Original Law and Disorder Radio ™

Heidi Boghosian, Michael Smith, Jim Lafferty, Maria Hall, Stephen Rohde
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Hosted by 4 attorneys, Law and Disorder is a one hour weekly show providing timely legal perspectives on issues concerning civil liberties, privacy, right to dissent and practices of torture exercised by the US government and private corporations.

  1. 2D AGO

    Law and Disorder May 4, 2026

    Donald Trump vs History The article is titled, Donald Trump vs History: The Trump School of Falsification and it is not about Trump’s personal difficulties with telling the truth. The first paragraph of the article reads: “The rise to power of Donald Trump and his minions has sanctified and energized a campaign to revive the kind of triumphalist, exceptionalist version of U.S. history that reigned over both academic and public culture from the late 1940s through the early 1960s." The article goes on to say that “To drive that campaign forward, the Trump regime has now launched simultaneous assaults against schools, libraries, museums, the National Park Service, and even the National Archives.” In short, it is nothing less than the wholesale effort by Trump and company to dishonestly rewrite America’s history. Guest - Bruce Levine is a retired history professor who has taught history at the University of Illinois and the University of California. He has written four books on the Civil War, including The Fall of the House of Dixie. His most recently published book is a biography of Thaddeus Stevens, the radical Republican leader of the Civil War era and Reconstruction era. He’s now writing a study of democratic revolutions and Leon Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. ---- U.S. Aids Israel’s Brutal Geopolitical Positioning  We are living in a time of great peril to humanity. Two nuclear-armed countries, the United States of America and Israel, commenced a war of aggression against Iran, on February 28th. This war threatens to spread uncontrollably. It has already quickly become a regional war. A full world war could be triggered, creating the danger that the United States or Israel might use their atomic weapons. The radioactive fallout would bring about a nuclear winter. The current war of illegal aggression reminds us that on September 1, 1939, Hitler sent his troops east to invade Poland. Six years later, the resulting world war ended with the United States using atomic weapons, for the first time, on Japan. Sixty million people died in World War II. Israel seeks to make Iran into a failed state to achieve what it has always wanted, to become the region’s hegemon and only nuclear power. Getting the United States involved in a war against Iran has been the project of Benjamin Netanyahu for 30 years. American presidents and the military have long resisted this. But not Trump. There are already 50,000 American soldiers in the region. 3000 Marines are headed towards Iran. The 101st airborne division has deployed paratroopers, just as they did in the illegal invasion of Iraq 23 years ago. At that time, President George Bush falsely claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The lie this time is that Iran will soon develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles and the capability to deliver them. 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.

    58 min

  2. APR 27

    Law and Disorder April 27, 2026

    Gaza Genocide Relief Effort Launch The war in Iran and Lebanon has pushed the war in Gaza off the front pages of our newspapers and from the screens of our televisions. But that war is still very real to the Palestinian people of Gaza and the West Bank. Despite the so-called “cease-fire,” Palestinians continued to be killed by Israeli forces. They continue to starve for lack of food and water. They continue to die for want of medical care. They continue to lack sufficient schools for their children to attend, or houses in which to live. And they continue to wonder what the future holds for them and if they will ever again be able to live a decent life in what is left of their homeland. Meanwhile, supporters of the Palestinian cause continue to do what they can to bring aid and comfort to the people of Gaza. One of those people is our guest today. Guest - Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army and Army Reserves. She retired from the Army as a Colonel. Ann Wright has also served America as a diplomat for 16 years, having served in U.S. Embassies in Nicaragua, Somalia, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, among other counties of this world. She resigned from the U.S. government in March of 2003, in opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq. Since her resignation, she has been active in many peace and justice groups including Veterans for Peace, Women for Peace and Code Pink. Currently, she is a coordinator for the Gaza flotillas and has twice been imprisoned in Israel for participating in those relief flotillas. ---- Countering With A General Strike We the people face a certain immediate future of increasing hardship and increasing authoritarian repression. Many of us are hoping to vote Trump and his MAGA gang out of office seven months from now in the 2026 congressional elections. But will the elections take place? And if so, under what restrictions? The Voting Rights Act that protected Black people has been gutted. MAGA’s Safe Act makes it difficult for women to vote who have taken their husband’s last name and now need to provide passports to show their identity. A lot of people in this country don't have a passport. Mail in voting is sought to be prohibited. It is naïve to think that the detention camps being built from one end of the country to the other are only for undocumented immigrants. As September 29 of last year, Trump signed National Security Memorandum Number 7 which listed crimes of political opposition that he wanted a prosecuted. Then his then Attorney General Pam Bondi made another list of the possible laws that can be used for the prosecution. The criminal prosecution of political opponents who hold progressive ideas has yet to be carried out. ICE’s budget is larger than the combined budgets of all the police departments and sheriffs’ departments in the country. ICE has started purchasing long rifles, not just pistols. What for? The people who are recruited by ICE are signed up in places like gun shows and offered $50,000 signing bonuses. Economically things have gone south in a hurry. Because of the American/Israel aggressive war against Iran oil prices have shot up increasing costs like filling up your tank or putting it on the food on the table. We are in a recession and looking at a depression. Trump wants the military budget increased from $1 trillion to one and a half trillion dollars. He tells us that a government has no money for medical care, food, subsidies, education, firefighting or hurricane relief. Guest - Kshama Sawant is a socialist economist who was elected to, and served 10 years on the Seattle, Washington City Council. Her election and her advancement of a strong progressive agenda on the Council was often national news. She contributed to the recently published Law and Disorder book From the Flag to the Cross: Fascism American Style writing the last chapter on what is to be done. ----------------------

    58 min

  3. APR 20

    Law and Disorder April 20, 2026

    Welcome to our annual special on the Armenian Genocide. This year, U.S.-Armenian relations made headlines in a revealing way. In February 2026, Vice President JD Vance became the first sitting U.S. vice president to visit Armenia. His office posted—then swiftly deleted—a message saying he was at the Armenian Genocide Memorial to "honor the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide." The White House called it a staff error. A replacement post went up with all mention of the word "genocide" stripped out. When pressed, Vance called the massacre "a very terrible thing that happened a little over 100 years ago"—and left it there. The visit wasn't only about memory. Vance and Prime Minister Pashinyan signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement worth up to $5 billion in initial U.S. exports— part of a broader push to pull Armenia out of Russia's orbit. Vance then traveled to Azerbaijan, advancing plans for a U.S.-backed trade and transit corridor aimed at bypassing both Russia and Iran. It's a familiar pattern: Armenia is valuable enough to court as a geopolitical piece on Washington DC's chessboard, but not important enough to have its genocide named out loud — because that might upset Turkey, the NATO ally whose cooperation is needed more.

  4. APR 13

    Law and Disorder April 13, 2026

    With God On Our Side: One Mans War Against an Evangelical Coup in Americas Military Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary and an Evangelical Christian, has explicitly framed the Iran war through the lens of his religious faith, weaving scripture into his remarks, praying for "overwhelming violence" against his enemies and insisting that God stands with the U.S. against Iran, a Muslim-majority nation of some 90 million people. The ex-Fox News host has long worn his faith on his sleeve " and on his flesh. He has a large Jerusalem cross tattooed on his chest and the words Deus Vult, a rallying cry used by the Crusaders, which means God wills it, are inked on his arm. In his 2020 book American Crusade, Hegseth rejected the principle of separation of church and called it leftist folklore. At a prayer breakfast on Feb. 6, he said that the U.S. remains a Christian nation in our DNA, if we can keep it. Hegseth told CBS News on March 6: The providence of our almighty God is there protecting those troops. When asked if he views the conflict in a religious context, Hegseth responded: Im a man of faith, who encourages our troops to lean into their faith. During a press briefing on the war four days later, he quoted Psalm 144, stating, Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle. Last week, while hosting a Pentagon prayer service, Hegseth implored God to: Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation and asked that wicked souls be delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them. Guest - Mikey Weinstein has been described by Harpers magazine as the constitutional conscience of the U.S. military, a man determined to force accountability." Mikeys family has a long and distinguished U.S. military history spanning three consecutive generations of military academy graduates and over 130 years of combined active duty military service. Mikey is a lawyer and a 1977 Honor Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. A registered Republican, Mikey spent over three years working for the Reagan Administration as legal counsel in the White House. In 2006, he founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) to battle the influence of far-right militant radical evangelical religious fundamentalists in the US military.He's the author of two books With God On Our Side: One Mans War Against an Evangelical Coup in Americas Military and No Snowflake in an Avalanche: The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, its Battle to Defend the Constitution, and One Familys Courageous War Against Religious Extremism in High Places. In 2011, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State presented Mikey with UAs first ever Person of the Year Award, calling him the leading voice protecting church-state separation in the military. In December 2012, Defense News named Mikey one of the 100 Most Influential People in U.S. Defense. He was also named one of the 50 most influential Jews in America by the Forward, one of the nations preeminent Jewish publications. Not unexpectedly, Mikey has been reviled by the radical fundamentalist Christian far-right, which has called him Satan, Satans lawyer, the Antichrist, That Godless, Secular Leftist, Antagonizer of All Christians, Most Dangerous Man in America and Field General of the Godless Armies of Satan." ---- We Need More Muckrakers and Fewer Buck-Takers There was a time when journalism didn't just report the news"it changed the country. It broke monopolies, exposed corruption, and forced presidents to act. Today, with public trust in media at historic lows, that kind of reporting can feel like a relic. But what if the real story isn't that its gone"but that we've stopped supporting it? Media scholar and activist Mickey Huff has just written a provocative call to action titled We Need More Muckrakers and Fewer Buck-Takers. Its a phrase rooted in the legacy of Carl Jensen, who believed journalism should serve the public"not profits"and who spent decades exposing the stories corporate media ignored. At a moment when misinformation spreads faster than truth and corporate consolidation shapes what we see and don't see, this conversation asks something deeper: What kind of media system does democracy require"and what role do we play in rebuilding it? Guest - Mickey Huff is the director of Project Censored and president of the Media Freedom Foundation, where he has co-edited its annual Censored book series since 2009. In 2024, he joined Ithaca College as a Professor of Journalism and the Distinguished Director of the Park Center for Independent Media. Through these roles, he leads efforts in critical media literacy, independent journalism, and the production of the weekly syndicated Project Censored Show. Park Center For Independent Media.

