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- [00:01]
Michael Popak
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- [00:29]
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- [00:54]
Michael Popak
You're on POPOC Live with a new home office studio. I appreciate you being here. We got a lot to talk about at that intersection of law and politics. Here's what I want to discuss with you tonight. I want to start with all things Elon Musk and Doge. Not because I want to, but because I have to. As federal workers troll and hack the Trump administration, cabinet members rebel against the yoke of being told what to do by Elon Musk that that means maga, fighting maga. And I'm there for it as federal judges, one after another in a series of lawsuits and injunctions and orders, look the Trump administration in the eye and its officials and say with a unified voice, we don't believe a word that you say. We don't believe a word that you're telling us in these courtrooms. And therefore we are issuing fill in the blank, temporary restraining orders, preliminary injunctions, and the rest. I want to talk about all of the cases. There are 92 of them, 92 cases. I'm going to talk about the 34 restraining orders, preliminary injunctions or more against the Trump administration. And we're less than five weeks in. Then we're going to talk about how the Trump administration is hollowing out not only the federal government and destroying the link, the necessary link, between the American people and its government, breaching the social contract, making us unrecognizable to the world in terms of what are, what are our American values and why are they completely absent from everything that Donald Trump is doing in a domestic or foreign policy way? He is a unifying force. He's unifying Europe against America. He's unifying Russia against America. He's unifying China against America. As he instructed his ambassador to the United nations to do the unthinkable, to vote along with North Korea and Russia against One of our allies. I never thought I'd have to talk about a Russian sympathizer occupying the White House. But here we are going to talk about Ukraine and the European reaction to all of it because it matters to us, because our audience doesn't subscribe to the theory that we can pull in our oars and not have our economy impact the global economy, not have our values impact the world values. And then I got to do mainstream media Watch, right, because MSNBC has decided to curry favor and pander to Donald Trump. I mean, on one hand, they're trying to fire up their programming to compliment or match what we're doing on the Midas Touch Network. On the other hand, they're doing reverse dei. They're firing everyone who is a person of color, including not only friend of the show, friend of me, Michael Popak, going back almost 15 years, Katie Fang, Jonathan Capehart, Joy Reid. Why are they no longer on the air at a critical moment when we need them? And what is mainstream media doing? On one hand you've got the sort of the CBSs of the world and the Associated Press and the Gannett or Gannett papers trying to do something to protect the freedom of the press in recent filings. But at the end, they just always seem to capitulate, stroke a check to Donald Trump personally and try to move on. We don't believe in that here in the, in the Midas Touch Network network. And I think that's why people are flocking to this network in droves. I mean, when the brothers and I spoke about the network, the Midas Touch, it was a website with a podcast attached to it five years ago, we said at one point, how are we going to continue to attract people if, for instance, the criminal cases for Donald Trump subside or if people lose interest in the intersection of law and politics? Well, what we've shown in the last month or two is that we're building on the last five years with our audience is that they need, they're thirsty for the independent commentary and analysis they're only finding here on the Midas Touch Network, making it the number one YouTube channel. Most watch YouTube channel. The number one podcast in the Midas Touch Brothers podcast legal AF, right, hanging right in there with its, with its brother Pod. We're in the top 10 depending upon which poll you look at. And that's all a reflection of the community that we've built here because we got to speak truth to each other before we can speak truth to power. Now let me just do as I transition Let me talk about the cases because I think that's why people come to me in particular to talk about the intersection of law and politics. 35 year practicing lawyer in the federal courts that I talk about. There are an extraordinary number of cases already filed against this administration. There's no other way to put it. We are five weeks into this administration. There are 92 cases. 92 cases in just about 37 days. You do the math. It's about three cases a day. And that's going to continue for the next four years. In the first Trump administration, over a thousand cases were filed and most. And, and the batting average for wins against the Trump administration was between 80 and 90%. Now we're looking at three or four times that because Donald Trump is acting three or four more times. Outrageous. That much more outrageous. And so we are averaging close to the three. We're coming close to meeting my prediction of 3,000 lawsuits in a four year period. But it's, and know that to answer the question that often comes up in the chat or in direct messaging to me, no, that's not normal. Okay? We've never seen an out of control rogue president who created a phony fake mandate, a phony fake landslide, a phony fake set of facts in order to justify policies that nobody elected him on, that nobody wanted. Raise your hand in the chat if you voted for Donald Trump. There's got to be a few people in there that voted for Donald Trump that are having misgivings, that are, that are showing up at these town hall meetings that we've seen, right? Excoriating the members of Congress and saying this is not what we voted for. Consumer confidence at an all time low in the last four weeks, plummeting 10 points below what it was with Joe Biden. Remember those good old days? Egg prices soaring, rent staying where it was. No day one price lowering which Donald Trump promised you. Quite the opposite. Well, it's no surprise he thought he was playing some sort of video game. Let's tariff our 50% trading partners. Let's tariff our