November 14, 2025 — Aloha Friday

[NEEDS CONTENT]

The administration had been cancelling federal grants to education programs it deemed to include DEI components, including grants funding teacher recruitment in hard-to-staff schools. California sued in district court. The administration argued that because this was ultimately a dispute about money (the grants), the case had to be filed in the Court of Federal Claims, which handles government contract and money disputes. The district courts had been inconsistent in how they handled this argument. The Massachusetts judge in this case split: the part of the case asking for the money back would go to the Court of Federal Claims, but the part asking whether the administration was constitutionally allowed to cancel grants because of its ideological disagreement with DEI would stay in district court. Bryan noted nobody was happy with this outcome — California was now fighting a two-front war — but observed that a clean ruling on whether the government can cancel grants for ideological reasons might be more useful in future cases than getting the money back in this one.

Members of Congress have an immunity that traces back to English parliamentary law: they cannot be prosecuted for anything done in the course of their legislative duties. Under the Speech and Debate Clause, that immunity extends to their travel to and from Congress. Congresswoman McIver went to an ICE facility in New Jersey as part of her congressional oversight work. An altercation with ICE agents led to three criminal charges. She moved to dismiss all three, arguing Speech and Debate immunity. The judge dismissed two: her travel to and from an ICE facility was not travel to Congress, and the altercation itself didn't serve a legislative purpose. But the third charge was different. On the video, at the moment the third charge arose, an ICE agent had physically blocked her path as she was attempting to enter the federal facility to conduct oversight. The judge said: at that moment, she may have been acting in her official legislative oversight capacity, and the agent may have unlawfully blocked her from performing her constitutional duties. The judge reserved ruling on that count, pending further review. Bryan used this as a live example of how centuries-old parliamentary immunity doctrine still generates real legal questions today.

Bryan gave a detailed breakdown of a new filing from a separately-appointed judge reviewing the Comey prosecution. The underlying issue: in 2020, the FBI searched the computer and records of Daniel Richman — Comey's attorney — pursuant to a search warrant focused on whether Richman had leaked classified documents. The warrant included a judicial order: anything found beyond the warrant's scope must be immediately sealed. In 2025, the FBI pulled those records back out of sealed storage and searched them for evidence against Comey, without any court authorization. The filing judge found two immediate problems: (1) the FBI violated the original warrant's particularity requirement by searching for crimes not listed in the warrant; and (2) the FBI failed to exclude Comey's attorney-client privileged communications — because attorney-client privilege belongs to the client (Comey), not the attorney (Richman), and Richman's clearing of his own privilege didn't waive Comey's. Then the grand jury proceeding itself had three fatal problems the judge identified: the prosecutor suggested Comey bore the burden of proving innocence; the prosecutor told the grand jury it didn't need the full record because more evidence would come at trial; and after the grand jury voted to reject one of three counts and endorsed the other two on the written charging document, the prosecutor took that document, printed a new one with only the approved counts, and told the foreperson to sign it — without presenting the new document to the full grand jury. The judge ordered the grand jury transcript turned over to Comey and suggested he might want to file a motion to dismiss.