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- [00:00]
Michael Popak
Are your ulcerative colitis symptoms proving difficult to manage? Tremfiab can help you manage the cycle of UC symptoms. At one year, many patients taking Tremphya achieved clinical remission and some patients also achieved endoscopic remission. Individual results may vary. Tremphya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections may occur. Before treatment. Your doctor should check you for infections and tb. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu like symptoms or if you need a vaccine.
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Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Ask your doctor if Tremphya can help.
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Michael Popak
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Karen Friedman Agnifilo
The world, including a 55 day 3064.
- [00:56]
Michael Popak
Mile run across the US. So I know a thing or two about performance wear. When it comes to relaxing, I look for something ultra versatile and comfy. The Ponto Performance Jogger from Vuri is perfect for all of those things. It's the comfiest jogger I've ever worn and the Dream Knit fabric is why I'll always reach for them over other joggers. Check them out in the Dreamlit collection by going to vuorie.com William that's V-U-O-R-I.com where new customers can receive 20% off their first order plus enjoy free shipping in the US on orders over $75 and free returns. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet.
- [01:45]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer carts going abandoned and more sales going cha ching.
- [01:51]
Michael Popak
So if you're into growing your business.
- [01:53]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. 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. Oh it's Wednesday. You know what that means on Midas? Touch? It means legal AF midweek by the time we get to midweek now with Karen Freeman, Nickniffalo, Michael Popak I'm like half exhausted by what's going on in the courts. But we bring the energy, we bring the vigor, we bring the insightfulness, hold truths of power. One place I know of on the dial, it's called Legal af. And if you didn't know why we called it that five and a half years ago, now you know why. So let's kick it off with a really a bombshell. I can't. I mean, I, we say that a lot sometimes. People sometimes criticize our thumbnails. Everything's a bombshell. Everything's a, Everything's breaking. Well, it is. And in this case, we've got a judge, Judge Cooper, in the District of Columbia for the first time. It's hard to believe it's the first time, but we're only 60 days into the administration, so everything sort of, kind of a first time, declaring that Doge and Elon Musk are subject to public records law, which we call foia, Freedom of Information act, which is a big deal because they've been trying to hide in a surreptitious fashion everything that Doge is all about behind the COVID of night, behind executive privilege, using velocity and opaqueness to try to cut the government down to size without congressional oversight or public accountability. And Chris Cooper, the judge has had enough, and he's ruled for the first time that Doge, Service and Musk must disclose in public records everything about their existence and operations, period. We'll talk more about that. It's a great case brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Crew and then we'll turn to another landmark bombshell. The First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, Massachusetts, joining with two other circuits to declare that Donald Trump's efforts to use an executive order to rip the beating heart of birthright citizenship out of our Constitution is unconstitutional. And they will, for now, not agree with the Trump administration. They will not block the nationwide injunction put in place by Judge Sorokin up in, in Boston, Massachusetts. They will join with the 9th Circuit and the 4th Circuit in and this is not on this, on the merits of the appeal, but it sort of is. And we'll tell you the difference between that and how this will now set up a pretty rapid appeal to the United States Supreme Court as we, as we battle this out. And we'll give, Karen and I will give our best analysis and estimate about what will happen next in that particular case. I talked a lot about in a recent hot take about a very small, the smallest of agencies. I said the the smallest will lead us, but There is a case about the African Development Entity set up by Congress to invest in Africa and in that continent that had been completely eviscerated and shut down even worse than US Aid overnight by Donald Trump trying to put in one of his lackeys, Mr. Morocco, to head that organization. And the board and its executive chairman fought back and they pulled the judge, Judge Leon Leon, a senior judge, and he put an administrative stay in place. But now he's lifted the stay but with some words to the Trump administration. Are they falling on deaf ears? Does it matter? What does it all mean about Donald Trump's takeover in broad daylight of agencies and the cutting the legs out from under congressional funding and mandates before our very eyes. And then we'll end today with a very interesting and you know, kind of sets our teeth on edge a little bit in many, many ways. The case of Mahmoud Khalil, who was a green card holding graduate student at the university at Columbia University. I almost demonstrated, I don't live near New York any longer. I misnamed the university who led the pro Palestinian movement on the campus, One of the leaders there, one of the leaders of divest trying to force schools like Columbia to divest in, in protest of Israel's policies. I don't necessarily agree with his, what he's saying under the First Amendment, but I will defend till the very end his right to say it and as a green card holder not to have ice burst through his door in front of his eight month pregnant wife who's a US citizen and whisk him off to Louisiana in 24 hours in order to avoid the jurisdiction of a New York judge. That New York judge who we're going to talk about held a hearing recently, a series of hearings about this and about the ability of Donald Trump on the fly to use ICE as judge, jury and executioner to revoke people's green carded other legal documented status because they don't like what they're saying. And we'll break it all down right here. The only place I know on the dial that does it. Legal AF Karen, how are you?
- [07:42]
Michael Popak
I'm good. How are you? Popak, I'm so happy it's Wednesday.
- [07:45]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
I know. That used to be hump day, remember? And now it's. Now it's legal AF day.
- [07:50]
Michael Popak
I know. Oh, I have to fix my. There we go. I have to match you there. That's much better.
- [07:54]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Are you matching my head?
- [07:55]
Michael Popak
I'm matching your headspace. But yeah, I used to, you know, Wednesdays were always like, oh, it's the middle of the week, whatever. But now I wake up every Wednesday. I'm so excited that it's Legal AF Day and I get to have a break from the, the legal work that I do the rest of the week.
- [08:10]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
So the, the drudgery of representing actual clients. Yeah, I get it. I get people know that I kind of moved out of that world come the election. I have some, I have some clients. I don't want to undermine them. I do have some remaining clients, but my day to day practice is really here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal A before we jump in, I know Karen, you and I talked about it before. We just rolled the odometer on the Legal AF channel. We just went over today. 500 there it is. 500,000 subscribers in less than six months. I couldn't ask for better. It reinforces my, my pep in my step every morning when I go to the Legal AAP channel to curate it to develop content. I know when you're not busy doing law work, you're over there with us as well. We got and just a shout out to those that have helped contribute besides our audience, which without which we would not be in existence. But we've got Court Accountability Action, Lisa Graves, Alex Aronson and Michael and Mike Sachs. We've got Dina, Dina Dahl, we've got Shan Wu, we've got me. We've got you when you can do it. Just an amazing group of people every hour doing something at the intersection of law and politics. Thank you to our audience. Check us out. Legal A FMTN from Midas Touch Network on that. Let's people come here for the ads, they stay for the analysis. Let's get to the analysis and talk about this really. I mean, we're running out of adjectives to use for certain developments in the Trump administration, but this really is a landmark. As I joked on a recent hot take about it, it's like the pinata of Doge and Musk is about to break open. And this is a big hit on the pinata. Cooper, a very good judge in District of Columbia took one look in 37 pages at all the record that had been developed about the velocity at which Doge has been operating, which is part of its power, its superpower and the opaqueness and the surreptitiousness of its conduct and said, yeah, and the way it's exercising executive power in a way that a quote unquote, as Donald Trump likes to call it or his administration and its simple advisor to Donald Trump doesn't really do. And to call him an advisor is an insult to our intelligence and an insult to the court. And the judge said, because the issue was whether they are subject to public records law, because they're an agency. If they're not an agency and they're merely some sort of advisor to the president, then we got the whole executive privilege problem about what they are, you know, whether they can testify or provide documents at all. So CREW sued DOGE Services and others and demanded two sets of FOIA Freedom of Information act requests. One against the Office of Management and Budget, because that's where all the bodies are buried, too, about funding cuts and staff cuts and all of that, and the other directly against DOGE Service. And the Trump administration fought back. Right. And I'll let you take it from there about executive privilege and the fight back, but the administration, Karen.
