Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Newsom Shocks Trump with Sneak Attack Lawsuit​

Episode Date: April 19, 2025

California Governor Newsom, who presides over the 5th largest economy in the world, is taunting Trump with a new filing, asking him “what are you scared of” as Trump tries to run away from a federal suit filed in California and assigned to a Biden appointed judge to declare his tariff policies unconstitutional, and trying to find a Trump judge on the US Court of International Trade in NY to take the case instead, Michael Popok explains the new taunting.. and removal motion filed — and why it is likely doomed to fail. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you running scared? I don't mean the audience. I mean Donald Trump. That's the question that the governor of California Gavin Newsom, the leader of the fifth largest economy in the world is asking in his social media post. You think the president is the only one who can talk people with social media posts with, you know, no, Gavin Newsom can do it too as one of the leading candidates for the 2028 election and on the heels of filing a new lawsuit that he filed just 48 hours ago in the Northern District of California Federal Court in order to challenge Donald Trump usurpation of Congress's exclusive core constitutional function

under Article 1 to impose tariffs. That's not a presidential core function. That's a Congress core function. And now finally somebody's filed a lawsuit to challenge it We've been talking about it as an academic exercise for the last two weeks But it was it was California's governor along with his attorney general Rob Bonta that filed the suit But Donald Trump doesn't want to be with the judge that was appointed. Oh, it's a Biden appointed judge She's a very fine judge

But he doesn't he doesn't want to be in front of her. Judge Jacqueline Corley up in the Northern District in San Francisco. Now that he's seen the writing on the wall, oh no, I've got to take the case somewhere else. Where can I take it? Oh, there's a court in New York called the Court of International Trade. Oh, we're going to have a little pop-pock legal AF breakout session here. Court of International Trade with seven people. There's some Trumpers on there, aren't there? Let's try to get it there. Yeah, let's break it down here on the Midas Touch Network and on legal AF. We had a lot of discussion and debate and breakdown and analysis about Gavin Newsom's filing, right? It was smart, smart filing,

because the power that Donald Trump cites, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, IEPA, it doesn't allow for tariffs. It's never allowed for tariffs. No president has ever tried to use it for tariffs because tariffs are the exclusive constitutional core function of, wait for it, Congress and Article 1 power, Article 1, Section 8, where if you go through it, and I'm not going to take the moment, but if you go through it, it talks'm not going to take the moment, but if you go through it, it talks about Congress's power to do taxes, duties, imposts, impositions, and excises. Those are all tariffs. Nowhere is that for the president. The president has his own Article 2 powers. Presidency has their own Article 2 powers, core constitutional powers, you know, make treaties, you know,

commander in chief, that kind of stuff, you know, faithfully execute the laws of Congress, but not this one. Now, Congress in 1978 created IEPA gave the presidency one bundle, one stick from its bundle and said here, if there's an emergency, a war, an economic emergency, a real emergency, you could do certain things related to the economy and some things that kind of rub up against our duties our our role but You have to you have to call it within the lines. Of course, Donald Trump said I'm gonna do tariffs under IEPA wrong So the lawsuit gets filed no surprise on Northern District of California, not only because it's a California lawsuit, because he could have filed it wherever

Sacramento's federal court is, LA or that kind of thing, but the reason for Northern District is it's filled with judges that are doing God's work in imposing injunctions against the Trump administration. Not only was the number one injunction, it's so hard to remember which one it was, but I do know the number one injunction this administration, this particular administration was hit with five days after its administration was on birthright citizenship. Judge Kofenor, where? Northern District of California, San Francisco. And it's no surprise, of course, that's now up at the United States Supreme Court with a big hearing in May. But even

the very first injunction in the first Trump administration 45 about Muslim travel ban, Northern District of California, it's the place to go. You know, if you're fishing for bass, you go to a hole that's known for bass fishes, and bass fish, sorry, fishes. It's been a long day, Pope people. So here we go. They file the suit. It's right. It's a declaratory judgment action. It's asking for the judge and it's been assigned a judge Corley to take a look at the Constitution, all of the case law in the area and say that

Donald Trump and his attempt to impose tariffs is unconstitutional. And we've got an injured party with standing California $3 trillion GDP, fifth largest in the world, getting hammered with these Mexico, Canada, China and the rest tariffs in global trade. It sits at the intersection of the US and global trade, especially Pacific Rim. So we got an injured party. Good filing, great filing. Donald Trump's scared.