allies to success. Let's cut taxes, let's, let's get rid of revenue stream into the economy. Let's take the US out of the US economy and cut off all funding fore and domestic. Then let's see what happens. Only a madman would do that without thinking through the serious ramifications and consequences of his actions. Judge ali Khan in D.C. trial court level today issued an order in which she basically said, are you mad? You cut off $3 trillion worth of federal funding to not for profits. In states. We had a 24 hour notice that is the very definition of arbitrary and capricious and not reasonable. You didn't think about the real world impacts because you didn't care about it. When Donald Trump says, and the, and his, and his right wing MAGA Federalists say, Heritage foundation people say we want to reshape the role and the relationship between American voters and their government. What they mean is they want to completely detach the American voter and Americans from their government and cut off the umbilical cord, cut off the life support. Cut. Right. Or as Judge Ali Khan said, kill the fuel to this large machinery without repercussions, without thinking of the repercussions we had before Trump. A social contract, one with the other of our fellow neighbors, with us, with the government, that they would provide a social safety net of programs that matter to help Americans as they move through their life cycle. Who may not be as accomplished as the billionaires who joined Donald Trump in the White House. And that's okay. They're, they still have the beating hearts of Americans, American voters. And they deserve dignity regardless of their educational background, their accomplishments, how many businesses they started, how many businesses they failed. They deserve to live in the America of their dreams. Donald Trump is dashing those dreams in this failing administration. I mean, I'm not trying to throw dirt on the Trump administration, but I am. We, we are five weeks in and I've never seen a worse start to an administration other than Herbert Hoover that threw us into the Great Depression. All of these, you know, all of these. Why all these crazy schemes that people around him have pressed him to do. Let's tariff Canada, China and Mexico and see what happens. Let's cut off foreign aid that used to be used for diplomacy purposes. And every foreign dollar has an American company, an American worker behind it. Let's cut that off. Let's see what happens when we turn off the trillion dollar spigot of money that supports not for profits and our states and the people that are underneath each of those things that need the support. How about we don't do that? How about we don't do that? And we say we did like we were children. You know this, you know this is a five year old. What happens if I push this button? Is that where that's who we want leading our government? And then if that wasn't enough, you got Elon Musk, who. I defy anyone in the Trump administration because they haven't been able to do it since. Even in courts, I defy The Trump administration to look the American people in the eye in a filing, in a press conference to tell us what Elon Musk does, what he did. What are the five things he did last week that were illegal? To paraphrase his own email out to federal workers, I'd like to have Trump tell me the five things he did that were not illegal last week as well. But first they say Elon Musk has no power, that Elon Musk is just a special advisor that Donald Trump enjoys. And then it's no, he runs Doge. And then it's he's sending out emails under an anonymous HR email. No, nothing says I'm a coward more than an anonymous HR email trying to fire people. And the American people have had enough. They are, all of them, as represented by special interest groups. And labor unions are filing their suits. That's how we got to 92 of them. And no, it's not normal to have three lawsuits a day. And. And I'm not. And seven used to be five. Seven preliminary injunctions and temporary rest training orders have been issued a week against this administration. 7. They've had a couple of small wins. I know mainstream media was jumping up and down, oh, there's a couple of wins for the Trump administration. They are very minor. The fundamentals of his 50 or 60 executive orders are all inside courthouses with federal judges that we can trust to make the right decision. Now you see that the Trump administration is already groaning and straining because they can't answer the question of what Elon Musk does for a living. And so instead, instead they let him run around like an elephant who's not wearing a diaper. And they got to clean up behind him. Think of that imagery. They got to clean up behind him on a frequent basis. Let's use the what did you do last week Email as an example. Elon Musk, with great fanfare and alleged support from Donald Trump, sends out an email to all federal workers. There's like 2 million of them. And says, you have to justify your existence. Tell me five things you did last week that helped the American taxpayer. And if you don't respond, you're fired. He did something like that at Twitter. He drove that company into the ground, by the way. Into the ground. Lost shareholder value like we've never seen before. So why we thought Trump thought this was going to work at the federal level. None of these people know how the federal government operates. It's not a business, it's not a for profit. They don't know where the levers are they don't know how to pull them or in what order to make the government hum for the American people. And instead, Elon Musk, that shouldn't be anywhere near the government. And if Judge Chutkan and a couple of other federal judges have their way, he'll be bounced from the government. But in the meantime, he sends out the email. Donald Trump says, I think that's a good email. And then the lawsuits start. The AFL cio, remember them, the largest union representing federal workers, they filed a lawsuit in San Francisco and told the judge, the Office of Personnel Management can't hire and fire people. They don't have that power. Each agency has to hire and fire on its own. We got an email from the HR Department, Elon Musk at opm, telling us we're fired or we have to fill out a form to justify our existence. That is the biggest employment fraud in the history of American government. And they amended their lawsuit. And now a federal judge is gonna be calling Elon Musk onto the t. Onto the, onto the