The First Amendment, it's really meant as a disruptor.

It's the people and journalists acting and surrogates for the people,

disrupting and interrupting government officials and holding them to account.

Hi, and welcome back to Amicus, Slate's podcast about the courts and the Supreme Court and the law and the rule of law.

I am Dahlia Lithwick. I cover those sorts of things for Slate.

And this week was an off week for the highest court in the land.

But it was nevertheless busy having decided just at the end of the last week to hold a hearing on an evidentiary matter in that very same census case we talked about on the last episode.

And the Justice Department is, by the way, pushing aggressively to stop the lower court altogether and go right to the Supreme Court with this.

Last Friday also saw the filing of another stunning thing, a surprise motion in the High Court itself, seeking to substitute Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for Matt Whitaker as acting attorney general.

That was filed by Tom Goldstein, among others. He's a friend of this show. But the weirdness extends so far past the Supreme Court itself. You can't believe it.

We have a court in California that entered a temporary restraining order halting President Trump's brand new asylum rules at the border. We have a

battle between Senators Jeff Flake and Mitch McConnell over the confirmation of Trump judges. Jeff Flake is

now saying he's going to block those judges until there is legislation, protecting the

Robert Mueller investigation. These and other things are just a few of the items for which we are

thankful this holiday week. We will never sleep again. And the legal news continues to boggle the

mind. But now to that extraordinary lawsuit filed by CNN, challenging the White

House's decision to bar CNN's Jim Acosta from the White House following a contentious press conference

just two weeks ago. After an initial loss in a federal district court and then White House

threats to bar and seemingly

torture Jim Acosta indefinitely. The whole thing was summarily settled. On Monday night,

Jim Acosta had his press pass reinstated and the White House announced brand new rules for the

White House press corps. If your head is spinning from the

...