Doesn't want to have Judge Corley. Peeked under the hood, said, no, I don't want Judge Corley. Where else can we put it? Well, it's tariffs, somebody said in his little round table, his little inner circle. Tariffs, tariffs. That should go exclusively in another Article III court,

a specialty court that sits in New York, right? I think it's at one federal plaza or somewhere like that, the Court of International Trade, right? The Court of International Trade has seven members. Unlike the Supreme Court that sits always on banc, meaning all nine, all the justices sit in here, the Court of International Trade rarely sits on bunk. They sit in groups of generally one. One member of that court, like a federal judge, hears the issue. Maybe three under special circumstances, but no more than

that and never seven. Now why does Donald Trump want to put it there? Let me give you the stats. There's three Trump appointed judges, three Obama appointed judges, and one Biden. So Donald Trump looks at his odds. He's like, well, I got a three in seven chance. I mean, it's better. I mean, it's not 50-50, but it ain't bad. It's 40% or so of getting a Trump judge. And I know I got 100% chance of having a Biden judge where the case is right now. Get me out of there. Or as Gavin Newsom put it, you're running scared? Of course he's running scared.

You know, it's got to be attorneys general in the 22 blue states that are gonna bring these types of cases. We've been saying it since the election. I mean, literally on November 6th, here on Legal AF and on the Midas Touch Network we were saying all hope is not lost. Do not surrender hope here. Right? Justice is done here. We are the foot soldiers for democracy and to protect our Constitution and so are

those 22 attorneys general led by Letitia James and Rob Bonta for California and they along with a lot of other attorneys general, are filing these suits in multiple jurisdictions, getting overlapping injunctions, and their batting average is tremendous in this administration. It's over 90%. They've got 65 or so injunctions.

They got over 110 cases. Sure, they've had some losses at the appellate level, and at the Supreme Court level of the 10 cases that have been filed or so, it's gone 3-2 in favor of Trump for now but that's not bad batting average either. These cases are important and where they are tried is important too. So if what Trump did and this is the report here is he filed a what we call a notice of removal. here is he filed a what we call a notice of removal. It's like a venue transfer. When you file a case in the wrong court, if it were state court and you needed to take it to federal court, that device is called a removal notice. You are removing it from state to federal court.

Then why, you may ask, since we're in federal courts, is it still removal? Because you're taking it from a general jurisdiction article three court in California to a specialty court created by Congress and the judiciary to deal with international trade sitting in New York. And so that would be a removal kind of it's all within the article three powers judges, but it's moving it over to a specialty court. You could call it a venue transfer, you can call it removal either one. That's gonna be considered by, look, if it goes to the chief judge

of the International Trade Court, that's an Obama appointee. And they'll say thumb up or thumb down on jurisdiction. If they say thumb down, they'll deny the notice of removal, the motion for removal, it'll be litigated. California will have the opportunity to come in with its lawyers.

They have a whole group of federal litigation lawyers within their state attorney general office because states have a lot of federal litigation because of the nature of our federalism. So don't worry. And I'm sure they have some trade experts and trade lawyer experts in California, given the tremendous size of its economy

as it points towards the Pacific rim and internally. It's one of the bread baskets for the world and for America. It generates tremendous amount of agriculture and of course, technology and other exports. So they will decide the Court of International Trade at a hearing. It'll be brief. They probably hold oral argument. We'll report on it here on the Midas Touch Network. And then if it stumps down, it goes back to Judge Corley. Now for now, she can't take another move. While the issue is being litigated on the removal, which means her jurisdiction, she can't take any other move.

So she sits in stasis, a pin in it, when the removal is denied, I don't know, week, two weeks, three weeks, a month, if it's denied, she automatically holds a status conference, gets this case back up and running. My guess is 70-30, it's gonna go back to the federal court in California. Because when you look at the exclusive jurisdiction

that was given to the Court of International Trade, it's really about, oh, you don't like your tariff or your customs duty, and you're fighting it out with the Customs Bureau, the Customs Enforcement Bureau or something like that. But when you're talking about fundamental separation of powers, a state versus the federal government, that over tariffs at the most fundamental constitutional core separation

of power issues, that's federal court. That's general jurisdiction, subject matter jurisdiction, federal judge, article three, not specialty court over, I don't like how much I'm getting charged for this freight coming in, judge. That's different. See what I mean? So that state and fed should stay in the court

that it was filed in by California. I know that Gavin Newsom and his lawyers knew that they were gonna try this and has already outfoxed him. And that's why they're taunting him. It's a great move by Newsom in this particular area. And it shows you how weak Donald Trump is. Oh, let me try to get a Trump judge.

I don't think it's gonna help him here, but we'll continue to follow it all right here on the MidasTouch Network and of course on Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Look, do me a favor. This is one of those plea moments, plea deals. Here's the plea deal. Come over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel as well. Hit the subscribe button. We went over 550,000 subscribers in seven months. We're trying to get to a million in a year. We're going to do it with your help. And then we got that podcast, Legal layoff the podcast. We talk a lot about the Midas Touch podcast at number one. It is amazing.

We're at number 10. And in between is a whole bunch of like, bro podcasters, MAGA podcasters, right wing podcasters. Let's crush them. Let's move us up to number two behind the Midas Touch podcast. Give us one and two on the podium. That's what I'm asking for. I'm Michael Popock until my next reporting. In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the Legal AF YouTube

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