Legal AF by MeidasTouch - The Intersection with Michael Popok Full Episode - 7/8/2025
Episode Date: July 9, 2025Michael Popok is back at the Intersection with breaking news at the hot corner of law and politics and tackles: 1) Trump's Big Beautiful Bill's attempts to defund and put Planned Parenthood out of b...usiness being blocked by a Big Beautiful Temporary Restraining Order; 2) Judge Xinis telling the DOJ, effectively, that they can't be trusted and ordering that they go under oath in the witness box this week about the Abrego Garcia case; 3) how one Federal Judge in Boston is single handily blocking the Trump Administration's Birth Right Citizenship cancelling executive order; 4) Marco Rubio is a "Deeper Fake" than we thought with a new Signal scandal rocking the Trump Administration and undermining our national security, and so much more. Support our Sponsors: Tushy: Over 2 million butts love TUSHY. Get 10% off Tushy with the code LEGALAF at https://hellotushy.com/LEGALAF! #tushypod Moink: Keep American farming going by signing up at https://MoinkBox.com/LEGALAF RIGHT NOW and listeners of this show get FREE WINGS for LIFE! Check out The Popok Firm at: https://thepopokfirm.com Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN?sub_confirmation=1 Legal AF Substack: https://substack.com/@legalaf Follow Legal AF on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/legalafmtn.bsky.social Follow Michael Popok on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mspopok.bsky.social Subscribe to the Legal AF by MeidasTouch podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/legal-af-by-meidastouch/id1580828595 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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Well, you're here again on The Intersection. And so am I. I'm Michael Popak, and we do
this podcast only on the Midas Touch Network. I'm traveling, but I don't have the luxury of taking time out of
defending democracy, defending our constitution, or our constitutional republic. So here we go.
Let's start right off with CBS Paramount slash Skydance settling with Donald Trump. That settlement
is getting smellier by the moment. We've got new reporting coming out that there's a side deal.
It's not just the $16 million that the family
of Sumner Redstone owning Paramount is apparently
going to be paying to the Trump administration
for doing absolutely nothing wrong in their reporting.
They didn't even do reporting.
They did an interview with Kamala Harris
and Donald Trump doesn't like the way it was edited
because they shrunk and shortened up her answers
the way they do for anybody else
while making the entire interview available
online separately.
What's this really about?
This is really about just a bribery scandal.
The Donald Trump got back into power,
used his Federal Communications Commission
headed by Brendan Carr to squeeze the balls
of Sumner Redstone and Sherry Redstone,
Sumner Redstone's family and Sherry Redstone, his daughter,
who wanted to do a deal that needed regulatory approval
between her company and Skydance, owned by, wait for it,
David Ellison.
Who's David Ellison?
He's the young son of Larry Ellison,
who owns Oracle, a huge Donald Trump supporter.
So the young David Ellison, I mean, this is right out of,
this would be the fifth season of succession
if there was one on HBO.
David Ellison at Skydance,
I don't think he's ever run a company
of the size of Paramount, wants to do the deal and buy it.
They need regulatory approval.
Donald Trump gets back in power and said,
I'm not giving regulatory approval through FCC
unless there's a major payment made to Trump.
And so that's why Sherry Redstone needs to make the payment
because she needs to make this deal in order to get cash
for her assets she inherited from her father who died.
And so who is the victim in all this
besides the American people?
60 Minutes used to be the crown jewel of the Tiffany network.
Remember when CBS and CBS News was known
as the Tiffany network, Edward R. Murrow's network?
They're all spinning in their graves
for having made this settlement.
But now the new reporting is,
it's not just the $16 million in cash
to Donald Trump effectively. There's not just the $16 million in cash to Donald Trump effectively.
There's another 15 to $20 million
in public service announcement ads
that was promised to Donald Trump and the administration,
according to an insider in reporting,
including through a Rupert Murdoch newspaper, by the way,
that that 15 to $20 million in public service ads
are going to be for the benefit of anything
Donald Trump wants to have advertised on the network.
So now when you're watching CBS,
one of your favorite shows,
you're going to see an ad
that's run for the Trump administration,
bragging about the Trump administration.
And who's bragging about that side deal?
Apparently, David Ellison.
So David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison,
the owner of Oracle comes up with the great idea
that when he finally gets control of CBS,
he's going to force it down its throat,
public service announcements and effective campaign ads
for MAGA and Donald Trump.
Does anybody not see this?
Who doesn't see this $30 million in total payments
and compensation and consideration to be a bribe
to the Trump administration to get them to approve
give them the regulatory approvals for the transaction.
And the fact that there's this close link again
between one of these tech bros, I mean, the original tech bro
of Larry Ellison and his son,
who I'm sure he's the puppet master for, David Ellison,
and gave him a lot of the money to start Skydance,
which is now buying Paramount.
If anybody doesn't think this is basically insider trading
and a bribery scandal all wrapped into one,
tell me in comments.
I think this is why people are on independent media.
I think this is what attracts you to Midas Touch,
to Legal AF, to shows like The Intersection.
I'm not controlled by corporate media.
Sumner Redstone's family's not rolling up
Midas Touch Network or buying us.