pavement or the carpet, Sorry, onto the carpet. Now, where they're getting themselves tied up in knots is they don't want to admit in the Trump administration how much power Elon Musk has. And so they'll say, judge Elon Musk is just a special advisor, doesn't even work for Doge. And judges like Chutkin are saying, really that, you know, I'll remind you not to lie to the court is one of her last orders. I can read and I can see what he's doing and I can see the allegations against him. You may not think he has that formal power, but he has the de facto power. He has what we call, if it's not actual authority. He has implied authority. He has apparent authority, and the Principal Trump is letting people think he has that authority. It's classic apparent authority agency theory. I learned it in almost at first grade in the first year of law school. And so you got, you got the five day Trump all excited. Elon Musk doubling down on this novel way to fire people or have them fire themselves. And then we had the MAGA war because all the cabinet level people think they're the leaders. And so each one of them, Marco Rubio at State, Scott Bessant at Treasury, Tulsi Gabbard at National Intelligence. I can't even believe I'm putting these words together on a kitchen magnet thing. Tulsi Gabbard, head of National Intelligence, Cash Patel, FBI. All of them told their employees, ignore Elon Musk See that guy over there who act like he was acting like he's in charge, Just ignore him. You know, he's like that weird uncle at Thanksgiving. You got to listen to him to be polite, but you don't have to do a darn thing he says. And if he asks you to go in the bedroom with him, don't. So we got that going on. And then because that looked like an embarrassment, the Trump administration made it official and officially told employees they can ignore. Ignore the Musk email. But that doesn't stop the lawsuit because it's obviously a craven attempt and a callous attempt to try to get out from under a future preliminary injunction and also to stop Elon Musk from being embarrassed. Elon Musk, by the way, is continuing to make money with the government, the government that he advises. And he's up for a series of other new contracts, new military procurement contracts and the like, which I'm sure will be awarded to him. What a shock. And what a surprise. And then we've got the resistance of the federal worker. Oh, hell hath no scorn like that of a. Of a federal worker. First you got a group of Doge employees, 20 of them, who said, we are technologists who were hired to help the American people, and we can't do it working for that guy Elon Musk, you know, the guy that the government and Trump says isn't in charge of Doge. Well, 20 people just said he is in charge of Doge and just tendered their resignation and said, we're Audi. We can't. We're not going to be the pawns. We're not going to be the technologist instruments for the destruction of America, its privacy, its confidential information, or all of it. We're out. Right. So that happened. Then. On top of all of that, you've got my. One of my favorite stories today, which is that at least one federal agency decided to troll the Trump administration and Elon Musk particularly. And when its workers came back to work today, because Elon Musk ordered everybody back to work, no more remote locations. They were greeted to giant screens bolted to the ceiling, playing on a loop, an artificial intelligence. Deep fake. I think it was a deep fake of, of a Trump. It's a video. A Trump sucking the toes of Elon Musk under the caption along live, the real king over and over and over again. I said on my hot take on this that when regimes fall and collapse, you know, from a value standpoint or from a military coup, while the regime change is Going on state run television often runs on a loop. Things like, you know, the pick a ballet, you know, Swan Lake or classical music, a song from classical music over and over and over again. That's how the people know there's been a regime change. Oh, is Swan Lake still on? Okay, it's not over yet. So that's how I interpret the federal workers firing back with this loop. Right. Which it took a long time to get down. It was also a signal of support to the other federal workers. Like, we're with you. You know, pardon me, we're with you on this. Don't, don't worry. We got your back. You're not alone. You're not alone. We're not alone. That's why we joined together all over the place. I might as touch Tuesday nights here on POPOC Live, Wednesday and Saturdays on Legal af. We join together. You're helping me build a new pro democracy channel called Legal AF, the YouTube channel Legal AFMTN. And it's that resistance that takes many forms that's important in this particular moment in time. As Judge Kofador said when he wrote his preliminary injunction on birthright citizenship. And during the hearing, we don't want history to look back and say where were the judges and where were the lawyers when this was going on? And I'll add one more to that. Where, where was the YouTube Midas Touch community in all of this, you know, because we are the new press, we are the new independent, independent minded commentators and providing analysis to you. Let me talk for a minute before our first break. Let me talk for a minute about what just happened at MSNBC because I'm livid. Our brothers are livid because we know a lot of these people, they've been on the show. I'm personal friends with Katie Fang. I knew her when she was a up and coming young lawyer and partner in Miami. When I was a little bit older lawyer in Miami, I was a mentor to her. She was an amazing mentee. I wanted to see her become a judge. She had bigger things that she wanted to do nationally and became, working her way up, an amazing legal correspondent and the host of the Katie Fang Show. But since they've decided the way to curry and pander, curry favor with and pander the Trump administration, from an MSNBC standpoint, from a Comcast standpoint, the cable company that owns all these channels is that they were going to get rid of DEI hires and they're not even DEI hires. What I mean by that is not that they were hired because of dei. They just got rid of, in a perverse response to Donald Trump's attack on dei, they just got rid of everybody that was diverse. So they got rid of the two black journalists and the one Asian journalist and the one Hispanic journalist. You know, now I get, they looked at their demographics and I was