Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Episode - 7/2/2025

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

On the top ranked Legal AF podcast, Michael Popok is joined with guest anchor, attorney and activist Rachel Cohen, sitting in for KFA, who is also joining the Legal AF YouTube Channel as a regular contributor. Popok and Rachel take on: the different forms that defiance against this Administration can take including taking personal responsibility to actively participate in our participatory democracy; how to weaponize and turn the tables on Trump's attempt to weaponize the DOJ and whitewash Jan6; a big win for women's rights coming out of the Wisconsin Supreme Court; federal judges figuring out how to hold Trump accountable with new class actions and injunctions since the Supreme Court's "nationwide injunction" ruling, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Support Our Sponsors: Armra: Head to https://tryarmra.com/legalaf or enter promo code: LEGALAF to receive 15% off your first order! OneSkin: Get started today at https://OneSkin.co and receive 15% Off using code: LEGALAF Delete Me: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to join https://deleteme.com/LEGALAF and use promo code LEGALAF at checkout. 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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Winning in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Welcome to the midweek edition of Legal AF. And I'm so pleased to be joined by our guest anchor for today,

Rachel Cohen, sitting in for Karen Friedman at NIFILO, who's busy with some of her court cases today. Rachel Cohen, you may recognize from many, many places, one in particular, her leading the charge as a human guardrail against this administration and against big law when they, her law firm, bent the knee and was one of the early settlers with Donald Trump paying hundreds of millions of dollars of free legal services. And Rachel Cohen was a young associate and said, I've had enough.

And not only have I had enough, but organized around it. And then took that to political activism and is leading the charge there. And we're so pleased to have Rachel, because she's on Legal AF now with her podcast partner, Tiara Mack, who is a state senator in Rhode Island in a new playlist podcast that we like to call, or they like to call, the Pragmatic Optimists.

Rachel, thank you for co-anchoring Legal AF with me today. Thank you so much for having me. It's a great opportunity. And as you know, there's so much happening to discuss, and I just hope that 45 minutes is enough. Well, we'll see. We'll see how long it goes. You know, you and I are doing this high wire act without a net. We're gonna do it together. There is

a great introductory video that's up right now on the Legal AF YouTube channel introducing you and Tiara to the channel. It's actually right now, so anybody that's interested, come on over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel, subscribe there and take a look at that video explaining exactly what the point of view is gonna be for Rachel. But you're a lawyer by training. You practiced for a couple years in the corporate world,

but now tell everybody, let's do the origin story here a little bit. And just to give everybody an update, we're gonna talk today about things like a former Jan Sixer, former FBI agent who was in the middle of a trial when he got pardoned, who stormed the Capitol, broke through into the Senate, and yelled F them, and kill the police at various times.

He's now working for Pam Bondi and Ed Martin in the weaponization subcommittee or committee of the Department of Justice. We'll talk about that. Alina Habba, who we all thought was only going to serve 120 days or so as the acting interim US attorney for New Jersey, but apparently Donald Trump is feeling it, and he wants to try to shove her in and get her confirmed as the permanent US attorney in New Jersey. So we'll touch on that.

Judge Moss, Randy Moss in DC has issued what is the first certification of a class action with an injunction attached to it coming in the wake of Friday's Supreme Court decision, which told federal judges, well, if you're gonna find that the Trump administration has violated the Administrative Procedures Act or law or abuse of power, you can't use, generally, you can't use a nationwide injunction.

You gotta do it by class action and a temporary restraining order or injunction. All right. Well, that's exactly what we have. And some good news coming out of a Supreme Court, just not the Supreme Court, with Wisconsin in a four to three vote of their Supreme Court. The tiebreaker, obviously Justice Protasewicz, voted that Wisconsin women have the right to reproductive rights and control over their own bodies,

including making the decision about abortion and ripping away a 174-year-old anti-abortion statute off the books and declaring, no, that's not the law in Wisconsin. So some good news coming out of Wisconsin. A Supreme Court race, Rachel, as you may know, that Elon Musk and Donald Trump tried to steal by pumping $20 million in to try to turn that state or the Supreme Court red didn't happen.

And now we see it's already paying dividends. Rachel Cohen, welcome to the anchor seat. Thanks so much for having me. I think that there's lots of relevant kind of background for both me and Ciara, who you referenced and who's co-hosting Pragmatic Optimists with me in today's lineup, because I think that number one, this kind of weaponization of the legal system is the overarching reason that I decided to resign from Skadden. And the one thing, this is not a good move for someone who would love to be invited back

as a co-anchor, but I actually resigned before my law firm, Bentheny. And the reason that I always correct people on that is just because I like to make sure that we all know that the Trump playbook is overwhelmingly predictable. And so the organizing and the resignation and everything else that I engaged in was before Skadden had entered into their deal that promises $100 million in free legal services to the Trump administration.

It was in response to a different law firm, Paul Weiss, offering up the first quote unquote settlement to the Trump administration of $40 million in free legal services along with a number of other concessions. And I was able to resign feeling quite confident that I would be proven right very quickly. And eight days later, Skadden entered into this agreement

with the Trump administration because this authoritarian playbook, this weaponization of the judiciary is so tired and so often played. And I think that kind of, I guess the Trump administration with this January 6th riot are now joining the weaponization committee and Alina Jaba. I think that the Trump administration is misunderstanding and appointing people

that are pro-weaponization of the judiciary right to these kinds of committees and these positions of power because they know what a powerful tool it is, which is why it's so important that we're on here breaking things down for people and kind of explaining that they may be acting like they can do these things, but many of time, much of the time they actually cannot, which I think brings us to kind of that asylum ruling today. And then last but not least, I must again plug state Senator Tiara Mack,

a personal friend for many years, because one of the things that we really want to focus on is the fact that there's a lot of good news that can come out of states and localities when we make sure that we are showing up to state and local elections and not letting those elections be bought. There's a reason Elon Musk poured so much money into that race. And it's because this is now where many of the fights for our rights are going to take place. And it's been fantastic to see that Wisconsin came out on the correct side. Yeah, well, I'm glad you, I mean, yeah, I shorthanded it because I always had thought that you resigned because of, but you, it's even better because you saw, you saw the writing on the wall and that Skadden was not taking a position.

