Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Episode 3/29/2025

Episode Date: March 30, 2025

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok head the top rated Legal AF podcast, and tonight discuss: 3 straight losses for the Trump Administration, as federal judges block their efforts as violations of the First Amendment and Due Process Rights to blacklist major law firms that once opposed Trump; an update on the fast moving Alien Enemies Act case, in which a federal judge has blocked, affirmed on appeal, Trump's use of phony war powers to kidnap and deport people and send them without Due Process to deathtrap El Salvadorian prison; a rare win for Trump, as a 3 judge panel of the DC Circuit Appeals court is allowing him for now to put out of business the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Services Board meant to protect workers against illegal practices, a Biden-era gun control law finds support a the US Supreme Court in a new "ghost gun" ruling, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Support Our Sponsors: Cook Unity: Cook Unity: Go to https://cookunity.com/LEGALAF or enter code LEGALAF before checkout for 50% OFF your first week! Fatty 15: Get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to https://fatty15.com/LEGALAF and using code LEGALAF at checkout. Delete Me: Get 20% OFF your DeleteMe plan by texting LEGAL to 64000 Laundry Sauce: For 20% off your order head to https://LaundrySauce.com/LEGALAF20 and use code LEGALAF20 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

Donald Trump loses three times to the three law firms in federal court that actually stood up to his executive orders targeting those law firms. Other law firms bent the knee, they're now disgraced and humiliated in the legal community, but Trump was handed loss after loss after loss in three separate courts, including two federal courts where they were George W. Bush appointees will discuss. Also an order against the Trump regime from using signal and other text communication methods for sending classified communications in violation of the Presidential Records Act was handed down by none other than Judge Boesberg,

who randomly got assigned the Signal Gate case brought by a group called American Oversight. Judge Boesberg is also handling the case by the ACLU regarding Donald Trump's regime's kidnapping of migrants and sending them to concentration camps in El Salvador. Speaking of that case, Judge Boasberg extended the injunction against the Trump regime from these kidnap renditions to concentration camps in El Salvador. That was extended to about mid-April. We'll discuss and we're learning a lot of stories about migrants who are not Trende Aragwa, gang members who were here lawfully, lawful asylum seekers, good people, family people who are now living in or maybe even not any more concentration camps in El Salvador,

a real horrific time in our nation's history. Also, we have to talk about a bad ruling. Not all good rulings, not all gravy here when it comes to what the courts are doing. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals issued a bad ruling regarding Donald Trump's terminations of the National Labor Relations Board member and the Merit Protections Board member. To me, a really bad ruling saying that the status quo being preserved is the termination by Trump, not the fact that the people hold onto their jobs.

So it's a kind of temporary order, but it will prevent these people from getting their jobs back during the duration of their litigation. And I think it's a bad, bad ruling and a likely get appeal to the Supreme Court, but not a good sign that that's what the Court of Appeals did. But a good ruling, if you will, by the Supreme Court against the Trump regime on the issue of ghost guns

and against the NRA on the issue of ghost guns. It was a seven to two ruling. We'll discuss that ruling, its implications as well, but seven to two against ghost guns. It should be unanimous, but that's where we're at. Let's bring in Michael Popok from the Legal AF podcast. Michael Popok, before throwing it to you, I just wanna share this video of

Kristi Noem at the concentration camp in El Salvador wearing a $60,000 Rolex. Kristi Noem is the Secretary of Homeland Security, a dog killer as well, a human killer as well. Here she is. Let's play this clip. Here at CECOT today and visiting this facility. And first of all, I want to thank El Salvador and their president for their partnership with the United States of America to bring our terrorists here and to incarcerate them and have consequences for the violence that they have perpetuated in our communities. I also want everybody to know if you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face. First of all, do not come to our country illegally.

You will be removed and you will be prosecuted. But know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people. I wanted to lead with that, Michael Popok, and share that at the outset. We're going to talk more about it in this episode. It's not getting the attention it deserves from other corporate news media. That's why being independent news media, it's important that we highlight that. We have prisons in the United States.

We have a deportation process. Nobody wants criminals and gang members here. But we do have a system of due process to determine who are the bad guys and who are not and bragging about concentration camps in El Salvador, a country that has a $30 billion a year GDP and a 25% to 30% poverty rate, it's not exactly the model of who we should be in the United States. Let me throw it to you, Pope.

Yeah, no, look, the Christine Noem is obscenely unqualified to be protecting the homeland in any way, shape or form. She referred to the people in violation of the Geneva Convention paraded before her bare chested and tattooed as being quote unquote their terrorists. What she skips is the thing that Judge Millett, who we're gonna talk a lot about today because she was on two different two-to-one decisions

that you and I are going to talk about in different segments at the DC Court of Appeals. Judge Millett said, we're talking about the intersection, you and I talk about the intersection a lot, but the intersection of Fifth Amendment due process and the Alien Enemies Act. And that's the thing that's always missing

from the Trump administration. It's not that we're not in favor of the esoteric theory that bad people who committed crimes and or are here illegally should be removed. The thing that we're against as a nation of laws, as a constitutional republic, is doing it through a kidnapping program in the middle of the night with no due process so these people can stand up and prove that they are or are not part of the criminal terrorist

gang before they are sent not to their own country, not to even a detention center under the US auspices, but to one of the world's worst prisons in El Salvador, where more than 300 people died in the last year and a half from quote unquote natural causes. If you think beating another human being to death is a natural cause, then you'll agree with President Bukele of El Salvador. This is a pay to play scheme that's immoral. We're paying Bukele $6 million to fill empty jail cells for himself so that Kristi Noem,

and let's call it like it is, wearing her $60,000 Rolex, her hair extensions, her Botox, and her too tight t-shirt can go hang out in front as an F you and a middle finger back to judges that are doing the nation's work and God's work like Judge Boasberg and other judges who are standing between this abuse of power by the Trump administration and these individuals.

This was I don't care what Boasberg says about the Alien Enemies Act not being able to be used to kidnap and deport people. I'm going to go down there and thank President Bukele. So now our America, our democracy through Donald Trump is taking instruction on how to run its democracy from President Bukele who puts in a social media post in the last couple of weeks,

directed to Donald Trump. He writes, you should go after the judges. I did it. You won't be able to get your agenda passed without doing that. Now we're taking instructions about how to run our democracy from El Salvador, and nobody finds that to be appalling. Let me leave one note of personal point here. That comment that she made, that ad campaign about don't come to this country, you know, I was sitting in Miami a week ago at a restaurant

where people were watching the Brazil-Argentina World Cup Playoff. And so it was filled with people from lots of different nations, mainly Spanish speaking ones. And she comes on with a commercial in English, in which she said, effectively, that ad campaign that she just used in front of the prison there in El Salvador,

which was, don't come to this country. If you're illegal, leave now. You may be able to come back one day. I assure you that 80 to 90% of the people in that room had troubled status and or in that room had troubled status and or new people that had troubled status, close family members and the like. And this went over like a lead balloon in that room.

