Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Dem AGs Team Up to Give Trump Legal Hell He Deserves

Episode Date: March 15, 2025

In breaking news, the “gang of 20” states have joined forces again, led by NY’s Attorney General Leticia James, to sue to stop Trump’s dismantling and putting out of business the Congressionally mandated and funded Dept of Education to obey his “Project 2025” master’s orders. Michael Popok takes a deep dive into the new lawsuit filed in Massachusetts and observes what happens next. Right now, you can get a free inspection, free estimate, and save up to 30% off your entire purchase at https://leaffilter.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 MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial 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 On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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of the Department of Education and to stop cutting off of all of the funding related to education to the states. This suit has been filed in Massachusetts. I'm going to cover it right here, what it means and the restraining order that it's looking for on the Midas Touch Network. The 20 states joined together, it's the same group that's been suing over and over again very successfully against the Trump administration. Arizona, California, Hawaii, New Jersey, and others all joining together and

they pick their spots here, the District of Massachusetts, which will lead to a very favorable appellate court for them as well. Let's look at the Department of Education. Linda McMahon, who's the new, formerly from the World Wrestling Federation, and now the head of the Department of Education, she said her job is to be put out of a job, to close down the Department of Education, formed in 1979 by Congress. And that's the problem. And that's what the lawsuit says. The lawsuit says Donald Trump can't, through a reduction in force, what we call in the law a riff, can't undermine congressional authority in the establishment of a department or of an agency. You can't riff your way out of an agency just by cutting it in half, closing offices all around the United States,

including the very important Office of Civil Rights investigations for the Department of Justice, which stops discrimination and harassment in education. It has two major components, the Department of Education, one dedicated to K through 12, and then one dedicated to higher education. Just to give you the raw numbers before I get to the lawsuit now been filed, you've got 98,000 schools and 32,000 private schools

in America that get funding and regulation through the Department of Education. You've got 18,000 school districts. You have 50 million, five zero million children between the ages of five and 18 that are in secondary schools. 12 million additionally in college of some sort, all under the regulations of the Department of Justice.

And more importantly, the billions of dollars of aid that go to each state, New York alone, gets $6 billion in aid for K through 12 from the federal government. Linda McMahon likes to say in her interviews in Donald Trump too, we wanna make the students and the states responsive to the families.

Where's the funding coming from? Comes from the federal tax dollar and its commitment to public education. And the problem is Congress has already established the Department of Education. And the fundamentals of the lawsuit, I'll read to you from certain aspects of it, are what we've heard before. That Donald Trump has violated the separation of powers by usurping the legislative authority of Congress.

That he's violated the separation of powers by violating the take-care provision of the Constitution Article 2, which requires him as the president to faithfully execute the laws and agencies and departments as established by Congress. That his actions are ultra-varies, meaning they're outside the lane of his executive power. And lastly, he's violated the Administrative Procedures Act because he and his group, his gang, have done things in an arbitrary and capricious fashion and have harmed and injured the states as a result.

Letitia James is recently on the Midas Touch Network being interviewed by my colleague and partner, Ben Mycelis. We applaud everything that she does in the leadership here. Shot throughout the lawsuit filing are public comments, including interviews on Fox News of people like Donald Trump and Linda McMahon, the education secretary, where she said, I'm going to put myself out of business. In fact, during an interview just on March 11th, Linda McMahon with Laura Ingraham, who's now been bribed

with a position by the Trump administration on the Kennedy Center, Performing Arts Center board, she did an interview, puff piece, and she asked point blank, is this the first step in cutting the workforce in half, in shuttering civil rights offices in all the major cities? Is that the first step on the road to a total shutdown? Here's her response. Linda, I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job.

I want her to put herself out of a job. Education department. All right, and a move that seems to portend the beginning of the end for the department that Republicans going back to Reagan pledged to abolish, the Department of Education today told staffers to vacate their offices by 6 p.m. Because the offices were closing nationwide. The doors are now locked. Workers aren't going to be allowed back into the buildings until at least Thursday. Yes, actually it is because that was the president's mandate.

This directive to me clearly is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know will have to work with Congress to get that accomplished. But what we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat. And that's not to say that a lot of the folks, it's a humanitarian thing too, a lot of the folks that are there, they're out of a job. But we wanted to make sure that we kept all of the right people, the good people, to make sure that the outward-facing programs, the grants, the appropriations that come from Congress, all of that are being met. And none of that's going to fall through the cracks.

The answer is yes, obviously. And that is front and center on page 33 of this particular filing. They first go through all of the other comments starting on page one. Let me read to you from aspects of the complaint that's been filed in the request for temporary restraining order.

