Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Episode 3/12/2025

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo are back on the top-rated Legal AF podcast and debating: a landmark order against DOGE and Musk forcing them to reveal themselves to the American People; another appellate court rules against Trump's attempt to rip birthright citizenship from the Constitution; a new order about DOGE's efforts to chloroform a federal aid agency founded by Congress; the Trump Administration's attempts to deny a NY federal judge jurisdiction by whisking a green card holder who expresses views the Administration doesn't like, to red state Louisiana; and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Support Our Sponsors: Remi: Save your smile and your bank account with Remi! Get up to 50% off your custom-fit mouth guard at https://ShopRemi.com/LEGALAF today! Zbiotics: Go to https://zbiotics.com/LEGALAF to get 15% OFF any Zbiotics Probiotic when you use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout! Qualia: Head to https://qualialife.com/LEGALAF and use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout for 15% off your purchase! Lume: Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with Lume deodorant and get $5 off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo code legalaf at https://LumeDeodorant.com! #lumepod 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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See details. Oh, it's Wednesday. And you know what that means on Midas Touch. It means Legal AF Midweek. By the time we get to midweek now with Karen Freeman, Nick Niflo and Michael Popak, I'm like half exhausted by what's going on in the courts. But we bring the energy we bring the bigger we bring the Insightfulness

Whole truth to power one place. I know of on the dial It's called legal a effort if you didn't know why we called it that five and a half years ago now You know why so let's kick it off with a really a bombshell I can't I mean I we say that a lot sometimes. People sometimes criticize our thumbnails. Everything's a bombshell. Everything's breaking. Well, it is.

And in this case, we've got a judge, Judge Cooper in the District of Columbia for the first time. It's hard to believe it's the first time, but we're only 60 days into the administration. So everything sort of kind of a first, declaring that Doge and Elon Musk are subject to public records law, which we call FOIA, Freedom of Information Act, which is a big deal because they've been trying to hide in a surreptitious surreptitious fashion everything that Doge is all about. Behind the cover of night, behind executive privilege, using velocity and opaqueness to try to cut the

government down to size without congressional oversight or public accountability. And Chris Cooper, the judge, has had enough. And he's ruled for the first time that Doge Service and Musk must disclose in public records everything about their existence and operations period. We'll talk more about that. It's a great case brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington crew. And then we'll turn to another landmark bombshell, the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, Massachusetts, joining with two other circuits to declare that Donald Trump's efforts to use an executive order

to rip the beating heart of birthright citizenship out of our Constitution is unconstitutional. And they will, for now, not agree with the Trump administration. They will not block the nationwide injunction put in place by Judge Sorokin up in Boston, Massachusetts. They will not block the nationwide injunction put in place by Judge Sorokin up in Boston, Massachusetts. They will join with the Ninth Circuit and the Fourth Circuit, and this is not on the merits of the appeal, but it sort of is. It will tell you the difference between that and how this will now set up a pretty rapid appeal to the United States Supreme Court as we battle this out. And we'll give, Karen and I will give our best analysis

and estimate about what will happen next in that particular case. I had talked a lot about in a recent hot take about a very small, the smallest of agencies. I said the smallest will lead us. But there is a case about the African development entity set up by Congress to invest in Africa and in that continent that had been completely eviscerated and shut down,

even worse than USAID overnight by Donald Trump trying to put in one of his lackeys, Mr. Morocco, to head that organization. And the board and its executive chairman fought back. And they pulled a judge, Judge Leon, Leon, a senior judge, and he put an administrative stay in place, but now he's lifted the stay, but with some words to the Trump administration. Are they falling on deaf ears? Does it matter? What does it all mean about Donald Trump's takeover in broad daylight of agencies and the cutting the legs out from under congressional funding and mandates before our very eyes? And then we'll end today with a very interesting and, you know, kind of sets our

teeth on edge a little bit in many, many ways. The case of Mahmoud Khalil. It was a green card holding graduate student at Columbia University. I almost demonstrated I don't live near New York any longer and misnamed the university, who led the pro-Palestinian movement on the campus. One of the leaders there, one of the leaders of divest, trying to force schools like Columbia to divest in protest of Israel's policies. I don't necessarily agree with his, what he's saying under the First Amendment, but I will defend till the very end his right to say it, and as a green card holder, not to have ICE burst through his door

in front of his eight month pregnant wife who's a US citizen and whisk him off to Louisiana in 24 hours in order to avoid the jurisdiction of a New York judge. That New York judge who we're going to talk about held a hearing recently, a series of hearings about this and about the ability of Donald Trump on the fly to use ICE as judge, jury and executioner to revoke people's green carded other legal documented status because they don't like what they're saying. And we'll break it all down right here. The only place I know on the dial that doesn't. Legal AF, Karen, how are you?

I'm good. How are you, Popok? I'm so happy. It's Wednesday. I know. That used to be hump day, remember? I know. And now it's Legal AF, Karen, how are you? I'm good, how are you, Popok? I'm so happy, it's Wednesday. I know, that used to be hump day, remember? And now it's Legal AF day. I know, oh, I have to fix my, there we go, I have to match you there, that's much better.

Are you matching my head? I'm matching your head space. But yeah, I used to, you know, Wednesdays were always like, oh, it's the middle of the week, whatever. But now I wake up every Wednesday, I'm so excited that it's Legal AF day and I get to have a break from the legal work that I do the rest of the week.

So I'm so excited to be here. The drudgery of representing actual clients. Yeah, I get it. I get it. People know that I kind of moved out of that world come the election. I have some clients. I don't want to undermine them.

I do have some remaining clients, but my day-to-day practice is really here on the Midas Touch Network and on legal AF. I have some clients, I don't want to undermine them. I do have some remaining clients, but my day-to-day practice is really here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. Before we jump in, I know Karen, you know I talked about it before, we just rolled the odometer on the Legal AF channel. We just went over today 500, there it is,

500,000 subscribers in less than six months. I couldn't ask for better it reinforces my My pep in my step every morning when I go to the legal AF channel to curate it to develop content I know when you're not busy doing law work You're you're over there with us as well We got and just a shout out to those that have helped contribute besides our audience Which without which we would not be in existence. But we've got Court Accountability Action, Lisa Graves, Alex Aronson, and Mike Sachs.

We've got Dina Dahl. We've got Shan Wu. We've got me. We've got you when you can do it. Just an amazing group of people every hour doing something at the intersection of law and politics. Thank you to our audience. Check us out, Legal AFMTN from Midas Touch Network on that.

