2026 Mailbag: Is Any Of This Legal? [TEASER]

5-4 answers your questions about whether ICE agents can be prosecuted, why it’s worth knowing your rights, if the president can cancel the midterms and…whether there’s revolutionary potential in tax evasion. As always, this is not legal advice™. If you're not a 5-4 Premium member, you're not hearing every episode! To hear this and other Premium-only episodes, access to our Slack community, and more, join at fivefourpod.com/support http://fivefourpod.com/support. 5-4 is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Alli Rodgers. Leon Neyfakh provides editorial support. Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY, and our theme song is by Spatial Relations. Transcriptions of each episode are available at fivefourpod.com http://fivefourpod.com Follow the show at @fivefourpod on most platforms. On BlueSky, find Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social, Michael @fleerultra.bsky.social, and Rhiannon @aywarhiannon.bsky.social. Our Sponsors: * Check out Mint Mobile and use my code mintmobile.com/fivefour for a great deal: https://www.mintmobile.com * Check out Quince and use my code FIVEFOUR for a great deal: https://www.quince.com Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The real question is this: Was all this legal? Absolutely fucking not.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Hey, everyone. This is Leon from Prologue Projects. On this subscriber-only episode of Five to Four, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are once again answering your questions. The last time we did a Mailbag episode was one year ago. At the time, I said the administration was testing the limits of their power by ignoring existing laws and pretending the Constitution is just a set of suggestions. In the years since, we've seen the White House double down with terrible consequences.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  Residents still mobilizing after an ICE officer shot and killed a 37-year-old mother.

• 0:40Speaker 03

  Overnight outrage in Minneapolis after the killing of Alex Preddy.

• 0:44Speaker 04

  Federal agents today arrested former CNN anchor Don Lemon and three others.

• 0:49Speaker 05

  Uncertainty for two Chula Vista children. This week, ICE detained both their parents after they dropped the children off at school.

• 0:57Speaker 06

  ICE agents detained her husband outside their Georgia home.

• 1:01Peter Shamshiri?

  ICE agents used a crowbar to pry open his window before smashing it to pieces and then pulling him out of the vehicle.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Understandably, you all had questions. Can ICE agents be prosecuted? If so, how? Can the president unilaterally cancel the midterms? Is it even worth knowing your rights when there are videos showing federal agents routinely ignoring the Constitution every day? How does all of this reflect on the modern Supreme Court? This is Five to Four, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.

• 1:37Peter Shamshiri?

  Welcome to Five to Four, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have removed our civil rights, like ICE being removed from Minneapolis. Yeah, hell, yeah. I'm here with Michael.

• 1:48Speaker 00

  Hey, everybody.

• 1:49Peter Shamshiri?

  And Rhiannon.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Hey, y'all.

• 1:51Peter Shamshiri?

  As you're all aware, over the winter, I got myself a big, green, sort of like military overcoat.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:57Peter Shamshiri?

  And I was like, this is so cool. I'm having a real cool guy winter. And then Greg Bavino started wearing a not totally dissimilar jacket, and everyone was like, he's in Nazi cosplay. And I was like, oh, I don't know.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  Oh, no.

• 2:15Peter Shamshiri?

  I don't know necessarily that that's what he's doing, you know?

• 2:18Speaker 02

  What am I signaling here when I'm in the Target parking lot?

• 2:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:23Peter Shamshiri?

  What if he's just trying to be like a cool guy with like a cool, fashionable jacket, you know? Anyway, no one listened to me, but now he's gone and it's been good for me because I feel I can freely wear it again. And it was the most expensive jacket I've ever bought. Peter, it sounds like congratulations are in order. ICE out of Minneapolis and Greg Bavino out of whatever, acting director of ICE. ICE out of Minneapolis, Peter out of the house with a cool jacket.

• 3:00Peter Shamshiri?

  All right, folks, we are doing a mailbag episode today. Every few months, we have to do one of these now because people just keep peppering us with questions. Everyone's just like, how, how is this legal? How is this happening? And we have to explain. We have to explain that it's not legal.

• 3:18Peter Shamshiri?

  And it's happening anyway. And that we don't know how it's happening. Yeah. So I think the place to start and the question we really got the most is about ICE. Several people asked whether it is possible or probable to arrest and prosecute ICE, especially for the murders of Renee Good and Alex Preddy. There is sort of a sub-question here, which is, are there other ways to hold them accountable? But let's start with prosecutions because I think this is sort of on everyone's mind. Yeah. And the answer is just a pretty straightforward, yeah, you know, you can, you can arrest and prosecute federal officers for violating the law. The federal government is obviously

• 4:03Peter Shamshiri?

  not going to do it, but state and local authorities could do it. Right. Murder is against the law in the state of Minnesota. Right. And I can do that off the dome. No research. That's true.

• 4:16Peter Shamshiri?

  And so, yeah, I mean, in the case of Jonathan Ross, the killer of Renee Good, the feds sort of intervened and confiscated a bunch of evidence and said that they would not allow state and local authorities to investigate. So.

• 4:36Peter Shamshiri?

  Yes, the feds are able to impede these investigations, but there is video in both cases. There are witnesses in both cases. You know, you can subpoena evidence in both cases. Convictions have been gotten on less. Hey, folks, if you want to hear the rest of this episode, you're going to have to subscribe. This episode is one of our premium Patreon-only episodes. Membership starts at just $5 a month. If you want to hear the rest, join us at patreon.com/54pod. That's 54pod, all spelled out. Members get a bunch of stuff. Not only do you get access to the premium episodes, but access to subscriber-only events, discounts on merch. And at the $10 a month level, you get bigger

• 5:20Peter Shamshiri?

  discounts on merch and membership in the incredibly rowdy 54 Slack. So again, that's patreon.com/54pod. 54pod, all spelled out. Become a member today.