actually surprised by this. The average age on msnbc, the average of its viewership. Guess put it in my, put it in my comments right now. I'll wait a second. It's 77 0. You know, it's the aging of an audience. Nothing wrong with that. Our audience tends to be, you know, somewhere in the 50, 60 range on average. But, and I get what they're trying to do. They're trying to recalibrate and reload, taking a page out of independent media like ours, free independent media like ours, without outside advisors, without a public, a public company to worry about. And they're saying, huh, we got to go into opposition and resistance against the Trump administration. Yeah, no shit. What do you, what do you think we've been doing for the last five years? Well, welcome, welcome to the party. You're a little bit late, but I don't understand why, why Joy Reid, Jonathan Capehart and Katie Fang aren't part of that resistance. You know, I invite all of them to come on our network, to come on my show, to come on any Midas touch show. You know, I'd love to get Katie Fang to join the legal AF channel or the Midas touch channel or both in a heartbeat. But you have that going on, which appears to be clear pandering and the bending of the knee by mainstream media that has to worry about Donald Trump and their FCC licenses and everything else, while CBS tries to put up a fight even though they got their own FCC problems, led by a Trumper, led by an election denier in Brandon Carr who runs the Federal Communications Commission. They all got to get their licenses. They all got to get their regulatory approvals for mergers and acquisitions. CBS gets sued for $20 billion by Donald Trump personally because they had the temerity to edit out certain aspects of Kamala Harris's interview. I mean, to paraphrase a new lawsuit or a new motion paper filed today in Iowa by the Des Moines Register and by the Gannett papers. Donald Trump's a sore winner. He won that election. What's the damage? What's the issue? You didn't like that. They cut, they didn't play her entire five minute answer. They only played a minute of her answer. That's called editorial discretion. You know, if you don't want editorial discretion as a viewer. You know where to go. It's called C Span. You want, they just play the whole darn thing and they don't tell you what's important and you have to sit there through four hours gavel to gavel coverage. That's a different, that's a different business model I would suggest. So Gannett and CBS fire back in their briefs in which Donald Trump sued Ann Selzer, one of the leading Iowa pollsters who created the Iowa poll, because he didn't like that he won within the margin of error, but didn't like that he was on the wrong side of the margin of error in the last reporting. And he's therefore claiming some sort of consumer fraud. It's just a press release. It's just a political screed masquerading as a lawsuit. So CBS fired back there. They also said, hey, you said it impacted you. Let's take a look at your financials. Let's get your personal financials. Donald Trump, I don't think he's going to like that much. At the same time, Associated Press finally decided maybe they should fight back and not be barred and banned from Air Force One and the, and the Oval Office from doing reporting. But on, on balance, mainstream media, whether which is owned by public companies, which is owned by billionaire oligarchs are scared of Donald Trump and they're scared of the chilling effect of being attacked by his Federal Communications Commission, being attacked by his FBI, being attacked by his Department of Justice when they're trying to return shareholder value. We are not concerned with those things here on the My Stash network or on legal AF or on POPOC Live. And we're going to talk about, when I come back, we're going to talk about the hollowing out of American values and how it's playing out around the world as Europe unites behind a an all a right wing German leader. Is this 1942 and who's, and who's doing the uniting? It's Donald Trump uniting the world against us with his crazy tariffs and his attack on democracy led by our allies. And then I want to talk briefly about some updates and some of the preliminary injunctions of why it matters to our way of life that the last firewall appears to be federal courts. But first, let's take our first break here on POPOC Live.
- [26:40]
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Michael Popak
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Michael Popak
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Michael Popak
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Michael Popak
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Michael Popak
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- [31:27]
Michael Popak
Let's talk about American values, because nobody's really talking about that, neither in the Trump administration or in mainstream media. Values for me matter. There has to be a meaning, an essence, something in the, in the fiber of our being as Americans that distinguish us from other countries. What does it mean to be an American? You know, if we were a company, I guess this would be some sort of tabletop exercise where we go around. What's our corporate ethos, what, what distinguishes us from all the other companies you know, but this is, this is bigger, this is greater. Who are we as Americans? Is what Donald Trump is doing? Does that represent who we are as a people or who we want the world to see us as? What does it mean to be the leader. Why were we called the leader of the free world? And what does that mean? What are the values that we're supposed to be upholding that has been lost in the equation of this. The velocity at which Donald Trump is trying to destroy the, the relationship between the government and its people. He's not trying to reshape it, he's trying to destroy it and implement policies and values that are far out of step with the. The average American person. There is nobody, I can assure you, that believes that from a foreign policy standpoint, pissing off and alienating and sticking a stick in the eye of our allies is helpful. To what end? The American economy was doing just fine before Donald Trump got in office. The American economy is complex. It hums on its own frequency. But you have to have a role for monetary and fiscal policy, a role for the US Government in the treasury, in the treasury notes and bonds arena, and a role of the US Government.