And maybe, I don't know, you'll, I'm not trying to breach confidences, but maybe heard some things internally and didn't see the leadership there standing up. I, as people know, I started my career at Skadden Arps and I had senior people, now semi-retired or retired, but were in senior leadership at Skadden and know that I came out before you and I even met and did some scathing hot take videos against Skadden

particularly, and then the other 14 firms too. One of them wrote me, which will remain nameless, and said, do you wanna talk about it? Do you wanna know what happened? I said, no, I don't need to talk about it. I don't need to know the nitty gritty of what happened. It's obvious what happened. I read the memos and things that have leaked.

I don't need another story. And I have friends at Paul Weiss at senior leadership positions, and they had the template, the $45 million template, and then that was cheap compared to Wilkie Farr and Skadden Arps and all the rest. The question, let me ask you a question about that because you're probably following it

even much closer than I am, as long as we're on that topic. A billion dollars of pro-boto legal services was the headline. But I haven't heard a peep about any of the law firms representing any of the right-wing MAGA or the administration to start consuming any of those pro-boto hours. What have you heard? They're definitely trying. And some of it is kind of whispers that comes back to me from people within scatting. And those are I'm not going to come on to a YouTube video or excuse me, a YouTube channel and legal podcast and say, just believe me on

this, because if I can't tell you verifiable stuff externally, we'll save it. But there is verifiable kind of examples of Greta Van Susteren, I don't know if you remember her from your old Fox News days, tweeting directly about how Skadden hasn't been supporting a veteran that she sent to them. And there was a New York Times article

that I believe broke that some of the people that have been sent have connections to January 6th, right? And we're seeing people who are sent to these law firms, and the law firms are kind of giving the Trump administration the runaround. And we'll see how long they're actually able to do that for. There was a lot of time. But even that story, and I'm old enough

to remember Greta Van Cester on CNN covering O.J. Simpson, okay? That's how, that's where she got her start. But even that anecdote, yeah, we're always about speaking truth and we're always about no smoke or sunshine, and we try to get our facts right. But even that anecdote proves my point. There's very little reporting out there about any of cashing in on any of the chips of the billion dollars.

I think that, and listen, if you talk to people that are still at these firms, the line that they're constantly giving is, this was actually a great deal because they're never going to be able to cash in. And I do think that if there's one thing that corporate lawyers are really, really good at, it is giving people the run around and over billing.

Right? That's true. They may have exhausted their billion already. Yeah, they're running the clock that it is giving people the run around and over billing. Right? So. That's true. They may have exhausted their billion already. Yeah, they're running the clock as long as possible and they're running those timers too, I'm sure, as they do so. But we've seen the Trump administration kind of signpost

where it would like to see, and I don't, again, to not allow any sunshine here. Greta is not in the Trump administration, but something that I point people to is there was another kind of executive order issued related to requiring firms or requesting firms or setting up a fund using the firms to have those attorneys defend police officers

accused of misconduct and to have the DOJ kind of work with them on that because there's so much difficulty understandably getting attorneys to take those cases. And I think that ultimately the people in the firms are saying we're just gonna give them the run around for forever. But I think that that is very optimistic

and rooted in a notion of the Trump administration as being very stupid, right? Like these firms think that they are so much smarter than the Trump administration that eventually he's just going to forget that they owe him a billion dollars worth of legal services and that that excuse is going to run out and the Trump administration is going to pin them on something and the firms are either going to have to take those things on or they are going to have to fight with the administration about what the terms of those agreements were and they've proven themselves pretty unwilling to do that.

So I think that in the next couple of months, we might see more as people have to actually file into cases, but this is as you know, they can kind of run people out by saying, well, they haven't cleared conflicts. We're not I heard rumors that something that was being used often was they're asking us to do work in jurisdictions where we're not barred. And so we're not going to get local counsel in that they're going to run out of that eventually. And Stephen Miller, who is And Stephen Miller, who is an evil person, but is smart. He's tracking, he was tracking, and is tracking all of the pro bono hours. And I think you're right.

Whether they brought him in on the tariff policy, there are gonna be plenty of opportunities in the next 18 months to two to three years to cash in those chips. And the law firms that are, you know, who have signed on the dotted line, who have been chastised by federal judges like Beryl Howell, who, you know, in her rulings about Perkins Coy,

one of the four firms that didn't settle, you know, the honorable law firms that did the right thing, she said, and I paraphrase, that you should not have settled with the Trump administration when you were on the receiving end of the attacks. You should have ran to federal judges for protection. And if you're a client of one of these firms, how can you ever trust these law firms

to be your zealous advocate when they've settled, especially if you're before the federal government, when they are appeasing the federal government that you need representation in front of? How could you ever trust them? And clients have left those firms. They have, especially clients who are seeking kind of litigation support. I do think, and I hate to come in and be a pessimist when I am trying to promote pragmatic optimists, but I think that something that I feel very deeply in my bones, I got a lot of kind of outreach

from reporters saying, now that all of the firms that have challenged the Trump administration in court are winning, do you think that changes things? And I think it's really important that we note that Paul Weiss entered into their agreement with the Trump administration after Perkins-Cooey had already won a temporary restraining order from Judge Howell.

