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Michael Popak
In Donald Trump's latest Memorial Day screed, attacking fellow Americans as scum and calling federal judges us hating judges, is another attack on Harvard University, the lead, the oldest university in America and one of the leading research institutes. Many medical breakthroughs, including in cancer and in other infectious diseases, comes out of Harvard University. Now Donald Trump wants to take another $450 million away from them to punish them because they won't bend over and allow the Trump administration to impair their academic independence, run the university for them, tell them what they can and can't teach, tell them who they can and cannot admit. Harvard is not Harvard, for instance, without its international students. And now Donald Trump has done two things. One, he has said that $450 million that was going for effectively biomedical research is now gonna go to trade schools in America. Look, I'm all for plumbers and electricians. I just don't think they're the substitute at this moment for biomedical research to help people live. And when he's not busy, when he's busy doing that, which is on top of billions of other dollars of threatened cuts, as you may know, or I'll tell you, has effectively revoked, except for a federal judge intervention on Friday revoked Harvard's ability to have any foreign students at all attend its university. Harvard is not Harvard without its international students. That's their words, not mine. Let me pull it all together on this Memorial Day hot take here on Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF on Friday. And I love the pairing here, the cosmic Justice, Jenner and Block, a law firm that is on or is on Donald Trump's crap list and is basically made Persona non grata and radioactive by Donald Trump trying to bar Jenner and block from doing any business in front of the government, which was blocked last week by another federal court, is one of the major law firms representing Harvard University. This is why Donald Trump goes after the big law and big law firms, because he doesn't want to see them doing amazing legal work in cases against him. And they filed last week on the 23rd of of May, a motion for temporary restraining order because they're arguing to the judge, Judge Alison Burroughs, that the revocation by the Department of Homeland Security of the visa program allowing foreign students to attend Harvard at all is the death knell for Harvard, both financially, their ability to have a diverse class and otherwise. And just to do the math before we get into the order of Judge Burroughs, which in one page blocked the attempt by Donald Trump to deny Harvard the ability to accept foreign students. And this is all under the phony guise and the false flag of preventing antisemitism on campus. Look, I'm all for, I'm all for if there's a terrorist link between people in the streets and what they're saying and there actually are terrorists, all right, get them off the streets. But like students and graduate students with bed sheets spray painted in a courtyard, that's called the First Amendment as far as I'm concerned, even if I find what they're saying to be distasteful, I'll defend the right for them to say it. Now, just so you can do the math here, There are about 7,000 or so foreign students on, on Harvard's campus. And the makeup, forget anti Semitic, pro Hamas, anti Israel activist on campus. What is that, like 6, 10, 30? But the rest, one third of the Harvard Business School, 1/3 of the Harvard Business School, the competitor school for the one that Donald Trump went to at Wharton, at University of Pennsylvania, one third are international students. They are not carrying around, they're not living in the tent city to protest, you know, the Israel war with Hamas. One half of the Harvard Kennedy School of Diplomacy, one half is made up of, you guessed it, foreign students. That's why Harvard keeps saying Harvard's not Harvard without international students. Donald Trump wants to take control of the faculty, wants to decide who makes tenure, wants to decide what students are let in and is going after the very lifeblood right of all these feeder sources to keep Harvard alive and trying to, and try to kill it. Here's what the motion for temporary restraining order that was just filed by Jenner and Block. Yes. The same firm that is itself the recipient of a temporary restraining order successfully in a preliminary injunction and permanent injunction that says that the Trump administration is violating their First Amendment rights, their due process rights, by making them unable to do business with clients who have business before the federal government. Here's what they said in their filing, and then I'll read to you from the order and tie it all together with this new Memorial Day attack by Donald Trump. This is from the motion for temporary restraining order. For more than 70 years, Harvard University has been certified by the federal government to enroll international students under the F1 visa program, and it's long been designated as an exchange visitor program sponsor. Harvard has, over time, developed programs and degrees tailored to these international students, invested millions to recruit them and integrate