Law and Disorder November 2, 2026
Legal Challenges Leading Up to Mid-term Election
Prior to our mid-term elections, scores of lawyers for the Republican Party prepared lawsuits in preparation to challenge the outcome of the elections around the country. And, in response, lawyers for the Democratic Party prepared to defend against all such lawsuits. Leading up to the elections, the Trump Administration sent federal agents to knock on potential voters doors, challenged mail-in ballots in court, and lost, and carried on a campaign to convince the American people that the elections would be unfair without the federal governments pre-election threats and lawsuits. Along the way Trump, on several occasions, suggested he might even declare martial law or take other steps to prevent the elections from taking place. He is on record as saying he wants to control the mid-term elections and will only honor the outcome if he judges them to be fair.
So, today, on the eve of the elections, here on Law and Disorder radio, we will examine some of the many actions and threats coming from the Trump Administration in the lead-up to, and conduct of the elections, as well as possible challenges to the results of the elections once they have concluded.
Guest - Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author, and the former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times. Among his more than a dozen books are American Fascism: The Christian Right and the War on America; The Greatest Evil Is War; and A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine. Chris Hedges is also one of the contributors to the book titled From the Flag to the Cross: Fascism American Style, a book composed of summaries of interviews with guests here on the Law and Disorder radio show, and available for purchase at O/R Books. His latest book is titled Requiem for Gaza.
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Chicago Wrongful Murder Convictions Case Awarded 260.8 Million
Our guest today is Chicago civil rights attorney Anand Swaminathan. In October 2026, the Chicago City Council authorized payment of $260.8 million, that is over a quarter of $1 billion dollars, in compensation to 17 men who each spent decades in prison for wrongful murder convictions. These men were represented by Anand Swaminathan and his law firm Loevy & Loevy.
They altogether served nearly 400 years in prison for murders of which they were falsely convicted. Attorney Swaminathan and his partner Steve Art litigated their civil cases for 13 years. The false convictions of murder were arranged by Chicago police detective Reynaldo Guevarra. He was responsible for some 50 wrongful convictions which he accomplished by using false witness statements, and false coerced confessions.
The victims lived in the heavily Latino community of Chicagos Northwest side in the 1980s and 1990s. The victims were all young men ages 14 to 28.
Detective Guevara is retired. He lives on a Chicago Police Department pension of $91,000 a year and will likely never be held accountable. The passage of time and the unavailability and death of witnesses has so far, got him off the hook. When Anand deposed Guevara, Guevara took the fifth Amendment some 200 times.
At the same time detective Reynaldo Guevara was sending innocent Latino men to prison in the Humboldt Park area his counterpart Chicago Police Department Commander Jon Burge was torturing Black men on the south side into confessing falsely to an array of crimes.
This was exposed through decades of community activism and litigation by civil rights attorneys from the People's Law Office. Peoples Law Office attorney Flint Taylor wrote about it in his book titled The Torture Machine." Burge was ultimately convicted of perjury and sent to prison. In 2015, the City of Chicago passed a landmark ordinance that among other things paid reparations to Burge's victims.
Comedian Lenny Bruce used to say Chicago is so corrupt its thrilling." Is it possible to reform the police? What part does racism play? How much money have the citizens of Chicago been forced to pay by the actions of the police department?Will this gargantuan settlement actually bring about reforms? Do the powers that be in Chicago really want reforms? The most fundamental reform would be community control of the police instead of allowing them to terrorize the Black and Latino Community.
Guest - Anand Swaminathan grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of immigrant Indian parents who were professors . He attended Harvard law school, where he had more cases in its legal aid efforts than any previous student at the school. Swaminathan is a partner at a law firm of Loevy and Loevy, where he has worked for the last 16 years.