I watched for the reaction. And this is what you and I have to on the channel to continue to keep an eye on and promote as we move towards the midterms. One last thing about paybacks. Canada, I said this, I think to you guys, Canada is running billboards in Miami that they're paying for.

And talking about the tariff war just means higher prices for you as Americans. They don't have their name on it, but the Canadians are running ads now on US soil to talk about how tariffs harm the American pocketbook. Look, as Doge with its wrecking ball is firing all of these people, destroying lives, targeting Social Security and Medicaid, shutting down Social Security offices, how is this regime spending money?

And there's a reason why there's actually been more federal government spending in the last month than ever before in American history because they're using it to fund the lavish lifestyle of Donald Trump's vacation, all of these trips by Kristi Noem, JD Vance going to Greenland where he just shows up in a military base because Greenlanders don't want him there.

I mean, these ad campaigns are hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. Thirty million dollars for his nine golf weekends. Thirty million dollars of American taxpayer dollars. And think about all of the Social Security Administration offices that could have been kept open so Donald Trump can play golf while Elon Musk is doing that. I also think about the video of the Tufts PhD student, Rumeysa Azturk, has not been charged with a crime. If there's a crime that's committed, then charge with the crime.

Let the American people know what the criminal act was. And there's a lot of situations where there are people in colleges that the Trump administration, the regime doesn't like what they are saying, what they're publishing, but they're not saying what crimes are committed. In this horrific video of Ramesa Azturk, a PhD student studying in Tufts, pulled off the street, put into a detention center and You have Rubio and you have the State Department people not saying they're saying oh, we want to stop the illegal activity Well, then okay then say what the say what the crime is, you know

We are a nation of laws and what they are telling us this regime and they told us this all along They don't like our system. They don't like due process. Due process is a process and processes take time and processes have things that you're like, well, it would actually be faster if we did this. It could be quicker if we did this. Why are we going about doing this? Because the totality of human experience

and enlightened thinking that worked its way into our Constitution told us that this process is needed because otherwise you have authoritarians that first they go for this group and you may go well I don't agree with that so that's not affecting me then they go for this group and they're like well maybe I don't agree with that but that's not coming for me and then they come for you and and they're like, well, maybe I don't agree with that, but that's not coming for me. And then they come for you. And that's why it's important, whether you agree or disagree with the right,

whatever your views are, you need to stand up for due process in the United States of America. That is our legal system. And when I see as a lawyer who used to litigate against big firms, who have lots of friends in big who work in big firms. Michael Popok was a former big firm lawyer early on in his career. He started

his own law firm as well, which I'll tell you about now, which is a small boutique that he has right now. But Popok started at one of these firms. You have law firms that are standing up to the regime and winning in court, and you've have law firms that are standing up to the regime and winning in court and you've got law firms that are bending the knee and are cutting deals with Donald Trump to provide like services to the Trump regime agenda because they're so scared about losing clients. On the good guy or the good person and good woman side of this, you've got law firms like Perkins Cooey, Jenner and Block, Wilmer Hale, who are fighting back.

On the bad guy, bad person side of this, you've got firms like Skadden, you've got firms like Paul Weiss. Michael Popok, talk about what's happened in court, the wins by these firms that have fought back and those who have bent the knee. Yeah, and I'll do it from the perspective as full disclosure, and I did a hot take up

on Legal AF Channel. I started my career proudly at Skadden Arps. Cut my teeth there, close relationships there, including people that were on the executive committee as their careers continued. I always proudly said I was a Skadden lawyer that worked under Joe Flom, who ran that firm while I was still there before he passed away recently.

And now I no longer feel that way. I will talk about what Skadden has done and the amount of tribute and extortion they have been willing to pay and sacrifice their professional ethics and their professional responsibility on the altar of their profits per partner. There's no other way to put it.

Let me frame it this way, Ben, and then I'll get into the three losses, two in a row yesterday for the Trump administration on this issue, where good order and law firms that fight are winning at a thousand percent clip at a bat in a thousand. Regardless of the practice area that you choose to practice in or not practice in when you leave law school, if you're a member of the bar of any of our 50 states, I don't care if you're a transactional lawyer, mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property, a tech law, family law, divorce law, corporate law, you know, litigation, you can divide the world into transactional, regulatory, and litigation. However you divide the world, when you left law school, when you took the bar exam, when you took the ethics test, and you got admitted and sworn in, regardless of where you went off in the rest of your world.

You may never have seen a courtroom ever in your life because of the nature of your practice, but you took an oath as a profession to uphold the Constitution, and to abide by the rules of professional conduct and responsibility for your particular bar. I don't care if you became a tax lawyer or you became a family lawyer or a divorce lawyer or an M&A lawyer at Skadden, whatever it was,

you are a lawyer. If you didn't want to be a lawyer at this critical moment in time and you wanted to just make money in business, there were plenty of ways to do that without taking the bar and becoming and swearing an oath. You could go to Wall Street, you could be an eye banker, an investment banker, hedge fund, private equity,

become a broker or a trader, get an MBA, whatever you wanted to do. But once you became a lawyer, and that's how you ply your trade and your profession, then you had an obligation at this moment of crisis, where Donald Trump on a retribution campaign has attempted to blacklist and make radioactive. The reporting is up to 14 law firms.

He started with this four, but up to 14 law firms, now is the time that you stand up and you say, no, I'm not gonna turn my pro bono department, which is where we give back to our society for free, and represent people who can't afford the scat and arps at $2,000 an hour, but need amazing representation, whether it's an asylum case, a death penalty case, your Ruby Freeman and Che Moss, and your Sue and Rudy Giuliani case. This is where the pro bono programs, and the firms have used those pro bono programs in order to attract top talent

Because they say to them you'll get the experience that you wouldn't get working for corporate clients We have this amazing pro bono program and it's it's co it's cohesive with our commitment to diversity equity and inclusion Hiring black and brown people and women and putting them in positions where they can benefit society. If you're willing to sacrifice all of that and give your pro bono program over to Donald Trump and give him, in the case of Paul Weiss, $40 million worth of free service and just basically shutter your DEI commitment and the same thing for SCAD, except now the number is $100 million. You should just, you know, oh, it's existential, we'll go out of business. Well, then you should go out of business.

