Michael Popach (40:14)
So ABC again, the ABC seems to have won the Jimmy Kimmel war because now there's reporting that all those affiliates that are owned by Sinclair and this other right wing Christian family that owns like all the ABC affiliates that you and I watch, you know, the actual TV stations, they've relented and they're putting Kimmel back on the air. So it's not just the broad, it's not just ABC is broadcasting kimmel. It's like 300 channels around America, including in red states, are showing Kimmel again. And so that happened. Yeah, because the Trump administration, of course, went too far in the wake of, of Charlie Kirk and made a martyr out of Jimmy Kimmel instead of Charlie Kirk. But it's ABC again, you know, once they stroke that check for 15 million because George Stephanopoulos properly called Donald Trump a rapist. I mean, I'm just, I'm just repeating what Judge Lewis Kaplan said in his one of his own orders, which is technically, you're a rapist. Donald Trump wants you to believe that if you were in a, like a cocktail party, for instance, and somebody walked into the room and you pointed to them out loud. Everybody stopped clinking their glasses. And you said, you sir, are a rapist. And the guy responded, I am not. I am a sexual abuser. See, I don't think that would help him in the cocktail party. That's Donald Trump's argument. So. But you know, once ABC wrote the $15 million check equal to Stephanopoulos salary because during an interview with E. Jean Carroll, who got him adjudged a sexual predator, a sexual abuser, he used the R word instead of the A word. Now you're going to stroke checks all the time. So we're back to another ABC White House problem I love. But one of my favorite comments with JD Vance was that's why nobody watches you, George. And that's why you went on the show, because nobody watches. All right, let's move on from the Homan fiasco and move on to the Alex Jones fiasco. I hate talking about the guy, but as he told the supreme court, he's got 30 million followers. So crazy. The crazies that follow Alex Jones election denier jan6 denier 911 denier. Sandy Hook Massacre Denier. That's quite a. I was going to say trifecta. That's quite a quadruplet Vexa thing. Yeah, that's a whole lot of denying, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Including the depravity of claiming that children who will never see adulthood and parents who will never see their child get older were all elaborate scam and scheme. It was just a fever dream. Didn't really happen. Children aren't really dead. The FBI agent who testified in tears about the bodies that he saw at Sandy Hook, he's a traitor, according to Ed Martin. Now that's where we have. So what happened with Alex Jones? Alex Jones tried to. First he testified his own cases, two different cases and two different juries and judges came back with a $1.5 billion judgment against him for his defamation, his libel, his blood libel and his punitive damages. Then for the next several years he tried to use bankruptcy court to avoid paying anything. And then that didn't work. But it took several years. Give a lot of credit to the plaintiff's lawyers in this case. And then he tried to hide his assets and that didn't work. Then he tried. Then there was a court order to sell his assets. In fact, I asked the Midas Touch Brothers to buy Infowars to bury it. They didn't do that. I still like to buy it. And he's back on the air with all these Followers. So he's tried to argue at the United States Supreme Court. He's entitled to overturn his 1.5 billion because he's got First Amendment protection. He gets to say disgusting things and not be subject to defamation law. And they said, denied. We're not taking that case. And that's another. So there seems to be limits. If your name is Trump or you're the president, Sky's the limit with this, with this Supreme Court. But everybody else, watch your back, because you don't have immunity. You're not the executive. You don't have Article 2 power. And if it has to do with, like, sex and defaming dead babies, you're not getting the Supreme Court to rule in your favor. And so we've got the ruling now. Now, just to show you he was begging at the end, which he should, Alex Jones sent in another filing to the Supreme Court saying, I got 30 million followers, First Amendment, Public Square. No, you don't get to say disgusting, depraved things that make people feel bad and give them mental distress and intentional infliction of men of emotional distress and get away with it. You can do it, but you got to write a check. Now, how are we going to collect 150, sorry, the $1.5 billion from Alex Jones? I don't know, garnish his wages forever? They'll get several million dollars from him. I saw at one point he had, like, I think, his estate, his bankruptcy estate, and his value of, I think it was like 10 or 20 million dollars. Whatever, it's. It's 10 or 20 million dollars he doesn't need to have. Now that the appeal is over, his lawyers will go after it and. And fight hard. And as the White House continues to protect people like Alex Jones, I mean, Ed Martin, the guy I've been talking about all night, Eagle, Ed, he wrote a letter on his own on. On Department of Justice letterhead excoriating the FBI agent for testifying under oath about what he saw. And Todd Blanche found out about it and blasted Ed Martin and said, why are you sullying the White House's reputation over a fringe podcaster? Rescind the letter. And allegedly he did. But it was the beginning of the end of the relationship between Todd Blanche and Ed Martin. And the problem for Todd Blanch is Trump loves Ed Martin, and that that is a major problem. So we'll continue to follow that story and where that leads. Well, we're in the home stretch of that conversation that we need to have. We call the intersection. I want to update you on tomorrow's very important voting rights case. I mean our constitutional representative democracy is on the line. This is an attack, full frontal attack by MAGA on black and black voters and their attempt to make every congressional district that they can white in America. And the Voting Rights act is up for grabs. Whether it's going to even survive Section one already being ripped up and torn out of out of the Voting Rights act in prior case law. Now voting rights section 2, which is the crown jewel of the Voting Rights act passed by Lyndon Johnson at the urging of Martin Luther King Jr. I mean these are like totemic things I'm talking about here that these are the touchstones of our democracy. Look at the names. I'm talking about the leaders of the civil rights movement, the president that brought us the Great Society. And we're talking about having six people, mainly guys on the Supreme Court rip these things up like it was like it was a circular in your mailbox talking about the Constitution. Here we're talking about what it means to be an American and what our participatory democracy and representative form of government and the American experiment mean. That's what's up for grabs. And I'm worried we have it up live on substack and on Legal AF YouTube tomorrow at 10am Eastern Time. I'm worried about this oral argument. In 2023 in an Alabama case called Shelby John Roberts joined with KAVANAUGH, with the three remaining moderates on the bench and they formed a block to approve a voting map in Alabama that created one more predominantly black district. That's all we're talking about. Louisiana. It's even more pathetic. The 12 white plaintiffs are challenging a map where the we're in a state that has over a third black people, U.S. citizens challenging a map because it made one more district and not one more district to like even it out, not one more district to equal 33 and a third percent of the state, one more district to give two out of seven, two out of a total of seven. I haven't done math in a while like that, but we're talking about 28% in a state where that's still under the amount before it was one out of seven. The map that we're fighting over was going to reduce Black representation to 14% of the congressional districts more than or less than half of their of their population. Then Louisiana said, well, all right, there's a before and an after before the United States Supreme Court ruled for affirmative against affirmative action in the Harvard case, Harvard University case In which it said, well, if you want to stop racial discrimination, stop discrimination. Stop discriminating based on race. Yeah, thanks for that tautology, genius. You know, because to, to the most of the Supreme Court, we're, we should, we, we should now be colorblind. Congratulate yourselves everybody. We did it. No more racism in America. Everybody is equally in private schools and eating clubs and fraternities and sororities at Ivy League schools. Everybody has the same opportunities in America. You don't need a helping hand to help you up. There is no racism. There's no anti Semitism. It's all just one big happy American family. Is that right? We're in a post racism world, a proto racism world after Barack Obama? Or are there people in America that still need a helping hand that aren't in the the right neighborhoods, clubs, memberships, organizations to give themselves the Nepo baby help that others get? They don't, they don't have the black and brown people in America don't have the. Don't have the luxury of failing up or the gentleman see what they used to call it in college. But ever since that decision before and after, all MAGA heard was wait. Anytime you use race and any in any type of selection process that's gonna be automatically violative of the 14th amendment and equal protection. Let's go after all the DEI programs. Let's go after all of the woke programs. Let's get all white people back into medical school and colleges. Let's get rid of black congresspeople. Congress is primarily white anyway. Even in this country doesn't have the representation to match the the demographics numbers. And so the big argument tomorrow is what has changed since 2023 to now. That would make Roberts and Kavanaugh abandon the other three, Katanji, Brown, Jackson, Sotomayor and Kagan and side with MAGA against this map. How is this map different than the Alabama map for which added an extra district? And that's what we're going to get to the bottom of. The ones that want to kill the map and kill representation are saying it dilutes. You're using race to set a map. See when they rewrote the map to benefit maga, Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House in Louisiana, they strengthened his district. They found a way to make a what's called a minority majority district. One more black person got voted in from Louisiana, but that was based on race. That diluted my, my rights as white people in Louisiana. If MAGA gets this win and gets Kavanaugh, who already commented in 2023, that he doesn't see that the Voting Rights Act Section 2 lives on ad infinitum. There has to be an ending, a sundown to it. If this 2025 is the year and that map goes down, then at the next census, the majority of state houses, which are controlled by Republicans, are going to redistrict all the maps and make them all white. That's why I said I'm not. I don't deal in hyperbole. This is what's going to happen. Join me tomorrow or sorry, join me today for the 10am Eastern Time. It's up here on Legal AF. Go to the live tab. You'll find it there. I'll be in the chat. Come over to Substance stack. We're running it there as well. And I'll answer questions and I'll come back on with a sub stack live and answer your questions. It's that important a case that's, that's getting to the Supreme Court pretty rapidly. It's not there yet, but it's getting there is the Illinois and Oregon National Guard cases as Donald Trump decided to, you know, just do a full frontal assault on democracy. Use the power of, the awesome power of the presidency and its military prowess and military power to crush dissent in America, primarily in blue states and blue cities. By sending in National Guard spending billions of dollars of your and my money to have them pick up litter and