And so I think that these firms know that they win if they fight in court. And that feels very nefarious to me because it makes clear that they are playing some kind of different game. And I think other people have pointed out correctly that the firms that were the most likely to fold to the Trump administration

have large amounts of kind of merger and acquisition work or other corporate work. And those things often require government approval. They often require kind of collaboration with the government, especially if you're doing cross-border stuff. And I think that they are betting on a different game. Like I think that they're playing very differently

and they're betting on a much longer game that terrifies me a bit because it feels like they are tacitly acknowledging that the Trump administration is going to be one that does not respect the guardrails of the law. And I think that that in turn makes it even more embarrassing, abhorrent, and cowardly that they were willing to enter into agreements that let him do that. Well, when I left law school and the world divided, you know, it's, it's, you're either a litigator or you're a transactional lawyer. I mean, I'm being rough about the division.

Yeah. You went into corporate law, although now I know you're more involved on the litigation side, because you have to be in order to be on the forefront of this resistance. But the litigation, what's the common denominator of the firms, the four major firms that went to court and won, they're driven and run by trial lawyers and litigators.

And the other firms, I was a litigator within a major corporate firm, Scad and Arps, I worked at Sidley and Austin also. And litigators are a service department for the corporate mergers and acquisitions and transactional and private equity and hedge fund transactional lawyers in there. And they have the books of business

of 30, 40, 50, a hundred million dollars. And the litigators are seen as a necessary evil. They don't run these firms. And those are the firms. That's gonna be what aggravates the people at Skadden that you said more than anything else that we've said on this call.

But it's true. It's true. Yeah. It was true in 91 and it's true in 2025. And that is not true. That's one of the reasons I left Skadden was to go to a firm that respected its litigators more than it did.

And I worked in the elite white collar criminal department. I was in general civil litigation also, but I was in when the new white collar group was formed. And I was one of the first, I think I was the youngest associate in that group. So I had a little bit of a different experience than maybe you certainly did 25 years later, 30 years later in Chicago as a corporate associate.

Why don't we roll that in after the break and to talk about this Ed Martin led weaponization committee, Jared Wise being appointed to it, the rewriting of history to make Jan 6th be a day in the park like you went to Disney instead of the brutal medieval attack on human beings in the cradle of our democracy. We can also talk about Alina Haba and maybe what you're thinking is as to why Donald Trump went from no, I'll never probably make her the permanent U.S.

attorney to what he's seen now in her role and what he thinks about his ability to get all the Republican votes behind her to confirm her in the Senate, although her confirmation hearing will be required watching on the Midas Touch Network and legal layout because it will be a disaster for her. It doesn't mean she doesn't have the votes. I want to hear what your thoughts are on that.

And then we'll return to the court system. We've got Judge Moss's, really the first injunction with a certified class. There's a bunch of judges considering it in birthright citizenship, but they haven't gotten there yet. But Judge Moss has about Donald Trump's attempt to rip out the Immigration and Naturalization Act and replace it with an executive order about asylum seekers

at the southern border, and then the Wisconsin Supreme Court case that made everybody's hearts sing over here that declared invalid a law that's been on the books in Wisconsin and never really repealed for 174 years that banned the right for a woman to have an abortion and the liberal Supreme Court made a difference today. And we're going to talk about that as well. I have Rachel, don't adjust that dial.

I've got Rachel Cohen on here standing in for Karen Friedman at Nippolo. Rachel has just joined us on Legal AF, and on the YouTube channel there, there we go. That's a way to help support us. Free subscribe to Legal AF, and you'll find content from a dozen different contributors that I curate, including Rachel Cohen, our latest contributor who's joined with,

and will be joined with Tiara Mack, who's a representative, sorry, a Senator from Rhode Island. They've worked together in the past and they're going to do an amazing job of just not identifying the issues and the problems, but talking to our audience about what they can do at the local, state, and federal level to make that difference, which I think is gonna be,

our audience vibrates on that frequency, and I think that's gonna be very, very successful when you guys join. Other ways to support what we do here, legally after YouTube channel, come on over and free subscribe there. Midas Touch, subscribe to Midas Touch. We've got this podcast, which is doing great.

You know, I mean, we started it, Ben and I started it five years ago. It was like the two of us talking to each other with like 20 of our friends. That's how it started and now you know the YouTube's last rankings we're in the top 50 of all YouTube podcasts number one in law and politics. But let's be frank, we could use some love as an independent entity without outside investors. And the way to show your love for the show and that you like what we're doing here is we need some more audio downloads on podcast platforms.

