Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF - 4/1/2026

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

The Legal AF Pod, helmed by Popok and KFA, cover breaking law and politics news in the last 48 hours from the Supreme Court, DC federal courts, the White House, Congress, Iran and so much more. Delete Me: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to join https://joindeleteme.com/LEGALAF and use promo code LEGALAF at checkout. Dose: Save 35% on your first month of subscription by going to https://dosedaily.co/LEGALAF or entering LEGALAF at checkout. Mack Weldon: Go to https://mackweldon.com/?utm_source=streaming&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcastlaunch&utm_content=LEGALAFutm_term=LEGALAF and get 20% off your first order with promo code LEGALAF 120Life: Visit https://www.120life.com/products/120-life-free-shipping?code_bp=LEGALAF and use code: LEGALAF for 20% OFF! We NEED your help! Legal AF and The Intersection podcasts are both FINAL 5 Finalists for the Webby Awards Best Podcasts! Voting is open for only the next 2 weeks. Show your support for our shows by voting for free for the Webby Awards, and gets friends and family to do the same! Vote for Legal AF (Podcasts – News & Politics) https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/shows/news-politics Vote for The Intersection (Best New Podcast) https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/features/best-new-podcast-news-business-society Become a member of Legal AF YouTube community: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgZJZZbnLFPr5GJdCuIwpA/join Learn more about the Popok Firm: https://thepopokfirm.com Subscribe to Legal AF Substack: https://michaelpopok.substack.com/subscribe?coupon=c0fc8f5c 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 Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show The Ken Harbaugh Show: https://meidasnews.com/tag/the-ken-harbaugh-show Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com. Save $80 with code space 80 at talkspace.com. Welcome to the midweek edition of Legal A.F. We don't blow smoke or sunshine. When things go well for the democracy and against Donald Trump, we're here for it. And this is a terrible day. We can just do an entire podcast of just today against Donald Trump in every way, shape, and form. We're going to kick it off talking about birthright citizenship.

Donald Trump said history. today, made history today, first sitting president to ever sit in an oral argument, first sitting president to ever storm out of an oral argument that he knew was not going well for him when the MAGA Republicans took turns treating John Sauer like a giant jurisprudential pinata about the 14th Amendment and what it literally says. So it was not a hard oral argument. We were a little concerned that the Supreme Court took it up at all, but it comes down to four big pieces of paper. In 1898, Supreme Court case, 1868 amendment to the Constitution,

a 1940 statute, and a 1952 reenactment of the statute. That's it. You can tap dance all you want for two hours, John Sauer, which you tried to do, which can't outrun logic and gaps in your reasoning that were pointed out by the right as the right wing on the Supreme Court. Now, in watching the oral argument today, and it's up for everybody to listen to on LegalAF YouTube channel under Live, now I think they were doing it in order to embarrass Donald Trump to his face.

Before I was like, oh, no, they're taking the case. Oh, nothing good will come out of this. I don't know about that. We'll get into more detail when we get to that. Then yesterday, last 24 hours, a federal judge named Richard Leon put a big red tag on the ballroom, the Royal Ballroom Project, as I like to call it, at the White House, and did a stop work order, just as I thought he would do, and said, you are not to build this, you have violated the law. Congress needs to approve funding and or approve you doing any of this major reconstruction renovation of the White House. to be no different if Donald Trump in the middle of the night,

try to knock over the people's house, knock it down, and then say, well, what am I going to do? Got to build a new one. Yeah, no. And I love Judge Leon for a number of reasons, and one of my favorites is how he punctuated his order, his memorandum opinion,

with 18 exclamation marks and half a dozen eye-rolling, please, sometimes combined, please, exclamation mark. And yes, there's been an appeal already, Donald Trump has already misstated what the order allows and has revealed national secrets about how they're planning to secure the presidency. But we'll leave that for the segment. Then because he knew he was having a bad news cycle, Donald Trump decided he was finally, he had to sign some piece of paper about mail-in ballots, about voting. Remember, he threatened us. He threatened the democracy with, I'm going to run upside down, everything you know about elections.

I'm going to take them over. I want to sign an order about citizenship. papers and IDs and passports and all. No, it came down to something equally stupid and easily refutable in federal court. It's this, the post office, good news everybody, the post office is taking over and deciding who gets a mail-in ballot. Yes, the postal service. The one you can barely rely on to deliver your junk mail is now going to decide whether you are eligible to vote and withhold your ballot if they decide you're not with reference to social security administration records millions of people's mail-in ballots are at risk states rights are at risk will cover mail-in ballots and and why there's already lawsuits being filed to oppose that

well in well in time for the midterm elections and then again this is all last 24 hours judge mehta who at one time was the chief judge as a judge there in the D.C. federal court. He is allowing a group of Metropoleon police and Capitol Police officers and others, including in Congress, to continue with a lawsuit against Donald Trump for him being,

him having incited, based on the allegations of the complaint, an insurrection and attack that caused them harm. On Jan 6th, primarily focused on the ellipse speech. that case yes has been kicking around for oh these past six years or five years or so but now it's on its way to trial subject to some appeals we'll talk about another fine day for the democracy another fine day to be joined by my partner karen freeman ignifalo hi karen hi korek so good to see you as always you are to you too and for those of our audience that celebrate happy passover hags samaya happy Passover i don't I don't know how I don't know how to say that. We'll leave that for another time.

All right. So let's put, let's do the politics part of law and politics here on legal AF. Terrible, terrible poll numbers. I left that out, came out in the last 24 hours. CNN reporting that two-thirds of America, including a fair number of Republicans, have rejected Donald Trump's presidency, called it a failure, says he does, he's not in touch with their needs,

his economic policies, or if I'm talking about two-thirds. including him, and just since January, think about this, for the Iran War, just since January, he's lost double-digit point totals with Republicans, with Republicans under 45, in every major category that matters about his handling of the economy, inflation, the Iran War, global affairs, immigrant rights, all terrible. There it is. And does that have the mituses on there, too? Yeah, I mean, the approval rating, I've seen it as low as 33%. This is the CNN poll. There's another poll that has it as 33%.

This is the lowest he's ever been. But even among the GOP, he's shedding support. And that entire coalition that he built to get elected on what Representative Jamie Raskin told me in an interview a couple of days ago was this predator, predatory slogan of America first, which was never meant to accomplish anything but to get Donald Trump elected,

that coalition of like Hispanics and overperforming with the black vote, and overperforming with the women vote, and overperforming with the independent vote. It's all gone. It's all gone up in flames. And now he's left, apparently, Karen, with his only two trusted advisors. Susie Wiles, the chief of staff,

and his wife, Melania, who are consulting with him about his immigration policy and telling him they have to put an end to it, including maybe Stephen Miller's career. What are you sensing from the public that no Kingsday March? Another nine million people hit the streets. We're talking about 20% of the electorate

is hitting the streets against Donald Trump in advance of it. I'm sure you were popping around New York or someplace for that. What are you seeing out in America? Yeah, I mean, look, I have some friends who identify as Republicans and who voted for Donald Trump, and even they are saying essentially a couple of things. First of all, the whole Iran war, I think, has really made people ask in question. This is not what I voted for. The whole reason I voted for Donald Trump was because this promise of no more foreign wars,

these endless wars, Iraq, Afghanistan. I mean, people have lived through these wars that are quite expensive. And they're looking at their own situation or their kids' situation and saying, if we have a billion dollars, if I'm paying taxes and we have so much money from my taxes that I think are too high and I don't want to be paying, but if we have so much money from that, I don't want it going to be a billion dollars a day to fund this war that really has nothing to do with us and certainly is not something I wanted. I'd rather people, for example, have health care or affordable health care or food or lower prices.

