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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 March 30, 2026
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Prairieland Immigration Detention Center Protest Case Update
In a case we’ve been closely following, a federal jury in Texas has delivered a verdict in what may become one of the most consequential protest-related decisions in recent memory. Nine activists connected to a 2025 demonstration outside the Prairieland immigration detention center were convicted on charges ranging from rioting to providing material support for terrorism. At the center of the government’s case was the claim: “antifa” is a coordinated, violent enterprise—one rising to the level of domestic terrorism. Prosecutors leaned on expert testimony and political declarations to argue that common protest tactics—black clothing, encrypted messaging, even reading certain literature—were evidence of a broader criminal conspiracy.
But reporting by investigative journalist Adam Federman, based on FBI records he obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, tell a very different story. The documents show that, as recently as 2018, the Bureau itself concluded that “Antifa DFW,” or Dallas-Fort Worth posed no threat to national security and warranted no further investigation. But those records were not disclosed at trial—raising serious constitutional questions about withheld evidence and the integrity of the prosecution.
Guest – Xavier de Janon is a criminal defense lawyer and the Mass Defense Director with the National Lawyers Guild where he provides protest defense and support for the right to dissent. Based in North Carolina, Xavier also represents individuals in politically-motivated cases across the South.
The Trump Administration’s Policy Impacts On Civil Rights And The Black Middle Class
According to the New York Times, within hours of taking office, President Donald Trump immediately began to target the Black community. On his first day, he ordered the dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and the firing of the predominantly Black employees who staffed them. He branded Black history as unpatriotic and “divisive.” He equated diversity with incompetence and removed high-ranking Black officials in the government. He moved to weaken longstanding civil rights guardrails to restore what he called “merit” and fairness.
By the end of his first year, Trump had slashed the federal work force by nearly 300,000 people. His biggest cuts targeted agencies that had employed a disproportionate number of Black employees, a measure that economists and experts say poses the biggest threat to the Black middle class in modern history. Infamously, Trump recently posted a racist video clip on his social media feed portraying President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes. Trump deleted the video but refused to apologize for it.
Guest – Professor Kim Hester Williams is a Professor of English and Black Studies and Ethnic Studies at Sonoma State University. She is co-editor of the award winning collection, Racial Ecologies, published with the University of Washington Press in 2018. Currently, she serves as co-editor of the journal, Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers and previously served as guest editor for the special issue of Gothic Nature V: Decolonising the EcoGothic. She also published a co-authored essay, “Familial and Communal Histories as Environmental Care Work,” in the academic journal, Environmental Communication. Additionally, Prof. Kim writes poetry grounded in the eco-feminist, Black Womanist tradition of Poetics. Last year, she published her poem, “I Saw a Butterfly” in Voices Unbound: An Anthology of International Poetry. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Prof Kim following a screen of the movie Origin, based on the book Caste by Isabell Wilkerson. It was so illuminating that I wanted to continue the conversation.
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Law and Disorder March 23, 2026
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The Long War Against Iran: New Events, Old Questions
The war the United States and Israel started against Iran has been going on now since the last day of February. It will end Trump says “when I feel it in my bones.” For the US’s part, President Trump wants a regime change and a weak client state. He had hoped that assassinating Ayatollah Khomeini the Supreme Leader, as well as many others in the top tiers of the Iranian government would accomplish this. It did not.
The Iranian people are protecting their sovereignty against an illegal war – the greatest of all crimes – which already has killed 2000 people and destroyed much of the infrastructure of their country. Twenty three years ago, President George W. Bush falsely alleged that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and attacked that country in violation of the United Nations charter.
The Israeli American war against Iran was initiated by the same sort of fraud by alleging that Iran was on the brink of developing nuclear weapons and missiles to developed them all the way to the United States. The day before the war was initiated The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that Iran did not have and was not trying to develop a nuclear bomb. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has falsely accused Iran of being on the edge of developing nuclear weapons for 30 years.
Although the United States would like to reduce Iran to a weak client state, the Israeli government would like to make it into a failed state. Are we on the verge of World War III? We don’t know. Iran is achieving successes against American military assets in the region and doesn’t want a ceasefire, although none has been offered, because they want to make sure this never happens again.
Guest – Professor Behrooz Ghamari is the author of The Long War Against Iran: New Events, Old Questions. He is affiliated with the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of Toronto and before that was Professor and Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Although he’s not a supporter of politics of the current clerical regime he is a defender of Iran sovereignty.
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Cuba’s Future After 2026 Blockade
Actions taken by the Trump Administration have ensured that Cuba’s government, weakened by decades of US sanctions and illegal boycotts, is facing one of its most severe situations in years, with the country edging toward a humanitarian crisis. Power outages are widespread, hospitals are cutting back on surgeries, shortages of fuel and food are worsening, and tourism is declining.
The situation in Cuba deteriorated further after the January 3 US military invasion that removed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, whose government had long supplied Cuba with heavily subsidized oil. Severing Venezuela’s relationship with Cuba is clearly part of Washington’s broader strategy of toppling Havana’s government. Since mid-December, Washington has blockaded Venezuela from shipping oil to Cuba, economically strangling the island.
US officials say the invasion to capture Maduro also exposed Cuba’s vulnerabilities, killing dozens of Cuban security personnel assigned to protect Maduro. Washington’s decision to leave some of Maduro’s allies in power in Venezuela, including allowing Vice President Delcy Rodriguez to be acting president, signaled that the Trump administration may be willing to strike deals with Cuban rival factions rather than seek total regime change.
US officials had already been quietly holding hush-hush meetings with Venezuelan elites before Maduro’s capture and are now reportedly exploring similar contacts with influential figures in Cuba. And on March 16th, President Trump, when asked about Cuba said, “I’ll take it!” And, “I’ll do whatever I want with it.”
Guest – Sandra Levinson is the Executive Director of the Center for Cuban Studies. The Center for Cuban Studies, since the early 1970’s, has been organizing trips to Cuba and hosting events and showcasing installations of Cuban art all around the United States.
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Law and Disorder March 16, 2026
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Stop and Frisk Policing Considered Despite Federal Court Ruling It Unconstitutional
In the years after the September 11 attacks, New York City became the epicenter of one of the most controversial policing practices in modern U.S. history: stop-and-frisk. Under the policy, police stopped millions of people on the street, questioning and searching them without warrants. The overwhelming majority of those stopped were Black and Latino New Yorkers, and most were never charged with any crime.
After years of litigation and community organizing, a federal court in 2013 ruled that the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program was unconstitutional and ordered sweeping reforms. The decision marked one of the most significant victories for police accountability in the country and led to a sharp decline in stops. Now, more than a decade later, the city’s new police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, has signaled a renewed emphasis on aggressive street policing.
Guest – Jonathan Moore is a civil rights attorney and a partner at the law firm Beldock Levine & Hoffman and one of New York’s leading litigators challenging unconstitutional policing. Jonathan served as co-lead trial counsel in Floyd v. City of New York, the landmark stop-and-frisk case. He has also represented four of the five men wrongfully convicted, and then exonerated, in the Central Park jogger attack, helping expose one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in modern New York history.
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The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom
Today, anyone who cares about freedom of expression needs to face a stark truth: the right to speak freely is under siege. Once celebrated as a cornerstone of democratic societies, free expression is now met with growing suspicion and retaliation across the globe. Over the last century, speech rights expanded dramatically?including postwar democratic revolutions and the sweeping protections of the First Amendment in the United States?only to find those rights unraveling in the face of new political, technological, and cultural pressures in the US and around the world.
Today, liberal democracies are imposing speech controls, authoritarian regimes are cloaking censorship in democratic language, and digital platforms wield unprecedented power over global discourse. There is a concerted backlash against free speech from all sides: governments criminalizing dissent in the name of national security; lawmakers and activists demanding tighter controls on misinformation, hate speech, and offensive content; and AI systems removing speech at a scale and speed that dwarfs historical forms of censorship. At the same time, faith in free speech itself is waning, even in the very societies that once championed it.
In their new book which will be published next month, The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom, Jacob Mchangama and Jeff Kosseff present a panoramic view of how we arrived at this pivotal moment and how free speech can meet modern challenges without abandoning its foundational role in sustaining democracy, human rights, and shared understanding.
Guest – Jacob Mchangama, is one of the co-authors of The Future of Free Speech, founder and Executive Director of the non-profit organization, The Future of Free Speech. He is a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). In 2018, he was a visiting scholar at Columbia’s Global Freedom of Expression Center. Jacob has commented extensively on free speech and human rights in outlets including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy. Jacob has published in academic and peer-reviewed journals, including Human Rights Quarterly, Policy Review, and Amnesty International’s Strategic Studies. He is the producer and narrator of the podcast Clear and Present Danger: A History of Free Speech. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed book Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media, published by Basic Books in 2022, which I had the pleasure of reviewing – quite favorably I might add – for Los Angeles Review of Books.
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