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Law and Disorder is a weekly independent civil liberties radio program airing on more than 150 stations and on Apple podcast. Law and Disorder provides timely legal perspectives on issues concerning civil liberties, privacy, right to dissent and practices of torture exercised by the US government and private corporations.
Law and Disorder November 9, 2026
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The First Amendment v. Trump 2.0 Policies And Actions
A prominent expert on the First Amendment recently wrote that “Trump 2.0 policies and actions have had broad censorious and chilling effects” that represent “the greatest governmental threat to the First Amendment since the McCarthy Era of the 1950s.”
Trump and his cohorts have violated or threatened to violate the First Amendment by:
- Indicting government officials based on their criticism of the President or expression of disfavored ideas
- Terminating billions of dollars in federal funding to universities on ideological grounds to control their core academic operations; conditioning federal research on the agreement not to promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or “gender ideology” and to teach only “patriotic” curricula in K-12 schools;
- Arresting and detaining international students and foreign scholars based on their viewpoints and political activism, and revoking visas of foreign nationals based on political expression;
- Retaliating against the press by excluding specific media outlets from White House events based on their viewpoints and reporting;
- Threatening to revoke broadcast licenses based on networks’ editorial decisions;
- Restricting reporters’ access to unclassified defense-related information held by the Pentagon;
- Defunding libraries and public broadcasters;
- Scrubbing historical, scientific, and other data from federal agency websites;
- Ordering the removal of “anti-American” displays in national museums;
- Directing the Attorney General to prosecute individuals who burn the U.S. flag because that form of protest is “uniquely offensive and provocative” and communicates “contempt, hostility, and violence against our Nation;”
To help us access the threat that Donald Trump poses to the First Amendment and in particular, freedom of the press, we are joined by a lawyer who has been defending the First Amendment his entire career.
Guest – David McCraw serves as the senior newsroom lawyer for The New York Times. He has been at The Times for more than two decades and currently holds the position of Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel. His team provides legal counsel to Times journalists on libel, leak investigations, subpoenas for sources, access to information, and the law of newsgathering. He is the author of the book “Truth in Our Times: Inside the Fight for Press Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts,” a first-person account of the legal battles that helped shape The Times’s coverage of Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, national security, and the rise of political partisanship in America.
He is a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, where he annually teaches a one-semester course on press law. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Cornell University, and Albany Law School.
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Prominent Freedom of Press Cases Follow Up
In May 2023, FBI agents raided the Florida home of independent journalist Tim Burke, seizing computers, hard drives, cellphones and notebooks. Burke had obtained unaired Fox News footage, including outtakes of Tucker Carlson interviewing Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, in which Ye made antisemitic remarks. Burke says he accessed the footage using login credentials that were publicly available. Prosecutors say he had no permission to use them. Three months later, police raided the offices of the Marion County Record, a small weekly newspaper in Kansas, along with the homes of its publisher and a city councilwoman. The paper’s 98-year-old co-owner, Joan Meyer, died the day after the raid.
Both investigations involved journalists gathering information and reporting on matters of public interest. Yet both brought extraordinary law enforcement power down on the press. Burke was charged in 2024 by the Biden Justice Department with 14 felonies. After a federal judge later dismissed seven wiretapping counts, the Trump Justice Department appealed, then dropped that appeal in September. Last month, a grand jury returned a new indictment charging Burke with 13 felony counts. He has also sued the government over secret searches of his Google and Twitter accounts. His criminal case is still moving toward trial.
In Kansas, reporter Phyllis Zorn reached a settlement in her lawsuit against the city of Marion, three years to the day after the raid. The city will pay her $850,000; the county had already paid her $600,000. The police investigation centered on Zorn’s lookup of a local businessman’s driving record on a publicly accessible state website. Police characterized it as identity theft. freedom.press/newsletters pressfreedomtracker.us
Guest – Caitlin Vogus, senior adviser for advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. She previously served at the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the Federal Communications Commission.
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Law and Disorder November 2, 2026
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Legal Challenges Leading Up to Mid-term Election
Prior to our mid-term elections, scores of lawyers for the Republican Party prepared lawsuits in preparation to challenge the outcome of the elections around the country. And, in response, lawyers for the Democratic Party prepared to defend against all such lawsuits. Leading up to the elections, the Trump Administration sent federal agents to knock on potential voters’ doors, challenged mail-in ballots in court, and lost, and carried on a campaign to convince the American people that the elections would be unfair without the federal government’s pre-election threats and lawsuits. Along the way Trump, on several occasions, suggested he might even declare martial law or take other steps to prevent the elections from taking place. He is on record as saying he wants to “control” the mid-term elections and will only honor the outcome if he judges them to be fair.
We will examine some of the many actions and threats coming from the Trump Administration in the lead-up to, and conduct of the elections, as well as possible challenges to the results of the elections once they have concluded.
Guest – Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author, and the former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times. Among his more than a dozen books are American Fascism: The Christian Right and the War on America; The Greatest Evil Is War; and A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine. Chris Hedges is also one of the contributors to the book titled From the Flag to the Cross: Fascism American Style, a book composed of summaries of interviews with guests here on the Law and Disorder radio show, and available for purchase at O/R Books. His latest book is titled Requiem for Gaza.