You know, and it's making gas prices go up. Housing prices are still high. And I think people are just really frustrated that we are spending billions and billions and billions of dollars to be in this war. And then he's going out and spending billions of dollars on all of his vanity projects, whether it's to rebrand the Trump Kennedy Center or the whole East Wing of the White House or put up another monument, whatever it is. It's just, he's really lost touch with what people who did vote for him wanted. And he's really losing touch with, with a lot of people who think, okay, you said you were going to deport people who are committing crimes, but what about

the hard workers who my company relies on? I need them. I need them to work in my factory or beyond my farm or whatever it is. So he's losing a lot of people who he voted for him because he advertised one thing, but he's delivering something completely different. That's what I'm seeing. Of course, there's still these hardcore MAGA, you know, people who will always follow him, but there's a lot of people who are just completely disillusioned by this that I'm hearing, that I didn't hear before. Yeah, I agree with you. I had lunch with an old friend of mine yesterday, who was a moderate Democrat, and he had an interesting without outing him. He had an interesting perspective. He hates Donald Trump and everything about him. However, he is willing more than I

thought to acknowledge some quote unquote of the good things that Donald Trump has done, like he's in favor of what we've done already in Iran. I say, well, what is the out? What's the exit strategy? I don't understand how we were supposed to take over 90 million people. And from his point of view, it was like, well, we got rid of the missiles and the nukes and the Navy, and that's good enough for me. And nobody else had the balls to do it.

So it's interesting. He's not a Trump supporter. He's not going to vote, you know, Republican at the midterms or, but he's still, there's still this group out there that likes certain parts of what they've done. And the part that we have to be concerned about is that when you're the party out of power, like the Democrats, there's a limit to what you can do. Thank God they come on our show and on Midas and we get to talk to senators and Congress people all the time, but they're not making legislation to help people because they're not in power. And there's only so many nasty letters and subpoenas and oversight hearings and shadow hearings that you can run. The end of the day, that's why even in the polling, 65% of the people don't want to aren't happy with the Democrats either.

But that's really just a function of the Democrats are doing anything because they're not able to in our system of government other than try to hem in and pin back Donald Trump. I think the polling is amazing, but it has to be analyzed and turned into policy pronouncements, a contract with America by the Democrats in order to be really, really successful. Otherwise, it just becomes a pox in all your houses. And we're going to have another problem with three, eight, ten, 20 million people sitting out the next election. But what about, so what would your friends say, what is it about the Iran war? No, I'm really curious about this. What is it about the Iran? He's a huge Israel supporter.

So anything that degrades Iran is a plus. By the way, as I've said, I am not against the concept of getting rid of Iran if that was possible with well-thought-out coalition-building, strategy, combination of diplomacy, sanctioned. and the rest. But this, this is a fiasco. And so I'm not willing to give him any credit. The other person gives him credit, I don't want to speak for him, but gives him credit because it's like, well, at least the Navy's gone.

But Iran's not the only power, you know, regime, whatever country that has nuclear weapons. Why, why Iran? Why not Russia? Why not China? Why not North Korea? Like, why are we focusing on them? Why?

And the answer, you answered it, is because of Israel. But again, they're beatable. They're beatable. I don't think we want to take on the Russians or the Chinese. But it just to me seems really not necessarily in our interest and certainly not worth the expense and the human toll it's taking on the lives that will be lost and are lost. And like you said, there's no exit strategy. So what, we're going to be in this forever?

I mean, Iran seems dug in, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. This war is ever when they say it's over. Or they're just going to make Donald Trump keep you. shape-shifting and morphing before our very eyes in terms of what a victory looks like. It was regime change. No, forget that.

That's not going to work. It'll be straight of our moves under our control. Well, that's not happening. Forget that one. We'll do the Navy. We'll bomb the shit out of the Navy and the nuclear reactors. I thought we did that already. At least the nuclear reactors part.

And then he's just using it as a foil to go after our allies, once again, Mark Arrubio. We'll have to rethink NATO and our involvement because they're not coming to a pointless, you know, illogically planned war, and we want them to. It's like, you know, I really don't understand why you think you can violate other country sovereignties. You picked the fight with Iran, good for you. You didn't do coalition building or diplomacy on the way in. Good for you. And then you want our allies to bail you out, both with oil production and release and militarily. It's not fair. It's not fair to our allies. It makes us look weak and stupid.

we're not stronger around the world based on what people are watching because Donald Trump's in charge. I remember when Trump got elected or people voted for him. I had friends of a Republican that told me, you know what I like about Donald Trump? Like what? On a world stage, he's so erratic that people don't know what he's going to do next. And so I'm like, that's not a strategy. That's lethal weapon. Okay, that's Mel Gibson.

Like, oh, he's the crazy cop. You don't know what he's going to do now. That's a buddy movie. Okay, that's not how you run the most powerful country in the world. and the leading democracy. Okay? Like, you don't know what he's going to do next either. That's what I tell them, let alone,

and he doesn't know what he's going to do next either. And that erraticness actually weakens America in our allies' eyes. Many of them are watching our show today. We have 138 countries or more that support legal A.F have been with us from the very, very beginning. But let's take a time out here, unless you want to drill, make another point on Iran, go to birthright citizenship. I don't know. I just, I think what you said is, is a really important point, just that people are losing, even his supporters, his lack of credibility, the fact that he changes and lies to people's faces. People see that. And I think that really makes us weaker in so many ways.

Oh, yeah. And like today, so, you know, switching gears to the Supreme Court, I mean, he might have thought it was, there was a tough guy move, a mob move, mobster move, to come and be the first sitting president. to ever go to a Supreme Court oral argument, but now he's also the first setting president to ever get embarrassed to his face by his Supreme Court, including those that he appointed. And I don't know how that makes him look stronger as he strolls back Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. I think it makes him look incredibly feckless and weak.

And who are his advisors, Susie Wiles, Malania? Who is letting him out? Who sat in a room and said, yeah, it's a good idea, boss. You should go to the Supreme. Court. He knew it was going to go terrible for him. He's been bashing the refs for the last three weeks ever since he stopped doing it about tariffs. He knew his argument was a dead-bag loser. That's why his tell is all those social media posts. And yet he was going to go to have him do it to

their face. Yeah. And then he stormed out after, what, 13 minutes or something? No, 50 minutes after they got into the argument and after he saw that Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett were against him. In fact, let's talk about what happened today and break it down. And how do we get here. So we, you and I were concerned along with Ben that they were even taking this case, because why do we need this case? The 14th Amendment says a person who is born in or naturalized in the United States, subject to the jurisdiction thereof, is a citizen. Period. It was then codified in 1940, same exact language in Title VIII, in 1952, same exact language. See, countries like ours are always struggling with identity, always struggling with existential issues

about who's a citizen, especially a country that stole its country from another group of people. We're always debating who's a citizen. McKinley, President McKinley did it too. Let's redefine. You're born in Puerto Rico? Guam? No, you're not going to be a citizen. We don't want that.