So just plug in Legal AF and it'll pop up there. YouTube, of course, here, we have a five star review over on the podcast platform for Legal AF as well. And Legal AF has a sub-stack, which where we post all, like we're gonna talk about a couple of decisions today, they're gonna be up already on Legal AF sub-stack

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to get 15% off your first order. That's t-r-y-a-r-m-r-a.com slash Legal AF. Welcome back to the midweek edition of Legal AF. I'm joined with our guest anchor, Rachel Cohen, who's on aegal AF YouTube channel now with Pragmatic Optimist, and along with her co-anchor, Senator TR Mac. Let's break in now,

and thank you to our pro-democracy sponsors there. Let's talk about this news that hit the wire, that Jared Lane Wise, a former FBI agent, who was in the middle of a trial when Trump pardoned him and the jury had not yet returned a verdict, but was one of the guys that broke through the doors, wandered around in the Senate for nine or ten minutes, but on the long the way confronted law enforcement,

yelled to have the police killed, said to the crowd to whip them into a frenzy, to go F them and kill them, and said you're an embarrassment to law enforcement when he got in their faces. And he has now been rehabilitated by Pam Bondi, who's put him alongside Ed Martin. Why don't you talk about, Rachel, this weaponization committee and Ed Martin,

who we were thrilled when pressure campaign and the Senate let it be known they weren't going to confirm him to be the US Attorney for Washington. That's why we have Janine Pirro. But he might be able to do a lot of damage running around with this weaponization committee in an unconfirmed position. Why don't you tell our audience about it? Absolutely. And I think that it also kind of goes

together with just who all the Trump administration is willing to put forth in the first place. I know that we're going to talk a little bit about Alina Jaba in a second, but I think that those concepts even go together. Emile Beauvais and just Ed Martin should never have been nominated for anything in the first place, let alone now brought into this position that does not require him to be confirmed by the Senate. Because when we platform these people who are really presenting this kind of alternate history and alternate reality about what's happening

and what's against the law and what is unacceptable in American democracy. That's how we end up with then January 6th rioters being employed by them. And I think that all I can think of when I think about the January 6th kind of pardons and the total rewrite of history is the way that it was so challenging historically in the American South and beyond to get convictions for people

who had committed hate crimes against people of color because the sheriffs and the juries and everyone else was protecting them and pretending that, yes, we enforce the law and we can say that we enforce the law, but then vanishing as soon as there was a need to enforce the law against people who held power or were working towards the outcome that those sheriffs wanted.

In that case, obviously a racial hierarchy, but I think now we're seeing Donald Trump very obviously signal to people, that I think about it too with the payouts to the family of Ashley Babbitt is we're signaling you can break the law so long as it is in furtherance of the Trump agenda. And then you can be punished for breaking the law when you have not actually broken any law at all,

so long as the Trump administration doesn't like what you're doing. And so I think that Ed Martin kind of just opening the Pandora's box of him getting to imprint his own ideology, or really the ideology of people like Trump and Stephen Miller, onto the Department of Justice, and the federal notion of justice broadly is really terrifying because there's a lot of guardrails in the American system that only exist

when people are operating in good faith. Yeah, so, I mean, look, the good news is that we were able to deny Martin the role of the US attorney. He was already Elon Musk henchman trying to do investigations. We know he could do a lot of damage as the U.S. Attorney. So far, Jeanine Pirro, although she's obscenely unqualified for the position, doesn't seem to be hell bent on being Donald Trump's political hack in that role yet.

But he can do a lot of damage in this weaponization committee. And now you can see the types of people that he's putting around the table with the permission of Pam Bondi. This is just, you know, the continued rewriting of history in order for Donald Trump to be able to continue to say out loud that the election was stolen from him, and they're going to be investigating Joe Biden and how the election was stolen,

and in order to do that, then you have to absolve all of your minions that took your clarion call and the discontent you fomented and turned it into a violent attack, an insurrectionist attack on the Capitol. But you have to continue to kind of, you know, oh what a tangled web we weave. We've got to keep rewriting and revising.

And, well, if I didn't do anything wrong, and there was a big steal in these people that attacked, they didn't do anything wrong, then I have to pardon them. And if I pardon them, then I can put them on blue ribbon panels to talk about the weaponization. Here we go. This is the whole chicken and the egg all over again. And it also becomes almost that 1984

of they contradict themselves. And I think we've seen that in even the fallout with Elon and Trump in that fight, right? And it also becomes almost that 1984 of they contradict themselves. And I think we've seen that in even the fallout with Elon and Trump in that fight, right? It just changes what the rules even are and whose side we're supposed to automatically be on at any given moment. But. So let's turn to Alina Habba for a moment.

So Alina Habba, parking lot lawyer, literally, who worked near the golf course in Bedminster, found a way to worm her way into the inner circle of Donald Trump by handling a couple of his employment matters, one of which was ethically challenged at best, and she had a subtle of case related to it. She herself has said that her main role as the US attorney is, she's admitted that

it's to be a political hack to try to turn New Jersey red. I'm an ordinary New Jersey person. And there's been no major investigations about crime that have been announced in New Jersey. All it is, is her going after the political enemies of Donald Trump. She's indicted and arrested Representative McIver, who's pled not guilty, about being at an observation point

at a federal detention immigration center, Delaney Hall in New Jersey, along with the mayor of Newark, along with other elected officials. She's been indicted. The mayor of Mayor Baraka, who is a political enemy of Donald Trump and is on the short list of people who may run for the 2028 presidential election, he was arrested, indicted, or had a criminal charge against him, and then that was dropped. And that was so bad that a federal magistrate judge had to excoriate Alina Jaba in court and say, you need to do better because your office can't use indictments and arrests

and the threats of it for political gain. That is in violation of the Department of Justice manual. That's in violation of your ethical duties. She's been hit with a New Jersey bar complaint about not only filing criminal charges against Baraka and arresting him and doing a perp walk of him and the same thing of McIver, but threatening to do that and opening a criminal investigation

for leverage against two-time Democratic Governor Murphy and their Attorney General Plotkin. And that's all she's been doing. So she's going to answer for those and, of course, all the terrible things she did as the one of the criminal lawyers for Donald Trump. How do you think she's going, what do you make of Donald Trump doubling down on Alina Haba and trying

