Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Pissed Off Judge About to Go Berserk on Trump After Post

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

In response to a Federal Judge blocking Trump’s latest efforts to destroy Harvard by denying it the ability to recruit foreign students, Trump has gone another holiday rager, posting on Memorial Day that he will try to divert about $500 million dollars in funding meant for bio medical research, to trade schools presumably in Red States. Michael Popok takes a careful look at Judge Burrows' ruling, Trump’s response, and the likely outcome. Allermi: For 60% off your order, head to https://Allermi.com and use code 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 Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Buried in Donald Trump's latest Memorial Day screed, attacking fellow Americans as scum and calling federal judges US-hating judges is another attack on Harvard University, the oldest university in America and one of the leading research institutes, many medical breakthroughs, including in cancer and in other infectious diseases,

comes out of Harvard University. Now Donald Trump wants to take another $450 million away from them to punish them because they won't bend over and allow the Trump administration to impair their academic independence, run the university for them, tell them what they can and can't teach, tell them who they can and cannot admit. Harvard is not Harvard, for instance, without its international students. And now Donald Trump has done two things. One, he has said that $450 million that was going for effectively biomedical

research is now going gonna go to trade schools in America, like I'm all for plumbers and electricians. I just don't think they're the substitute at this moment for biomedical research to help people live. And when he's busy doing that, which is on top of billions of other dollars of threat and cuts, as you may know, or I'll tell you here, he has effectively revoked,

except for a federal judge intervention on Friday, revoked Harvard's ability to have any foreign students at all attend its university. Harvard is not Harvard without its international students. That's their words, not mine. Let me pull it all together on this Memorial Day hot take here on Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. On Friday, and I love the pairing here, the Cosmic Justice, Jenner & Block, a law firm that is on or is on Donald Trump's crap list and is basically made persona non grata and radioactive by Donald Trump,

trying to bar Jenner and Block from doing any business in front of the government, which was blocked last week by another federal court, is one of the major law firms representing Harvard University. This is why Donald Trump goes after the big law and big law firms, because he doesn't want to see them

doing amazing legal work in cases against him. And they filed last week on the 23rd of May a motion for temporary restraining order because they're arguing to the judge, Judge Allison Burroughs, that the revocation by the Department of Homeland Security of the visa program allowing foreign students to attend Harvard at all is the death knell for Harvard, both financially, their ability to have a diverse class, and otherwise. And just to do the math before we get into the order of Judge Burroughs, which in one page blocked the attempt by Donald Trump to deny Harvard the ability to accept foreign students. And this is all under the phony guise

and the false flag of preventing anti-Semitism on campus. Look, I'm all for, I'm all for if there's a terrorist link between people in the streets and what they're saying and there actually are terrorists, all right, get them off the streets. But like students and graduate students with bed sheets spray painted in a courtyard, that's called the First Amendment as far as I'm concerned. Even if I find what they're saying to be distasteful, I'll defend the right for them to say it. Now just so you can do the math here, there are about 7,000 or so foreign students on Harvard's campus. And the

makeup, forget, you know, anti-Semitic, pro-Pamas, anti-Israel activists on campus. What is that, like 6, 10, 30? But the rest, one-third of the Harvard business school, one-third of the Harvard business school, one third of the Harvard Business School, you know, the competitor school for the one that Donald Trump went to at Wharton at University of Pennsylvania, one third are international students. They are not carrying around, they're not living in the tent city to protest the Israel war with Hamas. One half of the Harvard Kennedy School of Diplomacy, one half is made up of, you guessed it, foreign students.

That's why Harvard keeps saying Harvard's not Harvard without international students. Donald Trump wants to take control of faculty, wants to decide who makes tenure, wants to decide what students are let in, and is going after the very lifeblood of all these feeder sources to keep Harvard alive and trying to kill it. Here's what the motion for temporary restraining order that was just filed by Jenner and Block,

yes, the same firm that is itself the recipient of a temporary restraining order successfully in a preliminary injunction and permanent injunction that says that the Trump administration is violating their First Amendment rights, their due process rights, by making them unable to do business with clients who have business before the federal government. Here's what they said in their filing and then I'll read to you from the order and tie it all together with this new Memorial Day attack by Donald Trump. This is from the motion for temporary restraint Order. For more than 70 years, Harvard University has been certified by the federal government to enroll international

students under the F-1 visa program, and it's long been designated as an exchange visitor program sponsor. Harvard has, over time, developed programs and degrees tailored to these international students, invested millions to recruit them and integrate them into all aspects of the Harvard community. Remember, they have competitors, Harvard. Yes, they're the oldest university in America, but they have competitors both in the Ivy League and outside the Ivy League who are recruiting. Yesterday, the government abruptly revoked Harvard certification to host these students

without due process. The government's revocation of Harvard's certification was not a product, the motion continues, of the ordinary review process set out in detailed regulations that define the limited circumstances under which a certification may be revoked. On its face, the revocation is part of the government's broader effort to retaliate against Harvard for its refusal to surrender its academic independence. In response to the government's disagreement with the perceived viewpoints of Harvard, its faculty, and its students, the government issued a series of demands requiring Harvard to submit to government oversight of the faculty it hires, the students it admits, and the

courses it teaches. When Harvard declined, the administration unleashed the full power of the federal government, freezing billions in federal grants, proposing to eliminate Harvard's tax-exempt status, opening multiple federal investigations, and terminating its participation in the visa programs. Yesterday, the government made good on the threat and did so via a letter that makes plain that the Department of Homeland Security is not even pretending to follow its own regulations. Revoking its certification is unlawful many times over. It is one of the pillars of our constitutional system that the government cannot invoke legal sanctions and other means of coercion to police private speech, especially when the government's