Let's cut that out. So, presidents like Donald Trump are always trying to redefine who's a citizen. But it creates a terrible us against them scenario in the United States. I'm a citizen. Are you naturalized? Oh, you're not the same as me. I was born here. Or am I?

Six generations were born here. Or I'm the daughter or son of the American, evolution or whatever bullshit people want to sell themselves about what makes them more of an American than their neighbor. We don't want to live in that society. So the 14th Amendment says what it says, says all persons, a person. It's always broadly interpreted, reaffirmed at 1898 by the case of the Chinese baby who grew up to leave the country, born here, and was denied entry again.

And he said, I'm an American citizen. They said, no, your parents are Chinese. They said, no, I'm an American citizen born in San Francisco. and it went up to the Supreme Court. And that led to a funny moment, which will play in a moment, between Cecilia Wong, who's the advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union, who's, of course, with us on Legal AF YouTube channel, and she was the advocate for the case. There was only two advocates, her and John Sauer, in which, in fact, let's play the moment where Brett Kavanaugh says to Cecilia Wong, if we agree with you,

that the Kwan Ark case from 1898 is the dispositive case, this is over pretty quickly, isn't it? I mean, it's a very short decision, isn't it? And she just paused for a second. Well, let's play it. Play the clip. Listen, your opening, that if we agree with you on how to read Wankham Ark, then you win.

So that could be a, if we did agree with you on Wong Kim, Ark, that could be just a short opinion, right? that says the better reading is respondents reading. Government doesn't ask us to overrule, affirmed? Yes. That's that. Then, I love that moment. You know, it's the brevity is the soul of wit.

You know, just sit, I've done it as an advocate. Just the answer is yes. That yes was 30 years in the making for Cecilia. You didn't saying that, having the courage just to say yes. And that case came up again, Karen. that 1898 case that you and I've been talking about for a year and a half came up again, but not in a good way for John Sauer, the Solicitor General, former Trump criminal appellate lawyer in a question from Gorsuch, another vote that he needs in order to support Trump's position

to count to five. Let's play Gorsuch and Sauer about the same case when it comes up. I'm just working within your argument for a moment. Today, you can point to me. laws against immigration that are much more restrictive than they were in 1860. We really didn't have laws like that we do today until maybe 1880. So if somebody showed up here in 1868 and established domicile, that was perfectly fine without respect to any immigration laws. There they were. And so why wouldn't we, even if we were to apply your own test, come to the conclusion

that the fact that someone might be illegal is immaterial. I would first cite Wong Kim Ark on that point because Wonka Mark says you're... Well, I'm not sure how much you want to rely on Wong Kim Mark. But there is a statement in there and says so long as... When you hear Gorsuch, who's supposed to be your friends, say, I'm not sure you want to rely on that case. I know. On the heels of it.

Let me play one more, then I'll get your view of what happened during the two hours. And this is probably around the moment where Donald Trump button is jacked. in his long red tie and stormed out of the room. And this is for those that haven't been there, and I've taken the tour, and I've also sat for oral argument there. I haven't argued at oral argument, but I've watched it.

You know, you've got the velvet red curtains. It's not that huge of a room. People think it's much bigger than it is. The bench is relatively close to you. So if you're sitting in the first row like Donald Trump was, you're pretty close to the action. I mean, Donald Trump's comfortable for being in rooms like that because he's an indicted, convicted felon.

And he's been in courtrooms before. But this was the moment for me. early on when it was like I call it on one of my hot takes, the weekend of Bernie moment. This is the moment when John Sauer died in terms of his argument and nobody told him. This is John Sauer and Chief Justice Roberts, as Sauer tries to make an argument about the modern world

and 8 billion people just a flight away from being a United States citizen. Their interpretation has made a mess of the provision. Well, it certainly wasn't a problem in the 19th century. No, but of course, we're in a new world now, just the leader pointed out to, where 8 billion people are one plane right away from having a child as a U.S. citizen. Well, it's a new world.

It's the same constitution. It is. Done. He's about as dead as fried chicken, as Senator John Kennedy said in Louisiana about Christy Gnome. I mean, for me, that was the... You get the Chief Justice going,

you know, it's the same old constitution. Nobody was buying his argument. I forget five votes. I don't know how he gets three votes. What did you make of it today? Yeah, I mean, look, it was very interesting. It was a history lesson. It was going back to some of our worst times as a country

when black people and slaves didn't have the same rights as the rest of us. And frankly, it was just, it was very interesting to listen to from that perspective. But I just didn't, I don't see, even John Sauer, I don't even know how much he believes what he was trying to argue because it just, the whole position makes no sense. And it came out through a lot of examples, right? Like, so, okay, John Sauer was saying it turns on domicile. Is this your house? Is this where you reside?

Is this where your home? Is this where you intend to live permanently? And the justices were like, yeah, but the 14th Amendment doesn't talk about the parents' domicile. It talks about the child's citizenship. And so how are we supposed to determine that? And how do you deal with that? So what if, is it the mom, it has to be a U.S. citizen or has to be legally here and domiciled here?

Or what about the father? Or what about both of them? Or how do you determine that logically? And so what happens between the time of birth and the time that you figure this out? And what are you going to do? Take depositions of pregnant women to find out what your intention is. Are you intending to stay? here. It talked a lot about, well, on that one. So you don't think, people don't think

Karen just pulled that out of thin air. Let's play Katanji Brown Jackson on that exact point. All right. You will still get a, because they're transparent. I'm just talking about the particulars, because now you say your rule turns on whether the person intended to stay in the United States. And I think Justice Barrett brought this up. So we bringing pregnant women in for depositions. What are we doing to figure this out? No, as I pointed out earlier, the executive order turns on lawfulness of stat. So if you give birth to a baby in the hospital right now, it gets the birth certificate in the system. There's a computer system.

So there's no opportunity, there's apparently no opportunity then for the person to prove or to say that they actually intended to stay in the United States. Absolutely not. The opposite is true. Their opportunity to dispute if they think they were wrongly denied, which would only happen in a tiny minority of cases is directly addressing that guidance. After the fact, after their baby has been denied citizenship, then we can go through the process. And the way that, I mean, I'm summarizing because I'm not an expert computers, but there's a computer program that currently automatically generates a social security number. SSA says, look, a social security number, non-citizens can have them if they work authorization. So it doesn't prove citizenship. We'll give you a social security number provided that the system automatically checks the immigration status to the parents, which they're robust databases for.

And then it appears no different to the vast majority of birthing parents. Thank you. picturing delivery rooms attached to conference rooms where depositions will be held for mothers who've just given birth. That's what I think is our next chief justice. If the Democrats get back in office and Roberts retires or whatever, I think Katanji Brown Jackson is the next chief justice of the United States. What do you think? Well, I don't know about that, but she was great. I mean, you know, but some more interesting.

Wait, wait, why did you run that over it? So why isn't she going to be the next chief justice? No, because I don't know. I mean, we both don't know. I'm making my opinion. I know. I know. Who do you want, Sotomayor?

