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Michael Popak
This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. It's tax season and we're all a bit tired of numbers, but here's one you need to $16.5 billion. That's how much the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud last year. Now, here's a good number. 100 million. That's how many data points Lifelock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed. Save up to 40% your first year. @lifelock.com podcast terms apply. I'm Michael Popak, and you're on POPOC Live. Some people ask me in questions. How do you prepare for the show? Well, listen, I'm preparing all week for a show like this with all the hot takes I do on the Midas Touch network and of course on Legal AF, the YouTube channel. But if you want to see my notes, that's it, folks. One thin page, high wire act, no net jumping from the high board into a shot glass. That's what we love about live tv. Nobody puts me in the corner. There's no censorship. I mean, I could send this to the brothers, but what are they going to make of it? Let's dive right in. What is it that got me motivated? I try to think, what is my motivation? It's like an actor in a drama class. What's my motivation? Here is it Cory Booker, who's 25 hours into a filibuster to oppose Trump policies in advance of Saturday and our hands off movement. The hands off mass protests which are coming on Saturday, look them up. MoveOn.org is leading it and where they are supporting it, is it that? Although that's a pretty good thing, of course. Side note, his bodyguard got picked up on a weapons charge in the Capitol while he was filibustering. But that's for another time in another place. The only time Republicans seem to be upset about guns in public places is when it's the Democrat senator's bodyguard. If it was a school, well, you fill out the rest. Was it that? Was it another law firm, including another one that I know well, Wilkie Farr and Gallagher in New York bended over, bending the knee and paying what now is the new tribute, $100 million to Donald Trump and the Trump administration. And this one, I mean, listen, you guys know, and I'll talk more about it, that the one where Scad and Arps, where I started my career, where I was a proud alumni, alumna alumni. That one, of course, cut me to the quick. But Wilkie Farr and Gallagher was the firm that was representing and represented so successfully Shay Moss and Ruby Freeman against Rudy Giuliani and got that $150 million judgment and was collecting on it. Are they gonna fire their client now? Are they gonna get on the wrong side of history because they had a cut a deal with Donald Trump that was just announced. Why Wilkie Farr and Gallagher, we hardly knew you. I'll talk about Willkie Farr and Gallagher, Scad and Arps and those on the other side, the right side of the angels, firms like Perkins Coy, firms like Jenner and Block, firms like Wilmer Hale that suing Donald Trump and are winning in the courts. But other firms are risk adverse. They just want to write checks, including Shay Moss and Ruby Freeman's. We got a new order coming out of California. Judge Chen there, who has decided that hardworking, patriotic Venezuelans who are here, not undocumented, documented under the temporary protective status, should not be deported, should not have their status ended just because Donald Trump and Christy Noem are dripping with animus and discrimination against the Venezuelans and the Haitian people. For good measure, I'm going to talk about the new nationwide injunction. I'm sure it's driving people in the Trump administration absolutely up the wall, including Donald Trump. And cue Carolyn Levette, the press secretary. Then we've got all of this malarkey. You know, I'll use a Joe Biden term. I'm so nostalgic for Joe Biden, aren't you? It seems like so long ago and like another galaxy far, far away. But it was only 75 days ago that Biden was still our president. But Biden warned us, of course, as the Kamala Harris about what we would be doing here and what we'd be experiencing here, as we did on Legal A F and on the middle station network. And let me just debunk using the malarkey phrase from Biden. Let me debunk what, what's going on with this third term nonsense? Okay, I am telling you straight. Meet me on camera two. By the way, I only have one camera. Meet me, meet me on camera 2. Donald Trump knows that he cannot get a third term. Donald Trump, even Donald Trump and his people around him know there's a 22nd amendment and there's no way around it unless you amend the Constitution and amend out the 22nd Amendment, which is not happening because let me remind everybody, it's 2/3 of the states have to approve that. Really? 