- [11:24]
Michael Popak
Yeah. So look, what's happening here is DOGE wants to be able to have complete control over the executive branch and all of the agencies. And so in order to do that, so that they can crash and burn our economy and dismantle our government to take money away from people who need it, and Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and everything else. I mean, they're literally trying to dismantle the United States government. And in order to do that, they have to have certain authority or certain power. And so to do that, they forced their way into a different agency that already existed within the executive branch. And it was like an IT agency, and I can't remember what it was called. So that's how they gained access to these agencies. The problem is, if they are an agency, if that is actually what they are, then as you said, Popak, that subjects them to certain rules, laws, requirements, et cetera. One of them is that the head of DOGE has to be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, which has not happened. Right. And so they keep saying, oh, he's just an advisor. Oh, it's not an agency. It's like they're gaslighting the American people. And everybody who actually sees what it is, of course, Elon Musk is the head of it, and of course it's an agency. And they literally try to say, no, no, nothing to see here. But what we're seeing, and what happened in this case with Judge Cooper is he basically said, no, that is not the case here. That is not what's happening. This is an agency, and therefore you are subject to the laws of this land. Now, what is foia? It stands for the Freedom of Information Act. It's something that is extremely important in government agencies. There's something called FOIL in New York State, the Freedom of Information Law. That's what applied to me when I worked for a state government agency, the Manhattan DA's office, for my entire career. We had a whole unit set up, a whole group of people whose job was nothing more than to respond to these FOIA or FOIL requests. Because any single person, it doesn't matter who you are, can submit a FOIA request to a government entity and ask for certain records. The New York City Police Department, same thing. I bet they have over 100 people who do nothing but respond to FOIA requests. And why is that? It's because you don't get an automatic. You don't automatically get whatever you ask for. You get certain things, and of course, certain sensitive things you can't get, or certain things have to be redacted, but someone has to go through and apply the law that says these are the things you have to give over and these are the things you don't. And so it's a really important part of keeping the lights on and the transparency in the government. It gives the American people the ability to see what's going on in your government. Because transparency is key, obviously. And here we have a federal judge, as you said, who basically said that, look, you're working in secret, you're working really fast, and it's the very thing that makes you subject to foia, right? You are acting like an agency. You have the power, you have the authority. And so you're the very entity. I don't care what you call it. I don't care what you say it is. I don't care what you are going to label certain things. You're acting like something that is considered an agency, and therefore you are subject to things like congressional oversight. Congress can pass a law like the Freedom of Information act, and you're subject to it. And so the judge said basically that you're subject to the Public Records Law. You. You must. But he also knows this is going to be appealed, right? So he's so. Knowing that what he said was, look, you can't. You must preserve everything while you, while you do your appeals so that if you. So that it doesn't get. It's called spoliation, right? It doesn't get destroyed, which you could imagine that happening, right? To try to avoid it, a government agency could do that. And so he said, no, you must keep it. You must. And he ordered them to keep it while, While you are appealing it, if you choose to appeal it. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to say you have to give a rolling production meaning what's being asked for is so voluminous. And I realize you have to go through it all and redact the things that you can't have, et cetera. So what I'm going to do is rather than wait until the end, you're going to have to do it on a rolling basis. So as you go through documents and as you find them and you take out whatever it is that you're going to take out the sensitive information, you have to give it over on a rolling production basis. So it's a pretty big deal. And I think it's great. It's a great ruling that essentially is telling Elon Musk and Doge, we see what you are and you're subject to the same laws that everyone else is. And thank God, thank God for crew who's doing this. So it's pretty great. Cooper didn't buy this whole Musk is just an advisor kind of thing. He basically said, look, this is you're in a decision making authority and you're making cuts across the government and that makes you subject to this. So I think it's great. I'm not holding my breath that we're gonna see anything soon. But it's just also, just to add one more thing, foia, the Freedom of Information act, is codified, if anyone wants to read it, in Title v of the U.S. code, section 552. And it grants individuals the right to request access to records from federal agencies. So. So yeah, it's a, it's a pretty big deal. And judges are finally starting to call out Musk and Doge for what it is. And I think that's a positive sign.
- [17:17]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Yeah, I mean, look, Judge Cooper did an amazing job in his analysis. And everything that the Trump administration pushed as the reason a rationale for not complying with FOIA was actually used, was like hoisting them on their own tart, using it against them. The velocity and opaqueness by which they are operating, which was obviously by design in order to catch Congress and the public by surprise and to, and to lay waste to the federal government and funding before anybody could figure out what had happened, is the very reason it demonstrates an exercise of executive power that's independent from Donald Trump. Donald Trump saying to the Cabinet, come on, it's not must. You got to run your own cabinet again. Reinforces along with his joint session speech and confession There that Musk is exercising independent authority behind closed doors in the dark, surreptitiously. So surreptitious that the judge was like, and I don't like the fact that you're using Signal, which is an app that's used in communication, that has an auto delete function that people use for secrecy purposes. That is the, that is against everything that is appropriate in government records and you are to stop using it and you are to make yourself available and transparent to the American people. Now, CRU wanted all those documents to come out during this congressional debate about government and about the budget and about funding. The judge was like, well, I'm not sure all of these documents are really necessary for the American people to see in time, like, like yesterday. But I do want them to come out quickly. So I don't want to wait on a rolling. I don't want to wait for a full production. Like three months from now you start rolling production. And just for people to tune in here, tuning in late rolling production, which I've been involved with a lot in E discovery and civil cases, means you don't wait to a date certain to do a data dump of everything that you have. Like, okay, back up the tractor trailer or the, the terabyte digital version of that. Here you go, boom. Dump. It's a rolling production, meaning as you get documents together and it better start soon, you start sending out half a terabyte, half a terabyte, half a terabyte, or whatever it takes to produce your documents so that we get some of them now. We don't have to wait till the very, very end. So he ordered that as well. It's hard to believe that with over 100 cases, it's the first case where a federal judge has said, yeah, I can't figure out Doge, it's way too opaque. But I can tell you one thing I have figured out is that it's exercising independent agency authority and therefore is not covered by the executive. The executive privilege. He didn't mention executive privilege, that four letter word by name. But that's the battle that's going to come up next. As we talked about on Saturday with Ben and me, the next big fight is going to be Trump. The Trump administration arguing, and I think unsuccessfully, that Trump, that Musk is just an advisor and has no real power and everything he's doing is he's advising the President and there needs to be executive privilege that protects that and he shouldn't be subject to FOIA and he shouldn't be subject to depositions. And that's our position. I think that's a loser at the trial court level. I think that's a loser at the various circuits, courts of appeal. And I do think, although I'll come back and tell you I was wrong, that at the