Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Episode - 6/11/2025

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

On the Midweek edition of Legal AF podcast, Anchors Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo take on: developments in the fast moving California suit against Trump; two different appellate courts siding with Trump for now and blocking court orders, the contempt proceedings that are continuing involving Abrego Garcia, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Support Our Sponsors: Naked Wines: Join the Naked Wines community and head to https://NakedWines.com/legalaf for 6 bottles of wine for JUST $39.99 with shipping included Armra: Head to https://tryarmra.com/legalaf or enter promo code: LEGALAF to receive 15% off your first order! Qualia: Head to https://qualialife.com/LEGALAF and use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout for 15% off your purchase! Smalls: Head to https://Smalls.com/LEGALAF and use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout for 50% off your first order PLUS free shipping! Subscribe to the NEW Legal AF Substack: https://substack.com/@legalaf Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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at the United States Supreme Court, the shadow docket, and this fast moving story, and then you can fill in the blank. We could have talked about Abrego Garcia being returned, and we will. We could have talked about the fallout between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and we'll touch on that. We could have talked about the fallout between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and we'll touch on that. We could have talked about

the fallout from the Tariff War and how the rest of the world is eating Donald Trump's lunch in front of us. But we gotta talk about the assault on a state sovereignty that's happening in California. California is just the Harvard of the states. It's the one that Donald Trump picked on. And I think he picked the fight with the wrong governor. And he's left him with no, Gavin Newsom with no choice, but to take on Donald

Trump and to fight back every way he knows how, including by filing a new lawsuit, and we already have developments in that lawsuit now, but assigned to a judge up in San Francisco. So Karen, you and I need to update our audience. Or for those just joining late, tell them what's happening there and why it is important to our constitutional republic that California, like Harvard winning its suit against Donald Trump, that they prevail. We've had a couple of procedural wins, which are wins nonetheless for the Trump administration,

and we'll try to sort them out. One is Donald Trump losing in his trade war, tariff war, and begging an appellate court to help him out and give him more leverage in the negotiations, because right now he's on the balls of his backside in negotiating. Nobody believes him. Everybody believes he's on the balls of his backside in negotiating. Nobody believes him.

Everybody believes he's a taco. Just wait him out and he will fold or chicken out. And there was a ruling by the Court of International Trade, a little followed court that you and I talked about. A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump took an appeal to kind of a little known or little covered appellate court, the appellate court for the Federal Circuit. And they've issued, 10 of them got together and issued a stay.

And we'll talk about what the ramifications of that are and the fast briefing schedule that they've also asked for. We also got a stay, a block of Chief Judge Boesberg, second time, but I don't fault him. He's dealing with very difficult constitutional issues with very little case law guidance and an out of control rogue president on the other side. So he had required the Trump administration to do something

by tomorrow related to 150 plus people sitting in El Salvador for the last more than 90 days in terms of describing to the court how they see, the Trump administration sees due process and rid of habeas corpus rights being given to these 140 people since they're in El Salvador. Are you going to open up a pop-up federal court and bring a magistrate in in El Salvador or somewhere over there, you know, Djibouti or wherever they were trying to do things

with another deported person, or are they going to bring it back to the United States? What is it consistent with the teachings of the United States Supreme Court over the last three months against the Trump administration starting with a series of decisions in April? But as fate would have it, the random wheel has drawn three Trump appointees, cherry, cherry, cherry,

and they have a new block of Judge Boasberg out there. And then we have the thing that normally any other week if it wasn't talking about this presidency, we would, you know, kind of lead off with, Abrego Garcia, because you and I didn't talk about it. Yeah, he's home now, but he's been brought back and stuck in Middle District of Tennessee, Nashville with an indictment.

I want to talk about what's happening in the Judge Zinnis courtroom in Maryland, and about whether bringing him back under this phony extradition claim to face charges for an indictment that they were working on while they were facing contempt charges with Judge Zinnis is going to get them out of the doghouse and avoid contempt charges in the court that is administering the justice

of Abrego Garcia and his return. And I want to bring in Karen to talk about that. And whatever else pops into our head that happened as we were coming onto the air. Karen, how you doing? I'm good. I'm good. How are you, Popok? I see you're clean shaven today. Like once a year I feel like you do the whole clean shaven thing. The baby's never seen me clean shaven. We decided that the other day, my wife made that comment. I said, that is true. The baby has never seen me. And?

Never seen my face. No negative reaction, just completely agnostic. I'm trying to think if she's getting closer to my face. But no, she's very kissy anyway. So it's fun. I just need to let it breathe. Need to cream it with all of our sponsors and all the different. Exactly. One skin and all the other.

All of that. But I'm glad you're here, because we both operate in high velocity environments of our own choosing and our own making. And it's nice just to slow down and see this on the calendar and say, hey, I get to spend time with Karen for. Me too, I look forward to every Wednesday.

Yeah, absolutely. So why don't we kick it off with you updating everybody about where we are in California. Had sort of a funny filing. I was sort of, that's, you know, the Trump administration on an order filed what they were supposed to. You can talk about the order with the court,

but it had some typos and some issues with the format that we can talk about, which doesn't surprise me, as they try to convince a federal judge in San Francisco to not block their commandeering of the State National Guard in California as they assault your home state of Cali. And then we've got, of course, Gavin Newsom, who made his YouTube debut.

We had the exclusive on the Midas Touch Network. Almost two million people will have watched it and gotten their news from here. And we were watching it and commenting and kibitzing behind the scenes. So let's pull it all together. Bring everybody up to speed as since the 6th of June, when Donald Trump manufactured a riot, where are we now?

Yeah, so what's going on in LA, it is where I was born and raised and went to high school and college, but I've been on the East Coast ever since. But I still have a lot of family there. I go there multiple times of year. And so anything that happens in California, especially Southern California is always very, very near and dear to my heart.