2/3 of the states. I got 22 that look blue to me. And 2/3 of the House and the Senate. But why is Donald Trump knowing that he can't get a third term? Why does he keep talking about it? It's a strategy. We can't let it work. I'll talk more about it here on POPAK Live. Then Tariff Day. Liberation Day is Wednesday. The big day, the big hands off. Hands off my body. Hands off the women in my life and their body. Hands off our policies, our democracy, our economy. That day is Saturday, April 5th. Many ways to participate in that, many ways. You can phone bank, you can knock on doors, you can gather in the streets, you can write your congressperson. You got to do something productive on Saturday. We truck, we talk. Sorry. We talk truth to each other here first before we talk truth to power. And in talking truth to each other, we also have to mobilize. I don't want to wait around until midterms to just hit the ballot box, do you? I want to do something in advance besides voter registration. Talk about all that then. We've got. Donald Trump is on a pardon spree again. It sounds like a crime spree because it really is. He's never met a fraudster that he hasn't decided to pardon. Financial fraud. That's right up Donald Trump's alley. He's convicted of financial fraud, of course. He started handing out pardons this week like a PEZ dispenser, including what we think is the first pardon in history of a president pardoning. Not a human being, not a live person, not even a dead person. A corporation. A cryptocurrency based corporation at that. So I'm gonna tie all of this together in a beautiful red ribbon. We're gonna do it together here on POPOC Live. I'm so pleased that you're here with me. Let me start with law firms. You know, that's my profession. Proud officer of the court, took an oath of office 35 years ago. Am I up to 35? 35 years ago, I took an oath to uphold the Constitution, to be ethical, to give candor to the tribunal, candor to my opposing party, represent my clients zealously. And I believe in my oath. And I use my oath in different ways. I'm not practicing law as much as I used to now, but I am practicing here to protect democracy and use my skills to. To keep us together and talk truth to each other. Right? So that's my way of doing it. But law firms matter in this country. Big law matters in this country because it's the counterweight to. It's the counterweight to fascism and when you have an out of control president, a limp noodle for a Congress. What's left? Federal courts, the right federal courts, the right federal judges, the Supreme Court, God help us. And lawyers that know what they're doing. And Donald Trump has gotten sideways and has him on big law in his enemy list for a long, long time. Big law the first time around. And after Donald Trump participated and led an insurrection and was impeached twice and was convicted and multiply indicted, they abandoned him. He was radioactive. No big law wanted to represent him. Look at the lawyers that ended up representing Donald Trump that are now arrayed in our Department of Justice or yeah, in our Department of Justice, including now Alina Haba, Lena Haba, never practiced a day in federal court, didn't clerk for a federal judge, wasn't a U.S. attorney, had no real practice to speak of. She represented parking lots. She is now your U.S. attorney for New Jersey. Todd Blanch, the number two lawyer in the Department of Justice now had to leave his law firm because they didn't want him representing Donald Trump. So he had a one lawyer law firm. Chris Kice, remember him? Same thing. One lawyer law firm and all the rest. Three, four person law firms, big law, 2,000, 3,000 lawyers, billions of dollars in revenue, said, yeah, no thanks. But their pro bono programs, which Donald Trump hates because he hates diversity, equity, inclusion, he hates representing the rule of law. Pro bono is the way that big law always historically gave back to our society. Pro bono means for the public good for free. So they would represent in the case of Wilkie Farr and Gallagher, a New York based firm, I'm going to talk a lot about here in the beginning that just bent over and said in a big declaration, they're going to give $100 million worth of pro bono assistance and basically turn their diversity and equity and inclusion policies out the door and turn it over to Donald Trump and their hiring practices. Well, that's not the Wilkie Farr and Gallagher that I know because their pro bono program, led by the chairman of their litigation department, led by the guy who Fortune 10 companies hire for disaster, disaster recovery. That guy, he was representing Shay Moss and Ruby Freeman. That's what pro bono programs and big firms do. It's a way for them to assuage their guilt for making billions of dollars in capitalism. Representing hedge funds, representing investment banks, representing one side or the other of a merger or an acquisition. That's how they make 3 billion, 5 billion, 100 million, these mega large firms. But through their pro bono programs, they give back the Capital punishment program, the Innocence Project, representing criminal defendants who can't afford, you know, 1500 to $2000 an hour or more lawyers. These lawyers pitch in. The younger lawyers do the grunt work, but the senior lawyers supervise pro bono. Pro bono programs are the lifeblood of our public service in America for lawyers. And Donald Trump knew that. So he wanted to clip it and cut the fuel line. So he went after these law firms and threatened these law firms and put three already on a blacklist to hit them where they live, their pocketbook to make it so they can't represent people before the federal government. One, one firm in particular. Not. It might have been, I think, Jenner Block. Jenner and Block or Wilmer Hale. I think Wilbur Hale has a hundred current matters before the federal government on behalf of clients. It represents a half a billion dollars worth of revenue for them. I'm not sure they go out of business, but it'd be pretty close. And so Donald Trump had a list, you know, sort of like McCarthyism. I have a list in my pocket of 22 communists in the American, our government, you know, no list at all. So he had a list of 14 law firms. He started