Supreme Court level, with Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, it's going to be a loser. He may not even get four votes for that, for that proposition. Just the way he's using Doge as the wrecking ball, you know, the destroyer of all worlds, indicates it's exercising substantial executive function and authority in the dark. That's exactly what we don't want. The reason for foia, the reason for foil, the reason for public records laws in states, is because we like to operate. We're supposed to operate government in the sunshine, sunshine being the best disinfectant. And that's how we've always approached government. We don't allow smoke filled back rooms to make deals. I mean, they still go on. But we leave it to all public interest groups and NGOs like CREW to bring these to the forefront, to federal judges doorsteps, and have them make the decision that Judge Cooper just made. Karen, you ready to move on to birthright citizenship? Another big blockbuster in the last 24 hours? Okay, so, you know, within days of the Trump administration, back in January, early February, we had a series of decisions that were entered by federal judges in New England, in California, in San Francisco, in particular in Maryland, all concluding the same thing, which is Donald Trump's effort by executive order to rip the 14th Amendment to shreds and to rip out what I refer to as the beating heart of birthright citizenship from the Constitution is unconstitutional. Donald Trump issued an executive order that said, in sum and substance, that if the mother of a child born on American soil is either documented or documented, but temporary, but the father is not a US Citizen or is undocumented here illegally, and the father's not a US Citizen, no birthright citizenship, despite what it says in the 14th Amendment, which is exactly the opposite, which is, I know they derisively call it anchor babies, but it is. Children born on US Soil are US Citizens and can one day grow up to be the President of the United States in a way that somebody like Ted Cruz from Canada can't be. And that has been our law since the 14th amendment as interpreted as late as 1898 in a case by the Supreme Court, and has been reinforced for the last hundred years. Except Donald Trump figured he'd take a shot at it, which is because it's a article of faith with the Heritage foundation and the Federalists that they get rid of birthright citizenship. So that's the framing. When we come back, I'll have Karen weigh in about the order that just came out from the First Circuit about refusing to block a nationwide injunction, how it compares to the Ninth and the Fourth Circuit, and then we'll talk about what the United States Supreme Court has to say about all that. And so we'll talk about that when we come back from our first ad break. Number of ways to support Midas Touch Hit the Midas Touch subscribe button. Come over to Legal AF. We've already crossed the 500,000 barrier. Hit the subscribe button there. That helps send the message to the algorithmic gods that you like the content there as well. We've got our sponsors who, of course, post election, they know what we're all about. They know we're speaking truth to power to each other and to power speaking truth to each other first. And hit the subscribe button for all of the things we talked about. Hit the like button for the podcast that you're on right now. Put both in the audio version on all podcast platforms and of course on YouTube and leave comment. That helps. Five star review. I know we start sounding like an Uber driver, but that that's important, too. And then we've got we come back from the ad break, I'll talk a little bit about the new popoc firm that's been formed and how and what's happening there. So you guys know about that as well. Let's take our first ad break. 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The last thing that's on my agenda, as people know since November and in December, I formed a new law firm. It's called the POPOC firm. It's dedicated to obtaining justice for people, primarily those that have been injured catastrophically in an injury cases. It's a contingency fee case, meaning we don't get paid unless you do. I'm working with an amazing group of nationwide plaintiffs contingency lawyers. This is what they do for a living. They know the judges, they know the courts, and they know how to obtain justice for people. So come over to the Popoc Fir Firm. It's at www.thepopocfirm.com I made it easy in our 800 number. 1877 Popoc AF. All right, let's go back to birthright citizenship. I guess I thought before the election he'd try it because it's in the playbook for Project 2025. But I don't think he should be. I don't think anybody's really surprised in the Trump administration that they're losing and losing badly. The First Circuit in Boston ruled in favor of Judge Sorokin's nationwide injunction. And just so I'll just turn it over to you now, this is not on the merits of the appeal, not yet, anyway. This is about whether, while the appeal on the merits is going on, whether the injunction is going to be allowed to block the executive order so that every baby born from now through the appeals ending is an American citizen, or is it going to be, Is the injunction going to be blocked because some appellate judge thinks ultimately Trump's gonna win on this issue? So far, no judge thinks he's gonna win on this issue. Carol, why don't you take it from there?
- [30:29]
Michael Popak
You know, I have to say, part of me wonders is Trump's strategy to just say something so outrageous and so extreme so that when knowing he's never gonna get the completely lawless, outrageous thing so that if he gets anything even remotely like that, he declares victory and everyone declares victory. Meanwhile, the thing he ultimately gets is terrible, too, because this falls into that category of this is so outrageous. I can't believe they even will do this with a straight face. They'll even go with a straight face to suggest that somebody that somehow he can sign an executive order that overrides the Constitution that establishes birthright citizenship. So this is just one of those outrageous things that he's trying to do. And he has been, this is a big deal because this is, I think, his third or fourth loss on birthright citizenship. And, you know, all of these cases are going to go to the Supreme Court. But here, you know, the essentially, in this case, the judge says that the government basically doesn't make any argument to show that the executive order itself is constitutional and doesn't contest that birthright, that if you, that essentially if you're born on US soil, that's been going on for over 100 years. So they basically declined Trump's request to grant or to lift, I should say, the nationwide injunction that is blocking this executive order that is trying to redefine birthright citizenship from going into effect. And so what Trump's executive order is trying to do is say essentially, anyone who has two undocumented parents who's giving birth to someone in the US Then it doesn't matter that you were born on US Soil, that that is not, you are not going to be a U.S. citizen. And so he basically, I think it was two different scenarios. One is that the mother is either undocumented or is here temporarily, and the father is undocumented. And that in those two scenarios. But look, this violates the 14th Amendment, Section 1 and 8, Number 8, U.S. code 1401, which provides that, quote, a person born in the U.S. and subject to the jurisdiction thereof shall be a citizen of the United States at birth. So it's essentially, it's a great order. And, you know, you did. I love when you do these, when you explain the whole preliminary injunction thing, I think it's really important for people to understand and I've learned so much from you, Popak, explaining how difficult it is to get a preliminary injunction that you have to essentially prove four things, including that you are likely to win on the merits. You have to show I'm going to win this case. And so what a lower court has said, what lower courts have been saying over and over again, is I find that the plaintiffs, that I find that you're going to win that it's so clear, the law is so clear here that the Constitution and the statute passed by Congress that if you're born on US Soil, you're going to be a citizen. That is so clear. And this executive order is so antithetical to those laws and against the constitution and unconstitutional that I'm going to, I believe you're going to win on the merits. And so therefore I'm going to issue an injunction saying this is going, this cannot go into effect. So they have to show a clear, make a clear showing that they're likely to win their case. So that's what the judge here found. The appellate court found that the judge who issued this injunction was right and they weren't going to lift that injunction. And all these cases are going to head to the Supreme Court, where your guess is good as anybody about what's going to happen. So this is the first circuit court, which is the appellate court level to uphold the district courts that have been issuing these injunctions.