Yeah, I was going to say, I would probably guess Sotomayor. But she's 75. Yeah. But I think Katanji Brown Jackson is a little, like she's alone a lot, right? She's sort of, she'll be the dissenter where Kagan and Sotomayor will concur. or she seems to be the furthest, you know, not necessarily a consensus builder, as much as Sotomayor, in my opinion, seems to be. I'm not sure about that. I mean, she dissented two days ago, 8 to 1 on the conversion therapy case, but she's generally, it's the block of three with Sotomayor and Kagan. Kekins sort of is not, I mean, she's not writing as prolifically as she used to. I love Sotomayor. I'm just looking at a 72, 73-year-old justice. and we're talking about three years from now.

She'll be almost 80 years old. I don't think she's the right candidate. I don't think a Democrat would skip over the current group to bring, which he could, or she could, to bring in a new Supreme Court justice. The only reason I'm talking about it is people like to talk about the future and what does that look like if there's midterms and a change in the presidency, and I do want to talk about that. Yeah.

You know, just to wrap up a couple of other sort of practical things that they talked about today. You know, Amy Coney Barrett was saying, what about, they call them foundlings, babies who are abandoned after birth, right, and whose parents are unknown? What do you do with those babies? I mean, they were really concerned about just children and being without country, being without sovereignty because of this question of their parents. And, you know, it's just part of the 14th Amendment not just talks about where you were born, but also subject to the laws. of, you know, subject to the laws or the jurisdiction of the United States. And I think a really important point is the only people who aren't subject to the laws of the United States are a very, very small number of people, such as diplomats, right?

And when I was a prosecutor, we had to deal with this where a diplomat would be accused of a crime and even arrested for a crime. And we had to release them. We had to literally release them and send them, give them to their country, because they are not subject to the laws of the United States. But whether you're documented or undocumented, whether you are here as a tourist or you are here as a visitor, you are subject to the laws of the United States.

You will be prosecuted if you commit a crime. You will get a traffic ticket if you're speeding. You are subject to the, you have to obey the laws of the United States of America. So you are subject to the laws here. And I think that that's where this is ultimately going to fall is a combination of our Constitution that applies to everybody, right? The Fourth Amendment, search and seizure, applies to everyone, not just citizens. And if our Constitution applies to everyone, then our Constitution applies to everyone, including the 14th Amendment, which is very clear about where you're born. If you're born here, you are a citizen of this country.

And that is what our country was founded on. It's based on the English common law that also has birthright citizenship. Trump, who tweeted out that we're the only country in the world who doesn't have that is wrong. At least 30 countries also have birthright citizenship. So he's just plain wrong. And so I do think that any way you skin this cat, whether it's looking at historical precedent, whether looking at the text of the Constitution, whether you're looking at English common law what this was based on, whether you look at the five or so statutes that have been codified in the

following years about what about citizenship. I do think ultimately, I don't know how they're going to rule, whether they just rule on statutory grounds or constitutional grounds. But no matter how they rule, I do think Trump is going to lose bigly, as he would say, in this particular case. Yeah, and it'll attack the Supreme Court justices. And I guess the thing we'll wrap this section with is I don't want people to think that because we're getting a few major wins like tariffs and birthright citizenship, it sort of makes up for all of the bad rulings that this activist bench led by John Roberts and the right wingers all done to us in the term and in past terms. You know, Trump's batting 900 in shadow docket cases.

Now, some of the merit cases are, of course, going in our way. We'll have to see where the final numbers shake out as this term ends. in June when they drop this birthright citizenship opinion sometime before they leave for vacation. But we're going to get a crappy voting rights case result. We're going to get a crappy mail-in ballots result. We may get a good Federal Reserve Independence ruling. But this administration had no problem with Donald Trump completely reshaping for the worse the relationship between the American people and the federal government, between federal workers and the federal government, between federal funding and the states and grants and programs and that type of thing and its impact on the economy and that's all because of the Supreme Court.

So while we're, you know, slightly elated by a Trump, especially to his face, being so resoundingly rejected, part of me thinks that maybe they wanted, they're glad he was there and they took this case for a reason because they didn't really have to. They could have just rejected the appeal and said, you know, the 1898 precedent stands. We don't really have anything new or novel to say about that. But, you know, Trump kept pushing. This was the lynchman of his administration, lynchman of his immigration policies. He needs to be heard on it. Where do you think Thomas falls? Well, he led off with the Dred Scott question.

We were like, well, that's appropriate. A descendant of slaves is going to ask a question about one of the most notorious, heinous decisions by the Supreme Court. Although it didn't really go any. I mean, it was interesting. He raised it, but it didn't really go anywhere. So he's hanging in the room. kind of thing. I don't know. I think this is seven to two. I think Alito and Thomas are just so

dug in to support anything that Trump says. It's very hard for them. Now, I mean, those, you know, when you start seeing eight to ones and nine zeros, it's on something that, like, Trump wanted that the moderates were willing to go along with, like conversion therapy, not being banned in certain states. I don't know. I think it's seven to two. Let's just do the count. Kintanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor and Kagan, against the policy, Roberts against, Gorsuch against, Barrett, Amy Coney Barrett against. And then I thought, going in, I was like, well, Kavanaugh is a free radical.

Based on the way he handled the questions, I think it's seven to two. Maybe one of the two could surprise me and slide over and make it eight to one. But under no scenario, is there a world where Donald Trump can get to five, can count to five? because he'd have to get three out of the four of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Amy Cody, Barrett, and Roberts. And he's not going to get three out of the four. I'm not even sure he gets one out of the four. And we'll know that at the end of June.

Now, there's lots of other lawsuits that will involve the Supreme Court, including Donald Trump's mail-in ballot thing. We'll talk about after our break. But that was a tremendous setback, no matter how you put it, for the Trump administration, as was what we'll be talking about after our break, which is in the ballroom. his royal ballroom. We'll talk about mail-in ballots, Judge Meta, allowing finally after five years a case to move forward about civil damages against Donald Trump in particular. We'll give you a quick update on something

that happened as we were coming on the air with Judge Randy Moss ruling in favor of NPR and PBS against the Trump administration. Maybe if we have time, Karen can talk about her favorite story about Christine Nome's husband and some dress-up games. Now we know why she's no longer. in the administration. Hopefully he won't go the way of cricket. The dog will just leave it at that. There's so many different ways to support what we do here on Legal A. I've got great new news.

New news. New news is in. This podcast and my podcast, The Intersection, are both up for Webby Awards. Last year, Midas Brothers podcast won the Webby Award, I think for like the best podcast of all time. This one is mine, the intersection is for best new podcast. podcast in news and the legal a.F with us is up for podcast in news. We made it out of thousands and thousands of submissions. We had to put together a whole real whole thing. We made it to the final five finalists in

both categories. And there's two components to it. There's the popular vote. There's a popular award, like a People's Choice Award. And then there's the Committee Award. I really would want, I don't know about you, Karen. I'd be more elated if we won the People's Choice Award. Totally. And some committee. I mean, sorry, committee. I mean, don't take us out of the running, but I really would like to say. So here's how it works.

Two-week campaign ending the 16th or 17th of April. And you literally vote, and we put the links below, and you can vote for both or one or the other, whatever you want to do. It'll tell you what the current vote totals are by percentage or by percentage. Right now, legal AF and the intersection are both leading their categories. I think we both have over 50%. But we need your help. We got two weeks.