If that is your business model, then you should go out of business. And if you've watched, see what's Skadden, my old firm, what's Skadden, the lesson it learned from Paul Weiss, its neighbor down the street, paying $40 million, also run by corporate people, mergers and acquisition people, not litigators, is well, it wasn't so bad. A couple of bad news cycles, a couple of bad articles. We'll take that. We're

making five billion dollars a year as a law firm. We'll take that. That's okay. We'll do that. As opposed to watching the lesson of Perkins Coy who got a temporary restraining order issued by Barrel Howell, that it was a First Amendment violation, that the Trump administration can't bar and ban law firms from doing business with the government, from representing clients before the government, from getting contracts before the government, from representing clients in federal courts or before federal agencies.

For some of the firms you and I are talking about today, it's 30, 40, 50% of their revenue, hundreds of millions of dollars, and Donald Trump knows it. So you either get your temporary restraining order as a First Amendment violation and an abuse of power from Judge Barrel Howell two weeks ago for Perkins Coy,

and you follow that lead, which Jenner and Block did, which Wilmer Hale, we know it, it's got a longer name, but we know these firms as Wilmer and Jenner and Block. Those firms said, F this, we took an oath. We are being abused, by extension, our clients, and we're being retaliated against, and we need to do something about it. And shout out to, I'll talk about the orders,

but shout out to the law firms that are representing those law firms, because they have law firms, which are now on the radar screen for Donald Trump. Cooley, which I know because I had given Cooley work when I was in in-house counsel, Cooley is representing Jenner and Block, and of all people, Paul Clement, who used to be the rightest of right, who is the rightest of right wing and former Solicitor General in the Bush administration,

the one who was in favor of waterboarding, the one who was against gay marriage and gays in the military. He is representing Wilbur Hale in his case. So it makes strange bedfellows. I may not agree, I never thought I'd say I agree with Paul Clement on anything, but I agree with him here

in terms of his defense of the profession. So we had back to back hearings in two different courtrooms in the same courthouse in DC on Friday, late in the day. But the same result, one little twist before I get there. Paul Clement, when he filed his case on behalf of Wilmer Hale, tried to get Barrel Howell as the judge, she had already issued a temporary restraining order on an almost identical

executive order blacklisting that firm. He tried to argue it was a related case. He directly filed it to Barrel Howell. Barrel Howell, I'm sure, wanted it, but decided that based on the factors, it was not a related case, even though the same type of executive order, and she kicked it back to random selection.

By random choice, we'll talk a lot about that when we get to Judge Boesberg, it ended up with Richard Leon, Leon who's a Bush appointee. Yep. On the other side, the random wheel assigned it to Judge- Bates. Bates, who's another Bush appointee.

And both of them found First Amendment violations. I'll tell you, Bates got really pissed off during the hearing, the reporting about the hearing itself. Bates, in talking to the lawyer for the Department of Justice said, well, is the firm barred or not barred from going on to federal property and visiting with agencies to do their job for their clients?

Well, those guidelines haven't yet been completely fleshed out. I would think if you're in my courtroom on a temporary injunction about the ramifications of an executive order, you would know if the answer to that question. So what Bates did is a very simple order. He said the motion for temporary restraining order

is granted. You are not to blacklist them. I want a status report about compliance of every federal agency by Monday at 12 o'clock. Judge Leon wrote a six-page decision. He said this is retaliation on its face. This is a First Amendment violation. And then he quoted, just so people understand what's at stake here, he quoted a executive lawyer for Wilmer Hale who said that they have 100 matters right now before the federal government for clients. That 40% of their revenue comes from representing clients

before the federal government to the tune of $500 million, that this would effectively put them out of business. That's the irreparable harm. I'm granting the TRO. And without coordinating with Judge Bates, he also entered a status report requirement, joint requirement for Monday at four o'clock.

So where are we now? 3-0 for firms that are fighting and $140 million paid by Skadden and by Paul Weiss for firms that are more concerned with their profits per partner than what's right in America. History will have a very dark and dim view on the firms that submitted during this moment. It is a travesty in my view for anyone who supports democracy, who considers those firms as really a place where you can practice law under your ethical rule.

Just giving you my opinion, giving your ethical obligations as a lawyer, firms that have become agents of fascism, it's a horrible place to be. And, you know, I'm certainly going to let my law students know, they can choose wherever they want to work. But I think it's important that they know what the stakes are here, at least when it comes to just fundamental democracy and what the rulings are, and then they can decide where they want to work. You know who put it best, Ben?

Judge... I wrote it down. Judge Koffnore, who issued the... It's hard to believe. The first temporary restraining order, five days into this administration, on birthright citizenship in San Francisco. We now have 70 or 80 injunctions, but he was the first. He said out loud at that first hearing, it stuck with me, I don't want history to look back and say during this era, where were the judges and where were the lawyers?

And for Skadden and Paul Weiss, they're gonna have to look their future clients or current clients and like you said, law school candidates in the eye That people are already quitting that firm. We just leave you that have been public about it and say where where were they? You know, where were they, you know, where were the lawyers and law firms in Nazi Germany? I guess is the what we're trying to say Absolutely and judges. Um, I'll tell you where the Michael Popok is starting his own law firm

I'll tell you where the Michael Popak is starting his own law firm And doing a great job. I am so proud of Michael Popak for starting his own law firm Just in the past 30 35 days or so. It's off to a great start Michael handles catastrophic injuries So he has cases for example like trucking accident cases that involved wrongful death, car accidents that involve wrongful death, people who have gotten catastrophic injuries from different types of accidents, sexual harassment and sexual assault cases, wrongful termination cases, medical malpractice cases. And because it's a boutique firm,

you can't handle all of the cases. So usually the bigger catastrophic cases, so if you or anybody you know has a case like that, or a family member, or a friend, or anything like that, Michael Popak, where can people go? And a lot of people have been reaching out to you, so I just tell people, reach out to Popak's firm if there's a case like this, where do they go?

Yeah, we've had over a thousand people reach out. We've got an easy website. It's thepopakfirm.com, we'll put it up on the screen. And we also have a very easy 1-800 number that's staffed. It's 1-877-POPAK-AF. It is the intersection of people, the court system and lives. And that's why I wanted to be involved. Well, it's doing great. Reach out to Michael Popoc. We're going to take our first quick

break of the show. Also a reminder for you to check out the Legal AF YouTube channel. It's soaring. I want to try to get that a million subscribers in the next few months. So make sure you're subscribed to the Legal AF YouTube channel as well. And by the way, you can check out the Midas Touch Substack at MidasPlus.com while you're at it. Let's take our first quick break of the show. We've got a lot to discuss when we're back. As an attorney, podcast anchor, husband, and a father of a nine month old, I can't afford to eat

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violation of the Presidential Records Act, a case that was randomly assigned to Judge Boesberg and then Judge Boesberg extending his injunction against the Trump regime using the Alien Enemies Act war powers to further kidnap migrants in the United States and send them to concentration camps in El Salvador without due process. That temporary restraining order was extended to mid-April. The Trump regime appealed to the D.C. circuit. A two-to-one ruling affirmed what Judge Boesberg was doing and now the Trump regime is

appealing that to the United States Supreme Court as well. Before tossing it to you, Popak, I want to show two videos first. The first I want to show John Kekker from the Kekker Van Ness Peters law firm. John Kekker runs one of the big law firms in the United States, and he's a fighter. So first off, he was in Vietnam. You should go and read his story. He was one of the chief lawyers in Iran, Contra. I mean, this guy is one of the top lawyers out there.