to slide her through because he thinks he has the votes in the Senate, and what should the Senate Democrats do in terms of the confirmation hearing? Including about Emil Bovi, who's, they're taking a break on that confirmation hearing too. I don't want wanna lose sight on that cause he's obscenely unqualified to be a third circuit court of appeals

lifetime appointed judge. Absolutely. And I'm sure that you've covered it, but I haven't been able to listen in the last week or so. I'm sure that you have seen at least the whistleblower letter about Emil Bovey telling people within the Department of Justice that they might need to just say, fuck the court,

if there's a court order that hobbles kind of implementation of the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda. I think that all of those things are really indicative of the fact that the Trump administration is trying to see what it can get away with. That's how I felt this entire kind of Trump 2.0. Because something that was pointed out to me so early on in this administration is that there are often things that the Trump administration could do legally, or

could at least pretend it's doing legally, that they choose to just do in a blatantly illegal way. I think the deportations of people over judge's orders are deeply indicative of that. But I want to come back to what you pointed out about Alina Jaba when she speaking said, you know, hopefully I can play a role as US attorney in the kind of aim of turning New Jersey red.

Alina Jaba does not need to say that. No one is, you know, pointing a gun to her head saying all the intrusive thoughts and nefarious schemes. Now you have to say them out loud. She's saying it because they're blatantly making it a priority to kind of show that there are no guardrails on them. to kind of show that there are no guardrails on them. That you can say the thing. I helped in looking into filing New Jersey

in personal capacity, filing New Jersey bar complaints against Alina Haba and put together an explainer of how people who are even not attorneys can file that because sometimes I think it feels like we're just screaming into the ether. And if I'm gonna scream into the ether, let me scream into the ether to the New Jersey bar. But I think that when we were doing that,

something that really stood out to me in terms of how those bar complaints function is that it's very, very challenging to file a complaint for a political prosecution unless the prosecutor has said something like, I hope I can play a role in turning New Jersey red, and then a month later, gone and arrested two prominent Democrats.

And I think that that is one of the most concerning things to me and to your question about what I think Senate Democrats should do. They should do everything that they are already doing in terms of, you know, blocking and protesting these appointments. But I also would like to see from more federal level electeds an acknowledgement that we are so far outside the bounds of the normal.

And I would like to see some actions on the Democrats' side that kind of bear that out. And I don't know exactly what that looks like, but I think that there's many ideas. And I've been glad to see Democrats stepping up congressional oversight visits to various ICE detention facilities, because RepresentativeGyver was exercising her, it's a kind of privilege of the office

to engage in oversight visits of ICE facilities to make sure that people's human rights are not being violated. And the Trump administration is also trying to force people to only do visits if they've been given a certain amount of notice, right? To only do visits if they've been given a certain amount of notice, right, to only do visits on certain days. And that's not how any of this works.

And I think that it's important that Democrats continue to show up to those visits and broadcast them as much as possible. I'd like to see them bringing various news crews with them. I'd like to see them on the floor. I can't say refusing to follow necessarily rules or order, but I think that we are being a little bit handicapped when we do not acknowledge just how outside the kind of rules the GOP is playing, because they will go on and just say that aloud constantly

to their supporters and also just put it out onto the internet. And I think that we need to be bringing top amounts of attention to that at all times, or Democrats need to be bringing those to the forefront. I'd love to see someone show up to an Emile Bové hearing in a shirt that says, might just have to say, "'Fuck the court, Emile Bové.'" I don't think that we're going to see that, but maybe I'll wear that on one of the incoming,

appoint people to the court like that. Now, by the way, adding you already is paying dividends in the merchandise Jordy, Jordy, my Salas attention, please. We have a tremendous idea. I want to see it like on the Michael Scott sign, like fuck the court, Emile Bové, legal AF. Absolutely. Well, and then when Adam Schiff, Senator Adam Schiff said, and I've done this in cross-examinations, when Adam Schiff said, did you say in the March hearing, as reported by Erez Raveni, the whistleblower,

did you tell them that they should just tell courts to go F themselves and go tell, and he says, I can't recall. So when I've done that, I'm like, the whistleblower, did you tell them that they should just tell courts to go F themselves and go tell, and he says, I can't recall. And if, so when I've done that, I've been like, I'll put that down, I'll put you down for a yes. That sounds like a yes. That sounds like a yes.

You're not sure if you said, I'll just have to say fuck you to the court order. Right. I use that phrase a lot for different institutions. So I can't remember that particular one, but, you know. They should just do what Michael Cohen did, one of our fellow podcasters here on Midas Dutch when he was being cross-examined in one of the Trump cases. And Todd Blanche, who's now our number two in the Department

of Justice, went through a series of things from podcasts, including Midas Dutch, including Lickle AF, that Michael had said about Trump. Michael had a great line that cracked the jury up. I had a New York Times reporter who did a whole article about the trial. And he did, Michael said, he would read it out loud. Did you call him a shit stain, this, that,

the other thing? And Michael took the jury and said, sounds like something I would say. Listen, I appreciate the honesty. Like I can't recall, but that sounds like me. Excuse me, Gary, I smoked, but I did not inhale. But for saying you want to deport people over judge's orders.

Exactly, well now you're seeing a little bit of a taste of this brand of pragmatic optimists that Rachel Cohen, along with her podcast partner Tiara Mack, are going to be bringing to the Legal IF YouTube channel. One of the reasons that I sort of picked Rachel to be with me today and sitting in for Karen Freeman at Nifilo is to continue to bring these amazing points of view.

