of United States citizenship. So in other words, if this passes or in similar provision passes, then any person will be able to sue a state and get their attorneys fees paid for for the tort of registering someone to vote without the narrow documents that the law requires. And look, in practice, we know what that means.

It means that Jacob Wall and Project Veritas, and that guy who fake that secret video supposedly showing all the Somali fraud in Minnesota, like all of these right-wing trolls are going to be incentivized to film poll workers get in their face and threaten them with lawsuits if they register people to vote, which I, that turns the motor voter a lot completely on its head. Right. I mean,

so deluge, the registrars were so deluge with abusive information requests that they couldn't

“do anything else. They just spent all of their time responding to these requests. So if it's”

you could just file a lawsuit against anybody. You can file a voter challenge against anybody. It will kind of allow bad actors to reject a lot of sludge into the system and slow it down. Yeah. And as we said, this act would require the state to submit their entire unredacted voter role to the state department, so it could run it through this safe provision and kick out voters. Right. So, I mean, we have, we haven't talked about it in a while, but they're all of these

lawsuits about doge aggregating all of the information data sets in the federal government's possession.

It would complete disregard for the privacy act and other statutory firewalls. And what the

save act in visions is feeding voter data into it and generating lists of voters to kick off the roles to disenfranchise. Incidentally, Alabama tried this with the similar program to what they're

“going to do. And it got enjoyed because the error rate was fantastically high. Right. It said,”

all of these people that it flagged were non-citizens had had become citizens in the interim, and we're still flagged as non-citizens and booted off. So Alabama tried this in 2020-2024 and got enjoyed. Okay. So, I don't think that this law is going to pass, but Donald Trump, because he just likes to say shit, said on social media this weekend, there will be voter ID for the midterm elections, whether approved by Congress or not. So what are you saying is, I don't care if you guys pass it,

I'm going to magic it up. Now, okay, the president says a lot of shit and we mostly ignore it. I mean, he talked about shutting down bridges to Canada and he talked about capping interest rates and 50-year mortgages and everybody's like, "Uh-huh, Grandpa, okay." But this is kind of scary, because we are talking about a person who did try a monocou when he lost. Yeah. And the act of having people think who may have family members who are particularly vulnerable,

"Oh my gosh, I can't show up." But like that's the point. Right. The misinformation is the deterrence. I guess we should say, although it should be straightforward, that that is not the law. The president cannot just unilaterally declare by fate that there will be voter ID for the midterm elections. Article 1, section 4 of the Constitution says that the times places and manner of holding elections for federal office shall be prescribed in each state. And then it adds a

cautisol that says Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulation. So in other words, the states set the baseline rules for who gets to vote in the federal elections. Congress and only Congress can override those state regulations to establish uniform rules for federal elections. And historically, Congress is at a very light touch in making those kinds of laws, right? Because voting is up to the states, right? So the paradigmatic example, really the only one

that I can come up with across history is setting a national election day, right? Saying every state

is going to hold their elections on the same day. But otherwise, Congress is basically left

“running elections to the states. The important thing, though, however far Congress's power might”

extend, the president has no role in federal elections whatsoever. None. So no, Trump can't mandate voter ID for the midterms. But maybe he can make people think that he can do that. And you know, as we've said, that that has its own suppression effect. So we need to counteract that disinformation. Right. And you've got Steve Bannon out there saying we're going to have ice around the polls coming over and we're not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And like,

well, that's some projection. Sending ice or the military or federalized national guard units, the polls is flatly illegal 18 USC, Section 592 makes it a crime to send armed forces or federal law enforcement to any place where a general or special election is held unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States, Section 593 prohibits interference in any election by the armed forces. And Section 594 makes it a crime to intimidate threatened

or coerced any voter. Yeah. Those laws are very, very clear. And look, we don't want to be naive here, right? Like Trump and his cronies are going to try and intimidate voters. We are going to have to be vigilant across the board. That is at an individual level, engaging in protests. And that means structurally bringing lawsuits and funding organizations. Yeah. And absolutely donating to those organizations, donating time, donating money.

And it certainly does start by understanding what they're trying to cram through in the legislature

“understanding just how terrible things like the Save Act are.”

Okay. That is going to do it for us today. Unless you are a subscriber on our sub-stack at longcastpod.com or on [email protected]/longcastpod. In which case, you will get an extended discussion of a district court injunction, which prevents ice from conducting raids and churches. And actually, Andrew, you seem to have a different take on this idea. I am for anything that obstructs ice in any way whatsoever. But I'm going to tell you, I think the legal reasoning in this opinion

“is pretty sketchy and you just have to listen. And while you're at that, you should check out Andrew's”

post. And he wrote yesterday about the Brian Flores's lawsuit against the NFL, which the second

circuit kicked back and said, "We will not be throwing this into arbitration. So the NFL doesn't get to do racist shit behind closed doors. They're going to have to litigate this." Or maybe they'll

“figure out a way to get out of it. I don't know, but they definitely got smack down hard by the”

second circuit. Yeah, we get to see it. All right. For subscribers, we'll talk to you in a hot second

and for everyone else. That is going to do it for us. Thank you so much for hanging out. And we will sweep back Thursday with written content and on Friday with another podcast. Talk to you guys then. Law on chaos podcast is production of "Rays of the Media LLC." It's intended solely as an entertainment, does not constantly live by speed as a form of an attorney client relationship. This shows research and written by Liz Dye and produced by Bryce Blinken Eggle.

Law on chaos podcast copyright, "Rays of the Media LLC," all rights reserved.