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disabilities and enforces the laws that prohibit discrimination in education. It administers federal student aid programs. These are just some of the key ways the congressional acts governing the existence of the department are deeply intertwined with the education system in the plaintiff states. Incredibly, all these significant and statutorily mandated functions are covered by just 4,100 people until March 11th, when the department announced that it was cutting its staff by 50%.

This massive reduction in force, the RIF I talked about earlier, is equivalent to incapacitating, key statutorily mandated by Congress functions of the department causing immense damage to the education system and to the members and to the plaintiff states. Although the department's March 11 press release says the department quote will continue to deliver all statutory programs that fall under the agency's purview that assertion is belied by the extent and effect of the riff so too is the assertion from belied by the extent and effect of the riff. So too is the assertion from Secretary McMahon that the terminations were the first step towards the total shutdown

of the department. You just saw that quote up on Fox News. Far from being the first step, it is effectively the dismantling of the department, paragraph three alleges. The riff is so severe, paragraph four alleges that it incapacitates components of the department responsible for performing functions mandated by Congress by statute, effectively nullifying the mandates. For example, paragraph four page three of the complaint, seven regional offices of the department's office for civil rights including those in New York, Boston, France, San Francisco, Philadelphia,

and Chicago have been closed entirely. It's not supported by any actual reasoning or specific determination, and the states have been harmed as a result. We know that Donald Trump wants to chloroform the Department of Education because it's in the Project 2025 handbook, which he's implementing.

We know that that's exactly what they're doing. They're taking the department out in the back and shooting it because that's in the Project 2025 handbook, which he's implementing. We know that that's exactly what they're doing. They're taking the department out in the back and shooting it because that's what Linda McMahon said she was empowered to do, to put herself out of business without regard to consequences to the American public school student. Not everybody can afford to send her to get to private school, well, and we have to make sure that funding

that comes from taxpayer dollars gets properly allocated to the states to pay for things like K and Pre-K and other programs. Letitia James is a hero here. We're gonna be talking about her a lot on Legal AF and the Midas Touch Network over and over and over again. Why? Because there's about 18 to 20 states that are going to join together over and over and

over again. I call them the gang of 20, where their attorney general is a Democrat, where one or both of their aspects of government, the legislature, legislator, and the executive branch, their governor is a Democrat. And when they line up, they're powerful and successful. Letitia James alone has four separate temporary restraining orders that she's obtained already against this administration. And this I predict will be the fifth.

Donald Trump will continue like a spoiled, petulant child to continue to test constitutional boundaries until he is stopped in his tracks by attorney generals, by public interest groups, by non-governmental organizations, by people banding together and taking their grievances to federal courts and the right federal courts. Once again, we're in Massachusetts. You'll see lots of filings. Just to give you a viewer's guide here, in the cases that have been filed, we're up to about a hundred. The states you're going to see over and over again, about half are going to be the District of Columbia. If that's where the plaintiffs think that's their best shot, they'll go District of Columbia. About half are there. That's where the agencies are based.

It's usually easier to sue there. But they can sue where they're harmed or where they're injured. So you're gonna see we've talked a lot about and here we have another example of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, sometimes New Jersey, Maryland. See you're getting the drift here, the original 13 colonies? Okay, blue. California. Washington, places like that. That's where we're gonna sue. MAGA sues in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, places like that.

We sue in these other places. And we've got the guns, and we've got the attorneys general to pull it off. And the success rate now is even higher than the success rate of the lawsuits in the first Trump administration. There, the attorney general's batted about 800. Pretty amazing, pretty Hall of Fame numbers. Now it's well over 900 percent, 90 percent success rate. So we'll continue to follow it. Let me just tell you that the way this is gonna work is once the judge is assigned, we have our judge,

then he's gonna hold or she's gonna hold a hearing on the temporary restraining order that's been asked for. That briefing is gonna go relatively quickly. They're gonna decide whether the dismantling needs to stop right now. The judge is not gonna be able to order the rehiring of people already fired at this stage, but to stop it right now. The judge is not going to be able to order the rehiring of people already fired at this stage, but to stop it right now. They'll have a debate over whether temporary restraining order is necessary and whether there's been irreparable harm, which I believe there has

been, and then we'll get to the merits of the case. These are important cases to bring against this administration, which is rogue, out of control, ultra-varies, and drunk with power. against this administration, which is rogue, out of control, ultra-various, and drunk with power. And I'll continue to follow it all right here. So until my next reporting, I'm Michael Popock. In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro-democracy channel

where I'll be curating the top stories, the intersection of law and politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe at LegalAFMTN. That's at LegalAFMTN.