- [33:26]
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- [33:28]
Michael Popak
That is a major part of what makes our American economy hum. We are not a pure capitalist market. Nobody, frankly, on this network, or if you can hear my voice, would want to live in a purely capitalist society where only those who have the ability to make lots of money will succeed and everybody else lives in poverty and on the street. That you don't want to do to ameliorate that. We have. Nor, by the way, nor are we living in a pure democracy. We're not. We don't vote. It's not majority vote. We're not in Greece. It's not ancient Greece. Right. Majority vote doesn't, doesn't make policy. Every major decision gets done by a majority vote of your neighbors. We don't live in a pure democracy. We live in, at best, a constitutional republic that has democratic features. We're so not pure democratic or Democrat, by the way, democratic system that on the scale of freedom of the press in the world, we're number 45. That, that goes back to my, my horror and my shock to wake up under a Trump administration that is soulless and valueless. And the fact that we are not in the top five of freedom of the press protections for a country founded on freedom of the press is embarrassing and disgusting and depraved. But this is what happens when even for a short time, we elect somebody like Donald Trump, who has taken the beating heart of American brand of democracy and freedom, the shining light on a hill, and shoved it into a black garbage bag, where it remains until we reclaim our country at the midterms. There is no better or worse reflection of the disassociation of American values from policy than what just took place at the United Nations a day or so ago, where they had a vote like they do every year for the last three and a half years or more of the Russia attack on Ukraine, killing millions of innocent civilians and taking land that didn't belong to them, violating their sovereignty of a democratic country in the heart of Europe, in the Balkans. Right. And every year, in some way, shape or form, the United nations votes to condemn Ukraine's aggression. Especially now when there's supposedly a peace deal being negotiated without Ukraine with. Between Donald Trump and his. And his lover is. There's no other way to call it. You know, he's a Russian sympathizer. Vladimir Putin. Putin dictating the terms of the. Of his peace against Ukraine, which fought valiantly with lots of our money over the last almost four years, and fought Russia, which is, I think, four times larger than it, to a standstill. Sure, there's a lot of rubble in Ukraine, but Kiev remains standing. Zelinsky is more popular than he was before. He's not an undemocratic dictator, as Donald Trump calls him. Just the fact that Donald Trump reaches out to attack our allies on a consistent basis, whether it's J.D. vance, remember him, by the way? Who is. Where is he? Where is he these days? Whether It's Vice President J.D. vance addressing a group in Munich of allies, democratic allies, and excoriating them and chastising them in a very undignified, undiplomatic way because they don't practice the Trumpian brand of democracy. What is that? That's democracy wrapped in fascism is what it is. It's a pop. It's a phony populism being used to anesthetize the American people into believing that he is for them. Although there's already signs that it's not working. The anesthesia is wearing off, and the American people are waking up groggy and in pain, like they just had, you know, four root canals at the same time. Courtesy of Dr. Trump. Yeah, so because look at. Consumer confidence is in the trash, and that's a leading indicator. And then we're gonna see the Fed have to step in. Then we're gonna see slowdown in production, Then we're gonna see less dollars being spent. More federal workers are gonna get fired under Donald Trump. So there goes those paychecks as consumers, we're gonna have less ability to export. There goes that. We got rid of foreign aid and every American worker behind it. There goes that. And you see where this is going. Donald Trump is the destroyer of worlds. He's not the maker of worlds, and he is the destroyer of the American brand of democracy. And so to hear that there was a UN vote where the three countries that joined together. I'll spot you the first two. Russia and North Korea. Name the third. The United States of America. That Donald Trump authorized Elise Stefanik, his UN ambassador to be to who's also morally bankrupt, to vote nay with North Korea. There's only three countries. And Russia against the resolution to admonish Russia for attacking Ukraine because it's inconsistent with Donald Trump's fake news, fake facts that Ukraine is the dictator, Zelinsky is the dictator, and he asked for it. Here we go. The victim asked for it. What does that sound like? Only somebody that would be adjudged to be a sex offender would come up with that approach to foreign policy to attack one of our allies. Zelinsky asked for it. Why? Because he wanted to be part of NATO. You know who's freaking out right now? Poland. Poland's like, this is how the United States protects Ukraine as soon as they change administrations. Poland's in NATO, but Donald Trump doesn't believe in