them into all aspects of the Harvard community. Remember, they have competitors. Harvard, yes, they're the oldest university in America, but they have competitors both in the Ivy League and outside the Ivy League who are recruiting. Yesterday, the government abruptly revoked Harvard certification to host these students without due process. The government's revocation of Harvard certification was not a product, the motion continues, of the ordinary review process, set out in detail detailed regulations that define the limited circumstances under which a certification may be revoked. On its face, the revocation is part of the government's broader effort to retaliate against Harvard for its refusal to surrender its academic independence. In response to the government's disagreement with the perceived viewpoints of Harvard, its faculty, and its students, the government issued a series of demands requiring Harvard to submit to government oversight of the faculty it hires, the students that admits, and the courses it teaches. When Harvard declined, the administration unleashed the full power of the federal government. Freezing billions in federal grants, proposing to eliminate Harvard's tax exempt status, opening multiple federal investigations, and terminating its participation in the visa programs. Yesterday, the government made good on the threat and did so via a letter that makes plain that the Department of Homeland Security is not even pretending to follow its own regulations. Revoking its certification is unlawful many times over. It is one of the pillars of our constitutional system that the government cannot invoke legal sanctions and other means of coercion to police private speech, especially when the government's treatment is animated by viewpoint discrimination. Okay, look, the moment the weather changed, my allergies showed up like an uninvited guest at a deposition or a witness at a trial. Sneezing congestion, itchy everything. And of course, the stuff I grabbed from the drugstore never really works. I was over it. I needed something better. This podcast is sponsored by Allerme. If your allergies are taken over, Allerme has the first and only custom nasal Spray made just for your symptoms. Standard meds don't work for everyone and finding a specialist, that's basically a full time job. Allerme makes allergy care affordable, accessible and actually effective so you can live your life without allergies. Calling the shots. You fill out a quick online consultation and their medical team creates a custom spray just for you. They send it straight to your door in a full allergy kit, including a moisturizing saline spray and your super spray for fast relief. That actually works. My custom Allerme spray just arrived and it's so easy to use. Clear instructions, no guesswork, and if I have any questions, I just messaged their care team right in the app. It's convenient, it's modern, and it works. Allerme was founded by Stanford allergist Dr. Robert Beauchian, who's been using custom combo sprays to treat patients for decades. Now it's available to everyone and with a 95% satisfaction rate and over 12,000 five star reviews, it's a game changer. Upgrade your allergy relief with allerme. Head to allerme.com and use code legal A for 60% off your order. Once again, that's allerme.com and use my promo code legal AF for 60% off. Make sure you use my promo code legal AF so they know I sent you. And that's where the judges come in. So while Donald Trump and I'm going to put up his news screen next attacks the Harvard University and says, I'm going to take $450 million effectively away from biomedical research to help ordinary Americans survive and give it to trade schools. So I guess I can get my I can find an electrician quicker or a plumber. Again, I'm all for trade schools. I'm just not for siphoning off money as a penalty and a punishment of Harvard University because you don't like its First Amendment expression and you want to effectively have a government takeover of a private university. This is, this is what judge it was so easy for Judge Burroughs after a small hearing that this is what she ordered. Order Granting Plaintiffs Motion for Temporary Restraining Order The TRO is justified accordingly. Defendants and anyone acting in concert or participation with defendants are enjoined from implementing, instituting, maintaining or giving effect to the revocation of plaintiffs SEVP certification. That's the ability to have foreign students sign. Judge Allison Burroughs United States District Court, Massachusetts this will now go up to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits over Massachusetts. Then it will end up at the United States Supreme Court, I don't think with an emergency application, although it could be. I mean, if the Supreme Court, where many of the people went to law school at Harvard and even undergraduate at Harvard, including the Chief justice, they think this is an emergency and they wanna undo this block. To allow Donald Trump to cut off federal funding as a retaliation against the university because he doesn't like what they're doing on campus related to attacks on students. There's other ways to police that issue. By the way. By the way, I know there's a. There's a rumor, which I love, and if only it