It's not generational. I don't want anybody, oh, he brought a generation, whatever your generation is. Millennials. Millenn which is crazy. Oh, yeah. We're starting all over. We're back to the beginning. Yeah, right. We're back, batted around. We're back to the top of the order. It's not that. It's, as I said in one of my introductions for your shows, I said, you know, she speaks to all generations. It's just, you know, you just, you know,

you're just, you know, you're just, you know, you're just a little bit of a, you know, you know, you're just a little bit of a, you know, you're just a little bit of said, you know, she speaks to all generations. It's just, you know, you just have a voice that needs to be heard on a regular basis and I'm glad you're here for it. And there's a lot of ways to support what Rachel's doing,

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Just hit the free subscribe button. We don't have anything behind a paywall, but this demonstrates that you want and you need this kind of content at the intersection of law and politics. And we set up a whole channel, just as Rachel was very prescient about her decision to leave big law before her firm, Bentonite,

we decided we needed this channel before the election. And so in September, before November, when we saw some writing on the wall that we were not happy with, we said, we better get this channel up and running because this is gonna be a break the glass moment. And I've been so thrilled to have contributors like you join, so we've got Legal AF there.

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our show. And thank you, Oneskin. Welcome back to LegalAF at the Midweek. Michael Popok joined by the guest anchor today, Rachel Cohen. And thank you to our pro-democracy sponsors. Rachel, we're in the homestretch of our podcast. Thank you so much for agreeing at the last minute to help us out here. Good way to introduce you to our audience on a regular basis. And as I said before, Rachel will be on with or without her podcast partner and vice versa, Tiara Mack, with a new playlist podcast that we are there calling Pragmatic Optimists.

And I think after watching her for the last 45 minutes, you understand why they have called it that. We're not just kind of the Grim Reaper here. Oh, another bad thing happened today in the Trump administration in the world of constitutional rights. We're talking about what you can do about it. So let's talk about, you know, human guardrails in the form of federal judges. We've got Judge Moss in DC who listened closely to last Friday's Supreme Court decision

about, well, I can't use a nationwide injunction or maybe I can if there's states involved. There was a little bit of a little bit murky aspect of that decision. But I certainly can use a murky aspect of that decision. But I certainly can use a class action and an injunction. And this was about the southern border and Donald Trump declaring that anybody that came over the southern border, quote unquote, illegally, would never be able to apply for asylum, even though that's not what the asylum statute says. And Donald Trump just decided through executive order to just throw over the entire game board and come

up with his own rules as the, because he keeps calling everything an emergency and everything an invasion. Why don't you talk about what Judge Moss just did and then what are the ramifications of that for federal judges as a blueprint? I mean, I'm feeling incredibly optimistic about what Judge Moss did in this decision

because it's not so much that he reached the right decision because it's, I, while as you've alluded to previously was a finance associate in my former life, I did a lot of immigration work. It's something that I've always been extremely passionate about. And while the executive has plenary power, which means just a lot of disproportionate authority

when it comes to immigration, there are still statutes that govern how people can seek asylum. And that's what Judge Moss ultimately ruled on, was that you can't just say, we don't have to follow the asylum procedure anymore because we have the INA, the Immigration and Naturalization Act, which outlines how asylum works. And you can't come in and decide, well, okay, that's pretty cumbersome. So I just don't want to do it that way. And instead, I don't

want to follow the INA. And also any attorney will tell you that relying on international law is always going to be a little bit of a challenging path forward in argument. But something like the Convention Against Torture is grounded in international law and international responsibilities that the United States has to not deport people to countries where the standard is, it's more likely than not that they will face torture if they are deported

to those countries. And so all of that to say, I really appreciated that the judge focused on the fact that the Trump administration is working as hard as it can to just throw out process and procedure and jump to the end. It's that same idea of you have a legal way of doing this. Many of the people, though not all, that they have deported over judges' orders

were likely deportable if that kind of, um, full legal process had been able to play out. But the Trump administration is rushing and rushing and rushing, and I struggle to believe that it is for any reason other than not wanting checks on their power. And I think that that's a very dangerous path to go down. And so I know that people will often kind of make exceptions or point

to really law-abiding migrants as to the people that it's bad that we're deporting without process. But I think that Judge Moss's decision cuts to the heart of what the real underlying issue is, which is no matter what it is you may or may not have done, if you do not have process to present your case, the government can say whatever you've done. They can say you're deportable.

They can say you've committed a crime, and then just act however they would like. And so I think that the big takeaway that I have from kind of a rights preservation and preservation of asylum perspective is that. And the second kind of procedural takeaway, which you've alluded to, is that Judge Moss responded very quickly to the decision that we saw come out in CASA last week

from the Supreme Court related to birthright citizenship, because that was ultimately a very procedural decision, right? Saying that, it didn't say anything about birthright citizenship, because that was ultimately a very procedural decision, right, saying that it didn't say anything about birthright citizenship, really. It instead focused on this nationwide injunction or universal injunction that lower courts have been using to block unconstitutional or illegal Trump actions when those actions are likely to result in irreparable harm to people

as they are rolled out and litigated. And so I think that one of the, it's a tough line to walk when all of us were talking about the Casa decision last week and over the weekend, because this is pragmatic optimism at play. I never wanna act as though things are, you know, hunky dory and Pollyanna and, oh, actually, it was a procedural decision, and so it's not a problem at all.