We're competing against these other great podcasts, and we need your help. And then if we win, I get to see Karen in New York in May. How fun. That would be fun. And other ways, of course, to support what we do. There's an ecosystem that we built here at Legal A-F. The backbone of it, of course, is this podcast, which, Karen, I forgot to wish you a happy birthday anniversary.

It's six years since Ben and I started. legal roundup five years since we launched legal a f so it sort of mirrors the podcast the midas world five and six years and that's this month wow so we got that the legal a f youtube channel which is going to cross 1.1 million subscribers very very soon a dozen videos every day um we had the live stream today of the oral argument in the supreme court we'll get 100 000 will probably be the number one or number two live stream for that particular oral argument out there because people are starting to rely on that channel for that some great interviews in the last few days Jamie Raskin deputy director immigration project for the american civil liberties union before

birthright citizenship i'm bringing on attorney general j jones of virginia to talk about the mail-in ballots litigation that the attorneys general are going to be leading uh you know and and and others and then we've got legal aft stack one begets the next, a whole other universe parallel to the YouTube channel where there's an overlap, but there's some people that live on Substack for us and for other reasons. And we had 10 pieces of content that go up every day. I just did a lot. I do a live every day. We're usually around noon. And we get a thousand or 2,000 people to join us and then watch that video. It's really, really fascinating. And then we've got our pro-democracy sponsors that Jordi,

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then Judge Leon's decision in the ballroom will. I said, watch out. I've been involved in construction cases where judges have ordered a tear-down of a building. And just because Donald Trump was continuing to, like, you know, build out that hole and try to bring up the ballroom and get approvals from these groups that he controls doesn't mean the judge Leon, who I knew had been sitting on a preliminary injunction by the National Trust since early March. And I knew Leon, it's funny, I don't know if he watches the show, so we know some judges do by extension. But I said a

couple of days ago in an email that there's a vote on Thursday tomorrow by the National trust controlled by Donald Trump to approve these plans. It's the last stop. Of course, Trump's ignoring Congress. And I was like, Judge Leon, it's time to issue your opinion. And right on cue, yesterday, he dropped his 30, I love his writing. He dropped his 35 page, a memorandum opinion, filled with 18 exclamation marks. Karen, you ever seen a judge use XT? And the word please with exclamation mark after ridiculous arguments. You can almost hear the eye rolling. within his opinion. And what he came down to is the following, effectively, what we always knew. The current occupant of the White House is just the temporary occupant who's a guardian for the

property for the people and for future generations. At the real landlord of all federal property that holds the keys is the Congress. And that just because you take in private money doesn't mean you can circumvent the role of Congress in approving massive construction projects. It would be different than if he, Donald Trump wanted to take a bulldozer or a brecking ball and tear down the entire White House to put up a condominium with his name on it because, oops, I'm the current occupant. What's the difference? And Judge Leon in his order, methodically crossed off the list, all the arguments by Donald Trump. Well, there's a statute that allows me to make repairs. Well, this is not a repair. And you still have to go back for authority and authorization. He even pointed

out, Karen, that in 2019, the first Donald Trump needed to replace a fence. Took him nine months. He had to get congressional approval. So he knows when he has to get congressional approval. He just didn't want to do it here. And so the statutes that are about remodeling and, you know, that's about like wallpaper. That's about painting. That's not about tearing down. Now, Donald Trump's tried to flip the script and say that the giant hole of the foundation is really also going to house major national security, like a bunker. Now, there's already a bunker. I'm not outing national security here.

There's already a bunker. There's the presidential executive operating center, the Piaq, that's under the White House in a bunker since the 1950s. It's like the panic room for the president. It's where the situation room is off of it. That's always been there. And we have bunkers all over the place. We've got, you know, Raven Mountain where the Department of Defense will go live.

if there's a nuclear holocaust, God forbid. And then there's another one on the border of Virginia and Maryland and Pennsylvania, which is where all civil command will go. And Trump now, because somebody whispered in his ear, Stephen Miller, that the more he talks about national security issues and security issues, then judges back off and give him a lot of power. So now he literally said, Karen,

that the ballroom is not a ballroom, a grandiose thing with 1,500 people, people to go dancing and do state dinners. Oh, no. It's really, we should see it like a shed that sits over a very elaborate security system that's being built under there. And Judge Leon had something to say about the security of the site while he's ordered that there be no vertical construction, right? Yeah, now he wasn't having it at all, this ridiculous argument. And he basically said, look, A, you don't have statutory authority to do a project of the scale on your own. And B, it doesn't belong to you. This belongs to future generations of first families. It belongs to the people. And you're just the steward of the White House currently, but you're not

the owner. And he was very clear about that. And he says, look, you're not allowed to demolish the east wing of the White House, which he did already, and replace it with a 90,000 square foot ballroom. And Trump tried to say, well, I don't need to get congressional approval because it's being privately funded. And Judge Leon took that argument head on and said, just because you have put together, I think he called it a Rube Goldberg way of getting money put in for this ballroom, it doesn't take away the fact that you need to get congressional approval. This is not an alteration. It's too expansive. And it's just not happening. And so, you know, he just shot it straight down. And, you know, he said, look, there's historical practice. The White House

has been renovated before, but you always have to go to Congress. And that's how you do it. You're not allowed to just do it on your own. You know, the thing that being my bonnet in this case is the fact that Trump tore down the East Wing and just put a wrecking ball to it. I mean, there's such, this beautiful building with a lot of history. And there was just no effort to preserve any of it or to preserve it even elsewhere, right? Give it to others who want to display or have a piece of history or a piece of the White House. He just took a wrecking ball to it.

And now is putting up this huge, this entire giant ballroom that up until this week, the architectural plans had a staircase to nowhere. And was so clearly ill-conceived and ill-thought-out, much like going into Iran. He just, he takes, he bombs first and then comes up with a plan later. And that's what he's doing here. He took a wrecking ball to the East Wing, and now they're scrambling to come up with a plan.

And the judges are saying, no, you don't just get to do that. And I think Trump has figured that out, which is why he does things this way. He creates, and he does this in so many areas where he destroys first because he knows he's going to be stopped, because he knows what he's doing is illegal. And so if he destroys first, then you can't just leave it like that, right? You have to be allowed to do something. And so because if he hadn't asked permission, right, Congress isn't going to, wasn't necessarily going to do this or give him authorization.

I mean, who knows? Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't, but it certainly wouldn't happen as quickly. And I'm glad to see that the courts and judges are putting a stop to his lawless behavior, even if it's something just like putting up, you know, destroying our, White House and putting up a garish ballroom. I'm glad to see that they're saying, no, the rules apply to you too. And that's what I think Judge Leon made very clear here. Yeah, I think of Donald Trump, and I've seen the clip of Donald Trump saying, oh, I don't think it's not bad because he said for national security purposes, we can continue to construct. That's not what the order says.