were true, that Barron Trump is only going to my alma mater, nyu, because he was rejected by Harvard. And I would love that to be true. I just. And we. I've sourced this out a number of ways, including organizations like SNOPE that look at these things very carefully, and there's no facts to support that he got a rejection letter and wanted to go to Harvard. Look, the entire family, the Trump family went to Georgetown and University of Pennsylvania. None of them really have a connection with Harvard. There's rumors about why Ivanka didn't do well at Georgetown, along with when she met her husband, Jared, but we'll leave that for another day. However, there was never a Harvard link with the Trump family. It would have been really unusual for Barron to have applied there. Penn. I thought he was definitely going to go to Wharton and where his father went, or at the very least, Georgetown and stay in Washington. But he's a mama's boy. He's. When he's not busy running as this as the second or third freighter in the family, the family's crypto business, he wanted to stay in Manhattan. He wanted to, like, live at Fifth Avenue in the Trump Tower and go to school down 5th Avenue on the corner of, you know, 5th Avenue and 10th street, where I lived when I was in a dorm to go to nyu. You know, it's where a lot of rich kids go who, you know, want to stay at home or stay near home. So I wasn't that shocked that Mommy Melania, who barely is in the White House and wanted to stay in New York herself, wanted to keep close tabs on her honor, on her son, and didn't want to be schlepping up to Boston during the academic year. But I. But it. But the fact, it has a ring of. It's truthy, as Stephen Colbert would say, it's like J.D. vance on the couch. I get it, I get it. But we've got bigger fish to fry here because If Harvard falls, we all fall. This is not just an attack on Harvard, on academic freedom. This is an assault on American democracy and one of the major pillars, and we've got to call it out. So I'm going to pull all this together. Donald Trump's attacks on Harvard and trying to cut off their funding and decertify them and get international students and again, paint with a broad brush and tar and feather all foreign students and make them all just like he does. All Venezuelans, all Mexicans, all people from El Salvador are criminals, all people from Cuba. These are his voting blocks. The Hispanic community voted in large numbers for Trump, but I never understood why. It's completely against their self interest. You see how he treats immigration. I live in Florida now. I lived here years ago and I came back and Florida is a state of made up of immigrants. I mean, 70% of Miami Dade county is Hispanic and 50% of that is Cuban, with a fair number of Venezuelans and people from Brazil and Mexicans and Haitians and the rest. And yet we have a governor who, who's anti immigration. We have a president that is anti immigration. And this shouldn't work in our America, an America that's getting blacker and browner every year, not less, not whiter. So we'll continue to follow how other universities have also supported Harvard, but also shout out to Jenner and Block. They have been working hard and winning to make sure that they're in the game, that they're not sidelined from democracy, that they're able to defend institutions like Harvard and the next Harvard because they had to get themselves off of a list. And they successfully did that because they've been the subject of Trump's ire and his retribution. I'll continue to follow it. All right here. I'm back on the Midas Touch Network. Thank you much from our family for all the condolences and sympathies related to my mother's untimely passing about a week ago. Appreciate all of you. It helped get us through. We're still in a dark period, but it helped. It helped. And your love and support has certainly helped us. You're on the Midas Touch Network. Take a moment. Hit the free subscribe button for Midas Touch legal AF channel. With your help, we're going to hit our $700,000. 7. Well, sorry, 700,000 subscriber. I know where that came from. Target in the next month or so as we make our march towards a million. And the larger we get, the more your voice is heard. Yeah, we are a channel that is devoted to law and politics. One stop shopping. Come over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel, Legal AF the Substack and Legal AF the podcast that I founded with Ben Meiselas. Oh, those five long years ago, which now it's fascinating. We went from 200 people watching our first episode to being in the top 13 in the world and ranked in the top 100 YouTube podcasts. That's all because of you. Otherwise it'd just be me and Ben, Karen and the others just getting together for a bagel nosh every week talking about law and politics. Appreciate you very much. I'm Michael Popak for my next report. Can't get your fill of Legal af. Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF sub stack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do called the Wait for It Morning af. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AO are there as well. We got some new reporting, we got interviews, we got ad free versions of the podcast and hot takes where Legal AF on substack. Come over now to free subscribe.