He put out a powerful statement to the legal community about fighting back against the Trump regime and not submitting and I brought him on and featured him on Midas slash legal AF I just want to share with you because this guy's one of the kind of top litigators in the legal community here's what he had to say about fighting back against the Trump regime let's play it my message is if you're good, you're going to be okay. Don't let a bully push you around and make you humiliate yourself in order to either please him or make the clients comfortable. If a client doesn't want to have a lawyer who's got some guts comfortable. If a client doesn't want to have a lawyer who's got some guts and some principles, then let the client go someplace else and you'll hope to be

against them in litigation. But my message is stand up and don't let this happen and don't be just scared about you. be scared about the entire Situation the entire rule of law the entire role of lawyers in this democracy. I Want to share with you this video of Attorney General Pam Bondi? But let's do it after popak first I toss to you and then maybe chat about these two judge Bozaberg rulings and then maybe chat about these two Judge Boesberg rulings. Let's frame it in the legal first, and then let me show you what the Trump regime is doing, which is not the legal stuff, it's the propaganda. I'll toss it to you though for Joe.

Yeah, and you'll do the propaganda. So there's always two worlds in a split screen with Donald Trump, right? We've talked about it a lot when he was criminal defendant Trump or criminal convict Trump. There's the world where extra judicially outside the courthouse, he, his lawyers,

here in this case, the attorney general, press secretary, Alina Haba, White House counselor, soon to be acting US attorney in New Jersey, they attack, attack, attack. Elon Musk, the federal judiciary, the federal judges, insane leftist, corrupt, over and over and over again, creating their own hermetically sealed loop of an echo chamber. And then they, as we've said before, in that ecosystem, they activate their social media campaign, their rapid response team, their paid social media people,

and then we're off and running with this clarion call for the head of the federal judge. So bad that the Supreme Court's head had to step forward and say enough, pump the brakes with Justice Roberts. Now we're in the courtroom with Judge Boasberg sort of two ways, and then later we're going to talk about some rulings at the DC Court of Appeals level where one three-judge panel made two rulings, but one judge flipped to support the Trump administration at a, I thought, a bad moment.

a bad moment. Boesberg gets assigned randomly the Signal Gate case, about the 18 people on a Signal Chat, which is barely encrypted, talking about war plans against the Houthis in the Suez Canal region and their military strikes that they were planning, including target packages and types of equipment. Turns out that much of what was discussed in the signal chat, which was first arranged by Mike Waltz, but Pete Hegseth doesn't seem to understand what confidential and top secret is either. New reporting is he's brought his wife to a number

of the meetings when he was abroad. You know, the meetings where he's caught with an alcohol glass at a meeting with the Europeans. He also brought his brother and his wife along with him to these secret meetings. Not great. And so this whole group sort of gets together. The Israelis are upset because it was their intelligence from that region, the Suez Canal around Egypt,

that was discussed in the Signal Chat. So it sort of torched and burnt the Israelis. Pilots for the military, current and former, are upset. Or as one put it, who's currently in the military, they, the Trump administration, is going to get us killed by talking about operations in an insecure, unsecure way before we've launched them, allowing our enemy to know where we are and shooting us out of the sky.

So, I'm framing the issue. It's been downplayed, attempted to be downplayed. Of course, it's backfired for the Trump administration outside the courtroom. You know, it's a glitch. You know, Mike Waltz learned a lesson. He's going to be fired any day now, by the way. In the courtroom, a group that often sues for transparency

in government brought a lawsuit about very simple and very ingenious and how simple it was. Didn't have to get into whether it's top secret, not top secret, classified, not classified, intelligence classified, military, who cares? It's a federal record. And the fact that they were using an app that by its nature auto deletes, like Snapchat,

but for the military and security purposes. They said that is a violation of the Federal Records Act because they're doing the people's business. These are the people's records. These are the people's records. These are transactional communications that need to be preserved for this administration, future administrations and the people. But of course, Donald Trump,

what did he learn from Mar-a-Lago and how that was ultimately handled? He can get away with anything when it comes to top secret classified compartmented CISA stuff. So of course his administration doesn't give a shit about any of that. Case gets filed for violation of Federal Records Act

to stop or enjoin all of the people on that chain and all departments from continuing to use Signal and from deleting these documents. It gets assigned to Boesberg. And Bondi takes to the airwaves and says, isn't it a coincidence that Boesberg, the radical left lunatic judge got assigned to this along with the Alien Enemies Act case?

Yeah, it's not a coincidence. He spent, I love, there were two moments of levity in the first hearing with Boesberg. The first was he spent an inordinate amount of time at the very beginning talking about the random selection process in the court system and how every judge has an electronic card and the wheel spins. When I started my career in federal court,

there literally was a wheel, okay? I'm gonna sound like I was wearing a powdered wig. You know when you watch the lotto numbers being picked and a ping pong ball popped up? It was like that. There were ballots and a giant thing and the federal and this clerk would pick out a judge's name that way, okay?

We do it now through an electronic wheel. But he felt he had to do that because he knew he was gonna get the grief that why did I get this case again? Look, there's only 24 judges in the DC courthouse, which is hard to believe given the amount, the volume that they work on. So yes, there's a one in 24 chance, but it happens.

And there's so many cases, hundreds of cases against the Trump administration already. Of course there's going to be overlapping judges, or judges that get signed to more than one case. So he spends the time doing that. Then after listening to all of it, he outfoxes, no pun intended, the Trump administration because he gets them to agree to an injunction

that between you and me, I'm not sure he had the power to grant because I'm not sure the irreparable harm part was there. What he wanted was them to agree to preserve all of the signal records from March 11th to March 15th and not delete them. The lawyer for the Department of Justice was busy tap dancing and stammering in front of the judge. We're trying.