- [34:35]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Yeah. And it joins the 4th Circuit out of a Maryland federal court decision. There's multiple nationwide injunctions here. They sort of overlap. So Donald Trump's just trying to find the right one to appeal from the 9th Circuit over Judge Kofanor in San Francisco ruled against Donald Trump. They all cite the same case. It's the leading dispositive case is an 1898 case involving a Chinese, an American born child who grows up to be an adult, of course, whose parents are Chinese and still kind of beholden to the emperor of China at the time. But the kid was born in San Francisco. I mean, I don't know how to put this any more simple, simply. And then he goes to, he goes to visit China. You know, he wants to go back to see his parents, home, homeland, not his own. He was born in San Francisco. And when he comes back in and like he's in his 20s, the Border Patrol at the time or whatever, immigrant was like, no, you're not allowed back in. He goes, I'm a US Citizen. They said, no, no, your parents were born in, in China. He's like, okay, well I was born in San Francisco. And it went all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. And supreme court said in 1898, based on the 14th Amendment, Kid was born on U. S. Soil. His parents aren't ambassadors or diplomats. They were just, you know, work in stiffs that happened to still be Chinese citizens or residents. But they, they, they gave birth, the mother gave birth in San Francisco. He's an American citizen. That's the way our, our birthright citizenship derisively called anchor baby thing works. So every court that's looked at it since from. First of all, no. No president before Trump was. Matt. Was a madman enough. Was insane enough to try to test this. But Donald Trump, you know, he's held hostage by those that supported him and paid for his presidency. And he's like, all right, I gotta do the birthright citizenship thing now. All right, hand me the executive order. Where's my Sharpie? Okay, is everybody happy now? And then he's gotta trot out the Department of Justice on your and my taxpayer dime to go defend these ridiculous cases. In fact, the judge. The judge commented in the First Circuit case that we're talking about right now, Judge Barron, he said on page 10 of his order that the Trump administration didn't even try to make out a case at all because they were relying not on the merits of the case. They tried to argue that the 18 states, including New Jersey, the case is known as New Jersey vs Trump and the city of San Francisco, that join together to sue in Massachusetts, that they don't have standing, which is the fundamental threshold thing that a judge needs to identify and establish for or make sure that is present for parties to be in front of them. Because we require judges to only exert their jurisdiction if there's a live case or controversy. And one of the ways we determine whether there's a live case in controversy is whether people have standing, whether they're just sort of strangers to a matter. They haven't really suffered any injury, but they're interested. Sort of like, you know, we can't convert federal courts into the Magic 8 Ball. I'm just wondering, Judge, what do you think about this? It has to be a live case or controversy brought by people who have standing to be there. And the Trump administration tried to argue there's no standing by these 18 states, although one of the plaintiffs, Karen, is a pregnant, undocumented woman. Sounds like she's got standing to argue that this case is. That this order is unconstitutional. The states made a good argument, what the constitutional scholars refer to as a pocketbook argument, which is they were going to lose federal funding if Donald Trump declassified these babies born on US Soil as non US Citizens. And they would suffer because the states would have to take care of these children, but they wouldn't have access to federal funds to do it. And so that was a very good pocketbook argument. And the judge said, yeah, you got standing. What's your argument? You haven't even addressed the merits. Because they didn't want to address the merits because they knew the Trump administration knew they were lose on the merits. So now you've got the, a very good record upon appeal. Although the Supreme Court can do whatever they want, Supreme Court has shown a complete willingness to disregard the record from below, which is the, which is a violation of everything I was ever taught about appellate lawyer law, law judges and the Supreme Court. And just go, yeah, okay, let's just get to what we want to decide on, regardless what the record says. But assuming they go by the record, this case coming out of the first, along with the fourth, along with the ninth, with Judge Kofador in the ninth, the Maryland case in the fourth is a nice little package now for the United States Supreme Court. Now Trump's going to have to make a decision. Which one is he going to try to take up to the U.S. supreme Court? They all, they're all terrible for him. All the decisions of the records are all terrible. Is he going to draw the standing one? Is he going to do the substantive one? Which one is he going to do? Or is he going to wait to go through the appellate process in each of the further appellate process on the substance? Because this was again, only about the restraining orders and whether they stay or go during the, during the pendency of the appeal. So I don't, my gut is he's going to, because he's got a loser appellate argument. He's going to try again to the US Supreme Court on an emergency writ. The problem is now he's playing into the hands of the Democrats who filed these cases and the moderates and free thinking people because they're in places where the Supreme Court justice sitting over those circuits are the moderate ones and the Democratic ones. And they can either decide on their own to know without any reference to the full court, and that's the shadow docket, or they can send it over to the full court. Either way, there may be, there may be four votes to take up the writ. I just don't think with Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, there's five votes to find that an executive order in this giant rock, paper, scissor thing, that an executive order beats the 14th Amendment, or that Donald Trump's reading of the 14th Amendment and reading out certain words he doesn't like is going to fly. What do you think, Karen?
- [40:39]
Michael Popak
Yeah, look, my hope is that the Supreme Court will ultimately not grant, will deny any writ. In other words, they won't hear this case, that they will say that when this comes up, that when some, when one of the cases substantively not just the injunction, but rules, no, the 14th amendment actually provides for birthright citizenship. I hope an appellate court does that. I hope that goes to the Supreme Court. And when Donald Trump tries to appeal that, to get them to overturn it, rather, I hope they just deny it and don't even hear it because it is such clear law, it's not worth wasting the resources, these really finite resources of the United States Supreme Court. I mean, we talked about this, I think last week. You know, the Supreme Court only hears, I think 60, 70 cases out of the thousands that are appealed to the Supreme Court. And they take the cases very carefully, very gingerly, and really important issues go there. This is not one that's even a close call. This shouldn't even be a waste of their time. So hopefully they'll see it that way and send a clear message that says, look, we're not even gonna, we're gonna uphold it and not allow the lower court to stand and we're not even gonna hear it. It's not worth our time. Let's move on to something more where there's a real issue involved. But this is clear cut. This is a clear violation of the Constitution and the law that the Trump administration is trying to do, in my opinion.
- [42:03]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
I agree with you. And the peel away from the four that are necessary if it's not killed at the starting line by one of the emergency Supreme Court justice that I've identified and it goes to the full bench, maybe there's not four. The one I could see peeling away is Kavanaugh. I've seen him peel away before on these kind of issues. Well, see Amy Coney Barrett with her eight children, including one adopted from Haiti. I just don't think she's going to find that an executive order from the sitting president is able to change 100 years of precedent, even Amy Coney Barrett. So I think ultimately I feel pretty good about the full bench eventually voting on this because it's, it should be an easy, easy loss or easy win for those that have brought this case. But we'll, we'll continue to talk about that when we come back from an ad break. We're going to talk about this strange case of one of the smallest agencies bringing a case in D.C. getting assigned to Judge Leon and him issuing an initial stay about their destruction. And if you read, I don't know if you saw, you went through it all, Karen. If you read the tick tock of the timeline of what happened to this African Development Agency with Doge and then US Marshals kicking down the door and they're, and they're lying their way, the Doge lying their way in in order to gain access, saying they were just there to modernize the servers and the architecture. And then when they were let in, they said, no, we're here to chloroform you and put you out of business and reduce you to the smallest amount of activity and funding as congressionally possible. This was an entity created by Congress as part of US aid to and part of diplomacy to help dying Africans. Sounds like a pretty good thing. And Congress already allocated money for it. And you had Donald Trump, who's supposed to be the executive branch, executing on congressional law and faithfully upholding it, doing the opposite. And it went before Judge Leon. We had an administrative stay, but then we had the, the current ruling on the temporary restraining order. That is a little bit of a head scratcher we'll have to talk about. And then Mahmoud Khalil, who again is an activist, a graduate student living in graduate dorms and housing on Columbia University's campus, easy to find with his eight month US citizen pregnant wife, who gets picked up by ICE and has his green card revoked, which has to be done through an administrative law judge and an immigration judge. But it's done by ICE on the street as they whisk the guy off within 12 hours to Louisiana to get him out from under New York court jurisdiction. And a federal judge is holding a hearing about it. And we're going to talk about all of that when we come back. First, a word from our next word from our sponsors. The reason we like the sponsors is a as as you know, I don't want this to kind of fall on deaf ears or through a little bit of fatigue. We are an independent news network media network with no outside investors. Right. We nobody tell. That's the good thing. Nobody tells us what to say. We're completely uncensored. I know there's some suggestion out there that somebody's telling me or Karen what to say or not to say or not covering something because somebody's telling us not to. If we're not covering something, it's because we've made an independent judgment that it's either BS magical thinking or just not in curating our content is just not something that's worth the juice, is not worth the squeeze. That's our decision. That's how we operate our quote unquote newsroom. Others can follow it. YouTube's a big universe. You want to follow somebody else that does something that talks about something else in a way that we don't. That's Our democracy. That's how it should be. But if you like what we're doing here, hit that subscribe button, go over to Midas, to Legal af. Hit the subscribe button there. Leave comments, be active as you are. We have such a beautiful, engaged, active, enthusiastic audience and listener base. It's just, it's, it's the envy, I think, of any other YouTube I, I put our group against anybody. There's a reason Midas Touch has floated up to number one. There's a reason Legal AF is regularly in the top 10 in what we do. There's a reason Legal AF, the YouTube channel, hit 500,000 in less than six months. And, yeah, we're doing the curating and the commentating on this side of the camera, but you guys are doing the watching, listening, absorbing and, and the time commitment and the enthusiasm and helping us spread by word of mouth organically. Because we don't have a marketing department. We are the marketing department. We are the network. You're the network.