Let's, people come here for the ads. They stay for the analysis. Let's get to the analysis and talk about this really. I mean, we're running out of adjectives to use for certain developments in the Trump administration. But this really is a landmark. As I joked on a recent hot take about it, it's like the pinata of Doge and Musk is about to break open.

And this is a big hit on the pinata. Cooper, a very good judge in District of Columbia, took one look in 37 pages at all the record that had been developed about the velocity at which Doge has been operating, which is part of its power, its superpower, and the opaqueness and the surreptitiousness of its conduct and said, yeah, and the way it's exercising executive power in a way that a quote unquote as Donald Donald Trump likes to call it, or his administration, and a simple advisor to Donald Trump doesn't really do.

And to call him an advisor is an insult to our intelligence and an insult to the court. And the judge said, because the issue was whether they are subject to public records law because they're an agency. If they're not an agency and they're merely some sort of advisor to the president, then we got the whole executive privilege problem about If they're not an agency, and they're merely some sort of advisor to the president, then we got the whole executive privilege problem about what they are,

whether they can testify or provide documents at all. So, CREW sued Doge Services and others and demanded two sets of FOIA, Freedom of Information Act requests, one against the Office of Management and Budget, because that's where all the bodies are buried too, about funding cuts and staff cuts and all of that, and the other directly against Doge service.

And the Trump administration fought back, right? And I'll let you take it from there about executive privilege and the fight back by the administration, Karen. Yeah, so look, what's happening here is Doge wants to be able to have complete control over the executive branch and all of the agencies. And so, in order to do that so that they can crash

and burn our economy and dismantle our government and take money away from people who need it and Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security who need it, and Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security, and everything else. I mean, they're literally trying to dismantle the United States government. And in order to do that, they have to have certain authority or certain power. And so to do that, they forced their way into a different agency that already existed within the executive branch, and it was like an IT agency. I can't

remember what it was called. So that that's how they gained access to these agencies. The problem is if they are an agency if that is actually what they are then as you said Popok that subjects them to certain rules, laws, requirements, et cetera. One of them is that the head of DOJ has to be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, which has not happened, right? And so they keep saying, oh, he's just an advisor. Oh, it's not an agency. It's like they're gaslighting the American people and everybody who actually sees what it is.

Of course, Elon Musk is the head of it. And actually sees what it is. Of course, Elon Musk is the head of it. And of course it's an agency. And they literally try to say, oh no, no, nothing to see here. But what we're seeing and what happened in this case with Judge Cooper is he basically said, no, that is not the case here.

That is not what's happening. This is an agency and and therefore, you are subject to the laws of this land. Now, what is FOIA? It stands for the Freedom of Information Act. It's something that is extremely important in government agencies. There's something called FOIL in New York State,

the Freedom of Information Law. That's what applied to me when I worked for a state government agency, the Manhattan DA's office for my entire career. We had a whole unit set up, a whole group of people whose job was nothing more than to respond to these FOIA or FOIL requests because any single person, doesn't matter who you are, can submit a FOIA request to a government entity and ask for certain records. The New York City Police Department, same thing. I bet they have over 100 people who do nothing but respond to FOIA requests. And why is that? It's because you don't get an automatic, you don't automatically get whatever you ask for. You get certain things, and of course, certain sensitive things you can't get or certain things have to be redacted, but someone has to go through and apply the law that says,

these are the things you have to give over and these are the things you don't. And so it's a really important part of keeping the lights on and the transparency in the government. It's gives the American people the ability to see what's going on in your government because transparency is key, obviously. And here we have a federal judge, as you said, who basically said that, look, you're working in secret, you're working really fast, and it's the very thing that makes you subject to FOIA, right?

That you are acting like an agency. You have the power, you have the authority. And so you're the very entity. I don't care what you call it. I don't care what you say it is. I don't care what you are going to label certain things. You're acting like something that is considered an agency. And therefore, you are subject to things

like congressional oversight. Congress can pass a law like the Freedom of Information Act, and you're subject to it. And so the judge said basically that you're subject to the public records law. You have you must. But he also knows this is going to be appealed. Right. So he's so knowing that what he said was, look, you can't you must preserve everything while you while you do your appeals so that if you so that it doesn't get

it's called spoils, spoiliation. Right. It doesn't get destroyed, which you, so that it doesn't get, it's called spo-spoiliation, right? It doesn't get destroyed, which you could imagine that happening, right? To try to avoid it. And a government agency could do that. And so he said, no, you must keep it. You must, and he ordered them to keep it while you are appealing it, if you choose to appeal it.

And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna say, you have to give a rolling production, meaning what's being asked for is so voluminous. And I realize you have to go through it all and redact the things that you can't have, et cetera. So what I'm going to do is rather than wait until the end, you're going to have to do it on a rolling basis. So as you go through documents and as you find them and you take out whatever it is that you're going to take out, the sensitive information,

you have to give it over on a rolling production basis. It's a pretty big deal and I think it's great. It's a great ruling that essentially is telling Elon Musk and Doge, we see what you are and you're subject to the same laws that everyone else is. And thank God, thank God for crew who's doing this. So it's pretty great. Cooper just, Cooper didn't buy this whole, Musk is just an advisor kind of thing.

And he basically said, look, this is, you're in a decision-making authority and you're making cuts across the government and that makes you subject to this. So I think it's great. I'm not holding my breath that we're going to see anything soon, but, you know, it's just also just to add one more thing. FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act, is codified,

if anyone wants to read it, in Title V of the U.S. Code, Section 552, and it grants individuals the right to request access to records from federal agencies. So yeah, it's a pretty big deal and judges are finally starting to call out Musk and Doge for what it is and I think that's a positive sign. Yeah, I mean, look, Judge Cooper did an amazing job in his analysis and everything

that the Trump administration pushed as the reason a rationale for not complying with FOIA was actually used was like hoisting them on their own petard using it against them. The velocity and opaqueness by which they are operating which was obviously by design in order to catch Congress and the public by surprise and to and to lay waste to the federal government and funding before anybody could figure out what had happened, is the very reason it demonstrates an exercise

of executive power that's independent from Donald Trump. Donald Trump's saying to the cabinet, come on, it's not Musk, you gotta run your own cabinet. Again, reinforces, along with his joint session speech and confession there, that Musk is exercising independent authority behind closed doors, in the dark, surreptitiously, so surreptitious that the judge was like, and I don't like the fact

that you're using Signal, which is an app that's used in communication that has an auto-delete function that people use for secrecy purposes. That is against everything that is appropriate in government records, and you are to stop using it, and you are to make yourself available in transparent to the American people. Now, CREW wanted all those documents to come out during this congressional debate about government

and about the budget and about funding. The judge was like, well, I'm not sure all of these documents are really necessary for the American people to see in time like yesterday, but I do want them to come out quickly. So I don't want to wait on a rolling, I don't want to wait for a full production like three months from now.