rolling them out one at a time. Perkins Coy don't like Perkins Coy because they went after me during the Russia investigation. Wilmer Hale don't like Wilmer Hale because I think Robert Mueller ended up working there. Jenner and Block, we were going to represent Jack Smith. You know, wherever the, the Russia, Russia, Russia investigation lawyers went. Donald Trump is out for retribution led by Stephen Miller, the non lawyer lawyer consulari for him inside the White House, who ran his own BS law firm called America first, which is basically Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's personal law firm. And because it's really. Let me just say this out loud. The one thing we learned, if we learned anything from the signal chat debacle, the breach brigade, is that Stephen Miller's in charge. It's not Elon Musk. As I predicted a long time ago, Stephen Miller calls the shots. You could see it by the Snapchat when he jumped in when J.D. vance got cold feet and said maybe we shouldn't bomb the Houthis. I'm not sure helping the Europeans with their trade right now in Suez Canal is consistent with, with the President with POTUS belief. I'm not sure he's thought this through. And then out of the blue, the cold dead live hand out of the crypt of Stephen Miller came into the chat and said, well, what I heard from the President was The following and it should be followed. Okay, okay. You know, he. So you know, it's the wizard of Oz. Donald Trump's in the front with the big puffy head. A lot of smoke and lights. Oh, goes there. But the person behind there run into the controls. Stephen Miller. So Wilkie Farr and Gallagher spent. I spent a lot of time talking about Wilkie Farr and Gallagher with high praise about them representing Shea Moss and Ruby Freeman. Remember those two election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, who got horribly doxxed and defamed by Donald Trump and by Rudy Giuliani, including recently on his own podcast in which they said that they were passing a thumb drive back and forth to each other, the mother daughter team. All they were doing was this lowly paid, no paid job of being election workers counting ballots in Fulton County, Georgia. I, of all the people here, I've been not an election worker, but I've been in polling places. I've been an observer, you know, a, an election poll watcher. I've been a poll observer. I've been an attorney for the Democratic Party inside the room during early voting and other voting. I've been there. You know, you can, you can look me up. I was even, I was even in West Palm Beach, Florida, during the butterfly ballots and, and Bush versus Gore and watch the vote counting of those hanging chads. Remember that? That's a blast from the past. And that was my first taste of being in the media. I know my producer, who's slightly younger than me, is probably thinking, what is this boomer even talking about now? All right, I'm talking about. I was on Hardball with Chris Matthews, a brand new show reporting from West Palm Beach. I was brought back for a second show. I was part of a little town hall they brought together. There was like seven or eight of us in the, in the Sheridan Hotel in West Palm beach to talk about the hanging chats. And I got on the air and they liked me so much, they brought me back for a second show. We're talking 2000. Yeah. All right. Why am I bringing that up? Okay, so I've been in the room. All they're doing is counting. And when they're done with their counting, Shay Moss and Ruby Freeman put the ballots underneath in a black locked box. And the thing they were passing back to each other were not, as Sidney Powell led everybody to believe, you know, corrupted thumb drive that you stick into the, you know, the Dominion voting machines and the smartmatic software and you convert Trump votes into Biden. It was a breath mint to this day, Rudy Giuliani defames them and says that they were some sort of crackheads that were passing a thumb drive back and forth to each other. And they sued. And Rudy Giuliani lost before a jury, before Judge Beryl Howell in the District of Columbia, $148 million judgment. And then he went bankrupt to try to avoid it, and that didn't work. Then he tried to hide his Yankee memorabilia, and that didn't work. And then he tried to hide his house in Palm Beach, Mar A Lago adjacent. That didn't work. And then he tried to hide his co op in Manhattan. That didn't work. And it didn't work because the lawyers representing Ruby Freeman and Shane Moss were Wilkie Farr and Gallagher, the pro bono firm that just settled with Donald Trump for $100 million. You see why I'm upset? And this is on the heels, as I said it would be, of my old law firm, Scaddin Arps. God. Joe Flom, who was the first associate. Oh, this is a very. Oh, I just thought of something. See, it wasn't even on my page. Very ironic. April Fool's Day. Yeah, April 1st. You know what started April Fool's Day? April 1st, 1948. Scadden, the law firm. Yes, I know that. Because they drill that into you and then when they install the chip, when you're a first year summer associate or second year summer associate. And the first associate. Summer associate. First associate hired by Scaddin, Arp Slate Mar. Was Joe Flom. And Joe Flom ran that firm. He was a titan. He was about 5 foot tall, but he was a titan, especially in mergers and acquisitions of corporate law. And I assure you he is spinning in his graves for what Skad NARPS did. They were the first firm to