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Welcome to the advisory opinion podcast. I'm David French with Sarah Isger and I always say this because I always mean it. We've got a lot to talk about today. It's going to be an action packed podcast.

Not so much analysis of legal cases, but some events, some events that matter in the law. So we're going to start with a super fast correction.

We're going to go to a big New York Times piece over the weekend alleging a leak in the hobby lobby case from years ago.

We're going to talk about the Trump special counsel appointment. We're going to talk about law school after law school dropping out from the US news and world report rankings.

We're also if we've got time, we're going to talk a little bit more about protective orders and end with bingo bingo.

I'm just going to not tell you what that means yet. But Sarah, before we get to the New York Times and the Alito leak allegations, we've got a super fast correction.

Oh, David, I fell for the oldest trick in the Texas book. Judge Pittman versus judge Pittman.

Look, Judge Mark Pittman of the Northern District of Texas Fort Worth is the one who wrote the student loan opinion that we talked about last week.

He's got two teas in his name. He is a Trump appointee. All of that. But Judge Robert Pittman from the Western District of Texas in Austin wrote that SBA

opinion that I attributed to the pitmans writ large. However, I was actually messing up which Pittman opinion I was referring to again, Pittman with two teas who wrote the student loan opinion because my overall point was that sort of

ideological consistency was worth noting when we saw it. Judge Pittman with two teas, the Trump appointee was the one that rejected the lawsuit from the United Airlines employees asking for the vaccine mandate to be

the one that was brought to the 5th Circuit and two to one the 5th Circuit upheld rejecting the United employees who didn't want the vaccine mandate by a company.

So the same Trump judge appointee who enjoyed the student loans is also the one who rejected sort of some of the vaccine stuff back in the day.

I screwed up the Pittman versus Pittman and thank you to all of you in Texas. Let me know. You know, I feel like the two Pittmans should come up with some nicknames or something.

That's kind of that's just hard. Yeah, that is hard. But the two teas versus one tea, at least there's that, right?

That's right. Well, whether it's the pronunciation of bell nap or confusing our Pittman Pittmans, we like to get things right at AO. So thank you for letting us know. And when we when we get stuff wrong, we'll correct it.

Let's talk now about a story that kind of lit up the online world over the weekend. And it's a story that is both long and short.

So the short part of it is that it's essentially a claim by a guy I know Rob Shank, who was a very long time pro life activist, who's kind of switched sides on from conservative to progressive on a lot of counts and has become very critical of the current Supreme Court and become very critical of the pro life movement.

Very critical of sort of conservative evangelicalism writ large. And he came forward to the New York Times with an account, the long part of it was sort of his account of how in his previous conservative days, he tried to influence the court. And that's a longer conversation. I think a conversation actually worth having now, but that's sort of the longer part of it. The short part is this and I want to say, I think that's a long time.

I want to read you this short part and Sarah get your reaction and then we'll have the longer conversation. So here's the short allegation in early June 2014 and Ohio couple who are Mr. Shank star donors shared a meal with Justice Alito and his wife Martha Ann a day later,

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