- [46:55]
Michael Popak
Come on. We have Jordy.
- [46:57]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
That's true. We have. No, Jordy's the ad guy. He's not the marketer. We're the marketer.
- [47:03]
Michael Popak
I know.
- [47:04]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
I like Jordy. So, of course. So hit the subscribe button. Do all those things. Legal af. Do all those things. So our ads, speaking of Jordy, our ads are cultivated and curated as well. These are sponsors that aren't just out to make a buck. Sure, they're for profit. Let's be frank. They're not. But they want to, they want to talk to our audience and they know what we're talking about. And we don't have meetings just to burst anybody's theory. We don't have meetings with our advertisers where they go, could you tone down the attacks on the Trump administration? Could you not talk so much about the Supreme Court or something that Trump is doing on tariffs with Canada? Nobody tells us that. They told us that. We would click them off. Click. We have fired sponsors, as people know, very famously. So if you have disposable income, you think this is interesting, you think it's something that you would like to try or could improve your life in some way, then that's why they're here. And then. So let's take, let's take our word from our sponsors.
- [48:06]
Michael Popak
Lume is a whole body deodorant that you can use absolutely anywhere. It's a fantastic product that you can use anywhere. You need a little extra help. It is really wonderful. It gives you more confidence. And I love the deodorant and have incorporated it into my daily routine. As I said, it's a whole body deodorant that's safe to use anywhere on your body, whether it's under your arms or other folds or belly buttons or cracks, et cetera, or your feet. So it was created by an OB GYN who saw firsthand how normal body odor was being misdiagnosed and mistreated. It's clinically proven to block odor all day and control odor for up to 72 hours. They have several product options whether you prefer a solid stick deodorant, Sweat Control Deodorant Spray deodorant. All their products are baking soda free and paraben free PH balance for safe use, safe use below the belt and have a variety of wonderful scents so the Starter pack is perfect for new customers. It comes with a solid stick Deodorant Cream Tube Deodorant, two free products of your choice like a mini body wash and deodorant wipes, and free shipping as a special offer for listeners. New customers get 15% off all Lumi products with our exclusive code and if you combine the 15% off with the already discounted starter pack that equals over 40% off their starter pack. Use Code Legal A F for 15% off your first purchase at lumideodorant.com that's code legal A f at L U m e d e O-O-R-A-N-T.com Please support our show. Tell them we sent you Smell Fresher dryer and boost your confidence from head to toe with Lumi.
- [49:42]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Have you heard about senolytics yet? It's a class of ingredients discovered less than 10 years ago and they're being called the biggest discovery of our time for promoting healthy aging and enhancing your physical prime Look. If someone would have told me that there are science backed ingredients that could help me feel 15 years younger in a matter of months, I wouldn't have believed it. Then I tried Qualia Senolytic look as we age, everyone accumulates senescent cells in their body. Senescent cells cause symptoms of aging such as aches and discomfort, slow workout recoveries, sluggish mental and physical energy associated with that middle age feeling. Also known as zombie cells. They are old and worn out and not serving a useful function for our health anymore, but they are taking up space and nutrients from our healthy cells. The formula is non GMO vegan gluten free free and the ingredients are meant to complement one another, factoring in the combined effect of all ingredients together. New research on aging and longevity, including a clinical study on Qualia Senolytic, shows that senolytic supplementation can play a huge role in enhancing how we age. Since I started taking Senolytic, I feel much more productive and enthusiastic as I embrace life with a lot less aches and pains. Resist aging at the cellular level. Try Qualia senolytic. Go to qualialife.com legalaf for up to 50% off and use code Legalif at checkout for an additional 15% off. That's Q u a l I a life.com legalaf for an extra 15% off your purchase. Thanks to Qualia for sponsoring today's episode. Okay, welcome back. Africa Development Foundation Jack booted US Marshals pounding down the door to take out the executive director and replace it with Peter Morocco, a Donald Trump henchman whose main job is to chloroform that agency. Look, all of these agency heads, from Linda McMahon in education, to the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Transportation, to this to Peter Morocco, they've all been given one charge. Put your agency, department and bureau out of existence. Chloroform it. Take it out in the back and shoot it. That's their mission. I don't remember voting for that. Of course I didn't vote for Trump. People didn't. Where was that on the platform? Where was that on the agenda? That's why there's so much voter remorse. That's why there's so much misgivings. So many MAGA voters are being hurt terribly by Trump's policies, whether it's veterans or others in poor and rural states. Who do you think is getting the brunt end of Donald Trump's irrational, immoral, depraved policies? It's red states. It's those voters. He's fired more veterans and things devoted to veterans benefits and affairs than any other president in history. We're 60 days into his administration. That is his legacy, among other things. And for those that he's gone so far, just leave it on this note, before we go back to the African foundation, it's gotten so disgusting that even MAGA and right wing legislators are finding that lines have been crossed. We just had a debate that was shut down in Congress today because one of the MAGA congresspeople decided they were going to misgender. One of the other congresspeople who's transgender and identifies as a woman and kept calling that person from Delaware, Mister, Mister, Mister and the MAGA chairperson had enough and said, that's beyond the pale. We're not doing that. Here we are the Congress of the United States. We're not a seventh grade lunchroom. And so one of the things that I want people to examine when we talk about cases, some of which go the way we want it to, some of which don't go the way we want it to, is think about the America that you want to wake up in in two years or less at the midterms and beyond. And whether this administration, through its policies and procedures, litigated through the courts, matches your ideal of what it means to be an American. And if it doesn't, and it shouldn't, then vote no in a binary way against anybody with an R next to their name come the midterms. Or as I'd like to say in a bumper sticker, I see all these other bumper stickers. 14th amendment, section three, let's have a march. Great. I got another bumper sticker. Give me the House and the Senate at the midterms and I'll give you an impeachment and a conviction and a removal. Let's put all our energy into that. That is going to get us where we want to go. So I was encouraged by this back to the African development case because I thought, wow, look at the timeline that's listed here from how the lies made by Doge to get their way in the attempts to replace the attempts to shrink this down to small enough size it could be drowned in a bathtub as an organization against the will of Congress. Here we go, Judge Leon do the right thing thing. And he started to and then something went a little bit awry. What did you make of his current ruling about denying the temporary restraining order? Karen?
- [55:08]
Michael Popak
Yeah, look, I think, I think I just want to get back to what you were saying before about your how we curate what we're going to talk about. There's so much that we could talk about. There's so that is part of I think the beauty of legal AF is we aren't just something that tells you everything. We, we take a lot of time to figure out what are the of all the fire hose of Trump related stuff and there is a fire hose, what are the ones that are really important that people need to know about. And this is one that Popak, I give you a lot of credit for putting on our, our list of cases that we're going to talk about because this is something that could have easily been missed and that isn't going to necessarily get a lot of play yet. It is extremely significant. And so I think the curating aspect of what is important is just as important as the analysis itself and just really showing people okay, because it's hard to pay attention to everything that's going on. It's hard to understand. Now, what is this? It's literally a fire hose of things that have been going on for the last. What is it, 50 days, 60 days since Trump has been president of just complete lawlessness. And so this is just this very small agency that, frankly, I'd never heard of before, the African Development Board, that essentially provides grants and things that. And investing in small businesses in Africa. And this is an agency, an independent agency, that was created by Congress in 1980 and is controlled by a board of members. And it's there confirmed by the Senate, and there's about 50 people who work there. And. And a congressionally created agency is something that you can't. You don't have complete authority over the way they think that they do. And meanwhile, Donald Trump on February 19 did one of his crazy executive orders that actually names this as one of the agencies that they are getting rid of. And Judge Leone, who's a Bush appointee, by the way, a George W. Bush appointee, said that this is a violation of the appointments clause. This was an agency established by Congress. This board was appointed by Congress, and what you're doing is unconstitutional. So it's basically an unnecessary executive order. And it was an unlawful executive order that appointed a new head of this small agency that provides this aid to Africa, appointed new board members. But essentially, the judge held that this was pretextual. You're just trying to close it down. You know, Doge came in and started threatening the board so that you're gonna be fired. They wouldn't let him in. And then they had to come with U.S. marshals. And, you know, they tried to do what they. What they always do and then shut this down. You know, they come in saying this protectual. Coming in saying, oh, we're just here to provide software expertise. Musk with his tech support T shirt, you know, nothing to see here. We're just providing tech support. We're not here to shut things down. But essentially, the federal judge here said that, look, you're removing most of the gr. You're moving most of the staff of this federal agency, and you can't do it. This is a legally created entity by Congress, and you just can't do it without, you know, without violating the law. So I thought this was a really important. I think this is just really important to show that the rule of the law matters, and the judges are starting to uphold it.
- [58:47]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Yeah, I agree. Except, you know, we got Leon today who said, yeah, I'm not going to grant the temporary restraining order because it looks like an executive director is trying to get his job back. And that's not irreparable harm. But, you know, I just love when these judges are using magical thinking. But I expect the Trump administration to do the right thing. So he, he already analyzed it, I think, in the wrong way. He analyzed it from an employment, employer, employee problem, as opposed to a destroyer of worlds without congressional mandate and violation of separation of powers problem, which is the way that the lawyers that brought this case framed it. And now I think if I'm the group that brought this case, I take that denial of the temporary restraining order, which now basically confers jurisdiction on the appellate court, and I take it up to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which I think will be a little bit more favorable to their position. I could be wrong. What I liked about the lawsuit when I read it and I did a hot take on it, is that it really does the first way show how surreptitious and underhanded the whole musk DOGE operation is. The one that Chris Cooper, the judge we talked about earlier, Cooper, the judge we talked about earlier, in finding that DOGE is a federal agency for public records purposes, also was concerned about that. They're the very thing that makes them so successful in implementing their policy of cutting the legs out from the administrative state and making our government less accountable to the American people, regardless of what they say about that. That's that gaslighting you talked about earlier is that speed and velocity. And so you've got to bring it to the public. And I thought the lawsuit that we're talking about now did that. It just didn't seem to resonate with the senior judge the way I thought it would. And now I think it's going to have to go up to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. I also kudos to my co anchor because you're one of the few people that actually uses gaslighting correctly. It's become such a term. Everyone's like, oh, that I feel like I'm being gaslit. But you actually used it exactly right. Gaslighting is when something is going on and they're telling you that it's not going on and not to trust your lying eyes. From a famous movie from the 1940s called Gaslight, where the husband tried to convince the wife she was going cuckoo crazy by continuing to adjust the lights in the house that were on gas back in the day with little gas bulbs, and he kept making them lower and higher. And then she'd say, all right, are the lights flickering? And he'd say, no, honey, I don't know what you're talking about. Let's bring the psychiatrist in. Because I think he wanted to commit her to get all of her wealth. That's gaslighting. I hear a lot of people use it because they don't know. They don't know where it comes from and they don't know what it means. You got it. Exactly as I would expect.
- [61:48]
Michael Popak
I always learn something from you, you know, Always. And the fact that you know about the movie, I am not surprised.
- [61:55]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
I saw the movie. I saw the movie. I was like, is that where that comes from? That's so great.
- [62:01]
Michael Popak
Because that's really what is that. That's what all these cases are showing us. And that's what the judges are trying to say is, look, you can say all you want, oh, no, he's not the head of doge, but we know he is. And at the joint session of Congress, they announced it was. Or when, you know, what was, what was. The 25 year old's. Remember when she came out, the communications director came out and Carolyn Levette. Yeah. You know, that was another time when they go to court and they say, oh, you know, they basically, the judge says, you know, whatever. They said there was a temporary restraining order and you have to do something. And she's like, okay, we'll just rip up the memo. But we're still going to do the thing, right?
- [62:42]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [62:44]
Michael Popak
On USAID funding. But, you know, it's just, they just. Absolutely. The courts are the ones who are going to. It's not all heroes wear capes here. It's going to be all the heroes wear robes. Because that's really what is happening. The courts and the judges who I think are going to save democracy ultimately and call it out for what it is.
- [63:02]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
We saw it on the criminal side, we covered it extensively. And all the federal judges trying to kind of rein in Donald Trump's criminal element during when he was candidate Trump and before and under Jan.6. I mean, just the, the sheer weight of the Jan6 prosecutions, couple of thousand going through one courthouse in the District of Columbia touching the lives of every judge that's out there. These are the same judges now that having went through and watched all the footage and know if anybody knows what really happened, it's only one set of facts. It's the judges of the D.C. court and the D.C. circuit in these Jan.6 cases and what Donald Trump really is responsible for having formed their own opinions as well. And now these are the same judges on the civil side that are being asked to protect our democracy from Donald Trump burning it down as now the President of the United States drunk with power.
- [64:00]
Michael Popak
In these cases, the defendants, who inevitably is the Trump administration in the various cases that we cover here at Legal af, that what they're doing is they're saying, oh no, Elon Musk is not the head of Doge. And then when at the joint session of Congress the President says he is the head of Doge and he stands up, the plaintiffs within an hour I think took that footage and filed it with the court and said, look, they're lying to you. And it's just. Go ahead.