And what's really interesting is what's happening right now is there was no problem in Southern California. Los Angeles was not having any issue. It was peaceful. It was lovely. 72 and sunny, which is what it kind of always is. And all of a sudden, Donald Trump comes in and has manufactured a problem that now he's coming in and saying, oh, here I am to the rescue, and I have to bring in the military to fix this problem, this failing state. He created the very problem that exists. There was nothing wrong in California. It was peaceful and lovely and wonderful and sleepy as usual. And what he does is he sent his ICE agents in to go not to the jails or the prisons

where the murderers and rapists actually are physically, because they've been convicted of murder or rape. That's where you go and you find the murderers and rapists, and then you can deport them when they're done serving their sentence or deport them now if you want them to no longer serve their sentence. That's what every single administration has done since, certainly since I started practicing

and certainly since I was a prosecutor starting in 1992. Even in New York City, another sanctuary city, we too coordinated with Democrats and Republicans where people who were convicted of terrible crimes like rape and murder after they were convicted would get deported. They would go to the jails and they would pick them up and they would deport them. That is what normally happens. And just because Donald Trump is saying we are deporting murderers and rapists, what they're actually doing is showing up to the places where there are a

lot of immigrants who work in the service jobs like at Home Depot or service industry jobs like in Home Depot or in restaurants or in fields. California has tons and tons of agriculture and a lot of day workers come in from Mexico in particular and pick the produce that many of us, no matter where you live in the country, are happy to have. And so that's what they were started doing. Children, women, pregnant people,

and people that are here completely legally, by the way, as well, making mistakes, like Abreiego Garcia. So it wasn't like they were just going in there and, and only taking the people who are convicted of serious crimes. And so the people of Los Angeles started protesting because these are people who are their friends, their family, people who work with them, beside them, or for them,

or they work for, things like that. So, so because they were rounding up people who weren't the criminals people started peacefully protesting Not a problem for the LAPD LAPD is you know, I don't know how many people know this My dad was ex LAPD. He won police officer of the year multiple times back in the day Very proud of my father, LAPD. LAPD is an incredible, incredible entity that has no problem dealing with protests, even riots. No matter what it is, looting, they know how to deal with it.

They can deal with it. And they had everything under control. And the only thing that started making it out of control is Donald Trump's next actions, which is he came in and started federalizing the National Guard. National Guard is normally a state function, but you can federalize it under certain circumstances. So he called up a total of 4,000 National Guard,

federalize them despite Gavin Newsom saying he didn't want that and he didn't need it and we have it under control. Things were calmer until Trump escalated it by sending in military troops. LAPD like NYPD, they're very sophisticated in de-escalation. That's what you do when you have, when you live in a big city and you have people who peacefully protest, because there's the First Amendment of the Constitution which allows

for peaceful protest. And so they're highly, highly trained in how to de-escalate things, because you want people to be able to peacefully protest and de-escalate, just like happened in New York last night. No problem, they de-escalated because that's what the NYPD does. But Donald Trump, he pours gasoline on any small fire and turns it into an inferno.

And that's what he did and called up Marines, et cetera. And that's when it all happened. And people started doing things that are objectively criminal and they will be prosecuted and should be prosecuted. And the District Attorney of LA and the governor and everybody else came out and said, we're against violence and this is not okay

and we'll prosecute it. And they will, and they will prosecute it. But PS, it's no worse than what happened on January 6th, by the way. If anything, January 6th was way worse. That was trying to overthrow a government. This is protesting, okay? This was lawless protesting.

But this is, in my view, political theater because why? Because he views Gavin Newsom as a threat because Gavin Newsom is clearly going to run for president in three and a half years. And although Donald Trump dangles a carrot out there that he might run again, even though he can't, he's going to anoint someone, of course, JD Vance or somebody else. And he views Gavin Newsom as a threat,

so he wants to take him on. And Gavin Newsom gave this very presidential speech last night on the Midas Touch Network. And, you know, I think he said a lot of really good things. I think, you know, he clearly basically took the, you know, took the invitation. He's like, okay, you're coming after me because I'm going to run for president. I'm going to give you a presidential speech. And that's what he did. I have mixed reviews of what he said, but we can talk about that another time, because this is legal AF.

So let's talk about what's happening legally. And so California went to court to try to stop Donald Trump from militarizing the National Guard, because he's actually not allowed to do that, right? You're not allowed to, there's the P not allowed to do that, right? You're not allowed to. There's the Posse Comitatus Act, right? We've covered that multiple times. That basically says the military can't do police functions.

They're not allowed to do that. And unless of course he, the president declares an insurrection, but he didn't declare an insurrection and is not declaring an insurrection. So instead he invoked a statute, it's Article 10, 12406, which basically gives three times where a president can federalize or bring in the military or federalize the National Guard. When can you do it?

First and foremost, and this is what's crazy, is these three exceptions or these three triggering events all require the consent of the governor, or the governor usually asks for it, which here, not only didn't ask for it, he said he didn't want the help, but there's three instances. Whenever the US is invaded by a foreign nation,

doesn't seem to apply, but Trump constantly is calling the immigrants or the migrants, calling them, calling this whole situation a foreign invasion. So I don't know if he's setting up for that one, that particular subsection, or to number two, suppress a rebellion against the government.

That's what January 6th was, by the way, and he didn't call in the National Guards for four hours then when he should have. And the third is if the president is unable to faithfully execute the law and regular law enforcement is not sufficient, but regular law enforcement's clearly sufficient. They have it under control, they had it under control, and again, they're not wanted there.

And so, Newsom filed a complaint and went to court and basically, you know, said, you can't do this. We don't want it, you can't do it. And it got assigned to a judge whose name is Judge Breyer, and there's going to be a hearing on it tomorrow. And we'll see what happens. But that's the state of where we are. They're seeking a temporary, they sought an emergency stay essentially,

or a temporary restraining order. But the judge basically didn't give them that. So basically right now, Trump can still do what he's doing. But in the meantime, it's going to, this whole thing is going to mood itself out by the time, I think think by the time they go through the motions of it's a very expedited schedule. But it's he didn't stop it in its tracks. And I think it will potentially it's going to fizzle out on its own.

Yeah, so we had the judge, Judge Breyer said a very didn't grant the automatic what's called ex parte injunction, meaning you don't have to hear from the other side. Here's our brief for California. They unconstitutionally in violation of the 10th Amendment, which reserves to the power of the people and the states anything that's not expressly given to the feds by constitution or by Congress and law, that's what keeps our entire United States together. That's the federalism deal that the 10th Amendment was very, very important, is very important to keep our union

together. Our union is under attack, you know, whether it's California or one of the other 20 blue states, Donald Trump from the bully pulpit of the White House is doing a reverse Lincoln. He's attacking a state, not trying to bring everybody back together again or trying to enforce civil rights. He's trying to create a mechanism, a phony riot, a phony rebellion, which is not happening, in order to justify crushing dissent

using every tool he has or he thinks he has in his ability to commandeer the National Guard. That's just what the fight is over. He did not coordinate with the governor. He did not coordinate with law enforcement, neither the Department of Defense or Homeland Security. That's admitted. That's a stipulated fact.