What the order says is you have a big giant hole. And if you need to secure the hole and the construction site, you know, so that people can't, like, jump on the tarp and end up in the White House. Go ahead. But he made it clear in a footnote right in the order that there is to be no vertical construction, no improvement of the site. Secure the site, sure. Improve the site, no. So Donald Trump, you know, either because he can't read or because he purposely misinterprets it for the American public, which makes it look weak again, said in a while he was signing the on the mail-in ballots and a bunch of other things that he was signing. He said, oh, I think I can continue to build. We're building this with, you know, drones, drones and bulletproof glass.

He starts outing national security secrets about how they're building, how they're building. That's not the point of the order. Now, the judge gave them a stay to give him time, to give Trump time, to go, and they've already appealed to the D.C. Federal Court of Appeals. and will, there's a notice of appeal. I'm sure he's going to be seeking a stay there. We'll see, it's really going to turn on which judges end up on the panel, the three-judge panel. If any of the Trumpers get out there, like Katzis or Rayo,

there'll be a, if there's two of them on there, God forbid, on the panel, there'll be a stay. If there's not, and it's like your normal panel, you know, like Millet and Pan and a few of the others, then I think he's not going to get his stay. if he wants to lob another hand grenade into the United States Supreme Court and argue, I got a bill in my ballroom. Now, even Judge Leon says, I'm not, here you have a, here, I'll read it. Exclamation marks and pleases it all.

Conclusion, page 34, where does this leave us? Unfortunately for defendants, unless and until Congress blesses this project, construction has to stop, exclamation mark. But here is the good news. It's not too late. for Congress to authorize the continued construction of the project. The president may go at any time to Congress to obtain express authority, to construct a ballroom or to do so with or without private funds.

Or do do so with private funds. See, his position is if you're going to do it with private funds, you still have to have congressional oversight over the project and approval. Indeed, Congress, Judge Leon wrote, may even choose to appropriate funds for the ballroom or decide some other funding scheme is acceptable. They need to bless it. Either way, Congress will thereby retain its authority over the nation's property and its oversight over government spending.

The National Trust, that's the plaintiff, its constitutional interest in lawful process will be vindicated. And the American people will benefit from the branches of government exercising their constitutionally prescribed roles. And I love his last line. Not a bad outcome. That, exclamation mark. I agree. And the crazy thing is the Republicans control Congress. So there should be, I don't see why they can't get this past. I mean, just go, go do it the right way. Now it's a terrible, terrible scar on the Capitol. It's, it dwarfs the other side, the West Wing. It blocks the view of the White House to the Capitol, which is exactly what the architect for the, for, for, DC, I think a guy named Le Petit, what he envisioned, which we know, to symbolize the co-equal branches of government and checks and balances. No, forget it. Now, it's just a giant ballroom.

You know, it's a, it's a, it's a white house attached to a giant ballroom instead of the other way around. Now, we can fix certain things in the future. Let's be frank. Many of the things that Donald Trump is putting up, we're going to be taking down. But what a waste of time and money to have to do it. Chisel off all those, all those letters off the Kennedy Center. you know, trash all his dollars with a signature on it, you know, tear down the arc to triumph for whatever he's building or if it hasn't been built yet, you know, give back the Air Force One from to Kuwait. It'll be a lot of work that I think the American people are going to be in favor of in getting

rid of the scar tissue that Donald Trump is generating while he's a short-term president. I agree. I think so. But what a waste of money. But, you know, no more waste of money. based in Donald Trump, I don't know if you saw the stats coming out, that tax receipts from corporations based on the big tax cuts in the big, big beautiful bill, $70 billion less tax receipts from companies. Companies are paying $70 billion led by META. I think they're paying like $20 billion

less based on the big beautiful bill. You know, that's not helping you and me to lose that $70 billion dollar tax receipts. You know, Donald Trump just gave a billion dollars to a French company to stop to stop them from building a wind turbine project that was approved because Donald Trump doesn't believe in alternate energy because he's in the back pocket of big coal and big oil. Imagine paying a billion dollars for something that you're not going to get, for something you're not going to see. You're basically paying someone to not do work. We were going to get a wind turbine that was going to produce electricity. That's what the billion dollars, that's what the money was spent on. And he's going to pay a billion dollars to not get that. I mean, it's just so

wasteful. So are we are. I mean, he'll say, well, I'm getting 16 billion in TikTok money for the, you know, he'll have all sorts of, you know, all sorts of, while, you know, while we came on the air, Elon Musk, who's effectively in charge of the Securities at Exchange Commission these days, he just announced he's going IPO in initial public offering to take SpaceX public. They think it'll be the largest public offering in history at $80. billion dollars, 90% of which is going to go into Elon Musk pocket. Wow. Incredible. Talk about a return on your investment. He put up 250 million dollars of his money to buy a

presidency and look what he gets in return. Yeah. Billions in contracts and an $80 billion IPO. Just totally crazy. But the ballroom case is a good one. And everything that's wrong fundamentally about the Trump administration, I think. is embodied in the golden royal ballroom. So any setbacks to it, I think, is a good thing for democracy. One quick thing before we take our last break, as we came on the air, Randall Moss, Randy Moss, the other one, not the football player, who's a longtime federal judge in D.C.

has ruled in favor of both national public radio and public broadcasting systems, PBS, and that the funding cuts by Donald Trump, you know, the ones he brags about, I'm reshaping the landscape of media. It was ultra-varrays against the Administrative Procedures Act, and just like a separate judge reinstated voice of America and said everything that, what's her face, Lake,

Carrie Lake did, was illegal, illicit, and unconstitutional, and they got to fix it. You know, you have yet another judge standing up for the democracy and for free speech, because that's the only reason PBS and NPR were being canned because Donald Trump didn't like the editorial slant. I didn't even know they had a slant. I'm sure if you really listened. But like, does Terry Groh, like, I don't even know what Terry Gross's politics are or any of the shows.

And that's probably a good thing. But that's a good decision. I'll do a deeper dive on that on the Legal AF YouTube channel. But we've got, I know this on this holiday edition of LegalAF YouTube channel, so many ways to support what we do. We've got the YouTube channel for Legal AF, a dozen videos every. day, every day, seven days a week at the intersection of law and politics and the rest. If you want to become a subscriber there, that helps us. We want to get to $1.1 million over the weekend.

We're so, so close. Legal AF substack, whole other universe. You should go check out. We got another eight or nine pieces there in commentary, live reporting. I literally do a live show at lunchtime. You can get a couple thousand people to join me there on breaking news. become a member on a substack. And then we're up for the Webby's.

Yes. Yes, I'd like to thank to make my mother. You've got the Webby Award for the Best Podcast. People's Choice version for us, I think. We're up for both awards. Intersection, Best New Podcast in News. We made it to the Final Five. And the LegalAF for Best Podcast in News made it to the Final Five.

for Best Podcast in News, made it to the final five. Voting is open for two weeks, free voting. The links are below. With your help, we'll take the coveted people's choice version of the Webby Awards for both podcasts. And then I get to see Karen in New York for the award ceremony, which would be fantastic. That would be amazing.

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jumping up and down, stamp at his feet, throwing food from his high chair about voting. since he got elected and wants to make it hard on Democrats and independents to vote. So he's threatened the Senate about the Save Act. Save Act is dead. Save Act requiring you to show citizenship papers with your legal name on it in order to vote, as opposed to just signing a penalty of perjury declaration, is not going to pass the Senate because the Democrats have successfully blocked it with the filibuster and there's not 60 votes to approve it. So no amount of Donald Trump threatening people.

I'm going to primary you. I'm going to run against you. First of all, people don't think a Trump endorsement is worth the paper it's written on any longer. The Democrats have won 31 races where they flip the seats of Republicans red to blue, including in Donald Trump's front yard, backyard, and home state in the last three weeks. And that is not, so his endorsement is not really worth, you know, much and they know it. So that's not going to happen. So Donald Trump threatened us. Remember about three weeks ago, Karen, he said, I'm going to issue an executive order of federalized national

elections against the Constitution, which provides that states, not the federal government, run federal elections for good reasons. Another check and balance by our founding fathers who did not trust the newly created federal government in many of the states who were big states-right states like, I'm Virginia, and I'm Maryland, and I'm North Carolina, and all those, and all, I don't know, I'm using voices for states, but I did. Correct. They were like, we don't want a federal government. And so it was hard to get them in the first place.

So certainly letting them run their own election was not something they were happy about either. And so that's why that's not what the Constitution says. But Trump, so what did Trump come out with? Oh, well, what can I do? Well, two weeks ago, the Supreme Court looked like it's going to side with him on mail-in ballots to the extent that there's not going to be a grace period. any more that states were giving for the receipt of mail-in ballots that were postmarked by the election day. Some states gave five business days or three days or whatever it was, and I don't

think the Supreme Court's going to go for it. I think they're going to say, you can do ballot ballots, but you've got to get them in so they should, if they don't show up on election day, they ain't getting counted. And then Donald Trump took a one step further. He said, I got a better idea. I put the Postal Service in charge, along with the Social Security Administration. What could go wrong when you put those two groups together? So what was your take on his new proclimate? his new executive order and what attorneys general and other interest groups are doing already to challenge it in court. I mean, first of all, this whole thing just is so ridiculous. I mean, you know, when you think about it, you're going to trust a list created by Social Security and the post office to determine whether you can vote or not.

It's just, it's got so many flaws. I mean, you know, with identity theft and other issues, you know, there are people out there there who are using other people's social security numbers. And besides, you know, we know that that system is not foolproof. And so that just seems like something that doesn't appear to be, it's going to take away a lot of people's eligibility, not because of substantive reasons, but because of reasons that are not within their control. And how are they going to fix it? How are they going to follow up? How are they going to challenge? it, right? That, that, it just has a whole, a whole logistical problem there, number one. Number two, the irony is Trump just voted by mail, right? So it applies to, it doesn't apply to

me, but it applies to the, you know, that's his whole, his whole thing. And you would think that he wouldn't do that because it's just a bad look. But mail on ballots is a practical thing that a lot of people avail themselves of, and, and like him. And so I do think that it's not, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And frankly, if he controls the post office, who's to say he doesn't just sort of say, hey, why don't you slow, don't deliver the things that look like ballots, right? Because he wants them to have barcodes and special envelopes and all of that. I don't trust him to encourage the Postal Service to make sure that even if people get them in on time, that they get delivered on time. Because he's so against mail and ballots. And so, so the,

The whole system, I think, is very flawed. And, you know, lots of experts and election officials say that the order is, that this order is unconstitutional because, as we all know, states, not the president, runs elections. That's actually in the Constitution, right? That the states get to come up with the time, place, and manner of the elections. And manner, meaning how they're done. And so this is not something that is supposed to be up to the president. This is something that the state. are supposed to do. So I think it's going to be ruled unconstitutional. It's also getting very close to the midterms, right, to do something like this and to, how would they logistically even do something like this without interfering with people's rights to vote? And so I think it's got a lot of problems. But of course, you know, we know that states are, if they haven't already, they plan on filing lawsuits. And that's what they're going to do, because this is something that's squarely in the control of the states. So, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, we just heard, you know, a couple of, a week ago, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we listened to oral arguments. We covered it on legal

A. I've heard the case of Watson versus the Republican National Committee about whether states can count mail and ballots that are postmarked by election day, but arrived afterwards. So I think that's going to be really, uh, I think it's going to, I think that's going to have a big impact on, on how things go. But, you know, if the court rules against the Mississippi case, in that case, you know, states might be barred from counting ballots that arrive after election day, even if they were mailed on time. So, you know, there's just a lot that's up in the air right now. And I think the one thing the Supreme Court didn't love is that different states have different rules, right? And that election day means something and what is election day? But I think the thing that Trump is not going to be allowed to do, which is to nationalize or federalize or control this.

So it'll be really, you know, really interesting to see how this goes. But the sad thing, the scary thing is just one more example of Donald Trump trying to take away people's right to vote. And so, you know, I'm not going to vote by mail. I don't want there to be any chance that my vote doesn't be counted. So I'm going to show up. I'm going to go to my polling place. But there's a lot of places that can't handle the influx of people who are, they're used to. States are set up in a way that they're used to having a certain amount of people show up

and a certain amount of people go by mail because some people don't live near polling places, right? Some people live 100 miles away in rural areas. able to wait in line. Exactly. Or that, exactly. There's so many reasons why people do it. And states for the midterms have already, they already have their election workers and their volunteers and they already have spaces reserved at various polling places.

And all of this takes a long time to organize. And so if they change up the rules now, I worry that polling places aren't going to be able to handle it or people aren't going to be able to logistically. do what needs to be done to get there. So Donald Trump thrives on chaos. He wants the chaos that he can point to chaos and counting and balloting and certifying. This is a group where Stephen Miller and others, you know, according to the Jan 6th committee reports, when there was reports of rioting outside of counting centers in Detroit, they were like, good, take advantage of the riots. So this is how

the Republicans feel they need the dirty tricks they need to use to get elected. I've been interviewing all 24 of the Democratic Attorney's General, and they're all in the next day or so going to be filing a lawsuit, at least 20 of them, against the Trump administration, on what he just signed yesterday. Here's Nick Brown, the Washington State Attorney General, in a quote, pardon me, also reminding us of the success of these attorneys general. It's no surprise that the same man that claims he won the 2020 election and advances nonsense conspiracy theories, now wants total control over elections. But he has no authority here, a fact already reaffirmed by the courts in this administration's ongoing attacks on the right to vote. In January, we successfully overturned a previous executive order by the president attempting to usurp the role of the states in Congress and elections. The law is on our side. There's nothing to support the election denier in chief's voter fraud claims, and we are once again prepared to defend the rights of his state.

And every of the 24 attorneys general, their Democrat, everyone has issued a statement almost identical to that one. and they are working. If we listen closely, we can hear the wood being sawed. They are working feverishly to get that lawsuit. I wouldn't be shocked if it gets filed on Friday or if not before. And I'm going to have Attorney General Jay Jones from Virginia join me to talk about it. I'll have Rob Banta come on and talk to me about it. And I've got the Colorado Attorney General who's also going to be joining this week to talk about that and some other things. So I feel pretty good about the strength of the argument in opposition of Donald Trump, of that of the Constitution,

the role of the states that is preeminent. It's not coextensive. It's not the states and or the executive branch. The executive branch has no role whatsoever. And speaking of no role whatsoever, let's round out our show with Judge Mata's ruling in favor of the Jan 6th civil damages case against Donald Trump. Now, it's hard to believe we're still talking about this case,

but it's been like a yo-yo. It's going up and down to various appellate courts. Some things Donald Trump's appealed, some things he hasn't appealed. We've gotten rulings four years ago from the D.C. District Appellate Court in a case called Blasningham, which we talked about three and a half years ago. Then we had the criminal immunity decision. This is going to allow us to talk to our audience about the difference between civil lawsuit immunity

and something called the Westfall Act. and criminal immunity, which is Trump versus the United States. And we're only talking about a civil case here. They're suing for damages for all the emotional and physical suffering of this group of people, met police, Capitol Police, members of Congress staff, and the rest. Judge Mehta has been very, very thoughtful about this case. But now we're at the moment of truth because Donald Trump filed a motion for summary judgment, which in effect Judge Mehta has denied.

It all has to do with Donald Trump's speech on the ellipse. in which, according to the plaintiffs, it incited violence. We all know it did. He wound them up, knowing that they were armed, that he was told that they were armed and dangerous. He said, they're not dangerous against me. They're my people. Drop the magnetometers, let everybody in.

And then he whipped like a weapon. He wound them up and fomented them, and then he pointed them at the Capitol. And he said, I'll be there with you. We got to fight, fight, fight. I'll see you there. And they said, yeah. And then he went the opposite direction of the White House and sat while his followers burnt down the Capitol.

Throwing ketchup at the wall. Throwing ketchup at the wall, the dining room for those derelict hours. So the focus on for Donald Trump, his argument was federal employee doing a federal job. I get what's called Westfall immunity, which is official act immunity for civil cases. You can't sue me. I was just doing my job. and you define the job stretch to its outer boundaries. And there's a case called Westfall, and that's why it's called Westfall Immunity.

And if Westfall Immunity applies, then the Department of Justice of the United States of America step in. They say he's out, we're in, we're sovereign, and you can't sue us. That's how that works. The other argument that Trump made besides Westfall Immunity ends the case, is that he's got a First Amendment right. So there's a First Amendment element to the, this hate speech, this insightful inciting a riot speech. Leave that, let's leave that for a minute.

And then the third argument that Trump made is that I was just doing my, this is more of the Westfall immunity. I was, I was, I'm not, I wasn't candidate in chief. I was, I was commander in chief. And I was giving instructions to Mike Penn, certify that election. And I was communicating with the people about something of a great national importance. And I get to do that on the ellipse. And it was an official White House event, which it wasn't.

therefore I'm covered, right? And Judge Meda broke it down. He said on First Amendment, Karen, he certified it to go up on appeal. He found the First Amendment doesn't apply, but he understands it's an important issue, so it's going to go up to the appellate court. On the application of the immunity, official conduct immunity, he said there are many things that Trump did that day that are outside the outer boundaries of official conduct immunity. He doesn't get to, because he was campaigner in chief, because he had no role in counting the ballots or anything like that. And the fact that he mentioned Mike Pence doesn't convert it into something else. And so, and on Westfall, he denied the Department of Justice in the U.S.

and their opportunity to come in and replace Donald Trump as the party to end the case. So, first, Amendment will go up on appeal, but the case now moves forward towards a trial subject to a ruling on First Amendment. I think this ends up back to the United States Supreme Court, don't you? Yeah, of course. I mean, this is their opportunity to talk about immunity again, right, if they want. You know, because Trump could appeal the other two issues, right? And in other words, if Judge Meta only certified one of the issues, Trump could try to appeal the other two issues as well and send the whole thing up to get the court,

whether they allow that or not as a whole other story. But I think that this is something that ends up in the Supreme Court where they will talk about whether there's civil immunity and what the First Amendment means and whether or not this was part of his official acts. And, you know, immunity is tricky because they granted him such vast immunity in the criminal context. but we're silent as to the civil context. And so it'll be interesting to see how they analyze this, especially now that they see what a monster that Trump versus United States and giving him this wide criminal immunity has created,

if they have buyer's remorse, this will be an opportunity for them to not only fix that, but they can clarify what they could say, you know, this is not like official criminal immunity, this because it's different because, you know, in that case, these things are immune. You know, they could clarify and sort of rein themselves in a little bit, even though it would be considered dicta because that's not the issue here. And here they could address this question about civil immunity as well as the First Amendment, right?

And whether or not this was speech versus, you know, not all speech is protected by the First Amendment, right? when it becomes conduct, like what Trump did, when he didn't just say, I believe this, and this is how I, you know, this is what I think. He actually engaged in conduct. His speech went from just pure speech over to conduct when, as you said, he sort of pointed and shot, and it was like a loaded a gun and shot it towards the Capitol by sending armed followers

to the Capitol and directing them to do what they did, right? and so I think that I think he loses even on all of those grounds, even in this Supreme Court. That would be my prediction. Oh, I totally agree with you. I don't think that there's any appetite, even for the Supreme Court to give him civil liability, having already given him criminal defense, criminal immunity. I think that they may find that it's a horse of a different color on civil damages, which does not implicate liberty interests.

But like you said, it's another opportunity for them to get under the hood and start monkeying around under their, you know, with immunity decisions and maybe roll back parts of it, that wouldn't be bad. And if they're having any second thought about how Trump has interpreted his immunity and how it's empowered him, this might be a good opportunity. Interesting, I don't really know why I'll dig in for the next time around, but it's interesting that Trump never appealed the Blasningham,

decision. So it is, as Judge Mata pointed out, is the prevailing law in the federal courts in D.C., which defined and set up a test for when a president or somebody can be sued for civil damages, even, and it was done before the immunity decision, but even under the immunity decision, as they smartly pointed out, Judge Mata pointed out, it doesn't impact his analysis. He has to follow Blasenkamp. But I'd love to find out why trying to. Trump didn't appeal Blasingham up to the United States Supreme Court. We knew he didn't do it at the time. But if they just lost track or they made a strategic decision,

that they've taken loser arguments to the Supreme Court before. I would like to know. Do you have any speculation as to why they didn't appeal that? I can't pretend to understand why this administration does what it does. So no, I don't want to speculate at all about that. Yeah, agreed, agreed. That's our whole show, speculating. I'm glad our audience is here.

Happy Passover for those that celebrate that. We had a fantastic show. Hopefully you found it fascinating. A marriage of a TED Talk in a law school class. Come to Life with Karen Freeman, McNifalo, and Michael Popock. Thank you for being such firm at supporters of all that we do here for the five-slash-six years. We've been on the air. Webby Awards, vote below for the intersection and legal AF.

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And of course, support for this podcast. You can find it wherever you get your audio podcast from. We're always in the top 50, 75 or so of audio podcasts. We're in the top, anywhere between the top 20, 20 to 50 in video, YouTube podcast, weekend, week out, all because of the support of our audience. And we appreciate each and every one of you and love to have you and love being your podcast commentators. Karen, last word on this holiday Wednesday. Happy Passover, happy Easter and happy holidays to everybody.

This is a really big solemn time that a lot of people celebrate a lot of, of, traditions and and holidays. So I just want to wish everyone a wonderful time with your family, with your loved ones. And just thank you so much for joining us every week and getting us to where we are. It's just so great to be here. Absolutely. Thank you all for being here. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal A-Fers.