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promo code LegalAF for 60% off. Make sure you use my promo code LegalAF so they know I sent you. And that's where the judges come in. So while Donald Trump and I'm going to put up his new screed next attacks the Harvard Trump, and I'm going to put up his new screed next, attacks the Harvard University and says, I'm going to take $450 million effectively away from biomedical research to help ordinary Americans survive and give it to trade schools so I guess I can find an electrician quicker or a plumber. Again, I'm all for trade schools. I'm just not for siphoning off money as a penalty and a punishment of Harvard University

because you don't like its First Amendment expression and you want to effectively have a government takeover of a private university. This is what Judge, it was so easy for Judge Burroughs after a small hearing, that this is what she ordered, order granting plaintiffs motion for temporaryraining Order. The TRO is justified. Accordingly, defendants and anyone acting in concert or participation with defendants are enjoined from implementing, instituting, maintaining, or giving effect to the revocation of plaintiffs SEVP certification. That's the ability to have foreign students. Signed Judge Allison Burroughs, United States District Court, Massachusetts. This will

now go up to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits over Massachusetts. Then it will end up at the United States Supreme Court, I don't think with an emergency application, although it could be. I mean, if the Supreme Court, where many of the people went to law school at Harvard, and even undergraduate at Harvard, including the Chief Justice. They think this is an emergency and they wanna undo this block to allow Donald Trump to cut off federal funding as a retaliation against the university

because he doesn't like what they're doing on campus related to attacks on students. There's other ways to police that issue, by the way. By the way, I know there's a rumor, which I love, and if only it were true, that Barron Trump is only going to my alma mater, NYU, because he was rejected by Harvard. And I would love that to be true.

I just, and I've sourced this out a number of ways, including organizations like Snoop that look at these things very carefully. And there's no facts to support that he got a rejection letter and wanted to go to Harvard. Look, the entire family, the Trump family, went to Georgetown and University of Pennsylvania. None of them really have a connection with Harvard.

There's rumors about why Ivanka didn't do well at Georgetown along with when she met her husband, Jared, but we'll leave that for another day. However, there was never a Harvard link with the Trump family. It would have been really unusual for Barron to have applied there. Penn, I thought he was definitely gonna go to Wharton and where his father went, or at the very least Georgetown and stay in Washington, but he's a mama's boy. He's a boy. He's not busy running as the second or third Freder in the family, the family's

crypto business, he wanted to stay in Manhattan. He wanted to live at Fifth Avenue in the Trump Tower and go to school down Fifth Avenue on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 10th Street where I lived when I was in a dorm to go to NYU. It's where a lot of rich kids go who want to stay at home or stay near home. So I wasn't that shocked that Mommy Melania, who barely is in the White House and wanted to stay in New York herself, wanted to keep close tabs on her son and didn't want to be schlepping up to Boston during the academic year.

But it has a ring of, it's truthy as Stephen Colbert would say, it's like JD Vance on the couch. I get it, I get it. But we've got bigger fish to fry here. Because if Harvard falls, we all fall. This is not just an attack on Harvard, on academic freedom. This is an assault on American democracy and one of the major pillars. And we've got to call it out.

So I'm gonna kind of pull all this together. Donald Trump's attacks on Harvard and trying to cut off their funding and decertify them and get international students and again paint with a broad brush and tar and feather all foreign students and make them all just like he does all Venezuelans, all Mexicans, all people from El Salvador are criminals, all people from Cuba. And these are his voting blocks. The Hispanic community voted in large numbers for Trump.

But I never understood why. It's completely against their self-interest. You see how he treats immigration. I live in Florida now. I lived here years ago and I came back. And Florida is a state of, made up of immigrants. I mean, 70% of Miami-Dade County is Hispanic, and 50% of that is Cuban, with a fair number of Venezuelans and people from Brazil and Mexicans and Haitians and the rest. And yet we have a governor who's anti-immigration.

We have a president that is anti-immigration. And this shouldn't work in our America, an America that's getting blacker and browner every year, not less, not whiter. So we'll continue to follow how other universities have also supported Harvard. But also, shout out to Jenner and Block. They have been working hard and winning to make sure that they're in the game, that they're not sidelined from democracy, that they're able to defend institutions like Harvard and the next Harvard because they had to get themselves off of a list.

And they successfully did that because they've been get themselves off of a list and they successfully did that because they've been the subject of Trump's ire and his retribution. I'll continue to follow it all right here. I'm back on the Midas Touch Network. Thank you much from our family for all the condolences and sympathies related to my mother's untimely passing about a week ago. Appreciate all of you. It helped get us through. We're still in a dark period, but it helped. Your love and support has certainly helped us. You're on the MidasTouch Network. Take a moment, hit the free subscribe button for MidasTouch Legal AF channel.

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