And that's what happens on the ground when bootjacked federal agents show up to try to do raids at various places in LA without coordinating it with local law enforcement who were learning about it for the first time on the Minus Touch Network or on Legal AF or on social media. And so they ran and we knew it because Rob Bonta, the attorney general, gave a great interview

with Ben, our podcast partner. The governor gave a great interview with Ben, our podcast partner. I replayed them over on Legal AF on the YouTube channel. So we have sort of one-stop shopping on all those issues. And the judge, you know, we got the 83-year-old, as you said, former brother of Stephen Breyer, or sorry, brother of former Justice Stephen Breyer,

who has gone out of his way to push back in his own diplomatic way as a retired justice, to push back against the assault of the rule of law by Donald Trump and defending what Roberts is trying to do to keep the judiciary legitimate and not have it delegitimized by Trump. So you got this 83 year old senior status judge. He said, no, I'm not gonna grant it on the papers.

However, let's all get together. Let's do a briefing schedule over the next 72 hours. So he ordered Trump today on time to file their brief and he's giving the California on their three count suit till tomorrow morning at about 12 o'clock Eastern time to file their final say, they get the last word. And then he's pulling everybody in at 4.30 Eastern time for a hearing, which he's opening to Zoom.

We're going to try to Zoom our way in there and try to listen to it as members of the independent media, as you will. But I took a look at, as we came on the air, the filing. The funniest part of the filing made by Trump and his lawyers out in California is that there's a section that we refer to as the table of authorities. And it's a list that, depending upon the rules of your court,

you have to, at the size of your brief, you have to list all the case law and statutes that you're relying on for your argument. And this is not a complicated case from a legal standpoint. Donald Trump either has properly triggered his powers under 10 USC 12406, because those three scenarios have happened, or he hasn't. He either needs to go through the governor, because the governor is listed there as a person through whom the orders need to be distributed or sent, or he doesn't.

And he's either violating the 10th Amendment and state sovereignty by, under a long line of Supreme Court cases, about when you can and cannot commandeer the National Guard, the state National Guard, and when you can or cannot force state officials to do the federal government's bidding. And there's a body of law on that. So all this is coming to head, coming to a head with Judge Breyer for him to make the ultimate decision. So the funniest part of the brief is when I get to the, we all got to the table of authorities and put it up on the screen, it's a, it's blank. It just says insert like it's coming. All right. Now, maybe it's because the actual brief has very little case law in it too. It's a lot of complaint, complaining and crying.

I mean, they do cite the leading case, which I talked about in the odd take. Who's the law firm who filed that? No, it's an house. It's the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice filed something without a table of authorities? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Trump's brief. Who signed it? It's the guy that showed up the first day with the Trump administration, Brett Schumate. They pressed him back into action. He was in private practice. And now it's Christopher Adelman for the Federal Programs Branch in Washington.

It's another sloppy job. I'm sure that John Sauer took a look at it. But it just starts this way and doesn't get any better. It starts with, in a crass political stunt endangering American lives, the governor of California seeks to use this court to stop the president from exercising his lawful statutory and constitutional power to ensure that federal personnel

and facilities are protected. And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Let's go on. And then the rest of it is just make way where they go through, look at this burning car, and look at this burn, and look at, listen, I've been through riots and so have you. You know, I watched on television what happened in 1992 in California.

I was there for Black Lives Matter in New York, not the BLM part of it, the looting lawlessness that ended up using that as a cover to get into these buildings. And this is not what we're watching on television. Law enforcement and its use of the National Guard would be fine. If that's what the governor wanted to do in consultation with those around him, then he had the power to do that.

But they never got to that because they never felt they needed it. They didn't feel the law enforcement was outmatched there or the LAPD or any of the other places. And so, Donald, I don't believe that once we see this final brief tomorrow from, and then the hearing, I think it's going to go not well for the Trump administration. I don't think he's properly commandeered the National Guard. I don't think the triggering events are present for the statute. I think it violates the 10th Amendment. And we're going to

have to see if this judge has the brass ones to issue the ruling. If I was a betting man, I would say he does, especially given his family heritage and who he's related to. And then, if I'm right, the loser, hopefully Trump, will take an emergency appeal to the Ninth Circuit, try to get there, see what happens with the Ninth, come through Kagan, Justice Kagan,

because she's the first stop on the train. She'll refer it over to the full panel, I don't know why, on Bonk, she doesn't have to. And then, you know, we're gonna have yet another, the 20th emergency petition to the United States Supreme Court about this issue. And if they would just, as you put it, just leave well enough alone.

If they would just stop tampering with it and stop interfering with the good and welfare of the citizens of California and would just back off and back out, this whole thing would just dissipate. You and I were texting on the side. It's like, it would be like going in and starting a forest fire by arson and then bringing in the firefighters and saying, look, I'm the hero, I put the fire out.

You're the one who freaking started the fire. Absolutely. I said in a hot take, it's like a Ray Bradbury moment where the firefighters don't put out fires. They burn books. And we have the same thing here. I mean, they were taught, this is all political theater in order to bait Newsom, California and its residents

into attacking the federal government so that the Republicans could look every, their MAGA base and others in the eye and say, see, see the split screen? Democrats are for lawlessness and migrants. And we're for the rule of law. And that is their thematic. And it's also distracting,

because you and I are talking about it, it's also distracting from the Elon Musk Trump feud, it's distracting from the failure of the tariff program, it's distracting from his going after the Federalist Society. What else? The big, beautiful bill. The big, beautiful bill floundering. This is all political theater. But, but

lives hang at the balance. Yeah, no, it's true. It's true. They and Donald Trump does this, right? This is how he he behaves things aren't going well for him in with the economy with the tariffs with the big, beautiful bill, you name it, it's all going poorly. So what does he do? He turns to the one thing that he thinks goes well for him and that's immigration.

He creates this problem. He creates this situation in Los Angeles. And then he says, look, I'm a hero. It's like he has this way of distracting, you know, like I turn on mainstream news at the last few nights just to see what's going on. And it's live coverage, breaking news, reporters on the ground at these, you know, protests. It's like, that's all they're talking about.

They're not talking about all the other things that he's doing. Meanwhile, there are migrants still being held in Seacot who aren't supposed to be there. You know, there's so many problems and things happening, but nobody's talking about it because he's successfully thrown the ball and the Golden Retrievers have gone and chased it, and that's what we're focusing on.

The press has a nasty little habit. And it's... You and I know it from where we grew up and where you practiced the prosecutor. You know, there's the old saying, if it bleeds, it leads. That's an old newspaper phrase for, you know, if we got mayhem, if we got blood, it goes on page one. Blood or sex, blood or sex. Blood or sex, if it bleeds, it leads.

My favorite New York, so the New York Post is the, I think the oldest newspaper in the country. I know, Alexander Hamilton. Yes, exactly. So it's a tabloid. And, you know, I'm not vouching for its journalism whatsoever, but occasionally they have great headlines. And there's a famous New York Post headline. It's, uh, headless body found in topless bar.

You know, it's just genius because it struck both, right? It's blood and sex. You know, those are the two things that make headlines. But that's what they're focused on, right? So, oh, there's a sma... Where were they on Jan 6th? Yeah. They're like, fires burning. LA's on fire. First of all, it's one square mile of Los Angeles, okay? That's what they...

Zoom out. Zoom out. Zoom out. LA's huge, it's one square mile of Los Angeles. Okay, that's what they zoom out, zoom out, zoom out. LA is huge. Okay, it's enormous. And it's got millions and millions of people. It's one little square mile in downtown. And you know, it's on fire. Okay, they they're, again, I'm not downplaying it. It's bad. It shouldn't happen. You know, the looters are bad. But again, LAPD can handle it. But yes, you know, they send in these, the LA has these driverless cars.

We don't have those in New York yet. And my family takes them all over the place. They're called Waymo's. And you hear people talking about the Waymo's that are on fire. Not everyone knows what a Waymo is, right? Like it's these driverless cars. No, not the Waymo's.

Yeah, exactly. You summon them like an Uber. They come get you and you're in a driverless car and it takes you from point A to point B. And so I guess it's an easy thing to summon Yeah, exactly. You summon them like an Uber. They come get you and you're in a driverless car and it takes you from point A to point B. It's, you know, and so that guess it's an easy thing to summon it and I'd set it on fire. It's not, you know, but it's so typically it's such a characteristically singularly LA thing, right? That would happen. Like in Miami, we have these little Amazon delivery robots. They're adorable. One's named Josh. They're just little robots.

One's named Dolly. And I see them on the street now in downtown Miami just kind of doing their thing. Then they reach a little, a pothole. They gotta like think and they gotta reverse and go around it. And they make them look adorable with little eyes. So, and my wife turned to me and said,

hey, what do you think would happen if they had those in New York? I said it would be jacked up on blocks within about 10 minutes and all of its wheels would be taken off. And here I'm like petting it, like it's adorable. As in New York, it would be on fire and it would be on blocks with no wheels

in about 10 minutes. Oh my God. But that doesn't mean we send in the National Guard federalized by the president of the United States along with Marines, because there's a robot on fire. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. Exactly. I want to ask you, I want to go back to this, because I'm obsessed with the fact that they submitted a filing in federal court, the Department of Justice.

Yes. I want you to crap all over them, but we have to take a break. But you're going to... When we come back, Karen is going to crap all over the Department of Justice because they filed something that said to be inserted under case law in a major filing in California. We're also going to cover the, why the trade court ruling against Donald Trump was blocked.

What was that panel all about? Why was, why was a boat, well that one wasn't too bad, why was the Boasberg decision requiring Donald Trump to give due process to 140 people, not named Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, why was that blocked? Who was on that panel of the Pellet Court? And what does the Abrego Garcia return mean if anything

to the contempt proceedings being presided over by Judge Sinis? But now is that time we gotta pay the bills. And that's, we love that, we love that time. We got a number of ways you can support what we're doing here. And people are like, you're always promoting. Yeah, we gotta talk about our network,

we gotta talk about our channel, we gotta talk about ways that we can continue to bring uninterrupted all of this amazing content that you like. First is you're here on Minus Touch as they're making their move any day now, we're gonna be announcing five million and then we're on to six million and that's all a testament to you. The fact we had almost two million people

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Which is a a podcast every week about the united states supreme court all on legal af the youtube channel help us We're trying to get the 700,000 subscribers before the month is over. Now's a perfect time for you to contribute to that. Free subscribe there. We got a Legal AF sub stack. Yes, we do. Why?

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Go to tryarmra.com slash Legal AF or enter Legal AF to get 15% off your first order. That's t-r-y-a-r-m-r-a.com slash Legal AF. We're on the air with Karen Freeman-Ignifolo. Before we took our break, Karen is still dumbfounded and wants to take on the Department of Justice and their sloppiness in filing a major brief and leaving out the case law.

Go ahead, Karen. I just, look, it's just surprising to me because the Department of Justice has always been this premier entity. It is the hardest job to get out of law school is to like the DOJ honors program. If you want to work as a federal prosecutor, it's one of the most prestigious jobs you could have. It's the best of the best, the cream of the crop, and they're really excellent and they

produce excellent work. And I think that's what you want in your federal government, right? You want it to be the best of the best. It's not political and they're excellent lawyers and they do a really, really good job. This Department of Justice is like no one I've ever seen. I don't recognize it.

You have United States attorneys resigning in protest. You have in mass, you have in mass, you have entire departments that are being fired and being just decommissioned essentially, like the civil rights divisions and et cetera, political corruption. I mean, just things that used to, they don't do hardly any white color crime anymore, they're doing immigration enforcement.

I mean, it's just shocking to me. And then the quality of work that they're putting out, like what you just showed without a table of authorities, I mean, that would never happen before. I can't imagine that anything like that would ever happen before. And then you have lawyers who show up to court and just can't answer basic questions

on behalf of the government. And you have judges who are questioning them and they're just their answers. I don't know. I'm not sure. And, you know, you see Pete Hegseth, who was testifying before, I think it was before Congress, also just doesn't know basic answers to things.

And I don't know if that's by design. I don't know if that's their way of keeping information out of the public and basically showing, look, we can do whatever we want, or if they really are this incompetent. Because I've just never seen the quality of work product that is being put out by the federal government ever before in my life.

Yeah, it's a sign of the, um... the complete hollowing out of any intellectual heft at the Department of Justice. What happens when career prosecutors, solicitors general and others just say I'm out, it's just a brain drain of epic proportion that can't be easily fixed even when somebody not named Donald Trump wins the next presidency, more likely a Democrat. It's gonna be hard to reply when you lose the the expertise. You know when a Karen Freeman Agnifilo walks out the door of a

prosecutor's office, it's not just well here's your box and thank you let's go have margaritas. I don't know what happened to you that day. I'm just assuming. But it's just the loss of institutional knowledge and legacy knowledge and expertise that goes out the door with somebody like my podcast partner. And when all these people are going, see ya, I'm out. It's just terrible. Of course the Trump administration doesn't care

because they don't want competent people pulling the levers of power or in the Department of Justice. They don't wanna prep their lawyers. They don't prep any of the cabinet members before they go in for these terrible, it looks to me like professional malpractice how these people are so ill prepared to answer basic questions. But I think that's part of their strategy.