We have no outside investors for a reason.
And now you see how it influences journalistic integrity
because CBS just threw its journalistic integrity
into the trash or at least Paramount,
its parent company did.
And through 60 minutes, which used to be highly respected,
the crown jewel of the Tiffany network
is now in the trash as well.
And so we've got that settlement.
Now I want to turn to a new development related to,
this is no easy segue here, Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood was on the balls of its backside
about 10 days ago, when the United States Supreme Court
in a case we call Medina, and all this is up,
these kind of cases I'm talking about are all up
on the legal AF sub stack.
A great way to support this podcast, by the way.
So the case of Medina comes out,
and we all have a collective sigh,
and it puts Planned Parenthood potentially in life support
because South Carolina had cut the Medicaid funding
between the state and Planned Parenthood.
Now let me just get rid of all the misinformation
out there about Planned Parenthood
that could be used against you
when you're having your conversations
around the kitchen table, in the streets,
social media or whatever.
Planned Parenthood is not in the abortion business.
Planned Parenthood does not perform abortions.
I mean, I can't say it any plainly,
any more plainly than that.
Planned Parenthood provides reproductive counseling,
including perhaps recommending to the person
that they seek an abortion,
if that's what their choosing is.
They counsel, they don't provide the service.
They also do things like supply birth control
at low cost or no cost to millions of women and men.
They do cancer screening,
they do sexually transmitted disease
and infectious disease screening.
And if they get cut from Medicaid,
they're going to have to close 200 planned parenthood centers
around the country, including in 90% of the states where
abortion is allowed.
So anybody that tells you the Planned Parenthood is an abortion provider, they are not.
And so we saw the South Carolina ruling, the Medina ruling by the Supreme Court 10 days
ago, in which the Supreme Court said, well, South Carolina made a decision to cut Planned
Parenthood out of Medicaid funding,
but Planned Parenthood, you don't have the right
under the statutes, the Medicaid statutes,
to run into court.
You don't have standing, we call it,
because Congress didn't give you the right
to enforce your rights under Medicaid
in a private right of action in a courtroom.
That sounds, I know that sounds counterintuitive,
that if you're injured and you receive funding
under a statute and somebody cancels your statute
or cancels your statutory right,
you should be able to run into court.
We do have other ways to do that,
but the Supreme Court said no.
You, in this scenario, Congress did not wanna have people
and organizations suing over Medicaid funding,
so you have no right to challenge this.
We're not gonna address whether they were right
or they were wrong under Planned Parenthood
or under the Medicaid ruling in South Carolina
to cut off Planned Parenthood.
We're just gonna say you don't have the right
to litigate this in court.
That was bad for Planned Parenthood.
And then there's a silver lining.
That big bill of Donald Trump's that became a 90 page,
90 page campaign ad for the Democrats at the midterm.
But buried within the pages, sorry, the 900 pages
of the bill that have now become law
in Donald Trump's budget.
Which if we are doing things right,
we need to put as a millstone around his neck
and sink this administration.
But buried in there was a defunding mechanism
against Planned Parenthood.
Yeah, targeting Planned Parenthood.
Calling, you know, and labeling them in such a way
that they would be denied Medicaid funding.
That's in the bill.
So Planned Parenthood ran, I mean ran, July 7th,
filed a new lawsuit up in Massachusetts
in front of Judge Talwani, an Obama appointee,
Indira Talwani, very fine judge,
and got an emergency temporary restraining order.
So big, beautiful bill,
meet big, beautiful temporary restraining order, so big beautiful bill meet big beautiful temporary
restraining order.
And why are they able to do that?
Because if you're thinking about what's happened
in the last 10 days, Supreme Court tells federal judges
you can't do nationwide injunctions,
except maybe when states are involved.
You can't do nationwide injunctions.
And two, Planned Parenthood, you don't have the right
to sue about Medicaid funding under the Medicaid statute.
Then how, Popak, can you tell me
that there's a temporary restraining order
on proper jurisprudential grounds up in Massachusetts
that will survive appellate review?
How? Okay, I'm gonna tell you.
One, it's not a nationwide injunction.
Judge Talwani issued the temporary restraining order
in favor of only the parties that were in front of her.
Planned Parenthood Federation
and Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts and Utah.
Okay, define parties.
So it doesn't violate the Supreme Court's recent ruling.
That's one, because just to be clear,
if there is a act of Congress,
a law of Congress that's passed,
it can be challenged as being a violation
of the Constitution and being discriminatory
in a federal court of law.
Happens all the time.
Not a lot with this particular Supreme Court,
but it generally happens all the time.
So no violation of nationwide injunction
because it's not a nationwide injunction, that's one.
Two, they're not suing under the Medicaid statute. they're not suing under the Medicaid statute.
They're not suing under the Medicaid statute.
They're suing under the new budget that was just passed
and the defunding mechanism.
All right, so they can bring a constitutional challenge
under the First Amendment, freedom of association.
I get to hang out with people that I want to hang out with, that's a First Amendment, freedom of association. I get to hang out with people that I wanna hang out with,
that's a First Amendment right.