- [64:31]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
No, no, no, no. I'm just laughing at your comment.
- [64:33]
Michael Popak
No, but, but it's, that's, that's what's happening. And, and people are paying attention. And so it's shows like this that is calling attention to what is actually happening because that's the only way I think they're going to get called out for, for what they're doing.
- [64:49]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Well, on that note, with Judge Cooper in his 37 pages spent a considerable amount of time saying that my record in this case is effectively supplemented by what I'm reading in the media. So for people that, you know, this is again another place where we can call out and have it reverberate and vibrate with our audience. And beyond when we sometimes we break news stories, sometimes we are the news story, sometimes we are reporting things that are little covered in a way that make hopefully make the government more responsible because it's not responsible now to the American people. And that, that's a good segue into our next segment, which is one of those we don't necessarily, you know, when I'm trying to fit it into the curating with you, I'm like, we got to cover this. It's, it's, I mean, do I agree with my personal view, which I try to, you know, other than my, my point of view, which I do in my analysis, you know, do I agree with the sit ins and the tent ins on college campuses that made Jewish students feel uncomfortable during the attack by hamas that killed 1300 people in Israel on October 7th? No. But I'm a First Amendment guy and I'm a due process guy in person and I will defend till my death somebody's right to say it. I mean, when the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU defended the right of American Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois, which they picked on purpose because it had at the time one of the highest concentration of Holocaust survivors. And the Nazis wanted to walk through where Holocaust survivors live. It was the American Civil Liberties Union that went to court to make sure they could do that. Founded by Jews, a lot of Jewish people. I'm a card carrying member of the aclu, but I also defend the right of people to have First Amendment expression. So Mahmoud Khalil, I may not agree with his point of view, but the fact that his green card now if the end, and let me also, so I can cover myself, if there are other real facts and not political polemics that are developed that demonstrate that he is a, not just a Hamas, quote unquote sympathizer, but is actually, you know, involved with the funding of Hamas or terrorist organizations and bank accounts and other things, then yes, I'll come back and say that I'm wrong. But if it's about him getting up on a soapbox or in a tent city to be a part of the marketplace of ideas that I may or may not agree with, and that's the reason his green card was revoked and he was sent off to Jersey and then Louisiana to get him out from under a federal judge in New York, Judge Furman, eventually Judge Furman, and again, and only in New York moment, you've got an Orthodox practicing Jewish judge who, who famously shuts his court down for, for Shabbat and for Jewish holidays, who's adjudicating the issue of Mahmoud Khalil, this graduate student on a green card, married to an American citizen and him being, having his, his ticket to the United States, his green card revoked by ice. When ice, the reporting is, Karen, when ICE burst through the door of his Columbia University housing, not like he's hiding in plain sight and said, you're, you're out. We're deporting you and we're arresting you and we're revoking your student visa. He said, I don't have a student visa. I have a green card. So they, they very quickly switched gears and said, we're revoking your, your green card. And then Marco Rubio, our Secretary of State, I think, sent out a, a social media post at the same time that said we're revoking green cards of people that we suspect. Fill in the blank. Except that's not the way that works. You have to go through a process, a due process, including an immigration judge, to determine whether the person should be in America or not. So, as I predicted in my hot take a couple of days ago on the Legal AF Channel, they whisked him off to Louisiana to put him in a red state, to bring him before a red state federal judge, to put him before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and not have to deal with New York. So why don't you talk about what Judge Furman has done and ordered as of right now in a hearing? I think it was actually today. And what do you think is going to happen in the future?
- [69:03]
Michael Popak
I mean, you know, this is something that I had to do a little research into when this started happening, because I've never practiced immigration law. And I was wondering, what does it mean if you have a green card and you're a lawful permanent resident here in the United States, but not a citizen, Can a president just revoke your green card? Can they just say, you are no longer allowed to be here, your status here? And it seems pretty clear you can't just do that. That there has to be. Because he's a lawful permanent resident, he has a right to due process, and he has a right to a removal hear that has all the procedural protections available to anyone who would be charged with a crime, because that's essentially the standard to revoke his status, his permanent status. And none of that has happened yet. And certainly I'm not sure it's going to. They're going to have anything that is going to show that. But, you know, they're just trying to come in and revoke this from this activist at Columbia University who very carefully did not actually participate in these encampments. He didn't participate in any of those things. He was just exercising his First Amendment rights to talk about the plight of Palestinian people with Israel. And he did that on purpose and intentionally because he was a graduate student at Columbia and he didn't want to risk that status. So he tried very hard, my understanding, to follow what the rules are and to exercise his First Amendment rights. And that's really what he did. And Trump, however, just decided to say, look, no, we're going to arrest you and we're going to deport you and we're going to revoke your citizenship, or, sorry, not your citizenship, your permanent resident status. But unfortunately, I think the procedures that they're using to deport a lawful permanent resident is not going to pass muster because he has substantive constitutional rights in the deportation context, including the due process clause and the First Amendment. And it's pretty clear that it's murkier than Trump thinks As usual. Right. Trump just thinks he's all powerful, that the US V. Trump cases has essentially anointed him king. He can do whatever he wants, but they can't just simply revoke his status as a lawful permanent resident and render him subject to deportation without some kind of. He had to have done something wrong, and he had to. And he has a right to be told what he did wrong. To be accused and to go through, you know, has to be a deport. Had to have done something to make him, quote, deportable under immigration laws. And that's pretty clearly spelled out and codified. It's in 8 United States code 1227 A. He's entitled to a hearing, and there's going to be a removal hearing, but I think his due process rights are going to. Ultimately, they're going to be held that he didn't do anything that makes him deportable given his permanent status.
- [72:20]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
And again, if he did, then bring show. I'm a lawyer. Karen's a lawyer. We like evidence. We're funny that way. The Trump administration is allergic to evidence. If you got the goods, bring him into court to a federal judge and show how he is beyond a Hamas quote, unquote sympathizer who's standing on a soapbox and arguing. And show me where he is a terrorist. And if he's a terrorist or he's laundering money or. Or those kind of things. All right, that changes the picture for me. I have a little concern, though, Karen, that Furman in. In ordering that he remain in Louisiana and have access to his lawyers to allow them to prepare his defense. He gave them a very. It was like a very miserly order. He's like one day and one phone call a day, one visit and one pH. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what. Can't see. That's the problem. I don't know exactly what came out in that courtroom to have Furman be so miserly in his giving access to this person in federal detention in Louisiana and why he wasn't more upset. And again, I got to read the transcript to figure out whether he was more upset. We haven't gotten our hands on that yet. About having the Trump administration try to get him out from under New York jurisdiction. That was the argument in court today. Judge, you don't even have jurisdiction because they manufactured new jurisdiction or attempted to in. They said it's either New Jersey. I'm not sure the New Jersey court is that much better, although it does go up to a Different Court of Appeal. That's. That's a little thing. I'll talk about New Jersey. It reports to a different. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Even though it's just across the Hudson from New York. New York's the Second Circuit. They might think they got a better shot at the Third Circuit. He was only in Jersey for like a minute, and then they whisked him off in one of these Plank. One of these planes to Louisiana in the middle of the night, where. That's where they love. That's what they want. They want the 5th Circuit and a Louisiana, you know, federal judge to handle the case. So there's a whole debate over that. I predicted it when I heard he ended up in Louisiana. Which shout out to the Columbia student newspaper. They did a good job on tracking him down through the system and finding out that he ended up in Louisiana. And that's not for a good, wholesome reason. Like, he's so dangerous, we had to put him in, you know, penitentiary. And no, they moved him out of New York because they didn't want to deal with a New York liberal judge and a decent. And the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. That's disgusting. That's not the. That's not the world I want to wake up in. So we're gonna have to follow that case closely because of the principles that triggers and identifies and. And stands for. And it's important to me, and it should be to our audience about the type of America that we live in. And you're right about the green card. The green card, yes, it's a privilege and it can be revoked, but it's also a property right that's been granted to somebody upon which they based their life. And it can't just be taken away with an ice, somebody from ICE or a Secretary of State who's acting as judge, jury, and executioner. There's a due process. We don't have star chambers. Not supposed to. We don't have. I mean, we use Guantanamo Bay for a different reason, but we're not supposed to have. In America, you know, people cut off from access to their counsel. And, you know, that's. That is the way the case got into court. It was a writ of habeas corpus to bring the body, literally bring the person and have the government cough them up and bring them into court because they're being held somewhere against their will. And the question of incarceration and detention and liberty becomes the issue for the federal judge. So it's an interesting case that I think we're Gonna have to continue to follow, right, Karen?