You know, it's just implausible deniability. Like don't give them any knowledge or information. It gets the lawyers in trouble for the Department of Justice with federal judges. And that's what we're watching when we get to the Abrego Garcia matter. Let's touch on though, Karen, the two blocks, boom, boom, that happened sort of on the same day.

We've got the Court of International Trade, three-judge panel, because that's how they make decisions, a court that Donald Trump wanted, had a Trump person among the three, and they ruled that his Chinese, Mexican, and Canadian tariffs were blocked because they were not properly invoked under AIIPA, the Economic Emergency Powers Act, international version of it

that was passed by Congress. And then looked also at the separation of powers and said, you can't do it that way. You can do it, but you can't do it the way you've done it. And here's the reasons why. Trump went crazy, they're leftists, they're anarchists. Why did the Federalist Society ever let me pick that guy? Typical Donald Trump.

He takes an appeal and an appeal from that goes to the Federal Circuit, the 13th Circuit, if you will, of the Federal Court on the Appellate Court of Appeals. And they got together, like, with that stay, en banc, all like 10 that were actually around, and they did issue a ruling and a briefing schedule. Why don't you tell everybody about that? You do it, go ahead, Popeye, you do it.

All right, well, they're going to block the lower court, the internet, the Court of International Trades decision. So Trump's been begging, because he said, I can't, I can't get any of these, these tariff agreements, because, you know, it's all tied up in court. And so I'm not scared of anybody. I lost all my leverage. And the appellate court was like, okay, well, we'll let you out of this particular one for now, but we're gonna do a fast briefing schedule, relatively fast, to get this thing all timed out. And we wanna have oral argument on it by the end of, I think it's the end of June, right? I think it's the end of June, right? I think it's the end of June. But in the meantime, the tariff program of Donald Trump goes forward,

although it's been put on ice. You know, he wants the appellate court to solve his problem for him. The problem is he said he would impose tariffs on 120 countries, and then he would get deals with 90 of them in 90 days. And we're at 150 days, and there's no deals. There's talk of China, there's talk of Mexico. Mexico looks like it was able to get out from under steel tariffs,

because Trump is ultimately afraid of Claudia Scheinbaum, because she's smarter than he is, and he knows it. And we have all that. So, you know, a win procedurally, which could last even longer, what do you think is going to happen when the appellate court hears the entire thing? Look, I think at the end of the day,

it's hard for me to know. This is really something outside of my expertise. You know, it just, it makes no sense because he's creating, you know, and he's in a court that I've basically never heard of before, right? This international trade court. And it's really interesting though to me

because he imposed these tariffs or tried to impose these tariffs, essentially saying these are gonna be so great and bringing so much money to the American people that he was even like joking or playing with the idea that we won't even need taxes anymore, income taxes. Sounds great. Well, you can't look at the tariffs

without looking at his big, beautiful bill that he's trying to pass. If it was so great, if these tariffs were so great, even if things are stalled or temporary, or it's going to take some time because of the courts, whatever it is, if he were he if he really thought he was going to win and he was going to bring in all this money, he wouldn't have to raise the debt by trillions of dollars, which is what he's doing, which is what caused Elon Musk to implode and basically, you know, criticize this bill, which is what making a lot of people criticize this bill,

because Trump is doing the very thing that he criticized Democrats from doing and saying, doing the thing he said he would never do, which is, again, increase the size of the debt. thing he said he would never do, which is, again, increase the size of the debt. So not only are we not going to pay fewer taxes or no taxes, like he said, we have to increase the debt because of his policies. So his tariffs ultimately, I think, are going to fail one way or another. I think the other foreign countries are all basically saying that he is a lot of bluster and that he chickens out. The whole taco thing is a little overplayed,

but I think it is something. And so they don't really seem to have much impact whatsoever. And he doesn't seem to think it's going to do anything either, which is why he's passing this terrible, huge, big bloated bill. So I think that's what's gonna ultimately happen, whether it's through the courts or whether it's through leaders basically say, giving him the middle finger.

I don't think anything's gonna happen here. Yeah, I mean, look, I don't hold out a lot of hope here. I think they're gonna give him another win on tariffs, even though I don't hold out a lot of hope here. I think they're going to give him another win on tariffs, even though I don't see how he possibly can argue that he's not violating the International Economic Emergency Powers Act. Congress, by constitutional directive,

has the power to tax its spend and to impose tariffs, not the president's. And they can delegate to him, but they can't delegate without guidance and without limits. And that's the problem. Congress never really did that. And we don't have the economic emergency president

that he's claiming. If you're thinking that, wow, I didn't realize the country had so many emergencies when I was voting or when Biden was in office, we didn't. These are all, whether it's in the immigration area, the tariff area, the takeover of the National Guard to try to embarrass or give a black eye to California area. It's just made up phony exigent circumstances

and emergencies in order for Donald Trump to try to wield emergency powers. I think he has a binder on his desk that Stephen Miller probably put together of all his emergency powers, if he can just declare an emergency. And then they double down on it by telling the federal courts,

well, you can't intervene because this is within the president's prerogative and you can't challenge his prerogative as to whether we're under a predatory incursion or we're under an attack or on war footing or there's an emergency or he can't execute his powers in California or it's a rebellion and you have to just defer to the judgment of the president.

Well, I don't think that's how historically it's been done and the case law certainly doesn't side with them on that but the case law is being rewritten in front of us by this administration. That is the one part. I said on an, I had an interview with Michael Cohen on his show, Mea culpa, I think it's up tonight. And he said, or later, he said, he said,

do you think this is irrevocable? Or is it, can we fix it? He said, do you think this is irrevocable? Or is it, can we fix it? Can we repair and heal after the Trump era is over? What's the it he was referring to, everything? Yeah, I mean like our constitutional republic. And I said to him, we can do a lot of healing. A new president with their own set of executive orders,

the House and the Senate can certainly do a lot of repair. But there's just things we can't fix, which we've been talking about for the last five years on Legal AF, which is the new body of law, mainly with Trump's last name in it, that's been now developed by the United States Supreme Court that will stand the test of time,

or at least the next 10 to 20 years. And on areas that I thought we'd never have to... If you would have told me... Well, during the campaign, I knew it was coming. But if you would have told me five years ago that we would be talking about new decisions, about the Insurrection Act, the Alien Enemies Act, the attempt to effectively impose martial law, war power, war powers being exercised.

I'd be like, when is that? No. Why would that happen? Yeah. Because this was the strategy right below our nose, right in front of us, that Donald Trump in his approach was going to exercise. Everything's an emergency. Everything's a war, everything's a crisis, and then give me the book about all the law and the crisis powers that I have. And that's the problem. We won't be able to fix the book of precedent that's now been established. Yeah, well, what terrifies me is I was reading in,

I think it was in the New York Times, that there's people that there's a, I think it was a group of, it was a religious group. I don't remember exactly who it was, but their next area that they're gonna go after is same-sex marriage because they- Yeah, Southern Baptist Convention. Yeah, exactly. Because they were so, you know, they were so

successful with Dobbs and row that now they're going to go after same sex marriage. That's that to me is beyond terrifying. And you know, there's a lot that already has happened. And I know, I hear what you say to Michael Cohen, but I don't think all the damage, I don't think we're even close to the damage being done yet to know what we're gonna be repairing from. Well, and what I'm saying is we saw the Biden administration do a hell of a good job at making all the repairs

from the first Trump administration. No, damage isn't, we're only 150 days into this administration. I can't even, even my imaginative mind can't contemplate the continued bulldozing of democracy. But there's things that a new president can fix. These things too shall pass. But when you have law in the books

or worse Supreme Court precedent, it's almost irreversible. And that's one of my fears that this particular combination of Supreme Court justices doing incalculable damage that we won't be able to come back from doesn't mean we shouldn't start returning checks and ballots starting at the midterms with the House and the Senate being returned to us. Why don't we talk about, speaking of like the luck of the draw, we had a random wheel that spun and came up, Trump, Trump, Trump in DC Court of Appeals of all draw, we had a random wheel that spun and came up Trump, Trump, Trump

in DC Court of Appeals of all places, which is mainly moderate and liberal. But those three were out there. Now we knew those three were joined together as a panel because we'd done some other reporting on it in another in another case with Trump. We were like oh Katis, Walker, and Rao. So you got Katzis, Naomi, Rao, and Walker. We're like, oh crap, they're out there. And appellate panels, once they're chosen, here are more than one appeal.

Could be two, three, four, five, depends on what's on their little docket. But the one they got assigned to them, apparently, is the JGG case, which we've talked about at length in the Chief Justice Boesber courtroom, in which JGG, representing now a class of people who were taken in the middle of the night away from federal jurisdiction on purpose

and thrown into a foreign prison in El Salvador. There are lawyers represented by the ACLU after getting various positive rulings in their favor by the United States Supreme Court about people that are still here in America and that the court is now ruled needs to be given due process and habeas corpus rights and get before a federal judge and not be sent to El Salvador. There's always been this open, you know, the 800 pound gorilla is that there are 140 plus people that fit into a certain class that are sitting in El Salvador that never got habeas corpus rights.

So what do you do about them? And do you leave them just, sorry, sorry, yes. Do you reward the Trump administration for violating federal court orders in which the plane should have been grounded and wheels down, not wheels up. So, this is the same judge in the same case that had made a finding a couple of months ago, a probable cause to find criminal contempt in violation of his orders. That got stayed by another appellate court, another panel of the DC Court of Appeals is still sort of sitting there.

This one has to do with once the ACLU doubled back to Boasberg, they said, hey, we got a better idea. Why don't you certify a class of all those people sitting in CICOT, the supermax in El Salvador, and who have not been given those rights, given the new precedent of the United States Supreme Court about what's required and why don't you administer justice that way. And Judge says, I like that idea. So he certified the class last week.

He said, I'm going to issue an injunction in favor of the class. I'm going to require a $1 bond to be posted just to satisfy the Republicans who want a bond amount. And I'll do that. And by tomorrow, because he issued it last week, last Friday, I want a notice from the Trump administration about how they propose to give due process rights

to those people sitting in El Salvador. And now we have a new ruling by this Trump, Trump, Trump panel. Karen, take it away. Yeah, I mean, how do you think it went, right? They basically, the judge basically, you know, although Judge Boasberg had ordered the administration to provide due process to these Venezuelans, you know, these appeals court temporarily pause that order,

blocking it for now. I mean, of course that's what they were gonna do, right? I mean, it's just really, they're just languishing now in El Salvador and they're not coming back and they're gonna slow roll it, you know, and slow roll it and slow roll it and slow roll it. And these are, meanwhile, there are lives just sitting there

in this horrible prison. And it's just really sad, you know, it's really, really sad to me that this is the situation we're in. And again, it could all be avoided because all we're talking about here is due process. We're not saying these are people who need to stay here forever.

We're not saying that these are people who shouldn't be deported. It's that you have to give them due process. And the Supreme Court even said that's what has to happen. And this is the middle finger that's being given to the federal courts by the Trump administration, whether it's with Abrego Garcia or whether it's these 100 plus individuals or others. it's just basically we're going to do what we want to do and you can't make us do differently. And the court, you know, Trump, he, the one thing Trump did in his first administration, which is, this is the only criticism I have of the Obama,

of Barack Obama when he left. He left way too many federal judge positions open that were unfilled. and that was inexcusable because what Donald Trump did is he filled every single one of those and then some, and he got multiple Supreme Court appointments, multiple Court of Appeals appointments, and many, many, many district court judges.

And there are plenty of district court judges now who are not taking senior status, which means they can take fewer cases and open up a spot so that Trump can fill more judgeships because of the damage that his judges are doing. And that's what's happening. And the fact, as you said, that he pulled three Trump judges is just astounding

because that's not even considered one of the conservative districts. And all the judges are saying is you have to give due process. I mean, even the Supreme Court said you have to give due process. Just do it the right way and then you can execute your agenda. But his agenda isn't just to deport people. His agenda is to control and show that he can have power over the courts, that he can have power over the judges, that he can do what he wants in his administration.

Whether it's Gavin Newsom in California, whether it's judges all across this country, it doesn't matter. Part of his agenda is, and the authoritarian agenda, is to assert this power. And when judges allow him to do it, whether it's explicit or whether it's by slow rolling things or pressing pause, allowing things to happen, not stopping things,

whatever it is, it's giving him this unitary executive authoritarian power that he wants and is trying to assert. And there are times when he's more successful than others. And this is, I think, one of those examples. And we'll get the briefing schedule and then they'll just sit on it. I mean, they're all, oh, well, it's only a temporary stay. Let's have all briefs in by June the 18th.

And then there's nothing after that. So like, all right, you'll get all the briefs by June the 18th. And then there's like nothing after that. So like, all right, you'll get all the briefs by June the 18th. We are not going to see a ruling by that panel until late summer, early fall. If that, I'd be shocked if it were earlier than that. They'll do an oral argument that we'll hear. And other than Katz's just once ruling

against the Trump administration, it's gonna be a bad ruling that's inconsistent, I believe, with the law without seeing it, because I've watched them in the past. They almost invariably side with Trump on this particular issue. And it's gonna be up to the United States Supreme Court because the loser, the American Civil Liberties Union,

is gonna take their appeal. And they were successful six to three, twice, and related to JGG, or at least once, in this very case. So we're gonna get the gang back together again at the Supreme Court, and we will follow it closely. I wanna end, after our commercial break, talking about what does the return of Abrego Garcia mean, if anything, in the Maryland Federal Court

and with the judge on the precipice of the sanctions in the form of contempt. Trump administration has asked for a stay and asked to have the whole case dismissed because they brought him back. The other side, of course, is saying, are you kidding me, my paraphrase, you were in contempt for at least 90 days,

doesn't solve the problem, and you need to be sanctioned. What will Judge Zinnis do next? We'll talk about all of that when we come back, but let's get to the last break in our show. Legal AF, the YouTube channel, Legal AF MTN needs a little love, needs some more help continuing to build and grow by word of mouth, organically.

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Again, promo code LegalAF for 60% off your first order plus free shipping at Smalls.com. Welcome back to LegalAF Midweek. We were talking during the commercial break about some funny things that are popping up on the dockets these days. The way electronic dockets work for courts, there's things that we can all see,

because it's a public justice system. We're supposed to be able to see federal filings and criminal court filings. There's certain things that are protected. Grand jury proceedings for the duration usually are protected, witness statements, that type of thing. Some are redacted and sealed because of privileges and state secrets and all sorts of things.

And other things, it's a scale. So over time, the need to continue to protect them from the eyes of the public is less, and the judges will start stripping off the black tape at the redaction. And we'll get transcripts of things that get filed with the court so that we and the public know what the heck just happened.

And there was just a filing in the Abrego Garcia case. We had heard it at the time in which a lawyer for the Department of Justice looked a judge in the eye, Judge Zinnis, who we're going to talk about next and said, yeah, yeah, Donald Trump may be a master, the president may be a master of communication, but sometimes he's not precise in his language. Basically admitting that Donald Trump doesn't get his facts

straight, which of course we all know. What works outside the courtroom to pressurize our justice system doesn't work on the hollow grounds of the court system generally, usually. So I just thought that was sort of funny. Why don't you pick up with updating the audience on the Abrego Garcia, the return, that indictment, and what, and what's happening with Judge Zinnis, who has to make a decision about contempt proceedings.

Yeah, so there's essentially, there's two cases, right? There's a civil case, which is in front of Judge Zinnis that was going to essentially hold the Department of Justice in contempt, it was starting to look like, based on them basically taking Elbrego Garcia to El Salvador and admitting that it was a mistake, that he wasn't supposed to be taken. And, you know, they were saying, oh, we can't take him back. We can't get him back. Or, you know, they were not really trying very hard,

but they were supposed to facilitate his return, but claimed that they couldn't do it. But then they'd refused to say what they did to get him back. It was really clearly thumbing their nose in the face of Judge Zinnis, who reads the paper and social media and can see exactly what they're saying publicly,

which was different than what was saying in court. And I think we all thought Judge Zinnis was getting very close to holding them in contempt, and they didn't even try to bring him back, right? So what do they do? I think to save face, they build a criminal case against him so that if they do bring him back, they can slap him with actual criminal charges

rather than bring him back and have him lawfully stay here, which an immigration judge specifically said he could. They specifically said that he was not illegal when he was here. And so they basically created this criminal case and indicted him in federal court in Tennessee, and they're accusing him of being a human smuggler and a human trafficker, essentially.

We'll see if this case actually will ultimately stand, if there is any merits to it, if he is a human trafficker slash smuggler of bodies. The allegations are that apparently he, years ago, he was stopped in a traffic stop. And they say in the indictment that he was conspiring to transport illegal aliens. They say it was a nine-year conspiracy.

P.S. the chief of the criminal division in Tennessee resigned in protest because of this. So that always makes me suspicious of a prosecution if you've got someone, a prosecutor, literally giving up their job because they are protesting against something, something fishy is going on there. And Ryan Goodman, who is a professor and a legal commentator, and he works for Just Security,

he looked at the actual report when there was a traffic stop, because essentially what they put in the indictment is that they rely on this traffic stop from a few years ago in Tennessee, and they call it out, and they say that he lied because they say that he said he was in St. Louis on his way to Maryland, and they say that's the lie covering it up because they can tell from license plate readers that that particular car was actually in Texas. But Ryan Goodman looked at the actual police report that was filed, and in it, the officers say that, quote,

that Abrego Garcia said, quote, we are coming from Texas. That's in the contemporaneous report. Okay, so, I don't know, it seems a little fishy to me. It seems like, uh, like the charges aren't necessarily that strong or going to stand. Either way, it seems like they were created just so that they can save face and bring him back and say,

see, he was a criminal anyway, and we were deporting criminals. Either way, and it was very predictable that, oh, and by the way, let's just say one more thing that really offended me, and then we'll talk about Judge Zinnis in this little case. What really offended me was Todd Blanch, who's the number two at the Department of Justice.

He was, if you remember, he was the lawyer who represented Donald Trump in the case at the Manhattan DA's office, where Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies. He was the lead lawyer in that case. Well, now he's the number two at the Department of Justice. And he actually tweeted the arrest warrant, okay, for this Tennessee traffic stop smuggling case.

He tweeted the arrest warrant and said, welcome home. That to me is just really, really undignified of a high ranking person at the Department of Justice, frankly, any government official, but somebody at the Department of Justice that they would mock somebody like that and and an issue, something like like that via tweet. I don't know. It just, again, is one more example of what I was saying earlier about how I just don't recognize this Department of Justice.