The Department of Justice is working. We've made demand on all the departments, and some have cooperated, like the Treasury Department and others we haven't heard from like the Department of Defense and Hegseth which did not give the judge any great comfort. And whenever you hear the Department of Justice is on it, you know, you can, they have no credibility in these courtrooms for obvious reasons and so that the judges don't trust that. But he got the lawyer for the Department of Justice to agree effectively to his order that they would not, they would not delete and they would preserve those documents.

Now he can get out of the injunction world and he can get to the merits of the violation of the Federal Records Act. But so the reporting is that. He issued that particular order. At the end, the other moment of levity, which I love, because Boesberg is getting abused. And I'm sure it's showing up in his attacks on him in social media. And I'm sure there's an increase in violent rhetoric aimed at him

at the federal marshals are going to have to that are dealing with. There's a, there's a fight in the, uh, in the alien enemies act case. We'll talk about next in which they're arguing at the Trump level, which is a ridiculous position to take, that his oral proclamation, his injunction at 6.35, two Saturdays ago, to stop the planes and stop the deportation under the phony war power declaration, proclamation by Donald Trump, there's an hour gap there where it looks like they were violating. And they said, well, no, because it took an hour to put it up on the docket.

That wasn't the order. That was so the public can keep track through an accurate docket of what happened in the case. The order is what you're told in court. That's why when you're a lawyer, you take down notes, you get the transcript, you make sure you understand the parameters and contours of your injunction against you or the order. When I hear the judge say, which he said in the transcript,

pardon me, I'm ready to rule. As soon as the judge says, that's the magic words, as soon as the judge says, I'm ready to rule, you and everybody on your team takes out your pads or your computers, if you have your computer, and you start to write, because that's the ruling. So there's this fight about oral versus written. So the judge said at the end of the hearing

about Signalgate, he said, here's my order, you're gonna preserve, you agree, yes, okay, great. Oh, don't worry, you don't have to worry about writing it down, I'll be issuing something in writing. And then he just stood and looked at them, which I love that he is able, you know, to have that sense of humor in that context. So that's on the signal gate side.

You want me to switch to the Alien Enemies Act up to the DC appellate court? Let's do it and switch it up. All right. We got two diff, sometimes panels of three judges that are randomly assigned to a case are held together for more than one appeal. It depends on how the appeals come in.

So back to back, Wednesday and Friday, we had, I'll cover the first one first, we had the same three judge panel. Walker, Trump appointee. Mallette, Obama, Henderson, Bush, I almost said Reagan, Bush. Okay, same three judges. Henderson being the wild card, I'll tell you about that in a minute. They also get assigned to the case of the joint appeal about whether Donald Trump could just decapitate and put out of business effectively,

the Merit Protection Service Board and the National Labor Relations Board, which are for all the unions that didn't support Kamala Harris, you know, you got a lot of explaining to do now, because the two entities that were around to protect your workers have now effectively, for the duration of this administration,

been put out of business by Donald Trump and by this three-judge panel. So the three-judge panel, same three-judge panel, ruled for Donald Trump in that case, ruled against Donald Trump in the Alien Enemies Act. It went up on a hearing on the Alien Enemies Act. And the only issue in both of these cases is whether a stay on the injunction that was issued by the various judges to stop Trump's abuse of power, whether that injunction is going to stay in place while the duration of the appeal is litigated

over the next three, six, nine months. What is the status quo that's being preserved? That's the only issue. It gets to the merits because you've got to look at the merits of the underlying appeal in order to determine whether somebody's likely to succeed or not, but it's only about a stay. And there's certain factors that an appellate court can use about stay under a certain factor test

that have to be analyzed. On the Alien Enemies Act, all three, there was no real agreement except two judges in concurrence, Henderson and Millett, said the Trump administration is likely to lose. They overreached in using the Alien Enemies Act. Or as Henderson put it, what you're pointing to, this terrorist gang

that's in America and has been in America for quite some time, that's a migration issue. That's an immigration issue. Migration is not a predatory incursion. Migration is not an invasion or a war. And in order for you to have that power, for me to give you that power through the Constitution, is not a predatory incursion. Migration is not an invasion or a war. And in order for you to have that power, for me to give you that power through the constitution, there has to be a war.

And we don't have war with Venezuela. Millet is the one, she also in concurrence said effectively the same thing. Millet went further in oral argument and said, where is the due process? You can do everything that you're doing, but do it in front of a judge, an immigration judge, and give them due process. You can do everything that you're doing, but do it in front of a judge, an immigration judge, and give them due process. Give them an opportunity to have a lawyer and prove

whether they are or are not part of that gang. And then that might be a different story. But you're the Nazis, suspected Nazis in America were given better due process rights than you're giving these individuals who you've sent off to El Salvador. That was the big headline for that. So in a two to one with Walker, the Trumper in dissent, who said, this is really a Texas matter. Why are we in DC? This should have been done with a writ of habeas corpus individually down in Texas while they were still there,

but they're not still there. They're in El Salvador. That's the problem. So they upheld the Boasberg decision two to one, keeping the injunction in place. Donald Trump doesn't like it. He's filed an application, the seventh application to the United States Supreme Court. And as of our recording, the Supreme Court is sitting on it. They haven't gotten the four votes yet to ask for a briefing schedule. So they haven't assigned, usually I would have thought if they were really interested,

when they're interested in something, within a day, they will give the other side an opportunity to file a brief and they'll rule thereafter. They did that in a couple of cases recently. Here, I'm still waiting for the briefing schedule. They may not find this that interesting, meaning they can't find four votes to take up this application or five votes to support Trump. And we'll follow it here on my discussion on Legal AF. That's the full completion. I'll take a

breather before we move on to the other matter today. When I was doing this, there was like a switch hitter, like baseball season starting. I love it. You can switch it up, that's why I was doing that. I wanna call a quick break, our last quick break of the show, and then I wanna talk about the Trump propaganda. I'll take that piece of it.

But then there were some not so good rulings in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. You talked about the good rulings there. What's important on a show like this is that we let you know the good, the bad, and the ugly. I hope that's one of the reasons you like Legal AF because we're not gonna sugarcoat a bad ruling and its implications or gloss over it.

We'll talk about that, but we'll talk about a good ruling as well. Don't worry, we're not gonna finish though on the bad note. We'll finish on the note of the Supreme Court making actually a good ruling in a common sense ruling When it comes to ghost guns the fact that it wasn't unanimous though makes you scratch your head there for a second I want to remind everybody though about the legal AF YouTube channel. It's soaring right now It's on its way to 1 million subscribers. I'd love to get that legal AF YouTube channel 1 million subscribers. I'd love to get that legal AF YouTube channel, one million subscribers.