take a look at the lands, the litigation landscape where Perkins Coy had already received a temporary restraining order from. From Barrel Howell. And it was likely the General Block and Wilmer Hale were going to get injunctions too. And now they have. As of last Friday. Right. Since I did my last show, three and oh plaintiffs. Three and oh rule of law against Trump administration. And how does Scadden read that a week ago? I don't know. Paul Weiss settled for $40 million. They took a couple of bad hits in the media. A couple of press cycles. Media cycles. They're still here. Let's do it. 100 million. That's the new bid price. It's like an auction. I feel like I'm at Sotheby's. Except law Firm law, professions, ethics and morals are being, are being auctioned off. You know, 40 million paddle. No, I won't do it. 100 million paddle. Yes, that's the number. And now that set the new tribute that's gotta be paid to Donald Trump. Sure, it's not in cash, but it's in something even more valuable. Lawyers. Lawyer time. I figured it out. It's the equivalent of about 80 lawyers working round the clock for a year on the Trump administration pet projects. And you know what those are? Anti gay, anti woman, anti transgender people, anti voting rights, voter suppression. So are the Wilkie foreign Gallaghers? Here's my question. Are they having now sacrificed their, their oath, are they now going to flip sides and fire Shane Moss and Ruby Freeman? Are they now going to do Donald Trump's bidding? Apparently so. Apparently so to. To avoid what? Any client that would fire you for being principled of being a lawyer wasn't worth having that client. Sure, you might lose, I don't know, a billion dollars. You may not, by the way, you may pick up a billion from other firms that are proud to be affiliated with you. But who would hire them to handle anything? Having them folded in front of the federal government so quickly. Shame on you, Wilkie Fart Gallagher. Let me move on. In fact, I want to talk about Cory Booker. I want to talk about Hands off. Big mass protest on Saturday. This coming Saturday, April 5, happens to be my wife's birthday. Happy birthday to Natasha Popak. And I also want to talk about Judge Chen and a landmark national injunction that he just entered. And also what it means we'll touch on the tariffs. Trouble in paradise, trouble in hell in the Trump administration with Signal gate being declared to be over. Case closed by Carolyn Levette. Not quite Carolyn. And Howard Lutnick maybe being on the chopping block. Who's that? He's your commerce secretary. Talk about all of that and more. But first, I'm going to take a word from our pro democracy sponsors. Let me say this on the way in. It is so important that we have sponsors for this show. It keeps the lights on, right? We are independent. We are without corporate sponsors. I mean corporate investment. We are completely, completely removed from the corporate media world. That's why there's so many articles going on right now. I mean, you can't open a page, electronically or otherwise, without seeing an interview with Ben, one of the brothers who founded the Midas Touch network. Close friend of mine, co founded Legal AF with me, or an article about him or so far, Semaphore New York Times, Wall Street Journal, they're all getting on the Midas touch bandwagon. You don't need to get on the Midas touch bandwagon. You've already been there from the beginning or even if you found it more recently and you found legal AF, I know you found it because we're five months, we're six months old, and we've got 520,000 plus and growing at the intersection of law and politics, the hottest corner in the Trump administration. And so the fact that after January or after November, we still have sponsors willing to talk to our audience, knowing what we're going to say. And believe me, as I said, there's no way a sponsor saw this before I just made it 10 minutes ago. I mean, it's 35 years in the making or as a lawyer, but, you know, that's a good thing. So if you have disposable income, I'm not pushing you to buy things that are fun or otherwise in your life or that can help you, you know, if you don't have the money. But if you have the money, it's a great way to support the show because the sponsors love our audience. Our audience supports the sponsors. The sponsors know about it, they come back and we're off and running. And another way you can support us is is Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Hit the free subscribe free subscribe button over there. Help us continue to grow that pro democracy channel. So listen, until my next list of things we're going to cover. Let's take a break and a word from our sponsors. Hey, look at me. Michael Popak here. And yes, I'm actually using Irestore's amazing elite hair growth device. And now you know one of my many personal grooming secrets to having great looking hair. At 59, it's time to shake off the winter blues and get ready for a fresh start. This season, tackle thinning hair and hair loss with the Irestore Elite. It's a clinically proven solution designed to help you regrow hair with 282 lasers and LEDs, delivering light therapy directly to your scalp. Think of it as a rejuvenating treatment for your hair follicles, giving you a new look for the spring season. 