Loading summary
Transcript6 lines
- [00:01]
Shopify Advertiser
This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer carts going abandoned and more sales going cha ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling today.
- [00:24]
Progressive Insurance Advertiser
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Hey, prime members, are you tired of ads interfering with your favorite podcasts? Good news. With Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad free top podcasts included with your prime membership. To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to Amazon.com ad free podcasts. That's Amazon.com ad freepodcast to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads.
- [01:17]
Michael Popak
A gang of 20 is back. 20 states have joined together, led by Letitia James, the New York Attorney General, to sue Trump and the Department of Education to stop its dismantling the chloroforming of the Department of Education and to stop cutting off of all of the funding related to education to the states. This suit has been filed in Massachusetts. I'm going to cover it right here, what it means and the restraining order that it's looking for on the Midas touch network. The 20 states joined together. It's the same group that's been suing over and over again very successfully against the Trump administration. Arizona, California, Hawaii, New Jersey and others all joining together. And they pick their spots here, the District of Massachusetts, which will lead to a very favorable appellate court for them as well. Let's look at the Department of education that Linda McMahon, who's the new formerly from the World Wrestling Federation and now the head of, of the Department of Education. She said her job is to be put out of a job to close down the Department of education, formed in 1979 by Congress. And that's the problem. And that's what the lawsuit says. The lawsuit says Donald Trump can't, through a reduction in force, what we call in the law, a rif, can't undermine congressional authority in the establishment of a department or of a agency. You can't riff your way out of an agency just by cutting it in half. Closing offices all around the United States, including The the very important office of Civil Rights investigations for the Department of Justice, which stops discrimination and harassment in education. It has two major components, the Department of Education, one dedicated, dedicated to K through 12 and then 1 dedicated to higher education. Just to give you the raw numbers before I get to the lawsuit now been filed, you've got 98,000 schools and 32,000 private schools in America that get funding and regulation through the Department of education. You've got 18,000 school districts. You have 50 million 50 million children between the ages of 5 and 18 that are in secondary schools, 12 million additionally in college of some sort, all under the regulations the Department of Justice and more importantly, the billions of dollars of aid that go to each state. New York alone gets $6 billion in aid for K through 12 from the federal government. Linda McMahon likes to say in her interviews and Donald Trump too, we want to make the students and the states responsive to the families. Where's the funding coming from? Comes from the federal tax dollar and its commitment to public education. And the problem is Congress has already established the Department of Education. And the fundamentals of the lawsuit I'll read to you from certain aspects of it are what we've heard before, that Donald Trump has violated the separation of powers by usurping the legislative authority of Congress. That he's violated the separation of powers by violating the take care provision of the Constitution Article 2, which requires him as the president to faithfully execute the laws and agencies and departments as established by Congress. That his actions are ultra various, meaning they're outside the lane of his executive power. And lastly, he's violated the Administrative Procedures act because he and his group, his gang, have done things in an arbitrary and capricious fashion and have harmed and injured the states as a result. Letitia James is recently on the Midas Touch Network being interviewed by my colleague and partner Ben Meisellis. We applaud everything that she does in the leadership here. Throughout shot throughout the lawsuit filing are public comments, including interviews on Fox News of people like Donald Trump and Linda McMahon, the education secretary, where she said I'm going to put myself out of business. In fact, during an Interview Just on March 11, Linda McMahon with Laura Ingraham, who's now been bribed with a position by the Trump administration on the Kennedy Center Performing Arts center board. She did an interview puff piece and she asked point blank is this the first step in cutting the workforce in half, in shuttering civil rights offices in all the major cities? Is that the first step on the road to a total shutdown here's her response. Linda I hope you do a great.
- [05:59]
Linda McMahon
Job and put yourself out of a job. I want her to put herself out of a job. Education Department all right. In a move that seems to portend the beginning of the end for the department that Republicans going back to Reagan pledged to abolish, the Department of Education today told staffers to vacate their offices by 6pm because the offices were closing nationwide. The doors are now locked. Workers aren't going to be allowed back into the buildings until at least Thursday.
- [06:27]
Yes, actually it is, because that was the president's mandate. His directive to me clearly is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we'll have to work with Congress, you know, to get that accomplished. But what we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat. And that's not to say that a lot of the folks, you know, it's a humanitarian thing too. A lot of the folks that are there, you know, they're out of a job. But we wanted to make sure that we kept all of the right people and the good people to make sure that the outward facing programs, the grants, the appropriations that come from Congress, all of that are being met and none of that's going to fall through the cracks.