I'll remind you about MidasPlus.com, which is the Midas Touch sub stack. And then finally, so proud that Michael Popak has started his own law firm. The types of case they handle at the Popak law firm are catastrophic injury cases, car accidents, trucking accidents, medical malpractice, wrongful termination cases, car accidents, trucking accidents, medical malpractice, wrongful termination cases, sexual harassment, sexual assault cases like that. So if you or a loved

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www.thepopokfirm.com is the website. It brings you right to the free consultation form and all the different ways to have your matter assessed. And if we take the case, we're gonna do it on a contingency meeting for free unless we all get paid, unless you recover. And then of course the 800 number is easy to remember as well, 1-877-POPOC-AF.

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legal to 64,000 message and data rates may apply. Welcome back to Legal AF. Thank you to those pro democracy sponsors right there. The discount codes are in the description below and thank you to everybody who is also reaching out to the PO POC firm. I can actually see the calls that come in and the emails as they come in in real time. Also if you forget the number or the email address, we'll say it again at the end of the show,

but it's in the description below as well, how you contact the PO-POC firm. Hey, Michael, I said as we got back, I would talk about the Trump propaganda portion of this. And basically their attorney general, Pam Bondi, at this point is nothing more than a spokesperson who goes on Fox and not really a good one on that. Say what you want about Merrick Garland, the former attorney general, but he was at least

somebody who understood in theory what the role of an attorney general was like in terms of you're not... I guess I set my standards fairly low with that description, but at least it's not someone who's on Fox every day. Now, I think we all feel very strongly that, very strongly would be putting an understatement that a lot of what's occurring now could have been avoided if I think Merrick Garland didn't underestimate, and again, I'm really,

I think I'm saying the understatement of the year made sure that the crimes that needed to be prosecuted were actually prosecuted. But there's a whole other show and multiple other legal AF shows on that topic. But I guess the point I'm making is that Pam Bondi should not be on Fox News every single night, whining and complaining and acting like a bad PR flack. Here was the one of the more recent appearances where she's there like attacking federal judges whose experience compare, whose legal knowledge compared to

hers is the difference between a mountain and a little ant mole hill or something. I'm not good at descriptions like that. But anyway, play the clip. Pam, thanks for being with us this afternoon. Let's start, if we might, from the decision by Judge Bosberg. Tomorrow is your deadline to answer questions. Those questions include the following.

What time did the plane take off from US soil? Where did it leave from? What time did it leave US airspace? And what time did it land in airspace, and what time did it land in a foreign country. You have, I don't know, four, five, six questions the judge wants answers to regarding the details of those flights over the weekend. How will you respond at the Department of Justice?

Well, Will, our lawyers are working on this. We will answer appropriately, but what I will tell you is this judge has no right to ask those questions. You have one unelected federal judge trying to control foreign policies, trying to control the alien enemies act, which they have no business presiding over. And there are 261 reasons why Americans are safer now. That's because those people are out of this country. The judge had no business, no power to do what he did.

And Will, he came in on an emergency basis on a Saturday with very, very short notice, if any, to our attorney to run in the courtroom. You know, and this has been a pattern with these liberal judges. You just spoke about that. It's been a pattern with what they've been doing. This judge had no right to do that. They're meddling in foreign affairs. They're meddling in our government. Again, the defamation of our court system, I mean, quite literally, federal judges hear things on emergency bases.

This is the role of the federal judiciary. This was never a thing in the past before the Trump whining and victimhood permeated politics. That was even a question when I went to law school, when Popak went to law school slightly before I went to law school, and Popak went to law school slightly before I went to law school, and those before Michael Popak who went to law school before he, these weren't questions of import or of any substance because this is the role of what the federal courts

actually do and as a result of the Trump regime defying the initial court order and coming up with this excuse about oh it was an oral order or whatever you know we've been covering on the Midas Touch Network all of these stories of a guy named Andres who's a gay hair stylist political exile from Venezuela, not Trende or Agua, now sent to El Salvador's concentration camps, probably gonna die in a concentration camp while Kristi Noem parades in front of a group of prisoners at that concentration camp.

You know, there's the story about the DJ, the musician, the story about the individual who's here lawfully, asylum seeker, the story of someone who had a tattoo that was for autism awareness, because a family member had autism and that was said, oh, you're Trendy Aragwa, that's a gang sign, autism awareness, that's a gang sign, even when the initial ICE detention people told them, you're not a gang member, it's

okay. They sent this guy to El Salvador. They sent women to the concentration camp in El Salvador, and then they had to be sent back because it's a male-only concentration camp. The soccer player, football player who had the Real Madrid tattoo, had the Trump regime complied with the initial order, those people would not be killed in concentration camps. And the question is, are you okay? Even if there were some gang members on that plane,

which I think they should then have gone through the process where they're determined they're a gang member, you don't release them into general population. You make sure that they get the biggest penalties for the crimes that are committed. I'm not okay with people being sent to El Salvador concentration camps without due process. Again, call me old fashioned about my interpretation

of law and order nation, but due process is something that should exist. Now you have all these people in concentration camps under the authority of the United States flag dying and being murdered and the rest of their life there in concentration camps. I mean, it's ridiculous and it's a despicable and shameful time in American history

where this is taking place. And then you see the propaganda that she does and goes, ah, the judge, the lefty judge. Look, this was a judge who was first appointed by George W. Bush to the Superior Court in Washington, D.C., then appointed by former President Obama. He's been the chief judge of the FISA Court, the Foreign Intelligence Services Act, chief judge of Washington, D.C., Yale Law student. By the way, when Trump goes after Wilmer Hale, Judge Nichols, the Trump appointee, D.C. federal judge,

worked at Wilmer Hales as a partner. And so you have these ridiculous clownish, no offense to real clowns, as opposed to these Trump fascist clowns, because being a clown is a real profession, but being a Trump clown isn't. I mean, this is not the way the legal system works. I wanna flag that.