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Chicago Wrongful Murder Convictions Case Awarded 260.8 Million
Our guest today is Chicago civil rights attorney Anand Swaminathan. In October 2026, the Chicago City Council authorized payment of $260.8 million, that is over a quarter of $1 billion dollars, in compensation to 17 men who each spent decades in prison for wrongful murder convictions. These men were represented by Anand Swaminathan and his law firm Loevy & Loevy.
They altogether served nearly 400 years in prison for murders of which they were falsely convicted. Attorney Swaminathan and his partner Steve Art litigated their civil cases for 13 years. The false convictions of murder were arranged by Chicago police detective Reynaldo Guevarra. He was responsible for some 50 wrongful convictions which he accomplished by using false witness statements, and false coerced confessions.
The victims lived in the heavily Latino community of Chicago’s Northwest side in the 1980s and 1990s. The victims were all young men ages 14 to 28.
Detective Guevara is retired. He lives on a Chicago Police Department pension of $91,000 a year and will likely never be held accountable. The passage of time and the unavailability and death of witnesses has so far, got him off the hook. When Anand deposed Guevara, Guevara took the fifth Amendment some 200 times.
At the same time detective Reynaldo Guevara was sending innocent Latino men to prison in the Humboldt Park area his counterpart Chicago Police Department Commander Jon Burge was torturing Black men on the south side into confessing falsely to an array of crimes.
This was exposed through decades of community activism and litigation by civil rights attorneys from the People’s Law Office. People’s Law Office attorney Flint Taylor wrote about it in his book titled “The Torture Machine.” Burge was ultimately convicted of perjury and sent to prison. In 2015, the City of Chicago passed a landmark ordinance that among other things paid reparations to Burge’s victims.
Comedian Lenny Bruce used to say “Chicago is so corrupt it’s thrilling.” Is it possible to reform the police? What part does racism play? How much money have the citizens of Chicago been forced to pay by the actions of the police department? Will this gargantuan settlement actually bring about reforms? Do the powers that be in Chicago really want reforms? The most fundamental reform would be community control of the police instead of allowing them to terrorize the Black and Latino Community.
Guest – Anand Swaminathan grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of immigrant Indian parents who were professors . He attended Harvard law school, where he had more cases in its legal aid efforts than any previous student at the school. Swaminathan is a partner at a law firm of Loevy and Loevy, where he has worked for the last 16 years.
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Law and Disorder October 26, 2026
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Gaza Rising: Voices From the Rubble
As Israel continues to perpetrate its genocide in Gaza and atrocities in the West Bank, support for Palestinian liberation and sovereignty is growing around the world and in the United States. In July, Pew Research Center survey found unfavorable views of Israel at 62% among Americans and a recent Gallup Poll found for the first time, that US sympathy now leans toward the Palestinians (41%) compared to Israel (36%). This trend is due in great part to the unrelenting and outspoken defense of the Palestinian cause from prominent voices such as our guest today Dr. Ramzy Baroud. Dr. Baroud is a Palestinian author, historian, and academic whose work focuses on Palestinian history and liberation. He is the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle, which he has led since 1999, and has spent decades developing an alternative historical narrative centered on lived Palestinian experience rather than elite political frameworks.
Dr Baroud holds a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter. He has taught mass communication at Curtin University and serves as a Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Istanbul Zaim University. His scholarship bridges journalism and academia, and his work has appeared in numerous academic journals and edited volumes.
He is the author of eight books. He has just published two new books, Before the Flood (from Seven Stories Press), which reconstructs Gaza’s modern history through family memory and intergenerational testimony, and Gaza Rising: Voices From the Rubble.(from Clarity Press). His earlier works include Searching Jenin, The Second Palestinian Intifada, My Father Was a Freedom Fighter, The Last Earth, and These Chains Will Be Broken. He is also the co-editor, with Ilan Pappé, of Our Vision for Liberation.
Guest – Dr Ramzy Baroud’s writing has been translated into multiple languages and widely published internationally. His work combines historical analysis, oral history, and political interpretation, contributing to global debates on settler colonialism, resistance, and liberation movements. He has lectured extensively at universities, research centers, and public institutions across North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, contributing to global discussions on Palestine, decolonization, media, and popular resistance. His public scholarship places academic research in conversation with civil society audiences, activist communities, and policy forums.
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Buffalo Activist Coalition Demands Uniland Developer Not Lease Space To ICE
In Buffalo, New York, a coalition of activists, community organizations, and small businesses is taking on powerful real estate developer Uniland over its decision to lease space to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The coalition, Evict ICE from 250 Delaware, is demanding that Uniland end ICE’s lease at a downtown building. Federal immigrations operations there include detention holding rooms and the coordination of arrests and deportations across much of New York State outside New York City.
The campaign is also challenging the local business establishment that profits from these arrangements. Last week, activists took their protest directly to a Buffalo Business Hall of Fame banquet, where Uniland executive chairman Carl Montante was being honored. Some campaign members entered the banquet as guests and confronted the proceedings, while others held a parallel “Hall of Shame” protest outside.
The coalition’s demand is straightforward: ICE out of 250 Delaware when the lease expires in March 2027. But the campaign raises larger questions about corporate responsibility, public subsidies, immigration enforcement, and what ordinary people can do when powerful institutions refuse to listen.
Guest – Holly Verrett, Lackawanna resident, revolutionary activist, and gardener, Holly is committed to building stronger communities and fostering a love of nature. She is also the proud wife of Tony and mother to their daughter, Alice.