You start rolling production, and just for people to tune in here, the tuning in late, rolling production, which I've been involved with a lot in eDiscovery and civil cases, means you don't wait to a date certain to do a data dump of everything that you have. Like, okay, back up the tractor trailer or the terabyte digital version of that, here you go.

Boom, dump. It's a rolling production, meaning as you get documents together, and it better start soon, you start sending out half a terabyte, half a terabyte, half a terabyte, or whatever it takes to produce your documents so that we get some of them now.

We don't have to wait till the very, very end. So he ordered that as well. It's hard to believe that with over 100 cases, it's the first case where a federal judge has said, yeah, I can't figure out Doge. It's way too opaque, but I can tell you one thing I have figured out, is that it's exercising independent agency authority and therefore is not covered by the executive privilege. He didn't mention executive privilege, that four-letter word by name, but that's the battle that's gonna come up next.

As we talked about on Saturday with Ben and me, the next big fight is gonna be Trump, the Trump administration arguing, and I think unsuccessfully, that Trump, that Musk is just an advisor and has no real power. And everything he's doing is advising the president. And there needs to be executive privilege to protect that. And he shouldn't be subject to FOIA and he shouldn't be subject to depositions.

And that's our position. I think that's a loser at the trial court level. I think that's a loser at the various circuits, courts of appeal. And I do think, although I'll come back and tell you I was wrong, that at the Supreme Court level with Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, it's going to be a loser. He may not even get four votes for that proposition. Just the way he's using Doge as the wrecking ball,

the destroyer of all worlds indicates it's exercising substantial executive function and authority in the dark. That's exactly what we don't want. The reason for FOIA, the reason for FOIL, the reason for public records laws in states is because we like to operate, we're supposed to operate government in the sunshine,

sunshine being the best disinfectant. And that's how we've always approached government. We don't allow smoke-filled back rooms to make deals. I mean, they still go on, but we leave it to public interest groups and NGOs like crew to bring these to the forefront, to federal judges' doorsteps and have them make the decision that Judge Cooper just made. Karen, you ready to move on to birthright citizenship,

another big blockbuster in the last 24 hours? Okay. So, you know, within days of the Trump administration back in January, early February, we had a series of decisions that were entered by federal judges in New England, in California, in San Francisco in particular, in Maryland, all concluding the same thing, which is Donald Trump's effort by executive order to rip the 14th Amendment to shreds and to rip out what I refer to as the beating heart

of birthright citizenship from the Constitution is unconstitutional. Donald Trump issued an executive order that said in sum and substance that if the mother of a child born on American soil is either documented or documented but temporary, but the father is not a U.S. citizen, or is undocumented here illegally and the father is not a U.S. citizen, no birthright citizenship despite what it says in the 14th Amendment. Which is exactly the opposite. Which is, I know they derisively call it anchor

babies, but it is children born on U.S. soil are U.S. citizens and can one day grow up to be the president of the United States in a way that somebody like Ted Cruz from Canada can't be. And that has been our law since the 14th Amendment as interpreted as late as 1898 in a case by the Supreme Court and has been reinforced for the last 100 years. Except Donald Trump figured he'd take a shot at it, which is because it's a it's a article of faith with the Heritage Foundation and the Federalists that they get rid of birthright citizenship. So that's the framing. When we come back, I'll have Karen weigh in about the order that just came out from the first circuit

about refusing to block a nationwide injunction, how it compares to the ninth and the fourth circuit. And then we'll talk about what the United States Supreme Court has to say about all that. And so we'll talk about that when we come back from our first ad break. Number of ways to support Midas Touch, hit the Midas Touch subscribe button. Come over to Legal AF. We've already crossed the 500,000 barrier.

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Give your teeth a break without breaking the bank with Remi. Thank you Remi for sponsoring this episode. Okay, welcome back. The last thing that's on my agenda as people know since November and in December I formed a new law firm, it's called the Popak Firm. It's dedicated to obtaining justice for people,

primarily those that have been injured catastrophically in injury cases. It's a contingency fee case, meaning we don't get paid unless you do. I'm working with an amazing group of nationwide plaintiffs, contingency lawyers. This is what they do for a living. They know the judges, they know the courts, and they know how to obtain justice for people. So come over to the POPEPOC firm. It's at www.thepopeopakfirm.com. I made it easy in our 800 number, 1877 Popak AF. All right, let's go back to birthright citizenship. I guess I thought before the election he'd try it

because it's in the playbook for project 2025, but I don't think he should be, I don't think anybody's really surprised in the Trump administration that they're losing and losing badly. The first circuit in Boston ruled in favor of Judge Sorokin's nationwide injunction. And just so I, I'll just turn it over to you now.

This is not on the merits of the appeal, not yet anyway. This is about whether, while the appeal on the merits is going on, whether the injunction is going to be allowed to block the executive order so that every baby born from now through the appeals ending is an American citizen, or is it going to be, is the injunction going to be blocked because some appellate judge thinks ultimately Trump's going to win on this issue. So far, no judge thinks he's gonna win on this issue. Carol, why don't you take it from there?

You know, I have to say, part of me wonders, is Trump's strategy to just say something so outrageous and so extreme, so that when knowing he's never gonna get the completely lawless, outrageous thing, so that if he gets anything, even remotely like that, he declares victory and everyone declares victory. Meanwhile, the thing, so that if he gets anything even remotely like that, he declares victory and everyone declares victory. Meanwhile, the thing he ultimately gets is terrible too, because this falls into that category

of this is so outrageous. I can't believe they even will do this with a straight face. They'll even go with a straight face to suggest that somebody, that somehow he can sign an executive order that overrides the Constitution that establishes birthright citizenship. So this is just one of those outrageous things that he's trying to do.

And he has been, this is a big deal because this is, I think, his third or fourth loss on birthright citizenship. And, you know, all of these cases are going to go to the Supreme Court. But here, you know, essentially in this case, the judge says that the government basically doesn't make any argument to show that the executive order itself is constitutional and doesn't contest that birthright that essentially

if you're born on US soil, that's been going on for over 100 years. So they basically declined Trump's request to grant or to lift, I should say, the nationwide injunction that is blocking this executive order that is trying to redefine birthright citizenship from going into effect. And so what Trump's executive order is trying to do is say,

essentially, anyone who has two undocumented parents is giving birth to someone in the U.S. then that if it doesn't matter that you were born in U.S. soil that that is not, you are not going to be a U.S. citizen. And so he basically, I think it was two different scenarios. One is that the mother is either undocumented or is here temporarily and the father is undocumented. And that, in those two scenarios.