    58 min

  5. APR 6

    Law and Disorder April 6, 2026

    U.S. Aids Israel's Brutal Geopolitical Positioning  We are living in a time of great peril to humanity. Two nuclear-armed countries, the United States of America and Israel, commenced a war of aggression against Iran, on February 28th. This war threatens to spread uncontrollably. It has already quickly become a regional war. A full world war could be triggered, creating the danger that the United States or Israel might use their atomic weapons. The radioactive fallout would bring about a nuclear winter. The current war of illegal aggression reminds us that on September 1, 1939, Hitler sent his troops east to invade Poland. Six years later, the resulting world war ended with the United States using atomic weapons, for the first time, on Japan. Sixty million people died in World War II. Israel seeks to make Iran into a failed state to achieve what it has always wanted, to become the region's hegemon and only nuclear power. Getting the United States involved in a war against Iran has been the project of Benjamin Netanyahu for 30 years. American presidents and the military have long resisted this. But not Trump. There are already 50,000 American soldiers in the region. 3000 Marines are headed towards Iran. The 101st airborne division has deployed paratroopers, just as they did in the illegal invasion of Iraq 23 years ago. At that time, President George Bush falsely claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The lie this time is that Iran will soon develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles and the capability to deliver them. Guest - Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. But he’s more than that. He’s a political and moral philosopher. Chris Hedges contributed the first chapter in our Law and Disorder book, From the Flag to the Cross; Fascism American Style. He’s the author of fourteen books, including his forthcoming book on Gaza.

    55 min

  6. MAR 30

    Law and Disorder March 30, 2026

    Prairieland Immigration Detention Center Protest Case Update In a case weve 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 governments 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 asco-editor of the journal,Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writersand previouslyserved as guest editor for the special issue ofGothicNatureV: 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. Kimwrites poetry grounded in the eco-feminist, Black Womanist tradition of Poetics. Last year, she published her poem, "I Saw a Butterfly" inVoices 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.

    58 min

  7. MAR 23

    Law and Disorder March 23, 2026

    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 Khomenei 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. ---- 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.

    58 min

  8. MAR 16

    Law and Disorder March 16, 2026

    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. ---- 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.

    55 min
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About

Hosted by 4 attorneys, Law and Disorder is a one hour weekly show providing timely legal perspectives on issues concerning civil liberties, privacy, right to dissent and practices of torture exercised by the US government and private corporations.

Information

  • Creator
    Heidi Boghosian, Michael Smith, Jim Lafferty, Maria Hall, Stephen Rohde
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    85
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Law and Disorder 2024
  • Show Website
    Original Law and Disorder Radio ™

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