NATO, and so NATO is starting not to believe in the United States. So with the elections in Germany, which is a direct result of Donald Trump and not in a good way, we have a far right center right new premier prime minister in, in Germany, who's trying to unite Europe against the United States. What is this, the Axis powers again? The allied powers. He's going to start rolling through Europe. So you got Macron and the new German guy, Pats or Spats, whatever his name is, who are fighting for the leadership of Europe, telling all of the other European countries in emergency meetings, we can't rely on the United States anymore, not on funding, not on national intelligence, on security, not on intelligence, not on the economy, not on monetary policy, not on trade, not on anything. See, if we go America first, then every country goes their country first, and then where are we? Then the spigots turn off of free trade. See, I'm a free trade person. Yeah. We turn off the spigots and therefore the entire world economy closes its. You know what? It's in the back and we don't have an economy any longer. That's what happened during COVID when everything shut down at the same time and. And banks decided they weren't going to lend either, which required what the US government under Joe Biden to step in, put $3 trillion and jumpstart the heart of the American economy. Because it's that beating heart of the American economy and democracy that makes the rest of the globe spin. I don't mean that in a disparaging way against, you know, we have 138 countries that watch Midas Touch Network and Legal AF and I love and respect every one of them. I can't tell you how many emails and direct messages I get from them. However, we they will even acknowledge, they have acknowledged to me the obvious, which is America is needed. It's sort of like one of those, you know, DC comic movies, you know, imagining the world without Superman. It's not. And we don't have a Superman right now because we got Donald Trump running the White House. And that is where we as an American people need to send a message at the midterm elections. It's right around the corner. I mean they'll be here sooner than you think. And we have to vote the bastards out and run them out on a rail and put Democrats back into power to balance this, this unequal no week, no balanced government. Because you see what Donald Trump is doing while he has all the cards, got to rip the cards away from him. Otherwise we can't even use the impeachment and conviction method within the Congress, which is what our founding fathers wanted us to use to stop a rogue criminal president. We don't have that. When the rogue criminal president has completely co opted the other two branches of government. Right. Or at least two chambers of one of one branch of government. It's up to the federal courts. Now when I come back from my next break, we're going to talk about the federal courts and what they're currently doing. I'll use the loose, I'll use as an example a couple of recent decisions related to the federal courts. But we got some amazing. We say pro democracy. I think that has a meaning. If you think pro democracy has a meaning, leave me a comment. I think it does. It's a shorthand for what we're trying to do here. It's fair minded people, it's free thinking people. It's people who want to get the facts and analysis from a person here in this case Popoc live that they can trust, that they've learned to trust over the last five years of my, of my commentary. Am I being there for them in that trustworthy way? So one of the things that I want to do is to do a shout out to our sponsors because without them they are, we can't do this without them. There's no other way to put it. And they know what our, what our commentary. Nobody tells me what to say, but they know in general what Midas Touch stands for, what Legal af, the seal of Legal AF stands for, what the seal of Popo stands for. And they're, they're there for. We have more advertisers now than we ever did before and more, many more since the election when we were worried like, oh, what's going to happen? You know what happened? You stepped forward, they stepped forward. We're stepping forward to build a network together and we do it in. That's one way. Another way is to. Another way to support us is we got a legal a patreon patreon.com legal af another way to support us is of course hit the subscribe button on Legal AF, the YouTube channel. And then as most people have heard, I have a new law firm that I founded in this moment and for this moment called the POPOC Firm. And you can find it at the website just like that. And I'm focused on catastrophic injury cases where you need help. I'm representing currently from our Legal AF community, a family who's whose daughter died during one of the plane crashes. The American Airlines one of the Potomac. I have another family that we represent in Oregon, in Oregon related to a tractor trailer accident. I'm focused on the catastrophic injuries that turn your life upside down and for which you need, you need help. And I'm working with an amazing group of plaintiffs lawyers around the country for that. So go to www the popoc firm. And also we have a 1-800-number-1-877-popak AF. Let's take our next break.
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Michael Popak
All right, welcome back. We're in the home stretch. Let's pick up with these 92 cases and our 34 or so injunctions and temporary restraining orders. We have a new one that just came in, a few that have just came in in the last couple of days. One just today, Judge Ali Khan, a Biden appointee, just issued her memorandum and opinion to against the Trump administration, against the Office of Management and Budget, against Ross Vaught, who is the self proclaimed father of the of Project 2025 because she doesn't believe anything that the Trump administration has to say in her courtroom about funding. Remember in the beginning of February, Donald Trump thought it'd be fun to shut off $3 trillion worth of funding to not for profits that rely on federal grants. They've applied for them, the Congress has awarded them and they should be getting them. But the executive branch under Russ Vaught thinks that the way to control an out of control administrative state is to shut off its funding to to impound its funds, which the President's not allowed to do. He's allowed to execute. Yeah, he's allowed to choose the means and methods to accomplish the goals of Congress, but he can't cut off funding already allocated. So they thought it'd Be fun to do that. Not for profits. And state. State programs that rely on federal funding cut it all off with no notice. No, no, no. No time for anybody. Just like they cut off the $60 billion worth of aid through USAID. Let's find out. Let's see what happens when I push this button and two federal judges have stepped in. One I'll talk about now. The other one was Judge McConnell up in Rhode island and put a stop to it now in a new memorandum opinion. Let me read to you what the judge said today about the arbitrary and capricious, the opposite of reasonable decision making, if you can call it that, of the Trump administration. This is on page 29. The arbitrary and capricious review at this stage of the litigation remains largely unchanged from the court's earlier opinion. The touchstone of this inquiry is rationality and defendants actions flunk the test. That's Trump. Defendants still cannot provide a reasonable explanation for why they needed to freeze all federal financial assistance in less than a day to safeguard valuable taxpayer resources. Evaluating funding priorities can be done without needing to starve citizens or deny critical health services. The potential 3 trillion in finance in financial assistance implicated by the freeze is a breathtakingly large sum of money to suspend practically overnight, Judge Ali Khan said. And rather than taking a measured approach to identify purportedly wasteful spending, defendants cut the fuel supply to a vast, complicated nationwide machine, seemingly without consideration for the consequences of that decision. Doesn't that sum up all of what we're watching with the Trump administration? It's as if he never served as president before. He just cut the fuel supply to the plane while it's flying. I mean, I hate to use a plane analogies at this moment in time, considering there's been five major crashes while he's been president. Planes are falling out of the sky, which is an indication of a failing administration. But the judges, like Judge Ali Khan, have had enough. They're this close to finding somebody in contempt of court. She already said, in the same order that she doesn't believe a word that Donald Trump and his administration says, that it appears to her that they're trying very hard to do an end run around federal judge orders in order to act like they're in compliance when they really aren't. And that is the shit out of her. That's a legal term. Federal judges are starting quickly to realize some, many of which are the same Jan.6 judges that handled all those Jan.6 convictions, that the Trump administration, its Department of Justice and those lawyers that appear for it can't be trusted. And that means once you lose your credibility in a courtroom, you've lost everything. I don't have anything but my credibility. When I look a judge in the eye in a courtroom and I tell them that a body of law stands for a certain proposition or a case stands for a certain proposition, I'm right, and they can trust me. And they know they can trust me. They may not agree with my ultimate analysis, but they know if I tell them there's a case on point, that there's a fact on point, they know. I am not dissembling, I am not lying. I am being candid to the tribunal. I am being honest with my advocacy, and that's to my client's advantage. And so the lawyers that are coming in there for the plaintiffs, right, the public interest groups, the states, the attorneys general, the groups like Democracy Forward, they all have wind at their sails because they are trusted by the federal judges, especially in sharp, sharp contrast to the lawyers for the Department of Justice that are taking unreasonable, unreal, not rational, irrational positions in front of the judges, telling them not to believe. You know, it's like the old country song, you're going to believe me or your lying eyes judge? And the judges are going, yeah, we're going to believe my lying eyes. This is one of the reasons we already have the success rate that we have in the 92 cases. I can't believe the number in the 92 cases in the last five weeks in which there's 34 injunctions in total. Right? The winners are 34. And the Trump administration, in terms of winning is four. So they're 34 and four. Those are hall of Fame numbers, son. 34 to four winning percentage. That's even better than the first time around. Now, there was a lot of fear the first. I remember getting together with people even on the Legal AF YouTube channel that I curate. Some of my friends on court accountability and court of accountability Action, they were saying, I don't know, with all these federal judges that Biden that. Sorry, that Trump appointed and Biden not being able to get everything appointed before he left office, I'm worried that we're not going to be as successful in the second term as we were in the first term in pinning back Donald Trump and tying him down. At the time, I said, I don't see it that way. I think there's plenty of Biden, Clinton, Obama appointed judges in all the places that matter to our cases, like up and down the original 13 colonies. Well, not all the 13, 13. The top six or seven from New England, sort of down above the Mason Dixon line. And then California, Oregon and Washington, Illinois, maybe Maryland and D.C. i'm not shouting out states. And if you live not in one of those states and you're fair minded and progressive, moderate, independent, all of that, welcome. I'm not criticizing your state. I'm just saying these, these are where the judges live that matter to the things that matter to you by being here on POPOC Live. So, you know, that's why we're filing in Massachusetts and Rhode island and New Hampshire, in Maryland, in Virginia, in D.C. in Oregon, in Washington and California. That's why we're staying away from the rest of the country. We're not filing in Louisiana, we're not filing in Texas. Nothing to see here. Move along. We're not. Right now, we're not filing in Florida. Yeah, because they're untrustworthy from a standpoint that we can't trust the judges there to do the right thing. And we certainly can't trust the courts of the appeal that sit over those places. The 11th Circuit over Florida, Georgia, the 5th Circuit over Louisiana and Texas. Yeah, we got to stay away from them. There's a reason, though. The maga, Republicans and Trump flood the zone and they only go to those states. You know, we go to the other ones now. There's nothing that MAGA can do about it. The fact that we're filing first through all these places, there's no second filing. Nobody on the other side can go and ask. I mean, I guess they can go to Texas and somebody can ask for a declaration, declaration that everything Donald Trump is doing is lawful and constitutional. But that's really not how, that's not how ripe controversies live. Controversies work. You got to have standing because you're being damaged, you're being injured by the policy, which means you're automatically not on the Trump side. And what I'm seeing, to give a summary of what I'm seeing with the tremendous success rate is that that Donald Trump is, because he's gone so rogue, because he's gone so far away from American values to bring this POPOC live to a completion. Because he's gone so far away from the anchors of our American values, because his executive orders are so attenuated from the branch of government that he occupies and where he's trying to do a turf war with Congress and Congress looks like they're trying to give him the turf that he wants. I mean, Lisa Murkowski, Republican, said don't give the this out of control president. This Leviathan of a president, don't give him unfettered control. Don't give him, don't cede territory and turf that's ours. We have a job to do. We have a branch that we occupy. Right. We are the Article 1 of the Constitution is Congress article to the President, Article 3 the federal judges. We have, we have an anniversary to celebrate here on Popoc Live too. Yesterday was the anniversary of the 1807 case, or 18, sorry, 1805 case of Marbury versus Madison written by the great John Marshall, the first United States Supreme Court Chief justice who without Marbury versus Madison, which I spent three weeks studying in law school with the late great Walter Dellinger, former Solicitor General of the United States, Duke law professor, father of Hampton Dellinger, who's in a fight right now with the Trump administration to continue to be the, the head of the Office of Special Counsel. He was thrown out a week into a five year term by Donald Trump. Whatever it was I Marbury versus Without Marbury versus Madison, without John Marshall, there be no United States Supreme Court as a third co equal branch of government. That case basically put the Supreme Court in business. Even though the Constitution established a Supreme Court court, it didn't really set the agenda for it. What it would do and how it would it be the final arbiter of law. Until that moment, executive branch people like Andrew Jackson would think, well, I have an equal interpretation of the law. This sounds like Donald Trump, right, with his executive orders. Only I can can give the executive branch opinion about what law means. No, there's no executive branch opinion about what law means. You can take positions in court, you can take, you can interpret law and regulations, but they're the ultimate arbiter of that is the judiciary branch, the judicial branch. Only because of Marbury vs Madison, only because of John Marshall. There's a reason. If you're lucky enough to go to Washington, take a tour and go to the United States Supreme Court, you will see a giant statue of John Marshall right in the center of the rotunda of the Supreme Court, right near where you actually go in to see the court itself. There's another statue of him, a smaller bust, but this is like gigantic. It really demonstrates how much influence he had. We wouldn't be talking about the United States Supreme Court. It would just be a lackey of the executive branch, which is what he's been trying to do if we didn't have John Marshall. So a celebration because even though we don't agree with the current Supreme Court, if we didn't have at least a Supreme Court, we would be in deeper, deeper, we'd have deeper, deeper problems than we have even now. We got to count on federal courts at the appellate level to to make our rules. 99% of case law is made by the appellate courts below the United States Supreme Court. Sure, they take 60 cases a year, but there are thousands and thousands of other cases. Remember what I said. There's going to be 4,000 cases against the Trump administration. Only about 250 of those of those 4,000 are going to make it to the United States Supreme Court in four years. That's it. And the rest are going to rise and fall at the trial court level and at the appellate court level. And we're here for it and you're here for me. And I appreciate you. This is about our 12th or 15th episode of the POPOC Live new podcast. We're going to roll it out on audio version version in about a month or two. You're helping us build another pro democracy channel. I'm so honored to be here with you. Take a moment, hit the free subscribe button for Midas Touch. Come on over Legal A F M TN help us get to half a million in the next week or two. If you are the one that rolls the odometer to 500,000, I'll arrange a personal phone call with you. We'll figure out who that was. Somebody can go look and tell me you're the 500,000 and I'll figure out a way to have a direct conversation with you. How's that? That's my promise. So until my next POPOC Live next Tuesday at 8pm Eastern Time. Until my next legal af the podcast Wednesdays and Saturdays right here on the Midas Touch Network and or my next reporting and curating on legal layout the YouTube channel. I'm Michael Popak signing off. I'm Michael Popak and I got some big news for our audience. Most of you know me as the co founder of Midas touches Legal AF and the Legal AF YouTube channel.
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