Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Two Taps & Friends, a weekly podcast and YouTube show, takes the week's biggest legal stories, from the Ilhan Omar investigation to the Luigi Mangione case, to a panel of three criminal defense lawyers who explain what the charges, filings and rulings mean.
Two Argentine courts have held that the United States is immune from a damages suit filed in 2016 by Juan Carlos Ruffier over his 2005 arrest in Paraguay and nearly nine years apart from his son. His lawyers have asked Argentina's Supreme Court to hear the case, arguing that alleged FBI surveillance and paperwork on Argentine soil fall within the law's exceptions. The appeal is still pending before the appeals court.
Treehouse Sanctuary, Inc., an interfaith nonprofit, sued the City of St. Petersburg in federal court on October 12, saying the City has barred worship in the former Euclid Methodist Church since September 2025 and is demanding sprinklers and a voice alarm that would strip the 1926 landmark of its historic interior.
A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that the Kennedy Center cannot install memorials to President Trump or rename itself without Congress. Hours later the board he chairs voted to close the main building immediately for a renovation expected to last two years. The president said the work will not happen at all unless the naming ruling is overturned.
A federal judge has ended the Kansas law that let undocumented students who graduated from Kansas high schools pay in-state tuition. The Justice Department sued, the state's attorney general agreed with the lawsuit, and the judge entered a consent judgment. The governor and a student group asked to defend the law and were refused.
A federal judge in San Francisco has ruled that the Department of Homeland Security acted unlawfully in directing FEMA to cut its workforce roughly in half. The record contained no reasoning for the cut, the officials who discussed it used Signal and deleted the messages, and the judge will now presume those messages would have shown unlawful conduct.
Prosecution and defence psychiatrists used the same term for the killings. What separates a life sentence from commitment to a hospital is whether the jury finds she could appreciate that it was wrong.
Caseload standards and staffing reality have diverged far enough that courts are dismissing cases and appointing private counsel at cost. The constitutional obligation is being met with a checkbook.