That it's very, very scary what we see unfolding, particularly aimed at migration in the United States right now. But it is important to be specific about what the Casa decision, the birthright citizenship decision, actually did and its impacts and that they are restricted to that kind of universal injunction decision because there are so many people who are terrified that they might no longer be citizens

or that there are impacts related to their citizenship that have not been born out. And even yet again, not trying to say that people shouldn't be frightened, but it's important that people shouldn't be frightened, but it's important that people know that they do, at least in theory, still have these rights and privileges. And I think that we, Samuel Alito, Justice Alito,

I think in a footnote pointed out that there's this big class action work around that judges can use to issue injunctions that will functionally operate very similarly to nationwide or universal injunctions if they cover everyone that is potentially impacted. And I'm very heartened to see Judge Moss already putting that into action because contrary to what the Supreme Court wants you to believe, it's actually completely normal and a feature of our justice system that lower court judges are able to block federal action from implementation

when it is likely unconstitutional. So I don't know kind of if there's more that you want to say on especially that injunction point or other kind of takeaways from judges. Yeah, well, I think it was Kavanaugh because Kavanaugh was the one that said, just use a class action and a preliminary injunction. It's the equivalent of a nation wide injunction.

Alito is the one that said, oh, we don't want abuse in class actions. We're gonna keep a close eye on those federal judges. Cause he's always the grim reaper. Right. No, I think we're watching this play out. Judge Boardman has a case on birthright citizenship. She had actually turned to Mr. Rosenberg for the Department of Justice and say, I just want to ask a question.

I've set a timeline for when I'm going to consider the class certification and the ultimate merits ruling about birthright Citizenship and preliminary injunction which is timed out to be through July 27 Are you going to be removing babies born in the United States and sending them outside of the United States? While I'm making my decision and he said no, but of course the judge doesn't believe him She said put it in writing So the next day, yesterday,

they filed their one page piece of paper, which gave nobody comfort. It didn't say, all they had to write was, we understand the court's concern. We know what we've done in the past. However, when it comes to the babies, we're not gonna do anything until this court rules. They didn't say that.

Well, I mean, even if they did, and here's the pragmatic piece. If you read the Raminia, the whistleblower kind of letter, I certainly wouldn't trust that piece of paper, but don't let me cut you off. Absolutely, absolutely. So she's gonna have to probably speed up things here, certify class even provisionally,

get that adjunction going. Now these are the things you have to do while Judge DeBose up in Massachusetts found a way around, you know, listen, everybody's reading and trying to learn what the parameters, the lines they need to color within because of the CASA decision. And she came up with, I'm going to issue an injunction to stop the destruction of the Department of Health and Human Services. I'm not going to call it a nationwide injunction, but I got 19 states in front of me,

and there's enough of an argument that if they didn't answer the question, if states, multiple states, or the plaintiff, does the court have the ability to issue an injunction that is in effect nationwide without running afoul of the Casa decision. And she just said, because if you don't take that, then what you are left with would be the following dystopic world. A federal judge can see a constitutional violation, an abuse of power by Donald Trump, can declare it, but then can't do anything about it while it's on appeal.

Can't stop it, can't stay it, can't enjoin it. It has to get to the United States Supreme Court with just a declaration while the Supreme Court declares the law of the land and decides. But think of all the human harm that's happening in between for months or years. So how can you take away the equitable inherent authority of a federal judge to stop something, you know,

by just calling it through a feat of alchemy, a nationwide injunction? See, that's a problem. Oh, big time. Yeah, and I think that it's so necessary and heartening to see people coming up with creative solutions because as I think, as has probably come through, that is very much the GOP is coming up with creative harms.

And so we do have to come back and meet that with arguments that are a little bit outside of the box so that we can kind of run the clock here. Even if all we do is delay things from implementation, hopefully that's not the case, but even if it is, that is real necessary mitigation that needs to be done for people that are being harmed today for babies that are being born today.

And I think that, I mean, I'm certainly not Barden, Wisconsin, but when I was reading the decision related to the Wisconsin abortion law, I was struck by how maybe not creative, but I thought that the legal argument used was novel at least to me. And they admitted, you know, this hasn't been used too terribly often, but I do think it's a good segue into that. Yeah. Take it from there. Four to three decision led by liberals.

Supreme Court Justice Protasewicz, who's been on the Midas Touch Network, ran on a platform very open. I'm going to be for women's rights, reproductive rights and abortion rights. She got elected and the case came up. We also, the liberals, the moderates won the seat that That will, she didn't vote on it, Justice Collins. She didn't vote on it, but she will continue the four to three majority through 2028. But talk about what Wisconsin did with this inherent repealing concept from a law

in the books from 174 years ago. Yeah, so we have this law in the books that's banning abortion functionally from, as you said, I think it's 1849. And there were all of these legal arguments that were put forth. And I don't know how this works in other states or if there is an analog in other states,

but at least in Wisconsin, they ruled that the legislation that has been enacted in the interim related to regulation of abortion and in some cases, criminalization of abortion in more limited circumstances and everything else, that that functionally repeals, that is a legislative, I'm looking for the exact, implied repeal of the law on the books that banned abortion.

And that is a fascinating legal argument that kind of allowed them to root in Wisconsin case law, this implied repeal because there had been so many. It's similar in some ways, I think, to almost a preemption argument, which is where the federal law kind of crowds out state law and something, you go with the federal law to really oversimplify and distill that down.

But their argument is that the number of other regulations and laws and statutes and even, you know, in some cases, criminal statutes related to abortion in, or their opinion rather, related to abortion in the state of Wisconsin are an implied repeal of the overarching criminalization of abortion. And so they're holding it to be just a fetus-eyed statute, so functionally criminalizing the non-consensual termination of someone's pregnancy. I don't know if you've seen stuff like that before.