- [07:08]
Michael Popak
The answer is yes, obviously, and that is front and center on page 33 of this particular filing. They first go through all of the other comments starting on page one. Let me read to you from aspects of the complaint that's been filed in the request for temporary restraining order. I kept putting off addressing that little leak in the kitchen pantry ceiling until it nearly fell on my head when I was looking for a midnight snack. Clogged gutters are easy to forget, annoying to clean, and can grow into a big problem. There's an easier way to ensure your gutters stay clean and avoid costly damage. Upgrade to a permanent solution. You can on with leaf filter so you never have to clean out your gutters again. Right now you can get a free inspection, free estimate and save up to 30% off your entire purchase at leaffilter.com legal AF look, living where I live surrounded by trees and leaves, I think about my gutters now and again. But then it quickly wait for it leaves my mind until it's too late. An investment in leaffilter is an investment engineer to protect your whole home. Clogged gutters aren't just a nuisance. They can cause extensive water damage, protect your home from flooding, roof damage, rotting siding, foundation issues and more. Every installation comes with a lifetime no clogs guarantee. Leaffilter uses award winning patented technology to keep out everything but water. No holes, gaps or large openings for debris to get through. Call today to schedule your free gutter inspection and get a no obligation free estimate. A leaffilter trusted Pro will clean out, realign and seal your gutters before installing leaffilter. Protect your home and never clean out gutters again with leaffilter, America's number one gutter protection system. Schedule your free inspection and take advantage of the Spring Spectacular Sale with up to 30% off your entire purchase at leaffilter.com legalaf that's a free estimate, free inspection and 30% off@leaffilter.com legalaf see representative for Warranty Details the Department of Education, the complaint alleges, is essential. Plaintiff states rely on the Department for an extraordinary array of programs. The Department provides funds for low income children and students with disabilities and enforces the laws that prohibit discrimination in education, administers federal student aid programs. These are just some of the key ways the congressional acts governing the existence of the Department are deeply intertwined with the education system in the plaintiff states. Incredibly, all these significant and statutorily mandated functions are covered by just 4,100 people until March 11, when the Department announced that it was cutting its staff by 50%. This massive reduction in force, the RIF I talked about earlier, is equivalent to incapacitating key statutorily mandated by Congress functions of the department, causing immense damage to the education system and to the members and to the plaintiff states. Although the department's March 11 press release says the Department, quote, will continue to deliver all statutory programs that fall under the agency's purview. That assertion is belied by the extent and effect of the RIF. So too is the assertion from Secretary McMahon that the terminations were the first step towards the total shutdown of the Department. You just saw that quote up on Fox News. Far from being the first step, it is effectively the dismantling of the department. Paragraph three alleges the RIF is so severe, Paragraph four alleges that it incapacitates components of the Department responsible for performing functions mandated by Congress by statute, effectively nullifying the mandates. For example, paragraph four, page three of the complaint seven regional offices of the Department's Office for Civil Rights, including those in New York, Boston, France, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Chicago, have been closed entirely. It's not supported by any actual reasoning or specific determination, and the states have been harmed as a result. We know that Donald Trump wants to Chloroform the Department of Education because it's in the Project 2025 handbook which he's implementing. We know that that's exactly what they're doing. They're taking the department out in the back and shooting it because that's what Linda McMahon said she was, she was empowered to do, to put herself out of business without, without regard to consequences to the American public school student. Not everybody can afford to send her kid to private school on the and we have to make sure that funding that comes from taxpayer dollars gets properly allocated to the states to pay for things like K and pre K and other programs. Letitia James is a hero here. We're going to be talking about her a lot on Legal AF and the Midas Touch Network over and over and over again. Why? Because there's about 18 to 20 states that are going to join together over and over and over again. I call them the Gang of 20, where their attorney general is a Democrat, where one or both of their aspects of government, the legislator and the executive branch, their governor is a Democrat. And when they line up, they're powerful and successful. Letitia James alone has four separate temporary restraining orders that she's obtained already against this administration. And this, I predict, will be the fifth. Donald Trump will continue like a spoiled, petulant child to continue to test constitutional boundaries until he is stopped in his tracks by attorney generals, by public interest groups, by non governmental organizations, by people banding together and taking their grievances to federal courts and the right federal courts. Once again, we're in Massachusetts. You'll see lots of filings. Just to give you a viewer's guide here in the cases that have been filed, we're up to about 100. The states you're going to see over and over again, about half are going to be the District of Columbia. If that's where the plaintiffs think that's their best shot, they'll go. District of Columbia, about half are there. That's where the agencies are based. It's usually easier to sue there. But they can sue where they're harmed or where they're injured. So you're going to, we've talked a lot about. And here we have another example of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, sometimes New Jersey, Maryland. See, are you getting the drift here? The original 13 colonies, okay, blue, California, Washington, places like that. That's where we're going to sue. MAGA sues in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, places like that. We sue in these other places and we've got the guns and we've got the attorneys general to pull it off. And the success rate now is even higher than the success rate of the lawsuits in the first Trump administration. There the attorney general's batted about 800 pretty, pretty amazing, pretty hall of fame numbers. Now it's well over 900%, 90% success rate. So we'll continue to follow it. Let me just tell you that the way this is going to work is once the judge is assigned, we have our judge, then he's going to hold or she's going to hold a hearing on the temporary restraining order that's been asked for. That briefing is going to go relatively quickly. They're going to decide whether the dismantling needs to stop. Right now, he's the judge is not going to be able to order the rehiring of people already fired at this stage. But, but to stop it right now, they'll have a debate over whether temporary restraining order is necessary and whether there's been irreparable harm, which I believe there has been. And then we'll get to the merits of the case. These are important cases to bring against this administration, which is rogue, out of control, ultra varies and drunk with power. And I'll continue to follow it all right here. So until my next reporting, I'm Michael Popak. In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories, the intersection of law and politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe egalafmtn. That's egalafmtn.