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Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Okay, welcome back. And I also promised our producers I would not make this Cory Booker like and go 25 hours plus but shout out to Cory Booker, senator from my home state of New Jersey. I love that it's Cory Booker. I'm sure it's related to the fact that just last week this is where in a, in a TV show this would become wavy. Shoot back to last week. Just last week, Alina Haba, remember her, was introduced. She was sort of failing up. She was kicked upstairs to be the acting interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey. Also, as I said, my home state, in which she said, I'm going to go after, I don't know, she was like some sort of demented Batman character, except without the leather suit. Although I'm sure she thought about it, or at least Donald Trump did. Sorry. So she said, I'm going to go after crime. I'm going to be a crime fighter. All that crime. It's good that she got the US Attorneys for Dummies book and realized that one of the things you're supposed to do is go after crime as a federal prosecutor. Good on you, Alina. But then she continued as long as she was there and as a cheap political hack. And she said, and it's all happening in Cory Booker's backyard. All right. Has anybody taught her what a US senator does. I mean, I know Alphonse D'Amato from New York was famously called Senator Pothole because he would not do big picture things that senators are supposed to do. You know, the more deliberative body he would be like, hey, we, I don't know, I don't know exactly how he sounded, but I'll try. Hey, there's a pothole on the Long Island Expressway. We gotta get it filled like that. And then two guys named Mo would show up and they'd fill it. That's not what the senators are supposed to do. You know, the Senate, other than major bills on crime or gun control, senators have very little ability to influence what happens in their, in their state. You know, they can get a building built and they can get a military base open to close, you know, things like that. And the crime rate in New Jersey, by the way, is not bad. I don't know what she's talking about. Mayor, Governor Murphy, two term Democratic governor has done a remarkable job. He came off of Wall street, did a remarkable job there, including through Covid, you know, stellar job. He would have got elected to a third term by the way, if he ran. So our crime rate, New Jersey's crime rate's not bad compared to red states at all. But you know, she's got to be that crime fighter. So I love the fact that Cory Booker heard her. Well, it was like a dog whistle. Cory Booker and decided I'm going to be the one. You know, I'm sure he talked to the other senators to take to the Senate floor and, and do a filibuster and just rail against the Trump policies for eight, for 25 hours. I think I could do it, but Cory Booker does it much better and that is energizing for our audience to get ready for Saturday. Forget liberation bullshit Wednesday. The only people that are going to get liberated on Wednesday are maybe Howard Lutnick, our Commerce Secretary, who according to reporting in Republican news periodicals like the New York Post, he's a half wit with half baked ideas half cocked that he delivers to Trump and pushes on him and is annoying the crap out of everybody. And to quote one insider, he's like a mosquito at a nudist colony. And I don't mean that in a good way. So he's now top of my deadpool for being the first cabinet member to be shown the door. He already fought it out with Scott Besant to be the Treasury Secretary, which is what he really wanted to be. And when he lost that, he got the consolation prize of a Commerce Secretary. And now he's just pissed off everybody with his self promote. His self promotion on television. You think Donald Trump is a promoter? Woo. Howard Lutnick's self promotion would make P.T. barnum blush. Okay. And he's pissed off everybody internally. So mark it down, put it in an envelope, seal it, put the date and time on the back of it. Pope Fox says lot Nick first went out especially with a tariff war with a tariff announcement on Wednesday. If it really happens which is roiling. This is the visual roiling the stock market world economy. Just by Donald Trump threatening to do it. It's, it's trembling. Everybody's rushing to gold. Here's a tip. $3,200 an ounce. You might want to consider looking in your jewelry boxes for old lockets and chains at this point while Howard Lutnick is busy shilling Tesla. Tesla's stock is down. That was a great time to buy. That's our Commerce Secretary. It's also a violation of federal law, but we'll leave that for another time. So Cory Booker. Saturday, right? Saturday mobilization day. Hands off day. Look it up. We'll put a note down here. Here we go. Let me move to Judge Chen. I love what he's doing. So he issues a decision today. Thank God. In which. Let me just read from his. His order and what's. Let me first start with the issue. The issue before him was whether not the trend. Aragua, how'd you like that? Narco terrorists should be or shouldn't be sent off to a El Salvadorian dark day dank hole, never to be seen again without due process. That's up at the United States Supreme Court. Donald Trump has already lost that twice. Boasberg trial judge two to one decision at the D.C. court of Appeals. And now we've got full fully briefed at the Supreme Court. We're just waiting for their ruling sometime probably this week about whether Jeb Boasberg is going to be affirmed or denied about blocking the President's use of the Alien enemies Act of 1798. War power. Operative word in that. War power to continue to deport people. That's not the issue. Although it's. It's. It's for cheap political gain. Cheap political points. It's conflated with that issue. There is another issue. There are 600,000 Venezuelans who were properly protected through the extension of the temporary Protective Status Program. Been around for 35 years. Since the 19. Since the 1930s. Since 2019. Since where am I? Since 1990. 1990s. Got lost there for a minute. And that allows about 1.7 million people from 17 countries to remain in this country while they seek other more permanent status. They're not undocumented, they're not criminals. In fact, as Judge Chen said in his 70 page report, they are some of the most hardworking, tax contributing, educated, innocent, not criminal people around. In fact, when you compare the Venezuelan population, we're talking about the 600,000 or 350,000 that we're going to be deported this week under Kristi Noem's very inhumane, undignified order, trying to reverse what the Biden administration did before they left. He said if you look and you line up Venezuelans, that proud community, many of them are here in Florida, you know, shout out to Doral, Suella, Doral Florida, which you probably know because that's where Donald Trump's big blue Doral golf courses and live golf. Yeah, that's also the home of tremendous amount of Venezuelans, including those that thought about or did vote for Donald Trump. Hear this message if that's what you did. Because Donald Trump has called your people scum, has called your people saying they came from shithole countries, has said your people right, are murderers, that they emptied the jails to get here and that they emptied the mental asylums and criminally insane to come to this country. Is that how you feel about yourself, about your family, about your friends? Because that's how Donald Trump and Kristi Noem feel about you. Kristi Noem, as the judge reported, because he based a lot of his decision to block Donald Trump from ending temporary protective status for this. These hardworking, patriotic Venezuelans paying billions of dollars in tax proceeds, all 96% of them working lower crime rates than the average American. Right. He said. Also when you look at all of this, most of them are also trying to get another type of status that could be H1B because they have a certain skill or talent that we need in this economy that could be entrepreneurial visa. Many of them own homes. They have their whole family here. They've been here fore or for years under tps. The judge also said, I got a problem and this is why I'm going to issue the injunction. One, what you did four days after Kristi Noem got in to revoke or try to revoke the order of her predecessor, Secretary Mayorkas, under Biden is the very definition of arbitrary and capricious. Where under the Administrative Procedures act, where is the thoughtfulness? Where is the study? Where are the statistics? No, they just conflate trende aragua narco terrorists with this hard working Venezuelan group. And say Venezuelans, I take a special sensitivity to this because you can easily insert the word Jews every time I hear that about a group in our country. As a proud, patriotic American, I think of my grandfathers coming over this country when they were eight years old on a boat and got instantly naturalized through Ellis island, which was a naturalization center. Get rid of the, get rid of the holding pens and the internment camps and the concentration camps and turn them into naturalization places. Give people a path towards the American dream. That's what the Venezuelans are doing and that's what the Haitians are doing. Another group that's been targeted by Donald Trump has coming from a shithole country. And Donald Trump talks that along with Kristi Noem. And the judge called it out not only a violation of the Administrative Procedures act, it's a violation of equal protection under the law, the 14th Amendment because it's using race based attacks and animus to support policy that's unconstitutional in our country and it violates that as well. And he also found as long as he was there, that she did not have as the Homeland Security Secretary the inherent authority under the statute to revoke her predecessor's order. And I love the fact that in his order, and I went through it on a hot take recently, he listed all the crappy things that no mist said about the Venezuelans and Trump to remember that when it's time to vote and don't just stick in the word Venezuelan, stick in I. Unless you came here, unless you were born on a reservation or from our indigenous people, you came here somehow by boat or plane where you walked in. And when you hear Venezuelan, Haitian, just insert your ethnic group. You know, I heard a comic recently joke that everybody but white people has something before the word American, right? Arab American, Jewish American, Italian American. Well, if you're a hyphenated American of some sort, just stick that name on the left side of the hyphen in my story and you'll be able to walk in somebody else's shoes and maybe that'll make you a more, a more compassionate voter at least can only hope so. We got a national injunction by Judge Chen against the deportation and the revocation of the temporary protective status for Venezuelans. He invited one an application to be filed for the Haitian community as well. I'm sure he will grant it. And then right on cue, you will see. Here we go. You ready? Because I know the playbook. You know the playbook. Carolyn Levette, Press Secretary one Federal judge in one federal district has violated his oath and he has taken on and trying to obstruct the policies of how Donald Trump, with the largest majority and a landslide vote, was voted. And then we'll get the social media post by Donald Trump, a crazed lunatic corruption judge who he doesn't even know from San Francisco has stopped my. And they need to be impeached and. Impeachment, Impeachment, impeachment. See where this is going? It's the same MO Isn't it? Tiring and tiresome. You know, it's because the Trump administration and people around it are completely, morally and intellectually bankrupt at this point. They're just drained. Donald Trump physically looks drained. Why do you think he's going away and spending $30 million of our money every weekend? Well, 30 million collectively to go golfing every weekend because he's fired up and ready to go for his job. You're seeing, he starts. He literally starts every press conference leaning on the podium, and you can, you can hear it. And then he starts. Are we boring you? Are we keeping you up? I feel like Mr. Hand in fast times at Ridgemont High. You know, it's the Coley in the back, except I'm not going to hand out the pizza. All right, leave it. Leave a note if you know what I'm referring to there. All right, let's keep, let's keep it moving, folks. I want to talk about no third term. Not for me. You can vote me in for as many terms as you like here on Live on the Midas Dutch Network. I'm talking about Donald Trump. Now, let me make this easy for everybody. Donald Trump knows he can't get a third term. Everybody around Donald Trump knows he can't get a third term. Donald Trump knows there's no way around the 22nd Amendment. Donald Trump knows there's no federal court, no Supreme Court that would support it. Donald Trump knows that if they had to, federal judges, including the Supreme Court, would deputize military police or, I'm sorry, state police and, or National Guard and. Or federal, sorry, marshals. State marshals from blue states to take Donald Trump out. You seen the movie Civil War? You saw what happened there. Maybe not quite as far as that, but, you know, truth is stranger than fiction, so don't worry about that. So the really, really want to focus on is, is he crazy or crazy like a fox? Why does he keep talking about it? Because he makes me talk about it. He makes everybody talk about it. And it's distracting from the fact that he's a lame duck president. He's already lame duck. They are already exhausted. They haven't even crossed the hundred day line yet. Right? There's a hundred. This is a quadruple marathon for their four years and they haven't even crossed the hundred yard mark yet. And they're already exhausted, everybody. And so he doesn't want the thing he doesn't want to be is ignored. He doesn't want to be powerless. He doesn't want to be lame duck. He doesn't want people just to buy their time and look at their watch and hope that he goes away. He wants to be relevant. So every time we talk about he's lame duck, let's get to the midterms. It's going to be a bloodbath. We're going to return this country to the American people. Forget about make America great again. Make America America again. How about that? He talks third term because he knows he's trolling us. But I don't want people in the trolling to get upset, to think this is a thing. And you know, I've joked with people about, or I said it to people about, they're like, well, is he really leaving? See, he's gotten. Don't let him rent real estate in your brain. Your real estate in your brain is very, very expensive. It's your biggest, it's your hottest commodity. It's your most valuable asset, right? It's your most precious cargo. It should be going for billions of dollars a square foot. Don't let him rent it for free. Forget the third term bullshit. I know there's been hot take after hot take. It's interesting. It's not that interesting. Not happening. He uses it to distract us from his failing presidency, his failing economic policy, his failing domestic and his failing foreign policy, his failing immigration policy. The cabinet members that are heading for the door, the ones that aren't getting confirmed, the ones that pulled their confirmations already, the ones that had to double back and give up their confirmation and come back to vote for him in Congress, like Elise Stefanik. That's what. He's distracted. It's just a strategy of distraction. It's distractive. Don't let it be. All right, let me, let me wrap up with this Peace Institute thing for, you know, and then also there's things that I'm, I'm watching on my radar and come back to me on hot takes to follow it. Here's what I'm watching for this week on my radar. There's joint status reports and filings that got made earlier today about the law firms where they've received the temporary restraining orders in their favor and the judges have asked them to report today. I'm going to do hot takes on that, about how the injunctions are going, about making sure these law firms don't get blacklisted before the federal government. It's important to our democracy that big law gets support in the federal court system. So I'm keeping an eye on that. There's a new brief that was filed, the last brief that was filed to keep Jeb Boasberg's injunction expanded injunction in place to stop the use of the Alien Enemies act by Donald