- [75:59]
Michael Popak
Absolutely. I mean, you know, look, he's married to a U.S. citizen. I think his wife is pregnant.
- [76:06]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Eight months.
- [76:07]
Michael Popak
Yeah, eight months pregnant. I mean, you know, these are real people with real lives, and it's just, you know, Donald Trump and his administration, they're just running roughshod over people's rights. It's just unbelievable.
- [76:20]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Yeah, yeah. And just to bring our. Our podcast full circle, she's about to give birth to an anchor baby. Well, under the. Under the 14th amendment. Is a U.S. citizen.
- [76:29]
Michael Popak
Well, she's a U.S. citizen, so I think.
- [76:31]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Well, that's true. So under that version of his thing, those executive orders don't apply, but I'm trying to make it funny, but I know, I know.
- [76:39]
Michael Popak
I'm just.
- [76:39]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
That's all right.
- [76:40]
Michael Popak
You know, I wake up. I wake up every morning and I look at the paper like everybody else. And, you know, I've been recently looking. I don't have a lot of money in the stock market, but I have a little. And I'm just waiting for him to make America great again. I mean, it's just everything is going to shit.
- [76:58]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
I thought you said I had a lot of money in the stock market, but now I have a little.
- [77:02]
Michael Popak
No, a long time ago, I put a little money in, and it grew and grew and grew, and I never touched it the way I would be like, oh, I use this all the time. I'm going to now put. But, you know, I'm gonna buy five.
- [77:14]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Oh, yeah. I buy products. I do that.
- [77:16]
Michael Popak
Yeah, yeah, like that. That's. That's the extent of my. How. How I buy stocks and where can.
- [77:21]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
I buy Nespresso stock? Right.
- [77:22]
Michael Popak
Yeah, exactly. Anything that you use all the time, I think, okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna. Whatever, so. And it. It grew and it grew and it. It was. It was not nothing. I mean, for me, it's. It's money and it is just tanked. I can't believe it. You know, I'm like, you know, and same thing with whether it's groceries, whether it's, you know, even ordering online. We went to a rest in Chinatown, which is usually very affordable. Things were like, double, triple the price. We wouldn't believe what he's doing to this economy.
- [77:52]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Egg prices are up 56% in a year. But Donald Trump is going to fix that on. He had so much things he was going to fix on day one, I think. I think we. It was a typo. He meant he was going to kill the economy and our US democracy on day one. Because that's all, that's all we're watching. But the way we fight, what do we do? Yeah, well, we're doing it. You're here, you're on the Midas Touch network. Hit the subscribe button. Legal af. Hit the subscribe button. Watch our hot takes, do the comments and gear up everybody. Let's effing go, as Jordy likes to say because we got to get ready and giddy up for the midterms. You know, give me back Congress. And it will go a long way to stopping Donald Trump in his tracks. Make him the shortest of, of lame duck presidents quicker than you can say the midterms. We gotta get there. There's no, there's no choice. I like protesting like the next person. I like hanging out with people that are like minded. But we gotta vote. You know, as the, as the great. I was at the leak. Great. As the great Barack Obama says don't boo, vote. And that's what we gotta do. You gotta, you gotta.
- [78:58]
Michael Popak
I love all the resistance. I love that Greenland is pushing back and.
- [79:02]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Yeah.
- [79:02]
Michael Popak
And basically saying F off. I love that Canada is pushing back and saying F off and I hope all other countries, I hope everybody stands strong, even Ukraine. Right. Things are starting to turn there for them. I am so happy that there is resistance all over the world and in this country and don't succumb to this. We have to fight back in every way that we can. We all have to stay together and we all have to fight back because this is just complete autocracy, authoritarianism, lawlessness and it's not right.
- [79:35]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Europe, Europe joining together to stop an out of control totalitarian dictator who wants to destroy sovereignty of Europe. Where have I heard that before?
- [79:45]
Michael Popak
I know, right? You know what else? You know what else I loved? I loved that, I loved that Hamilton production. Yeah, they, they were scheduled to, to perform one of the great shows of all time. One of the greatest soundtracks of all time. I'm such a huge Hamilton fan. Was supposed scheduled to be at the Kennedy center and because of what Donald Trump has done, taken over the board of the Kennedy center and is going to turn it into a WWE instead of having real things there. It's going to be one of these MAGA showcase things. They pulled out. They pulled out because it would be a farce to be at the Kennedy center about what the founding fathers and the Constitution was like and perform there and that's great resistance. And I think everybody has to do their part and it'll happen.
- [80:31]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Oh you don't like Lee Greenwood being the curator of programming for the Kennedy Center. I mean, you know, this is what it is. It's, it's Susie Wiles and her mother. It's, it's the deputy chief of staff. It's everybody's wife for every donor. This is now on the it's, it's Maria Barter Romo and Laura Ingraham from Fox News who covered Trump, who have now been bribed by being on the Kennedy Center. And yeah, are the arts are fighting back as their art funding is being.
- [81:03]
Michael Popak
Everybody, everybody has to fight back in their own way. Even if it seems small. Anything you can do, everybody has to do it. That's the resistance. And I'm so proud to be part of the Midas Touch and the Midas Touch Network and this resistance that we do here. And I am so just thrilled and honored to spend every Wednesday with you, Popoc, doing Legal AF so that we can do our part in this great.
- [81:30]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Way to sign off. You've reached the end of another great episode. Hopefully you find it that way of legal AF on the Midas Touch Network with Karen Friedman, Nifolo and Michael Popak. Get us here, get us on podcast audio platforms. Get us on Saturday where I do the show with Ben Meiselas. So until our next time together, this is Michael Popak, Karen Freeman, Shout out to the Midas Mike and the legal A efforts.
- [82:06]
Michael Popak
You are no dummy, but you're kind of acting like one.
- [82:09]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
You used to crush it in school, outsmarting opponents on the field, and now, well, you're still smart, but not exactly challenging yourself. You could be advancing nuclear engineering in the world's most powerful Navy.
- [82:22]
Michael Popak
You were born for it.
- [82:23]
Karen Friedman Agnifilo
So make the smart choice. You can be smart or you can be nuke smart. Become a nuclear engineer@navy.com nukesmart America's Navy forged by the sea.