This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show

For all subscribers: we have a discussion of President Trump’s jihad against Perkins Coie, and Long-Suffering Federal Judge Beryl Howell’s lack of patience for it. And we talk about the arrest of green card-holder Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University — and the efforts of the Trump Administration to expel him using little-used but very broad powers for the Secretary of State to expel aliens on the grounds that their presence would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

For paying subscribers:

* The Trump administration’s effort to revoke hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to Columbia, on the grounds that the university has violated Title VI.

* Ed Martin’s vague-yet-menacing letter to Georgetown Law School, saying he is conducting an “inquiry” into the school’s alleged teaching of DEI.

* Updates on multiple cases where government lawyers say something in court and Trump administration officials say something else online that undermines their case.

* The advice Paul Clement gave Dale Ho about Eric Adams, how Sam Bankman-Fried got himself thrown into solitary confinement by giving a jailhouse interview to Tucker Carlson, and some tips on best practices for distributing a podcast from federal prison, whether or not you are George Santos.