But look, this violates the 14th Amendment, Section 1, and 8, number 8 U.S. Code 1401, which provides that, quote, a person born in the U.S. and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, shall be a citizen of the United States at birth. So it's essentially, it's a great, it's a, it's a great order. And you know, you did a, I love when you do these, when you explain the whole preliminary injunction thing. I think it's really important for people to understand. And I've learned so much from you, Popak, explaining how difficult it is to get a preliminary injunction that you have to essentially prove four things, including that you are likely to win on the merits. Like you have to show I'm going to win

this case. And so what a lower court has said, what lower courts have been saying over and over again is I find that the plaintiffs that that I find that you're gonna win. That it's so clear, the law is so clear here, that the constitution and the statute passed by Congress, that if you're born on US soil, you're gonna be a citizen. That is so clear. And this executive order is so antithetical to those laws and against the constitution and unconstitutional that I'm going to,

I believe you're going to win on the merits. And so therefore, I'm going to issue an injunction saying this is going, this cannot go into effect. So they have to show a clear, make a clear showing that they're likely to win their case. So that's what the judge here found, the appellate court found that the judge who issued this injunction is, was right and they weren't going to lift that injunction.

And all these cases are going to head to the Supreme Court where your guess is as good as anybody about what's going to happen. So this is the first circuit court, which is the appellate court level, to uphold the district courts that have been issuing these injunctions. Yeah, and it joins the Fourth Circuit out of a Maryland

federal court decision. There's multiple nationwide injunctions here. They sort of overlap. So Donald Trump's just trying to find the right one to appeal from. The Ninth Circuit over Judge Koffenhor in San Francisco ruled against Donald Trump. They all cite the same case.

It's the leading dispositive case is an 1898 case involving a Chinese, an American born child who grows up to be an adult, of course, whose parents are Chinese and still kind of beholden to the emperor of China at the time. But the kid was born in San Francisco. I mean, I don't know how to put this any more simple, simply. And then he goes to visit China. You know, let's go back to his parents' homeland, not his own. He was born in San Francisco. And when he comes back in, like he's in his 20s, the border patrol at the time or whatever, immigrant was like, no, you're not allowed back in. He goes, I'm a US citizen. They said, no, no, your parents were born

in China. He's like, okay, well, I was born in San Francisco. And it went all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court said in 1898, based on the 14th Amendment, he was born on US soil. His parents aren't ambassadors or diplomats. They were just, you know, working stiffs that happened to still be Chinese citizens or residents, but they gave birth, the mother gave birth in San Francisco. He's an American citizen. That's the way our birthright citizenship,

derisively called anchor baby thing works. So every court that's looked at it since, from, first of all, no president before Trump was a madman enough, was insane enough to try to test this. But Donald Trump, you know, he's held hostage by those that supported him and paid for his presidency. And he's like, all right, I gotta do the birthright citizenship thing now. All right, hand me the executive order. Where's my Sharpie? Okay. Is everybody happy now?

And then he's got to trot out the Department of Justice on your and my taxpayer dime to go defend these ridiculous cases. In fact, the judge, the judge commented in the First Circuit case that we're talking about right now, Judge Barron, he said on page 10 of his order that the Trump administration didn't even try to make out a case at all because they were relying not on the merits of the case, they tried to argue that the 18 states, including New Jersey, the case is known as New Jersey versus Trump, and the city of San Francisco, that joined together to sue in Massachusetts, that they don't have standing, which is the fundamental threshold thing that a judge needs to identify and establish for, or make sure that is present,

for parties to be in front of them, because we require judges to only exert their jurisdiction if there's a live case of controversy. And one of the exert their jurisdiction if there's a live case or controversy. And one of the ways we determine whether there's a live case of controversy is whether people have standing, whether they're just sort of strangers to a matter. They don't really have, they haven't really suffered any injury, but they're interested, you know, sort of like, you know, we can't convert federal courts into the magic eight ball. I'm just wondering, judge, what do you think about this?

It has to be a live case for controversy brought by people who have standing to be there. And the Trump administration tried to argue there's no standing by these 18 states. Although one of the plaintiffs, Karen, is a pregnant, undocumented woman. Sounds like she's got standing to argue that this case is, that this order is unconstitutional.

The states made a good argument. What the constitutional scholars refer to as a a good argument, what the constitutional scholars referred to as a pocketbook argument, which is they were going to lose federal funding if Donald Trump declassified these babies born on US soil as non-US citizens. And they would suffer because the states would have to take care of these children, but they wouldn't have access to federal funds to do it. And so that was a very good pocketbook argument. And the judge said, yeah, you got standing.

What's your argument? You haven't even addressed the merits, because they didn't want to address the merits, because they knew, the Trump administration knew, there were a lose on the merits. So now you've got a very good record up on appeal, although the Supreme Court can do whatever they want. a very good record up on appeal, although the Supreme Court can do whatever they want.

Supreme Court has shown a complete willingness to disregard the record from below, which is a violation of everything I was ever taught about appellate lawyer law, judges and the Supreme Court. And just go, you know, okay, let's just get to what we wanna decide on regardless of what the record says. But assuming they go by the record, this case coming out of the first

along with the fourth, along with the ninth, with Judge Kofford or the ninth, the Maryland case in the fourth, is a nice little package now for the United States Supreme Court. Now Trump's going to have to make a decision. Which one is he going to try to take up to the US Supreme Court? They all, they're all terrible for him. All the decisions of the records are all terrible. Is he gonna draw the standing one? Is he gonna do the substantive one? Which one is he gonna do? Where's he gonna wait to go through the appellate process

in each of the further appellate process on the substance? Because this was again, only about the restraining orders and whether they stay or go during the pendency of the appeal. So I don't, my gut is he's gonna, because he's got a loser appellate argument, he's going to try again to the US Supreme Court on an emergency writ.

The problem is, now he's playing into the hands of the Democrats who filed these cases, and the moderates and pre-thinking people, because they're in places where the Supreme Court justice sitting over those circuits are the moderate ones, the democratic ones. And they can either decide on their own to, nah, eh, no, without any reference to the full court.

And that's the shadow docket, or they can send it over to the full court. Either way, there may be four votes to take up the writ. I just don't think with Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, there's five votes to find that an executive order in this giant rock, paper, scissor thing, that an executive order beats the 14th Amendment, where the Donald Trump's reading of the 14th Amendment and reading out certain words he doesn't like is gonna fly.