It was new to me, but I also have not worked extensively on state law issues. Well, listen, all these springing statutes, you know, many of the Republican states, because they've been trying to get Roe versus Wade repealed for so long that they already had on the books. Well, a lot of our states have these old-timey anti-abortion,

anti-women issues, statutes on the books. So we'll just pass a law, it's easier, that says if Roe versus Wade is ever repealed, boom, these statutes spring back to life. And we're like, oh, these submarine issues, right? As soon as they got the Dops decision, these springing statutes popped up in a lot of different places, including in Wisconsin. Fortunately, in Wisconsin, so the argument goes, the state legislature in the last 50 years has regulated abortion, but allowed it to continue through the point of viability of the fetus and so

That was the major argument like well that may have been 18 to 1849 before the Civil War. However Recognizing that they were effectively repealing that that thing they have just been Regulating it and allowing it in Wisconsin. So yeah, I I think it was the, I mean, there was a lot of different, with the trial judge, it used a whole different analysis. Yeah. To reach her conclusion on it. But I think this is the right one.

And frankly, it is the final word. This is the United, sorry, this is the Wisconsin Supreme Court, four to three. That's it. You don't get another shot. You don't get another declaration. That is the law of Wisconsin, as long as the liberals are in the majority, which they are through 2028,

hopefully for beyond. And this is the type of work that state, but just to remind people, in case they don't know or tell them if they don't know it, many Supreme Courts in the United States are elected positions. Even if they're appointed by the governor or a panel, there's retention votes that come up. Many state court trial level positions are also elected.

And so I know a lot of people go into the election booth, and they're like, I don't know any of these people on here. But we, you know, we don't have that luxury anymore. Like, we don't know these. And we'll help, you know, we'll help. We'll get material up. We'll direct you so that you get information about who's who. You're not just guessing off of names.

But election, pardon me, election and judges matter. Not just at the federal level with the Supreme Court, but at the state level where a lot of this hard work of protecting democracy is happening. Right, Rachel? Very much so. And I think that it's important to remember that a lot of those kind of, at least in states where I've lived,

like Ohio, that have elected judges, excuse me, there is no party designation next to those people on the ballots. And so it's important that you do your research in advance and that you have, in fact, gotten a sample ballot or looked into things from people that you trust. And I think that it's also just a nice way to wrap all the way around because what brought Tiara and I together originally was

when I was living in Rhode Island. I was an educator there for four years, and we were working on Rhode Island similarly had kind of this springing abortion criminalization statute, and we were working on repeal of it and constantly told that it wasn't actually that important that we get it repealed, that Roe wasn't going anywhere. This is back in 2017, 2018. And so that was ultimately successful. But something that I really like about the Wisconsin

kind of reasoning here is that I don't know if there are other immediately apparent kind of high risk areas that those judges were thinking of, but this is an argument that they can use in future if other longstanding precedents are repealed at the federal level that the Wisconsin legislature has legislated around. And that's heartening.

And again, just a creative strategy that definitely rooted in law. They've used it before. There's many citations, but I think it's forward thinking about where we need to be kind of shoring up defenses. Sorry about that. Absolutely. Thank you, Rachel Cohen for being a good sport

and joining as a anchor today on the midweek edition of Legal AF. Got some great news while we came on the air today. The new podcast rankings for this week are out for YouTube and Legal AF climbed to number 22 of all podcasts, not just law and politics, just all podcasts. Brothers are at number two, we're at number 22, our highest ranking yet, and I'm sure with the addition

of people and talent like you, we're only gonna climb even higher, there's so many ways to support, right? Aren't you glad that you're like the luckiest? I'm in at the ground floor, Popa. There is people. Well, floor five, I don't wanna take that when you've been doing all this work. I think you came in at floor 22,

but we're gonna get to number one. And that's really a reflection, and we have deep and abiding love and respect for our audience who have been with us through thick and through thin, through it all, in this community joining together and vibrating at the same frequency. I see comments in my hot takes and on shows like this

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because we got bills to pay, so to speak, and lights to keep on, since we're completely independent with no outside investors, is it's simple. Everything's free. It's free, subscribe. Nothing's behind a paywall. Might as touch on Legal AF, the YouTube channel.

Download the podcast for Legal AF. That helps on the audio side, but you can use some more downloads, some more five-star reviews over there. We're doing great on YouTube, but we'll do better with organic growth. Let people know about our YouTube. Let's let's use 22 as the floor, not the ceiling for our ranking

on the podcast on the YouTube for podcasting. And then we got the substack for legal AF. Of course, we've got the Patreon for legal AF. Of course, I'm going to drive my producer crazy. We've got the we got the Popeye from the Popeye from soft. I'm gonna drive my producer crazy. We've got the, we've got the Popak from, the Popak from Zof. We got, forget that one. We got the Legal AF YouTube channel

where it's a home for a lot of amazing contributors, including now Rachel Cohen and Tiara Mack. So until the Saturday edition, we're gonna have to figure out Saturday edition, Rachel, because I'm traveling. It is the day after the 4th of July. We'll make something happen. I'm sure something will happen.

You might get another call. I'm around. Ideally a little earlier in the morning, if it's a Saturday. Yeah, we'll see. I might be able to do a live with them. That'll be fun. But in any event, thank you to our audience

for your passion and your fervent support of what we're doing here. We got your back, but we know you have ours. So until our next edition of Legal AF or any contribution related to Legal AF, I've got Rachel Cohen and this is Michael Popak. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers.