Legal AF by MeidasTouch - CORRUPT Supreme Court MAKES RULING on KEY LAW

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

The MAGA SCOTUS has just endorsed another Red State’s voter suppression laws to create another hurdle to the constitutional right to vote, under the guise of rooting out phony “election fraud”. Michael Popok examines the Court permitting Texas to deny all Texas voters under the age of 65 the right to vote by mail. Visit https://HensonShaving.com/LEGALAF to pick the razor for you and use code LEGALAF for 2 years worth of free blades! Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/legalaf Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Michael Popak with the Legal AF Hot Tech. There's no other way to put this. The right wing of the Supreme Court is against voting rights. They find ways to create barriers to people exercising their fundamental constitutional right to vote. And they did it again this week when they decided that it was okay for Texas to rule in its mail-in ballot requirements that only 65 year old Texas residents or older without an excuse can use a mail-in ballot. And everybody who's younger than 65, 18 to 64 and 364 days, has to have some sort of valid quote unquote excuse they have to present to some sort of election official in order to use a mail-in ballot. And the United States Supreme Court said that's okay.

Now, they didn't do it on full briefing. We didn't even get that far. In order for there to be a grant of an appeal, a grant of what we call a writ of certiorari, at least four of the Supreme Court have to vote for that, but you have to have five to block the rule, to block the Texas mail-in ballot rule. And there weren't five votes. Well, let me do the math for you. There is a six to three right-wing majority on the United States Supreme Court. So, if they couldn't find the votes, it's not because of Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, or Katanji Brown

Jackson. They needed one more for a writ of cert to be granted. They needed two more in order to have the thing up and have the stay on an emergency basis granted. Look, let me talk about voting rights. There is for me no more important fundamental constitutional right than the right to vote. From the right to vote comes all other rights. That's what separates us in a democracy, a constitutional republic, from those that are not in a constitutional republic where the leader or the dictator gets 80, 90, or 105 percent of the vote is the right to vote. Now, let me talk about the constitution for a minute. I'll go into a little bit of Professor Popak. We'll do a little

bit of a Patreon TED Talk meets Law School moment right here. There is nowhere in the original text of the Constitution before the amendments, many of which came during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, that mentions the right to vote. It talks about the age of people and it talks about different things, but there is no defined provision in the Constitution on the right to vote. Let's be frank. The Constitution is really about creating our tripartite government, three branches, Article 1, Article 2, Article 3. I'll talk about Congress, presidency, and the judiciary. And then there's some other

leftover language for other things. But where we really look to rights of citizens, even against the states, we look to the Bill of Rights and we look to the amendments that came after that in the Reconstruction period, particularly the 14th Amendment. So when you think voting rights, you should immediately think 14th Amendment. That's the starting point. It's not the ending point, but it's the starting point. And it talks about people having a requirement. There's a constitutional requirement. I'm going to read it to you that their rights be protected under the law. Section one of the 14th Amendment, the starting point for voting analysis is all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the US and no state shall make or enforce any law which shall

abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States nor deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process and deny them equal protection under the law. That's where you start on the 14th Amendment. So for the MAGA right-wing of the Supreme Court to say they don't have a problem with another round of hurdles being put on people's exercise of their constitutional right to vote is a bad thing. And I don't want them to get away with it without talking about it on a hot take like this. Voting should be, yes, protections for fraud. Build the wall around fraud, legitimate fraud. You know, the 0.001% of ballots that are cast either on purpose or inadvertently in the wrong

precinct, double counting, you vote your dead mother-in-law's ballot, you know, fraud, ballot stuffing. We all agree on both sides of the aisle, in no aisle, that that should be policed and regulated. But it is an infinitesimal amount of voter fraud going on in America that's outcome determinative. We've had our head of cybersecurity for the United States say the last election was the most secure election with no outcome determinative fraud at all. Department of Justice said the same thing. Every independent entity that's looked at it, and even some that were hired by Donald Trump, all conclude the same thing.

We don't have a fraud problem in this country. So we shouldn't be creating laws to kill a problem that doesn't exist. But that's what the Republicans want to do. When you hear voter fraud law being proposed in Texas and in Georgia and other battleground states, that's voter suppression law. That's code word. That's Orwellian speak. They're not trying to stop voter fraud. They're trying to suppress the vote in civilized countries outside of America, with our European brethren or in Scandinavia, it's very easy to vote.

You can vote like you're voting at an ATM machine. Yes, fingerprint scan and optical retinal scan and all sorts of scans can be used to ensure just like you do right now to board a plane or using global entry or something like that. The technology has caught up with the times. We can do that. And therefore, once they know who you are, secure ballot could be in an electronic machine like an ATM. It could be dropped off in mail-in ballot collection places that are throughout.

Why are elections only on election day? Early voting should be extensive. Early voting should start a month before the election. It should go on for, you know, unabated. But the problem with our constitution is that we have this tension between the federal government and the state. Here's something we all know.

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that'll last you a lifetime. Visit hensonshaving.com slash legal AF to pick the razor for you and use code legal AF and you'll get two years worth of blades free with your razor. Just make sure to add them to your cart. That's 100 free blades when you head to H-E-N-S-O-N-S-H-A-V-I-N-G dot com slash Legal AF and use code Legal AF. The feds and Congress, when it's led by Democrats, always try to pass voting laws that are both protective of that small, infinitesimal voter fraud problem I talked about, but opens the doors to enhancing and enabling the right to vote

and not inhibiting and suppressing it. So when the Democrats are in power, they try to get things like the John Lewis, you know, Voting Rights Act passed as an amendment to the Voting Rights Act. They try to get the Fair Vote Act passed, but they can't do it alone. And now the Republicans who are in charge of Congress for now, they don't want that because their fearless leader Donald Trump wants voter fraud to be a campaign issue even when it doesn't exist. And so voter fraud, think voter suppression. Because of that tension in our constitution, because it doesn't expressly say that the

federal government controls everything when it relates to, let's say, federal elections. It's left to the states. The states are allowed to regulate under our constitution, under one of the main bodies of the constitution. Any power not reserved for the federal government is in the states. The states have it. That's the tension in our federal versus state system. And so while the federal government by way of a constitutional amendment

has the right to set time, place and manner, right? Under the elections clause of federal elections, everything else is left to the states as the voting rights. So the fed set the time, place and matter, what day the federal elections are gonna be, the places they're gonna be, the matter in which voting happens. And that's why they have a little bit of control.

But they abdicate or delegate to the states or it's a power reserved to the states to set their own voting laws. And now you've got the Supreme Court fully controlled by the right wing six votes MAGA who haven't seen a voter barrier law that they haven't endorsed. And now they've rejected the Democrats of Texas and their lawsuit, where else, coming else coming up from Texas who've come to this court saying allow and broaden mail-in voting. Don't make it just for 65-year-olds. Make it for anyone. Donald Trump mail-in votes. He's always

mailed in voted, except when he ran for office and he needed the photo op of going down with Melania to pull the little switch or whatever he was doing to vote. He's always, everybody's mailed, I've mailed and voted. It's as secure and safe as any other. I don't feel like I've got to go and get my little paper receipt to know that I voted. I know that I voted when I mail it. The United States Postal Service delivers it and it's counted, just like every other year. And in other countries, they trust their voters and their elector to do the right thing. And they'll ferret out fraud through other methods.

They don't need a secret fraud, election fraud police like DeSantis has in Florida or Trump's proposing now in his campaign. But now you've got a Supreme Court that says, oh, that seems to be a reasonable restriction. I don't think that violates the 26th Amendment or the 14th Amendment. Texas is allowed to say how their mail-in ballots are being used. Now, the problem is at the trial court level,

the trial court judge originally stated and joined the mail-in rule finding that it was a violation of the 14th Amendment and other Reconstruction Era amendments, including the KKK Act, because it put an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote, especially below the age of 65. And our constitution, starting with the amendments that happened in 1971, lowering the voting age to 18, and what we call the 26th Amendment, it's supposed to be no discrimination in age. A 64-year-old isn't supposed to be discriminated against, and only a right to vote by mail

without an excuse is only reserved for somebody at 65. We got rid of that in the 26th Amendment, but not according to this United States Supreme Court who looked around and couldn't find four votes, meaning they needed one from the other six right wing to join the three, I'm sure, on the other side of the aisle, to grant the petition. Let it be fully briefed and let it come up for oral argument and then an ultimate decision by the Supreme Court. They said, nah, we don't need to take that case. Which signals to the rest of the states, including the battleground states,

and to the legislators in those states, the houses in those states, that they can pass very restrictive, it was an endorsement of these basically red controlled states passing very restrictive voting suppression law, not voting fraud prevention law. That is a fake boogeyman, I think all boogeymen are fake, but fake boogeyman under the bed that the Republicans use to scare the crap out of voters in order to get their voters to the polls.

That's what it is. That's what we're calling out here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. So once again, disappointed, should not surprised by the United States Supreme Court and this John Roberts Court or whatever it is. It's quickly becoming the Clarence Thomas Sam Alito Court that can't find a fourth vote to hear a voting rights issue as to whether it violates the 14th Amendment, the 26th Amendment, the 25th Amendment, and they don't see a barrier to voting as a bad thing when it should be a terrible thing. For me, again, the most fundamental right is the right to vote in America. And without it, all other rights fail.

Continue to follow the United States Supreme Court voting rights right here on the Midas Touch Network and on this YouTube channel and on a podcast we call Legal AF. Find out why we call it Legal AF. If you join us on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern time, you'll find out. We curate the best five stories

at the intersection of law and politics, just like this one. United States Supreme Court, civil rights, constitutional rights, women's rights, reproductive rights, voting rights. We do it all here. It's not just Trump on trial 24 hours a day, although that is important.

We don't want you to get fatigued on that either. And then we have that podcast, Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. I co-anchor it on Wednesdays. I'm joined by Karen Friedman at Knifilow. On Saturdays, by Ben Mycelis. And then on audio podcast platforms, wherever you get them from.

And then I do hot takes like this one, about every hour, every day on the MidasTouch network. Give me a thumbs up, leave a comment. It really does help signals you like this content and keeps it coming to you. Then I might talk back to you in the comment. We'll open up a dialogue. If you like what I'm doing, go over to MidasTouch on their YouTube channel. Free subscribe, get them to three million, slide over to playlists, look for Michael

Popok under contributors or my name. You'll find, I don't know, 1200 hot takes just like this one. So until my next hot take, until my next Legal AF, until my next podcast on Legal AF where I talk about something other than Donald Trump, this is Michael Popok reporting. Heary, heary, Legal AF Law Breakdown is now in session. Go beyond the headlines and get a deep dive into the important legal concepts you need to know and we discuss every day on Legal AF. Exclusive content you won't find anywhere else, all for the price of a couple of cups of coffee. Join us at patreon.com slash Legal AF. That's patreon.com slash

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