What do you think, Karen? Yeah, look, my hope is that the Supreme Court will ultimately not grant, will deny any writ. In other words, they won't hear this case, that they will say that when this comes up, that when one of the cases substantively, not just the injunction, but rules, no, the 14th Amendment actually provides

for birthright citizenship. I hope an appellate court does that. I hope that goes to the Supreme Court. And when Donald Trump tries to appeal that to get them to overturn it, rather, I hope they just deny it and don't even hear it because it is such clear law. It's not worth wasting the resources, these really finite resources of the United States

Supreme Court. I mean, we talked about this, I think, last week. You know, the Supreme Court only hears, I think, 60, 70 cases out of the thousands that are appealed to the Supreme Court. And they take the cases very carefully, very gingerly, and really important issues go there. This is not one that's even a close call.

This shouldn't even be a waste of their time. So hopefully they'll see it that way and send a clear message that says, look, we're gonna uphold it and allow the lower court to uphold it and not, and allow the lower court to stand. And we're not even going to hear it. It's not worth our time. Let's move on to something more, more like where there's a real issue involved, but this is clear cut. This is a clear violation of the constitution and the law that the Trump administration is trying to do in my opinion. I agree with you. And the peel away from the four that are necessary,

if it's not killed in its, at the starting line, by one of the emergency Supreme Court justices that I've identified, and it goes to the full bench. How much, maybe there's not four. The one I could see peeling away is Kavanaugh. I've seen him peel away before on these kinds of issues. We'll see. Amy Coney Barrett with her eight children,

including one adopted from Haiti, I just don't think she's gonna find that an executive order from the sitting president is able to change 100 years of precedent, even Amy Coney Barrett. So I think ultimately I feel pretty good about the full bench eventually voting on this because it should be an easy, easy loss

or easy win for those that have brought this case. But we'll continue to talk about that. When we come back from an ad break, we're gonna talk about this strange case of one of the smallest agencies bringing a case in DC, getting a sign to Judge Leon, and him issuing an initial stay about their destruction. And if you read, I don't know if you saw,

you went through it all, Karen, if you read the TikTok of the timeline of what happened to this African development agency with Doge and then US Marshals kicking down the door and they're lying their way, the Doge lying their way in in order to gain access saying they were just there to modernize the servers and the architecture and then when they were let in they said no we're here to chloroform you and put you out of

business and reduce you to the you out of business and reduce you to the smallest amount of activity and funding as congressionally possible. This was an entity created by Congress as part of USAID to, and part of diplomacy to help dying Africans. Sounds like a pretty good thing. And Congress already allocated money for it. And yet Donald Trump, who's supposed to be the executive branch, executing on congressional law and faithfully upholding it, doing the opposite. And it went before Judge Leon.

We had an administrative stay. But then we had the current ruling on the temporary restraining order that is a little bit of a head-scratcher we'll have to talk about. And then Mahmoud Khalil, who, again again is an activist, a graduate student, living in graduate dorms and housing on Columbia University's campus, easy to find, with his eight month US citizen pregnant wife, who gets picked up by ICE and has his quote unquote green card revoked, which has to be done

through an administrative law judge and an immigration judge, but it's done by ice on the street as they whisk the guy off within 12 hours to Louisiana to get him out from under New York court jurisdiction. And a federal judge is holding a hearing about it. And we're gonna talk about all of that when we come back first, the next word from our sponsors.

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African Development Foundation. Jack booted US Marshals pounding down the door to take out the executive director and replace him with Peter Morocco, a Donald Trump henchman whose main job is to chloroform that agency. Look, all of these agency heads, from Linda McMahon in education, to the Secretary of State,

the Secretary of Transportation, to this, to Peter Morocco, they've all been given one charge. Put your agency, department, and bureau out of existence. Chloroform it. Take it out in the back and shoot it. That's their mission. I don't remember voting for that. Of course, I didn't vote for Trump. People didn't. Where was that on the platform?

Where was that on the agenda? That's why there's so much voter remorse. That's why there's so much misgivings. So many MAGA voters are being hurt terribly by Trump's policies. Whether it's veterans or others in poor and rural states.

Who do you think's getting the brunt end of Donald Trump's irrational, immoral, depraved policies? It's red states. It's those voters. He's fired more veterans and things devoted to veterans' benefits and affairs than any other president in history were 60 days into his administration.

That is his legacy among other things. And for those that, I mean, he's gone so far. Just leave it on this note before we go back to the African Foundation. It's gotten so disgusting that even MAGA and right-wing legislators are finding that lines have been crossed. I mean, we just had a debate

that was shut down in Congress today because one of the MAGA Congresspeople decided they were going to misgender one of the other Congresspeople who's transgender and identifies as a woman and kept calling that person from Delaware Mr. Mr, Mr. Mr. Mr. and the MAGA chairperson had enough and said that's beyond the pale.

We're not doing that here. We're the Congress of the United States. We're not a seventh grade lunchroom. And so one of the things that I want people to examine when we talk about cases, some of which go the way we want it to, some of which don't go the way we want it to, is think about the America that you want to wake up in in two years or less at the midterms and beyond. And whether this administration through its policies and procedures litigated

through the courts matches your ideal of what it means to be an American. And if it doesn't, and it shouldn't, then vote no in a binary way against anybody with an R next to their name come the midterms. Or as I'd like to say in a bumper sticker, I see all these other bumper stickers, 14th Amendment Section 3, let's have a march.

Great, I got another bumper sticker. Give me the House and the Senate at the midterms and I'll give you an impeachment and a conviction and a removal. Let's put all our energy into that. That is going to get us where we want to go. So I was encouraged by this back to the African development case because I thought, wow, look at the timeline that's listed here from how the lies made by Doge to get their way in, the attempts to replace, the attempts to shrink this down to small enough size it could be drowned in a bathtub as an organization against the will of Congress.

Here we go, Judge Leon, do the right thing. And he started to, and then something went a little bit awry. What did you make of his current ruling about denying the temporary restraining order? Yeah, look, I think I think I just want to get back to what you were saying before about your how we curate what we're going to talk about. There's so much that we could talk about. There's so that is part of I think the beauty of legal AF

is we aren't just something that tells you everything we think. We take a lot of time to figure out what are the, of all the firehose of Trump-related stuff, and there is a firehose. What are the ones that are really important that people need to know about? And this is one that, Popak, I give you a lot of credit for putting on our list of cases that we're gonna talk about,

because this is something that could have easily been missed and that isn't going to necessarily get a lot of play, yet it is extremely significant. And so I think the curating aspect of what is important is just as important as the analysis itself, and just really showing people, okay, because it's hard to pay attention to everything that's going on.

It's hard to understand. Now, what is this? It's literally a fire hose of things that have been going on for the last, what is it? 50 days, 60 days since Trump has been president of just complete lawlessness. And so this is just this very small agency that frankly I'd never heard of before,

the African Development Board, that essentially provides grants and things and investing in small businesses in Africa. And this is an agency, an independent agency that was created by Congress in 1980 and is controlled by a board of members. And they are confirmed by the Senate, and there's about 50 people who work there.

And a Senate, a congressionally created agency is something that you can't, you don't have complete authority over the way they think that they do. And meanwhile, Donald Trump on February 19th did one of his crazy executive orders that actually names this as one of the agencies that they are getting rid of. And Judge Leon, who's a Bush appointee, by the way, a George W. Bush appointee, said that this is a violation of the Appointments Clause.

This was an agency established by Congress. This board was appointed by Congress, and what you're doing is unconstitutional. So it's basically an unnecessary executive order, and it was an unlawful executive order that appointed a new head of this small agency that provides this aid to Africa, appointed new board members. But essentially, the judge held that this was pretextual. You're just trying to close it down.

And, you know, Doge came in and started threatening the board so that you're going to be fired. They wouldn't let him in. And then they had to come with U.S. Marshals. And, you know, they tried to do what they always do and then shut this down. You know, they come in saying, this pretextual coming in, saying, oh, we're just here to provide software expertise.

Trump must with his tech support t-shirt, you know, nothing to see here. We just, we're just providing tech support. We're not here to shut things down. But essentially the federal judge here said that, look, you're removing most of the grants. You're moving most of the staff of this federal agency and you can't do it.

This is a legally created entity by Congress. And you just can't do it without, you know, without violating the law. So I thought this was a really important. I think this is just really important to show that the rule of law matters and the judges are starting to uphold it. Yeah, I agree. Except, you know, we got Leon today who said, yeah, I'm not going to grant the temporary restraining order because it looks like an executive director is trying to get his job back and that's not a reparable harm.

But, you know, I just love when these judges are using magical thinking. But I expect the Trump administration to do the right thing. See, he already analyzed it, I think, in the wrong way. He analyzed it from an employment, employer, employee problem, as opposed to a destroyer of worlds without congressional mandate and violation of separation of powers problem, which is the way that the lawyers that brought this case framed it. And now I think if I'm the group that brought this case,

I take that denial of the temporary restraining order, which now basically confers jurisdiction on the appellate court, and I take it up to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which I think will be a little bit more favorable to their position. I could be wrong. What I liked about the lawsuit when I read it

and I did a hot take on it is that it really does, the first way, show how surreptitious and underhanded the whole Musk-Doge operation is. The one that Chris Cooper, the judge we talked about earlier, or Cooper, the judge we talked about earlier, in finding that DoJ is a federal agency for public records purposes, also was concerned about that they're the very thing that makes them so successful in implementing their policy of cutting the legs out

from the administrative state and making our government less accountable to the American people, regardless of what they say about that. That's that gaslighting you talked about earlier. Is that speed and velocity? And so you've got to bring it to the public. And I thought the lawsuit that we're talking about now

did that, but just didn't seem to resonate with the senior judge the way I thought it would and now I think it's gonna have to go up to the up to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. I also kudos to my co-anchor because you're one of the few people that actually uses gaslighting correctly. It's become such a term. Everyone's like, oh I feel like I'm being gaslit, but you actually used it exactly right. Gaslighting is when something is going on and they're telling you that it's not going on and not to trust your lying eyes.

From a famous movie from the 1940s called Gaslight, where the husband tried to convince the wife she was going cuckoo crazy by continuing to adjust the lights in the house that were on gas back in the day with little gas bulbs. And he kept making them lower and higher. And then she'd say, are the lights flickering? And he'd say, No, honey, I don't know what you're talking about. Let's bring the psychiatrist in because I think he wanted to commit her to get all of her

wealth. That's gas lighting. I hear a lot of people use it because they don't know because they don't know where it comes from. And they don't know what it means. You got it exactly as I would expect. I always learn something from you. Always. And the fact that you know about the movie, I am not surprised.

I saw the movie. I was like, is that where that comes from? That's so great. Because that's really what is that. That's what all these cases are showing us. And that's what the judges are trying to say is, look, you can say all you want, oh, no, he's not the head of Doge. But we know he is.

And at the joint session of Congress, they announced it was. Or when, you know, what was the 25-year-old's, remember when she came out, the communications director came out and. Yeah, Carolyn LeVette. Yeah. You know, that was another time when they go to court and they say, oh, basically the judge says, whatever, they said there was

a temporary restraining order and you have to do something. She's like, okay, we'll just rip up the memo, but we're still going to do the thing. Yeah, on funding. Yeah, exactly, on USAID funding. But it's just they just absolutely, the courts are the ones, right? Yeah, on funding. Yeah, exactly, on USAID funding. But it's just they just absolutely, the courts are the ones who are going to, it's not all heroes wear capes.

Here it's going to be all the heroes wear robes because that's really what is happening is that it's the courts and the judges who I think are going to save democracy ultimately and call it out for what it is. We saw it on the criminal side. We covered it extensively. And all the federal judges trying to kind of rein in Donald Trump's criminal element

during when he was candidate Trump and before and under Jan 6th. I mean, just the sheer weight of the Jan 6th prosecutions, a couple of thousand going through one courthouse in the District of Columbia, touching the lives of every judge that sat there. These are the same judges now that having went through and watched all the footage and know that anybody knows what really happened. It's only one set of facts. It's the judges of the DC court and the DC circuit on these Jan 6 cases and what Donald

Trump really is responsible for having formed their own opinions as well. And now these are the same judges on the civil side that are being asked to protect our democracy from Donald Trump burning it down as now the president of the United States, drunk with power. And, you know, right? Yeah, in these cases, the defendants who inevitably is the Trump administration in the various cases that we cover here at Legal AF, that what they're doing is they're saying, oh no, Elon Musk is not the head

of DOJ. And then when at the joint session of Congress, the president says he is the head of DOJ and he stands up, the plaintiffs within an hour, I think, took that footage and filed it with the court and said, look, they're lying to you. Right. And it's just, go ahead. No, no, no, no, I'm just laughing at your comment. No, but that's what's happening. And people are paying attention.

And so it shows like this that is calling attention to what is actually happening because that's the only way I think they're gonna get called out for what they're doing. Well, on that note, Judge Cooper in his 37 pages spent a considerable amount of time saying that my record in this case is effectively supplemented by what I'm reading in the media. So for people that, you know, this is again another place

where we can call out and have it reverberate and vibrate with our audience and beyond. When we, sometimes we break news stories, sometimes we are the news story. Sometimes we are reporting things that are little covered in a way that make, hopefully make the government more responsible, because it's not responsible now

to the American people. And that's a good segue into our next segment, which is one of those we don't necessarily, you know, when I'm trying to fit it into the curating with you, I'm like, we gotta cover this. I mean, do I agree with my personal view, which I try to, you know, other than my point of view, which I do in my analysis

You know do I agree with the sit-ins and the tentons on college campuses that made Jewish students feel uncomfortable During the attack by Hamas that killed 1300 people in in Israel on October 7th no But I'm a First Amendment guy and I'm a due process guy In person and I will defend till my death somebody's right to say it. I mean, when the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU defended the right of American Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois,

which they picked on purpose because it had at the time, one of the highest concentration of Holocaust survivors and the Nazis wanted to walk through where Holocaust survivors live. It was the American Civil Liberties Union that went to court to make sure they could do that. Founded by Jews, a lot of Jewish people. I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU, but I also defend the right of people to have First Amendment expressions. So Mahmoud Khalil, I may not agree with his point of view, but the fact that his green card, now if the, and let me also, so I can cover myself, if there are other real facts

and not political polemics that are developed that demonstrate that he is a, not just a Hamas quote unquote sympathizer, but is actually, you know, involved with the funding of Hamas or terrorist organizations and bank accounts and other things, sympathizer, but is actually, you know, involved with the funding of Hamas or terrorist organizations and bank accounts and other things, then yes, I'll come back and say that I'm wrong. But if it's about him getting up on a soapbox or in a tent city to be a part of the marketplace of ideas that I may or may not agree with, and that's the reason his green card was revoked, and he was sent off to Jersey and then Louisiana to get him

out from under a federal judge in New York, Judge Furman, eventually Judge Furman. And again, only in New York moment, you've got an orthodox practicing Jewish judge who famously shuts his court down for Shabbat and for Jewish holidays, who is adjudicating the issue of Mahmoud Khalil, this graduate student on a green card,

married to an American citizen, and him being, having his ticket to the United States, his green card revoked by ICE, when ICE, the reporting is, Karen, when ICE burst through the door of his Columbia University housing, not like he's hiding in plain sight, and said, you're out, we're deporting you, and we're arresting you,

and we're revoking your student visa. He said, I don't have a student visa, I have a green card. So they very quickly switched gears and said, we're revoking your green card. And then Marco Rubio, our Secretary of State, I think, sent out a social media post post the same time that said, we're revoking green cards of people that we suspect fill in the blank. Except that's not the way that works. You have to go through a process, a due process, including

an immigration judge, to determine whether the person should be in America or not. So as I predicted in my hot take a couple of days ago on the Legal AF channel, they whisked them off to Louisiana to put them in a red state, to bring them before a red state federal judge, to put them before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and not have to deal with New York. So why don't you talk about what Judge Ferman has done and ordered as of right now in a hearing, I think it was actually today, and what do you think is going to happen in the future? I mean, you know, this is something that I had to do a little research

into when this started happening because I've never practiced immigration law. And I was wondering, what does it mean if you have a green card and you're a lawful permanent resident here in the United States, but not a citizen? Can a president just revoke your green card? Can they just say you are no longer allowed to be here, your status here? And it seems pretty clear you can't just do that.

That there has to be, because he's a lawful permanent resident, he has a right to do process and he has a right to a removal hearing that has all the procedural protections available to anyone who would be charged with a crime because that's essentially the standard to revoke his status, his permanent status. And none of that has happened yet. And certainly I'm not sure it's going to,

they're gonna have anything that is going to show that. But, you know, they're just trying to come in and revoke this from this activist at Columbia University who very carefully did not actually participate in these encampments. He didn't participate in any of those things. He was just exercising his First Amendment rights to talk about the plight of Palestinian people with Israel. And he did that on purpose and intentionally

because he was a graduate student at Columbia, and he didn't want to risk that status. So he tried very hard, my understanding, to follow what the rules are and to exercise his First Amendment rights. And that's really what he did. And Trump, however, just decided to say, look, no, we're going to arrest you and we're going to deport you and we're going to revoke your citizenship

or sorry, not your citizenship, your permanent resident status. But unfortunately, I think the procedures that they're using Unfortunately, I think the procedures that they're using to deport a lawful permanent resident are one, is not going to pass muster because he has substantive constitutional rights in the deportation context, including the due process clause and the First Amendment. And it's pretty clear that it's murkier than Trump thinks,

as usual, right? Trump just thinks he's all powerful, that the US v. Trump cases has essentially made, anointed him king, he can do whatever he wants, but they can't just simply revoke his status as a lawful permanent resident and render him subject to deportation without some kind of, he had to have done something wrong,

and he has a right to be told what he did wrong, to be accused, and to go through, you know, has to be a, he had to have done something to make him, quote, deportable under immigration laws. And that's pretty clearly spelled out and codified. It's in 8 United States Code 1227A. And he's entitled to a hearing, and there's going to be a removal hearing. And, and, but I think his due process rights are going to, uh, ultimately they're

going to be held that he didn't do anything, um, that makes him deportable given his permanent status. And again, if he did, then bring show, I'm a lawyer, Karen's a lawyer. We like evidence. We're funny that way. The Trump administration is allergic to evidence. If you got the goods, bring him into court to a federal judge and show how he is beyond a Hamas quote unquote sympathizer

who's standing on a soap box and arguing and show me where he is a terrorist. And if he's a terrorist or he's laundering money or those kind of things all right that changes the picture for me I have a little concern though Karen that Furman in in ordering that he remain in Louisiana and have access to his lawyers to allow them to prepare his defense he gave them a very it was like a very miserly order he's like one day and one phone call a day,

one visit and one phone call. I'm like, I don't know, I don't know what, see that's the problem. I don't know exactly what came out in that courtroom to have Furman be so miserly in his giving access to this person in federal detention in Louisiana and why he wasn't more upset. And again, I got to read the transcript

to figure out whether he was more upset. We haven't gotten our hands on that yet, about having the Trump administration try to get him out from under New York jurisdiction. That was the argument in court today. Judge, you don't even have jurisdiction because they manufactured new jurisdiction or attempted to in, they said, it's either New Jersey, because I'm not sure the New Jersey court is that much better, although it does go up to a different court of appeal. That's a little thing I'll talk about.