But either way, we talked about when we heard about this, Popak, we said, oh, I know what the, what Trump's going to say, what the government's going to say. They're going to say, oh, to Judge Zinnis, we don't need you to rule on this anymore. We're bringing him back. It's not a live issue anymore. It's moot.

You know, the case is mooted, and you don't need to rule on this contempt proceeding. I think Judge Zinnis is going to not only continue that they're proceeding and the fact finding and potentially hold someone in contempt for essentially lying, but I think the fact that they are able to actually bring Abrego Garcia back, the fact that the president of El Salvador is responding to a request from Trump to bring back Abrego Garcia. I think that's going to be used going forward

with Boesberg and other judges who are looking at this, about the people who are being squirreled away at CICOT in El Salvador. There's no doubt in my mind that the very act of bringing back a Braga Garcia proves the point of the contempt they always had. They had the power all along. It's like a Godfather movie. It was Barzini all along. They had always had the ability to bring him back,

and they chose instead to taunt Judge Zinnis, taunt senators, taunt United States Supreme Court, both in social media posts and in court filings. And to tell the judge to pound sand, play cat and mouse with the court. She used that term, but she felt like they were playing cat and mouse with her and pulling the yarn away from her at the last minute.

And she is on the cusp of finding them in contempt. And just because they brought him back under a alleged criminal case that wasn't even started until March after they were already in contempt, I mean, the Supreme Court ordered them to facilitate the return or the release from the El Salvador in prison starting on April the 10th. The fact that on May the 21st, you indict

for calling him a human smuggler in order to give you a cover to then ask for, so suddenly now Bukele in El Salvador is going to respect it. They didn't do an extradition proceeding. They didn't do a formal extradition proceeding. They just said, well, Pan-Bondi said, yeah, we told them, we showed them the indictment, and they released them. Yeah. That, whether it was an email, phone call,

diplomatic immunity. Nobody believes that Donald Trump was powerless to get Bukele, if he wanted to, to release Abrego Garcia. And his return now, what the Trump people file is, it's all better now, Judge. We brought him back. He's in Tennessee, he's in federal detention, but he's back. So your whole case that you were presiding over is moot. We're done here, right? No. No. There's the 90 days that he wasn't here. It's the fact that he's

still not in front of her, that the due process rights have yet to be given to him as it relates to his having left the country. Their argument is, no, we're beyond that. We're in a post-deportation removal world now. Now we're going to get a conviction and then we're going to remove him based on the fact that he's a criminal convicted in America. First time he'll ever be convicted if that were to happen. I think they have a good argument to get that case kicked on a motion to dismiss. There's some very good judges there. But

the filings that I read coming on the air, this competing filings by the Trump administration, which is telling Judge Sinis, nothing to see here, dismiss injunction. Contempt is overstay the case. And the Ibrego Garcia lawyer is saying, are you kidding me? They've told you and they've flaunted their power. They've taunted you and they violated your order so many different ways we can't even catalog it all here. You should allow the motion for sanctions to be filed. No more delays and contempt to be found.

And what is she supposed to do? She's got an order of the United States Supreme Court 90, not only telling her that she's right about due process, but telling her that she alone has the power to administer justice and make sure that habeas corpus rights and due process rights have been given to Abrego Garcia. And the fact that the other side says, well, we brought him back and we're not going to send him back now under the Alienated Abuse Act, you know,

that doesn't solve the problem at all. And she's going to have to make sure that her law, her orders are abided by, the Supreme Court's orders are abided by, and this ruse is rejected. So I think any day now, Karen, we're going to get an order from Judge Zinnis that says, this doesn't change anything. And we are going forward with the contempt proceedings and the briefing schedule that I've already set. What do you think, Karen? I think it's possible. I think you're right.

I think it's possible that that does go forward. You know, I was sitting here thinking to myself, will a Briego Garcia have a cause of action against the United States government for making this mistake? And part of what is developed in this civil proceeding would be used as discovery in any civil proceeding. And it's just interesting because obviously there's immunity issues too, right?

And prosecute, you know, there's immunity issues in play that will also occur for the people that the Department of Justice individuals that they would sue. But a lot of discovery that could be developed here and And, uh, and the... It's just interesting. Because I think he, if he has a contempt cause of action, he might have a civil cause of action against the United States government too, potentially. Yeah, I love that analysis. That's really smart. So we've reached the end of our midweek edition of Legal AF.

We covered a lot. We started with the California case and new developments there. We talked about two different appellate courts giving temporary, at least on paper, We covered a lot. We started with the California case and new developments there. We talked about two different appellate courts giving temporary, at least on paper, wins to the Trump administration, one involving his tariffs and the other involving the other people not named Abrego Garcia and some rulings by Judge Boasberg. And then we talked about whether the return

of Abrego Garcia means anything in the world of contempt against the Trump administration. And that's a pretty, we call that, let's put a lid on it. We call that a week, a half a week, right, Karen? That's not even half the things that happened, Opak. We curate them. Yeah, we curate, exactly. We curate the topics, but there's so much more that happens

I mean this administration is really just running roughshod over everybody and everything It's like a firehose and I think that's part of the part of the strategy. Don't you? Yeah, and where should people go when they want to learn more in between the podcasts? Legal AF, the YouTube channel where we're doing hourly updates and reports on things. I mean, you and I pull it together the way we do it here, but Legal AF, the YouTube channel, on fire, as the brothers like to say, rocket ship. But we need your help.

We need your help there. We need your help on Legal AF, the podcast, on more audio downloads to continue to make us drive there. We got some amazing pro-democracy sponsors. California person by birth, but made in New York. Yeah, exactly. Tell us, you got the last word. Exactly, exactly.

Leave California alone. They'll be fine. California, LA is great. It's a great place. They'll be fine. They don't need the military there. It's just, this is a made up problem. It's a fake problem. And I really just think this is

really terrible. And this is an existential this is existential for our democracy. And you know there's there's laws that basically limit what the federal government can do. And there's federalism states actually have more powers in some ways can do and there's federalism. States actually have more powers in some ways than the federal government. Leave them alone, let them do their thing. And the big mantra of MAGA was always leave it up to the states, leave it up to the states. Let some states do this and let other states do that.

Well, so leave California alone, this is how they wanna be. And that's my last word because they're really creating this problem and then then, you know, this is all them. This is not anybody else. Perfect. Join Saturday with Ben, my cellist and me on the next edition of Legal AF, Legal AF, the YouTube channel, Legal AF, the sub stack, all different ways to consume your law and politics commentary. And until our next episode, this is Karen Freeman,

Igniflo Michael Popox, shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal A efforts.