We should all be against that, regardless of your political party. And it's a bunch of nonsense injected into the veins of that Fox. I put this in quote, news audience, and it's a bunch of nonsense injected into the veins of that Fox, I put this in quote, news audience, and it's horrific. Popeye. But before you leave, Boasberg said it best. He said, when he did his hearing,

he said, you understand for the Department of Justice, you understand I'm not ordering the release of any of these people. I'm not ordering that the jails be emptied and these people be put into like the general population of America. You understand that, right? Yes. Okay, Mr. Ensign, you understand that you can continue to arrest people if

you want for now under the Alien Enemies Act the way my injunction is written. You understand that? And you can keep them in Guantanamo and all different places. The thing you can't do is to deport them without due process to a foreign prison under a phony war proclamation. I mean, that's the summary of that. And you got Pam Bondi, who I'm nostalgic always for the Biden administration and how they handle things like when we see Signalgate and the rest. But to see an attorney general as a cheap political hack

going after, you know, when she was saying, he has no right as a judge to do anything to review the Alien Enemies Act. Actually, he does. And if you read the 1953 case of Ludecky, you would know that anything that has to do with words, their meaning, interpretation, and whether the triggering events to give a president power or not,

even the utmost constitutional, absolute core presidential power, like war powers, gets reviewed by a single judge in a single district, going up to a three-judge panel of a court of appeal on the way to the United States Supreme Court. And every major case and constitutional case that you and I have ever studied and that we've ever covered has come up almost the exact same way. So this malarkey that this drug that they try to peddle to the American people, that

this is extraordinary, a judge interpreting the language of a statute or a constitutional provision? Yeah, ever since 1803 in Marbury versus Madison, that is the role of the federal courts. What they want is the thing you started this podcast with. They want the frictionless ability of an absolute monarch to make rulings without any pushback at all. He's got a doormat for a Congress, except for the Democrats doing their part. He wants a doormat or a limp noodle of federal judges so that in the short amount of time that he has,

and it seems longer, of being the president for the last time, he can do maximum damage. It is that friction between the plates and the courts doing their role to keep the presidency in line, the presidency doing its role against the federal courts in Congress, it is that tension, that friction that Louis Brandeis talked about in the 1920s that is our checks and balance system.

Or as Judge Beryl Howell put it recently, they are trying to upend the constitutional order of things that have existed for over 200 years. And so we have another decision, just a transition, batter up, transition, same three judge panel, Anderson, Millett, and Walker, except now, whereas Henderson was like, you know, I'm not letting you exercise war powers

when there's no war. So sit down. Here when Donald Trump decided to decapitate and put into mothballs the National Labor Relations Board and its expertise about labor and collective bargaining matters and illegal practices of the workplace and the Merit Service Protection Board established to protect federal workers in the civil service area that was reformed in the 1970s. And he decided, I got to wait. I'll get rid of the quorum.

I'll fire the Democrats. I won't replace them with anybody. And they don't have a quorum, so I don't have to worry about it. No more National Labor Relations Board and no more Merit Service Protection Board. Well, multiple judges, starting with Beryl Howell and Rudy Contreras, and at the time, Amy Berman Jackson, decided, no, you can't fire the special counsel,

the Merit Service Protection Board, or the National Labor Relations Board member, because Congress established them as yes, they're in the executive branch, but they are independent, they are bipartisan, and they don't exercise enough executive power to run afoul of a long line of cases starting in the 1930s with a case that you and I and the rest of us

refer to as Humphrey's executor, named after a case. And that case said, as long as this thing doesn't exercise that much executive power, and it was set up bipartisan, and it does these administrative things, even adjudicative things, it is, it can't be fired at will by the president unless there's cause. And then these people, there are no cause. The only cause was he didn't like the color of their party,

if you know what I mean. They were blue, but they're also women and black. So that case, which was reaffirmed in 2020 in a case called Celia Law, that's been, that is 90 years of precedent. Now the three judge panel, again, Henderson flipped this time, the Bush appointee, and sided with Walker, the Trump appointee,

and decided that they're gonna throw over the game board of 90 years of precedent, and say Humphrey's executor is questionable. And it's not really, it's really the outer boundaries and find these boards are exercising more executive power than the Humphreys court had anticipated and therefore it violates the separation of powers.

That's how they got there. Millett, the judge who in the other case said, Nazis have more due process. She's livid. And in her order, in her, sorry, her dissent, she said, you are the only federal court to have ever found after Humphrey's in 1937 or 35 and after Celia and all the times the Supreme Court has affirmed it, to find that a president can fire without cause, people with agencies who, and these do not operate in the world of exercising

too much executive power. They have barely power at all, but they are important. And all you're doing, she called it out, is you're letting Trump remove the quorum so there's not enough people to operate effectively incapacitating them, decapitating them, despite the fact that Congress has funded them and established them for a reason. So it's the executive branch, if anybody's violating the separation of powers,

it's the executive branch. And the status quo, as you started the hot take or the podcast with, the status quo is keeping them in their chairs. But now by a two to one decision, they're fired again from their roles, meaning these two entities stopped existing. And the parties, the plaintiff side,

the appellant side have asked the court to stay. They're ruling to give them an opportunity to go out to the United States Supreme Court. And we haven't gotten a ruling on that yet. But you can see, you and I half joke lot about, tell us who the judges are. And we can tell you what their traditional philosophy is and how on a lot of cases they're going to come out. And so when I heard Henderson, who'd been on the wrong side of a couple of

other cases involving Donald Trump in the past was, was the swing vote here, if you will, so you can see where she's at. No on war power, phony war powers, okay on unifying the executive branch and letting Donald Trump do whatever he wants with all these things. You know, this is where I see a lot of quote unquote conservative jurists kind of over intellectualize us into fascism and view this as some kind of fascinating thought experiment into how smart they are and these kind of esoteric ideas. And it's very weird because you would think that the same panel that basically says, hey, Trump, you're acting as a dictator by kidnapping people and sending them to concentration camps

would also be the same people who go, hey, you're acting as a dictator by firing these people in independent boards. But you see where I say they over intellectualize that the issue is not that they're saying Trump, you have a right to fire the people. Trump didn't win the case. What Trump won is that these right wing judges

who ruled against him in the other case in the two to one decision were basically like, what is to be or not to be? That is the question, right? It was, what is the status quo? Is the status quo now because they're fired, the fact that they're fired so they don't return? And thus, if we just

seal, hermetically seal what's happening, you could still fight but it'll take you two years to fight for your job back and you may ultimately win the merits but the status quo is the termination or is the status quo the fact that these people had a job and now they no longer have a job, which is what the people who were fired were arguing. The status quo is return us to the job. And so you could understand the thought experiment if this was a law school class, argue this. Well, the terminationination happened thus once you go to court ergo they're fired so the status quo before they filed is that they're fired but

you're like okay well now you've just justified dictatorship you freaking idiots and that to me is a lot of the issues with these John Roberts style conservatives who act like they're so smart you It's like watching the Harlem Globetrotters play basketball, and it's like, okay, but you'll never actually beat the freaking team if you just spin the ball around on your fingers, go, oh, oh, oh, oh. That's not how you actually beat the dictatorship

at the end of the day. It's like, I get it, you're smart, but you just made a freaking stupid ruling. And you think, let me ask you, I totally agree with that. Do you also think that Henderson, knowing what she ruled on Wednesday, do you think this was a makeup call? The umpire continuing baseball saying,

wait, that guy was out at first place. You think it was a makeup call by her? To give the Trump administration one? I think that's, it's their bizarre, I saw it in law school. I was in Paul Clement's class in law school. You know, Paul Clement was a professor who taught clinics at, uh, at a Georgetown law center. And so, you know,

you can have a guy like Clement who's like, I'm going to fight for the law firms against this overreach. But you know, the Patriot act does allow a lot of torture. You know, the unitaries, you know, it's just that, you know, I do think that I don't wanna hold, you know, this over the head of Mayor Eric Adams, so I'm gonna think there should be a full dismiss. You know, it's why I've always said,

you can't run a media network or anything trying to actually court these people and be like, come on, we're the pro-democracy group. What you have to do is just be in your own lane, speak the truth every day. And if they wanna join because they feel shame that they're not part of it, then they'll join, but you can't like actually put your hopes into some of these people because they'll join, but you can't actually put your hopes

into some of these people, because they'll always let you down. When you find out what they're really doing. One geeky last, and we have to move on to our last story. One geeky thing, Hampton Dellinger, who's the son of my constitutional law professor, the late Walter Dellinger, he threw in the white towel two weeks ago.

He would have been the third case, and he would have lost apparently. He saw the writing on the wall. He was the head of the Office of Special Counsel, which is the other part of the Barrett Service Protection Board. He thought he couldn't win. I thought under Humphrey's executor,

the case we talked about, he would win. But you know how to get up to Hampton. He at least he wasn't on the losing end of this decision that we're talking about. Well, and he bought enough time where he was able to issue a report to help the federal workers when he issued a report saying those terminations were unlawful. And he was able to see, but he bought himself the 10 days to do that.

He did his thing, which is I think why he asked for those 10 days. And then he, um, you know, went into the sunset, if you will, and, and, and has no interest in being a part of this ridiculous Trump regime. Finally, though, on a positive note, this 7-2 ruling seemed like an obvious ruling, so kind of clapping for it is probably not deserved, if that's where the Overton window has shifted on Second Amendment issues. But, Popeye, why don't you briefly hit this seven to two Supreme Court ruling? Yeah, that's we had hoped this would happen. This is speaking of nostalgia for the Biden administration. This is a Biden era push to have home kits

that you can make a DIY gun at home. Already sounds bad. Through either 3D part manufacturing or you just get the whole kit. And these kits either run the gamut from like a jigsaw puzzle where everything is, has to be put together and it takes you hours to do it. And yet, okay, or, and there were reproduced photos in Gorsuch

who wrote the majority opinion, seven to two opinion by Gorsuch. Or it's not a kid at all. The thing is exactly a gun. It's got a couple of plastic tabs you need to just cut. You shove the magazine in the bottom. And as one of the advertisers, one of the labels on the side of the box said

that Gorsuch reproduced, just buy, point, buy, build and shoot. Right. And that's the point. The question was whether this type of kit was governed by the Gun Control Act of 1968. Remember when Congress used to get together with national tragedies and handle them a bipartisan way, like when RFK was killed and Martin Luther King Jr.

were killed and they came up with, maybe we should get guns off the street, remember that? So the Gun Control Act still exists, and the question was a little bit of an esoteric one, whether the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Bureau, whether the Bureau's interpretation or issuance of a regulation pursuant to the gun control act of 1968 under Joe Biden,

under Biden administration, where it's said that these kits need to come, whether who are being sold by gun manufacturers are, have to be registered with serial numbers and people that get them have to get background checks. And because the explosion, no pun intended, of these kits, 30,000 ghost guns, that's what they call them, with no serial number were used in crime in the last year,

up from 1,000 five years ago. So we got a problem. In all Gorsuch and the other six set is that these two things can live in harmony. The Gun Control Act does not mean that this regulation is facially invalid. Now he left it open for depending upon the type of kit and how, but he didn't like the kits that he had seen because they looked a lot like guns out of a box. So now

the ruling, base seven to two with Alito and Thomas, of course, Thomas who wrote the Braun decision, New York rifle about expanding the Second Amendment rights, making them personal rights for people and not allowing regulation of people having personal sidearms and other weaponry, unless back in old timey time they could find a historical antecedent or analog for it. He wrote that, so of course,

anything that looks like gun control. Like, so there, as I said, so of course, anything that looks like gun control. So there, as I said in the hot take, two people on the court are in favor of mass murder and mayhem used by guns that are unregistered, which law enforcement hates, by the way. And Seppin thought, that's not such a great idea. Let's find a way to shoehorn these DIY kits into the regulations.

Again, they're not banned. You can continue, sorry, I'm stuttering over it. You can continue to make your guns at home, but you gotta get a background check and you gotta get registered. It's not gonna be an off the grid weapon because so many of them are ending up in the perpetration of violent crime.

or ending up in the perpetration of violent crime. Michael Popock, you said it all. I was thinking, do I even add anything to that? All I add to that is, Michael, I'm really proud of you for starting your own law firm. I want to remind everybody where they can reach out to you if they or someone they know has a case. You handle personal injury cases but really like the catastrophic injury cases so wrongful death cases cases where there are serious injuries and if it's not a case you handle you team up with the best lawyers in the country to try to get the best results possible for the clients. The consultation is absolutely free. So if people have a case or have a loved one or a friend who has a case, where do they

tell them to reach out to? Yeah, it's very simple. It's a website and a 1-800 number. The website is my name. It's thepopokfirm.com, and the 1-800 number is 1-877-POPOKAF. It's really great. I mean, you wanted to start your own firm, got thousands of calls already, so really proud of you there. Wanna remind everybody about Michael Popak's YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel, on its way to 1 million subscribers. So check that

out as well. Check out the Midas Touch substack at MidasPlus.com. M-E-I-D-A-S-P-L-U-S.com. MidasPlus.com. And hit subscribe below as well. Help us get to 5 million subscribers here on the Midas Touch channel. We covered a lot, very comprehensive episode on today's Legal AF. Share this network with friends, family members, coworkers, share Legal AF with anybody you know.

It helps really spread the word of mouth about the show, about what we're doing here, about our mission. I've been getting a lot of videos shared with me from all of these town halls that are taking place, where Midas Touch has frequently been mentioned and people are wearing their Midas Touch and legal AF gear, which is super cool to see the impact it's having here in the United States and Canada and Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Central America, Mexico, Africa, as well. We see you all Legal AFers. We're grateful for all of you and in Asia as well.

Grateful for all of you. Thanks everybody for watching Legal AF. I'm Ben Mycelis, joined by Michael Popok. We appreciate you. Have a good day. Stay in the fight. Democracy's going to prevail, we're in this together. Shout out Midas Mighty, shout out Legal AFers.