Trump. I'm looking at that at the United States Supreme Court level. I'll report back to you on that as well. There's some hearings going on, including in Judge Beryl Howell's chambers, about the continued takeover by Doge of things like the Peace Institute, which the US Government doesn't even own. They just lost their building in New York, in Washington, apparently, and it got transferred to the General Services Administration. And they don't, we don't even own it. And Beryl Howell was trying to get to the bottom of it as a judge. Like, how did that just happen? Why did that just happen? So we're going to, I need to look at that and analyze that as well. And then there's a request and I'm going to see what happens with the D.C. circuit Court Court of Appeals, pardon me, about whether they are going to grant the request to have an en banc meeting, all 20 or so judges of the D.C. court of Appeals, whether they're going to hear the ruling that went in Trump's favor 2 to 1, about whether he can fire the head of the National Labor Relations Board and the head of the Merit Service Protection Board, which protects American workers, including federal ones, whether he can just fire them, which is completely against 100 years of precedent, starting with a case called Humphrey's Executor. I just love saying this name of the case. I'm not showing off. I just like pulling it out. So the question is, first stop on the appeal train is the losers think that the 2 to 1 decision was not properly made and they want the entirety of the panel, the entirety of the D.C. circuit Court to make the decision. You need a majority to find that interesting. You need a majority, only a majority to rule in your favor. Then I'll follow that. Failing that, they'll take an appeal to the United States Supreme Court to see if we can get those two people Kathy Harris and Gwen Wilcox reinstated, but because Donald Trump decapitated them, took them out. Those two organizations, National Labor Relations Board, protecting collective bargaining and workplace abuses, and the same for Merit Service Protection Board. They can't meet, they can't function, they don't have a quorum. That's what Donald Trump wanted. And now we're going to see how that plays out up to the United States Supreme Court. So we sort of have reached the end of a POPOC live. Lots of things for me to follow up on. I love doing the show with you on Tuesday nights. It's one of the favorite things I get to do. People say, how's it different than Legal af? I'm by myself. I don't Ben does Saturday and kind of is the, is the social director, if you will. He's the executive producer of Saturday with me. I do Wednesday with Care, Freeman Nickniffalo, where I serve that role. But here it's just me unplugged, unhinged, unfiltered with you. And the audience is building with me. We were averaging about a half a million every week here and on Legal af lastly, come on, help me out. Help yourself out. Help me continue to build that pro democracy channel in collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, called Legal AFMTN for Midas Touch Network. As we continue our drive for a million. We want to do it in record time. In less than a year, we will. We're already at 520,000. That's all because of you. I got some great new collaborators over there. Dave Aronberg, formerly of a number of places including Midas Touch and Melba Pearson, have all come over and joined along with Dina Dahl, Shan Wu, the Court Accountability Action folks, me, we're all there together at the intersection of law and politics with our unique voice and points of view. Join us every hour on Legal AF, the YouTube channel. And then of course, we got the OG podcast. Listen. A lot of very understandable and fantastic news about Midas Touch as a network. Going up to number one in the world in YouTube and the podcast, number one in all genre. But you know what's like in the top 10, top 12 legal AF. And I'm proud of that. You know, we have a very strict strike zone about what sits at the intersection of law and politics. But you're there for it. And we've been up, we've been up and running five years, four years officially as Legal af. And I want to thank each and every person, how humbled we are. Your commitment to Legal AF is What get literally gets me up in the morning. I mean that and my nine month old baby daughter Francesca, my wife whose birthday is Saturday. Happy birthday sweetheart. Natasha. But this audience is so important to everything that I'm about now as a person. I totally redid and restructured my entire career. After 35 years in the making, people know I left my prior law firm. I started a new law firm dedicated to justice, to helping people obtain the highest recoveries they can if they've been catastrophically injured in some way. Because that's what I that's the best way for me to sort of support our audience right now. And I went effectively full time at the Midas Touch Network and formed Legal AF, the YouTube channel, all at the same time as a 2025 gift to myself and hopefully something that you enjoy as well. So until my next reporting, I'm Michael Popak and you're on POPOC Live. 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 or as a 35 year national trial lawyer. Now building a what we started together on Legal af. I've launched a new law firm, the POPOC Firm, dedicated to obtaining justice through compassionate and zealous legal representation. 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