Legal AF by MeidasTouch: Episode Summary
Title: Pissed Off Judge About to Go Berserk on Trump After Post
Release Date: May 27, 2025
Hosts: Ben Meiselas, Michael Popok, Karen Friedman Agnifilo
Executive Producer: Meidas Media Network
In this episode of Legal AF by MeidasTouch, hosts delve into a heated legal battle involving former President Donald Trump and Harvard University. The discussion centers on Trump's attempts to undermine Harvard by cutting funding and revoking its ability to enroll international students, leading to significant legal repercussions.
The episode begins with Michael Popak outlining Trump's aggressive stance against Harvard University. Trump has initiated moves to withdraw $450 million from Harvard’s biomedical research, reallocating these funds to American trade schools. Popak criticizes this decision, stating:
“I’m all for plumbers and electricians. I just don’t think they’re the substitute at this moment for biomedical research to help people live.”
— Michael Popak [03:30]
Furthermore, Trump has targeted Harvard’s academic independence by demanding oversight over faculty hires, student admissions, and curricular decisions. When Harvard resisted, Trump escalated his actions by:
In response to Trump's actions, Harvard enlisted the services of the law firm Jenner and Block. The firm filed a motion for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to halt the Department of Homeland Security's revocation of Harvard's certification to enroll international students. Popak emphasizes the significance of this legal move:
“Revoking its certification is unlawful many times over. It is one of the pillars of our constitutional system that the government cannot invoke legal sanctions and other means of coercion to police private speech.”
— Michael Popak [03:30]
Judge Allison Burroughs of the United States District Court for Massachusetts granted the TRO, effectively blocking Trump’s attempt to decertify Harvard's SEVP (Student and Exchange Visitor Program) status. The key points of the ruling include:
Popak summarizes the judge's decision:
“The TRO is justified accordingly. Defendants and anyone acting in concert or participation with defendants are enjoined from implementing, instituting, maintaining or giving effect to the revocation of plaintiffs SEVP certification.”
— Judge Allison Burroughs [03:30]
The hosts discuss the broader implications of this legal battle:
Impact on International Students: Harvard’s diversity and global standing are at risk without international students, who constitute a significant portion of programs like the Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School.
Academic Freedom: Trump's actions are portrayed as an assault on academic independence, potentially setting a dangerous precedent for government interference in educational institutions.
American Democracy: Popak argues that undermining institutions like Harvard threatens the foundational pillars of American democracy. He states:
“This is an assault on American democracy and one of the major pillars, and we've got to call it out.”
— Michael Popak [03:30]
Popak provides personal insights into Trump's motivations, suggesting that the attacks on Harvard are part of a broader strategy to control influential institutions and suppress dissenting viewpoints. He also touches on the irony of Trump's stance on immigration, highlighting the support of immigrant communities in states like Florida, which Trump positions as key voting blocs.
Additionally, Popak addresses rumors regarding Barron Trump’s educational choices, debunking claims that Barron was rejected by Harvard and emphasizing that the Trump family has historically favored institutions like Georgetown and the University of Pennsylvania.
The episode concludes with an overview of the legal trajectory following the TRO:
Popak underscores the resilience of Jenner and Block in defending Harvard, noting their successful obstruction of Trump’s attempts to hinder their legal representation.
This episode of Legal AF provides a comprehensive analysis of Donald Trump's contentious actions against Harvard University, highlighting the legal battles that ensue when political interests clash with academic freedom and constitutional principles. The hosts emphasize the importance of defending institutions that uphold democratic values and resist governmental overreach.
Notable Quotes:
“Harvard is not Harvard without its international students.”
— Michael Popak [03:30]
“The revocation is part of the government's broader effort to retaliate against Harvard for its refusal to surrender its academic independence.”
— Michael Popak [03:30]
“This is an assault on American democracy and one of the major pillars, and we've got to call it out.”
— Michael Popak [03:30]
For those interested in more detailed legal documents and ongoing updates, Michael Popak invites listeners to subscribe to the Legal AF Substack, which offers comprehensive court filings, oral arguments, and exclusive content.