New Jersey reports to a different, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, even though it's just across the Hudson from New York. New York's the Second Circuit. They might think they got a better shot at the Third Circuit. He was only in Jersey for like a minute. And then they whisked him off in one of these planes to Louisiana in the middle of the night

where that's where they love, that's what they want. They want the Fifth Circuit and a Louisiana, you know, federal judge to handle the case. So there's a whole debate over that. I predicted it when I heard he ended up in Louisiana, which shout out to the Columbia student newspaper. They did a good job on tracking him down through the system and finding out that he ended up in Louisiana.

And that's not for a good wholesome reason. Like he's so dangerous, we had to put him in, you know, penitentiary and no, they moved him out of New York because they didn't want to deal with a New York liberal judge and the second circuit court of appeals. That's disgusting. That's not the world I wanna wake up in. So we're gonna have to follow that case closely

because of the principles that it triggers and identifies and stands for. And it's important to me, and it should be to our audience about the type of America that we live in. And you're right about the green card. The green card, yes, it's a privilege and it can be revoked,

but it's also a property right that's been granted to somebody upon which they've based their life. And it can't just be taken away with an ICE, somebody from ICE or a Secretary of State who's acting as judge, jury, and executioner. There's a due process. We don't have star chambers. We're not supposed to.

We don't have, I mean, we use Guantanamo Bay for a different reason, but we're not supposed to have, in America, you know, people cut off from access to their council, and, you know, that is the way the case got into court. It was a writ of habeas corpus to bring the body, literally, bring the person, and have the government cough them up and bring them into court

because they're being held somewhere against their will. And the question of incarceration and detention and liberty becomes the issue for the federal judge. So it's an interesting case that I think we're going to have to continue to follow. Right, Karen? Absolutely. I mean, you know, look, he's married to a U.S. citizen. I think his wife is pregnant. Eight months. Yeah, eight months pregnant. I mean, you know, these are real people with real lives. And it's just, you know, the Donald Trump

and his administration, they're just running roughshod over people's rights. It's just unbelievable. Yeah, yeah. And just to bring our podcast full circle, she's about to give birth to an anchor baby. Well. So under the 14th Amendment is a U.S. citizen. just to bring our podcast full circle, she's about to give birth to an anchor baby. Well, under the 14th Amendment is a US citizen. Well, she's a US citizen. So I think. Well, that's true. So under that version of his thing, those executive orders don't apply. But I'm trying

to make a funny, but I know, I know, I know, I'm just, you know, I wake up, I wake up every morning and I look at the paper like everybody else. And, you know, I've been recently looking, I don't have a lot of money in the stock market, but I have a little, and I'm just waiting for the him to make America great again. I mean, it's just everything is going to shit. I thought you said I had a lot of money in the stock market, but now I have a little.

No, I, you know, a long time ago I put a little money in and it grew and grew and grew and I never touched it. You know, my, the now I have a little. Now I you know, a long time ago, I put a little money in, and it grew and grew and grew and I never touched it. You know, my the way I would do I would be like, Oh, I use this all the time. I'm gonna now put you know, I'm gonna buy five. Yeah, I buy products. I do that. Yeah, like, that's that's that's the extent of my how I buy stocks. And we're gonna buy espresso stock, right? Anything that you use all the time, I think, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, whatever.

So, and it grew and it grew and it was, it was not nothing for me, it's money and it is just tanked. I can't believe it. You know, I'm like, you know, and the same thing with whether it's groceries, whether it's, you know, even ordering online. We went to a restaurant the other night in Chinatown,

which is usually very affordable. Things were like double, triple the price. I couldn't believe what he's doing for this economy. Egg prices are up 56% in a year. But Donald Trump is going to fix that on day... He had so much things he was going to fix on day one. I think it was a typo. He meant he was going to kill the economy

and our U.S US democracy on day one, because that's all we're watching. But the way we fight, what do we do? Yeah, well, we're doing it. You're here. You're on the Midas Touch Network. Hit the subscribe button, legal AF. Hit the subscribe button.

Watch our hot takes, do the comments, and gear up, everybody. Let's effing go, as Jordy likes to say, because we gotta get ready and giddy up for the midterms. You know, give me back Congress, and it will go a long way to stopping Donald Trump in his tracks, make him the shortest of lame duck presidents,

quicker than you can say the midterms. We gotta get there. There's no choice. I like protesting like the next person. I like hanging out with people that are like minded. We got to vote. You know, as the as the great I was at the late great as the great Barack Obama says, don't boo vote. And that's what we got to do. You got to you got to I love all the resistance. I love that Greenland is pushing back and yeah, and basically saying F off. I love that Canada is pushing back and saying F off.

I hope, and I hope all other countries, I hope everybody stands strong. Even Ukraine, right? Things are starting to turn there for them. Like I am so happy that there is resistance all over the world and in this country and don't succumb to this. Don't, we have to fight back in every way that we can.

We all have to stay together and we all have to fight back because this is just complete autocracy, authoritarianism, lawlessness, and it's not right. Europe joining together to stop an out of control totalitarian dictator who wants to destroy sovereignty of Europe. Where have I heard that before? I know, right? You know what else I loved?

I loved that Hamilton production. Yeah, the mantle. They were scheduled to perform. One of the great shows of all time, one of the greatest soundtracks of all time. Such a huge Hamilton fan was supposed to scheduled to be at the Kennedy Center. And because of what Donald Trump has done,

taken over the board of directors of the Kennedy Center and is going to turn it into a WWE, you know, instead of having real things there, it's going to be one of these MAGA showcase things. They pulled out. They pulled out because it would be a farce to be at the Kennedy Center about what the founding fathers and the constitution was like and perform there.

And that's great resistance. And I think everybody has to do their part and it'll happen. Oh, you don't like Lee Greenwood being the curator of programming for the Kennedy Center? I mean, this is what it is. It's Susie Wiles and her mother. It's the deputy chief of staff.

It's everybody's wife for every donor. This is now on, it's Maria Bartiromo and Laura Ingram from Fox News who covered Trump, who have now been bribed by being on the Kennedy Center. And yeah, the arts are fighting back as their art funding is being cut. Everybody has to fight back in their own way. Even if it seems small, anything you can do,

everybody has to do it. That's the resistance. And I'm so proud to be part of the Midas Touch and the Midas Touch Network and this resistance that we do here. And I am so just thrilled and honored to spend every Wednesday with you, Popok, doing Legal AF so that we can do our part in this.

Great way to sign off. You've reached the end of another great episode. Hopefully you find it that way, of Legal AF on the Midas Touch Network with Karen Friedman and Knyfilo. And Michael Popok, get us here. Get us on podcast audio platforms. Get us on Saturday where I do the show with Ben Mycelis. So until our next time together, this is Michael Popock, Karen Friedman, Igniflo.

Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers.