Michael Popak (2:30)
They're about to burn Senate Majority Leader John Thune in effigy on the right because he refuses to bring to the Senate floor the SAVE Act, Donald Trump and maga's phony piece of legislation that will only result in having tens of millions of Americans who lose their right to vote because they don't have proof of citizenship handily on them or a ID with their proper name on it, including women who have gotten married, who don't have access to their birth certificate, their name doesn't match what's on their birth certificate, would all be denied the ability to vote under the SAVE Act. What the rightest of right wing MAGA want John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader to do is to bring it to a vote on the House floor and perhaps throw away hundreds of years of Senate tradition and get rid of what's called the filibuster. But John Thune's not going to do that and Donald Trump is sort of mad at him. But right wing MAGA like Elon Musk and Cleta Mitchell and Mark Meadows of all people back from his Jan6 insurrection participation and his voting more than once when he was the chief of staff for Donald Trump is back beaten down the door to John Thune. But the filibuster looks like it's going to hold a Michael Popak, you're the Midas Touch network and legal af. Let's sit at the intersection of law and politics and voting rights. So these SAVE act got passed by the House in it it has all sorts of new requirements that improperly puts the federal government effectively in charge with elections. Elections even for federal office our framers and our founding fathers wanted in the hands of the states. You see it in the Constitution, you see it at the 10th Amendment. And that's the way it's always been for good reason because they didn't trust the federal government when they formed the United States of America. They certainly did not want the Feds telling the states what do about federal elections for federal office. They didn't want the feds running their own elections, if you know what I mean. And so when I registered to vote, I signed as you probably did, under penalty of perjury, that I resided where I said I resided, that I was a US Citizen, I would vote in my precinct, check the box. And if I didn't and I violated any of those sworn statements, I could be prosecuted for crimes. That's that sort of good faith trust that has been pretty good for hundreds of years of voting in America, at least in the modern era. You know, we trust people. We trust people who sign sworn declarations that they're not committing crimes. And we and who understand that they could be prosecuted if they do. It's not good enough for Donald Trump because he wants to create this fake narrative that we have such massive voting fraud in America that it stole the election from him. Now we know that's not true because there's been empirical studies and evidence and 70 court cases and audits and the FBI and local state investigative agencies that have all looked at it and determined that the most fraud in any election is somewhere around along the lines of 0.0001%.0001%. It happens. Dead person votes, somebody votes, their mother in law's ballot, whatever. But it's not enough to change the outcome of an election. It's infinitesimal. You're talking about 8 to 10 fraudulent ballots in the entire, in an entire state election, if that, and they're prosecuted for it. So SAVE ACT says let's go after transgender people again. Here we go. So they're going to have to come up with some ID that you know who that matches their birth, not their current name or their legal name. He's got to go after the transgender community because Donald Trump thinks that's a winning strategy again to win at the midterms. Continuing to beat this, beat mercilessly this defenseless group of people in America. America. And, and, and it's also having the effect that 20 to 30% of Americans, especially black and brown and women, don't have the documents necessary to satisfy the SAVE act to vote. You know, okay, I have a passport, I have a birth certificate with my proper name on it. But my wife does it because her, her, her birth certificates from another country, it has a different last name on it. You know, now she's got her new documents, she's a citizen, she can vote. But there's that mismatch that the SAVE act would prevent her from voting. Now, once the House passed it, it gets over to the Senate. That's where John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader comes in. Now, he likes to be liked, whereas the prior Senate Majority leader, Mitchell, he didn't really care about being liked. In fact, he liked to be the enemy. He liked to be the dark senator. But not Thune. He likes, he's from South Dakota. He likes to talk about sports and be liked. The reality is he is not going to lead an uprising of Senate tradition to get rid of the filibuster. Now, what's the filibuster? The filibuster used to be an old timey times a person could get up in the minority against the bill being passed and speak and prevent the vote for hours or days on end. Right. Think of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or Cory Booker recently, hours and hours and hours and not relinquish the podium and try to block the vote. But now you don't have to do that any longer. You can do what's called a a just a verbal filibuster, meaning you just signal that you are going to filibuster if you are required to. So once you say I'm going to filibuster, in order to defeat the filibuster and get it to a House to a. Sorry, to the floor of the Senate for a vote, a simple majority vote, there has to be 60 senators out of the hundred who vote for something called cloture C L O T U R E, which kills the filibuster and allows for the vote. So it seems a little bit counterintuitive, but you need 60 votes in order to then put it to a vote which can pass by simple majority. 51. Okay, so that means the minority through filibuster can block the vote that would normally pass on a simple majority if it could get to a vote. Well, I was getting ready to talk about the news and politics today and my cat Chanel decided she was the headline. She doesn't care about politics, but she has extremely strong opinions about her food. If this show ever runs late, it's because she refuses to let me talk about law and politics until her Smalls cat food is handled first. It's 2026. Do you still feed your cat like it's 1926? This podcast is sponsored by Smalls. Smalls is protein packed cat food made with preservative free ingredients you'd actually recognize, delivered right to your door. And cats.com names Smalls their best overall cat food. Last time I fed my cat Small, she destroyed the bowl and followed me around like I changed her life. I even did a legit taste test. No, not that kind. Two bowls side by side and she immediately chose Smalls. Her fur is softer, her breath is better, and she honestly handles the news better than I do. And Smalls is so confident your cat will love it, you can try it risk free. They'll refund you if your cat won't eat it. Make 2026 your cat's healthiest year yet. For a limited time because you are a legal AF listener, get 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com legalaf one last time that's 60% off your first order, plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com legalaf and Thune is not going to throw away the filibuster because he's worried that if the House and the Senate and those two chambers flip to Democrats, then the Republicans in the minority will lose their ability to have any power at all to stop any future laws from being passed in the hands of the Democrats. Because that, I mean, that's a real possibility, right? Especially in the world of Donald Trump. Now, Donald Trump has been trying to get John Thune to pass the SAVE act, meaning to change the filibuster rules and allow for a simple majority vote on the SAFE Act. Here's Trump trying to twist the arm of John Thu. Play it.