stand in front of federal buildings. Better you could spend half that amount of money and give it to local law enforcement to improve local policing. That would have been a lot better. Just wouldn't have been as showy and as militaristic and a muscle flex the way Donald Trump wanted. So we have federal trial judges know what to do. Judge Immergut and the judges in Chicago, Judge Immergut in Oregon and judge and the two judges in Chicago have all ruled that Donald Trump overstepped his power under section 12406. He could not commandeer the National Guard and he sent them back to their barracks because there is no rebellion or domestic violence. That makes Donald Trump incapable of executing the laws of the federal government of the president. And that's the standard. Now the 9th Circuit put Judge Immerse decision on ice except they said we're going to deal with whether there can be we're not going to allow mobilization of the troops until we have a full hearing oral argument, which they already have. We're, we're waiting on the ruling. And the fourth, sorry, the sixth Circuit over Illinois said we're going to put on hold the judge's decision about not mobilizing the federal, the National Guard. We're going to let the mobilization happen, but we won't allow deployment. We won't. So stay in your barracks until we're done with the oral argument. So in a way, Donald Trump federalized, commandeered, but he couldn't deploy. And now we're waiting for both those appellate courts to make their ruling. I listened to the 9th Circuit oral argument. Two trumpers. So what happens? You put two trumpers together in a room, how many Trump judges does it take to screw up a democracy? You know what it is? So I don't think going to get a great ruling out of the 9th. I'm a little bit more optimistic about the 6th Circuit sitting over Illinois. Then we'll have conflicting rulings and it'll get it back to the United States Supreme Court. That has to break that tie. I think it'll be sometime this term. I don't think they're going to rush to do it. I think Donald Trump has gotten a little bit tired of that play thing. He's gotten a lot of mileage out of attacking governors and then punching and pushing back. The Department of Justice is exhausted and leaderless. You know, Donald Trump decided he was going to do the shock and awe, right? Flood the zone on the way in 230 more or more executive orders. He even beat FDR and FDR's executive orders for the New Deal coming out of the Great Depression. But his Department of Justice and its leadership weren't ready for it. They weren't ready for the four or five hundred cases that would be filed against the Department of Justice. They weren't ready for federal judges. They weren't ready for appellate judges. They're doing well at the Supreme Court where they're winning 86% of the time. But you got to fight it out in the courts in the meantime. So they're beleaguered. I'm not feeling sorry for them. They're, they're out of gas. They're fatigued. They're mentally drained. You know. Did you know the Department of Justice fired 5,000 members of the Department of Justice just the last nine and a half months and haven't replaced them. 75% of the civil Rights Division lawyers are gone and they're not rehiring them. I know you've heard things in the shutdown that they over fired during the Doge Musk era and now they got to hire back tens of thousands of people. We fired too many people in the irs. We fired too many people in this center for Disease Control. We fired two. We got to hire them all back and they're putting up one. There's, there's jobs now, tens of thousands of job want ads up for the government of people they fired. All the legacy knowledge went out the door. But the Supreme Court's going to have to deal with this National Guard, Posse Combatantis Act, Insurrection act by Donald Trump. He's being led around by the nose, but willingly by, by people in his administration like Stephen Miller. You know Stephen Miller. I don't know if Trump is a, if Stephen Miller is a Trump enabler or Trump's a Stephen Miller enabler, but he's our domestic policy president, Stephen Miller, and he's disgusting and depraved and immoral. And we'll continue to follow it all. I'm so glad you're here on the Intersection. We've come to the end of the show every Tuesday night at 8pm and then follow me on everything I do on legal af. I do 1415 videos analysis on the Midas Touch Network. I have from the very beginning, I curate the legal AF YouTube channel with the brothers where we have 10 videos. We just crossed 3, 10 videos a day. We just crossed 300 million views. We're going to, in just a year, 1 million subscribers. We're going to hit by December or January. We have a dozen playlists and contributors on there. And then of course you can help the Intersection by coming over to the podcast platforms for Apple and Spotify. Leave a five star review, leave comments, which I read that does help keep us up in the ranks and the ratings. I'd like to try to break into the top 100 of all news. I could do it with your help on YouTube. We're doing great. We just broke back in, cracked back in to the top 100 for the third time in about six weeks. And that's the hummingbird theory. Watch us, listen to us. Bring other people back to the Intersection. And I'll be doing my part. I bring it every hour, every day on Legal AF and on the Midas Touch network. And here on Intersection. As I joke, the brothers finally gave me my own show. So till my next report, I'm so glad you're here with us. Legal AF YouTube channel. Subscribe there. Legal AF substack. Consider becoming a paid member. Seven bucks a month, you'll get more content than you'll know what to do with. You can nerd out on law and politics over on Legal AF substack and of course the Legal AF podcast. The grand pappy of them all. Five years in the making. I co founded that and created that with Ben Mysalis. It's hard to believe it was 2020, but it is. So until my next report, thanks for being here. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal A Effers.