And First Amendment freedom of speech
because they're attacking the Planned Parenthood
for their viewpoint, it's viewpoint discrimination.
They don't like what Planned Parenthood does
in their counseling sessions because it offends the,
I don't know,
the Christian Mago right of this administration.
So they're challenging it under First Amendment,
freedom of association, and First Amendment freedom of speech,
and under the Fifth Amendment and equal protection.
That's different than the case where Planned Parenthood
was on the losing end 10 days ago,
which was suing under the Medicaid statute.
So the temporary straining order is in place.
Judge Talwani has determined that there's more likely
than not that they're going to be able to prove
their constitutional violations.
The irreparable harm is obvious.
Planned Parenthood told Talwani in their filing,
they'll have to put 2.1 million people
off of their, out of their offices. They'll lose the services if 2.1 million people off of their,
out of their offices.
They'll lose the services.
If 2.1 million people will lose the services
of Planned Parenthood, 200 offices will be shut.
And 90% of the places they operate, abortion is legal.
And so I see this as a winner for Planned Parenthood
and a really great result.
What's going gonna happen next?
Judge Talwani said, I'm gonna block it.
You're to continue to fund the way you've been funding
on the same timeline.
And lastly, I am going to hold another hearing.
You submit your documents in about two weeks
and tell me Trump Administration,
Department of Health and Human Services,
which is the sort of the parent agency
for Medicaid and Medicare.
You tell me why I shouldn't extend this
to a preliminary injunction.
Trump administration, I mean, they could try to take an appeal
on the temporary restraining order up to the first circuit.
I just don't see them doing that.
I think they'll wait another two weeks.
They'll get a win or a loss, likely a loss
with Judge Talani. They'll take it back to the First Circuit and then they'll get a loss at the
First Circuit, just my prediction. A court of appeals up in Massachusetts. Then they'll take
an appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Probably another emergency application that'll
go up to the United States Supreme Court sometime this summer while they're on summer holiday
and we'll get some sort of ruling we may or may not like.
That's the best way for me to put it.
I don't think there's no, what they did in the Medina case
about the statute in South Carolina is not gonna bear
their analysis here, but we're to see if they're going to block
the temporary restraining order of Judge Talwani
and cut off funding to Planned Parenthood
and effectively put them out of business
while the niceties of the appeal continue.
And I'm not confident enough at the moment
without seeing the briefing to predict what the Supreme Court's gonna do.
I'll pick that up as I gather more information
between now and over the summer
as the case moves up on appeal.
When that goes up on appeal
and when they have an oral argument,
we will put the oral argument, the actual audio,
up on Legal AF, the YouTube channel.
Here's a moment.
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Legal AF the YouTube channel just rolled the odometer
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But we could continue to use your help.
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All right, moving from Massachusetts back to Maryland.
We've got a brand new development in ruling and order
in breaking news coming out of Judge Zinnis' chambers
about, chambers about Abrego Garcia.
Let me catch you up there.
Yesterday, Judge Zinnis held a hearing in her courtroom,
one that the Trump administration tried to postpone.
What were the topics?
Well, it was wide ranging.
One was Donald Trump's attempt
to the Department of Justice to move to dismiss
the Abrego Garcia case in Maryland,
arguing that she wanted him back from El Salvador
and they finally brought him back
to stand charges in Tennessee.
On a set of charges, it looks like the Trump administration has abandoned against
Abrego Garcia for human smuggling. And isn't that good enough judge? Can we go
home now? You exerted jurisdiction to get him home. He's home and we're done.
And she said in the hearing, no. I deny your motion to dismiss. First of all, we
have to put him, I have to put him back in the place he was
in terms of status quo before you deported him.
And he wasn't in Tennessee standing charges
before you deported him.
And I have to make sure that due process
is properly administered to him
because my bosses at the United States Supreme Court
supported me nine zero on this issue.
So motions to dismiss are denied. Then to get to the bottom of what is likely bosses at the United States Supreme Court supported me nine zero on this issue.
So motions to dismiss are denied.
Then to get to the bottom of what is likely
to be a contempt finding by Judge Dennis,
she wanted to know what the Trump Administration
Department of Justice's position was about Abrego Garcia
because they've been speaking with forked tongue lately.
On one end, they tell the court and outside the court,
they say that they're gonna try a Brego Garcia
for human smuggling in Tennessee
on some charges that they did
over a two week investigation
about something that happened at a traffic stop
two years ago where he was released.
And they first, they said, we're gonna try that case.
We believe in our case, we're gonna try it.
He's a human smuggler.
Pam Bondi went off and said all sorts of things
that weren't in the indictment.
He's a child pornography, child exploiter,
wife abuser, murderer.
Like where is that in the indictment?
Well, it's not there, but you know,
it was a lot of the co-conspirators
told us about these things.
Okay, well what's in the indictment?
Human smuggling, which is not human trafficking.
It's not exploitive.
It's like a transaction.
I need to get across the border.
I pay you to do it.
Thank you.
It's a crime, but not quite the crime
that they made it out to be.
So you've got one statement that's made
that says we're gonna try that case first,
then we're gonna remove him
and send him to a third country not named El Salvador
But then you had lawyers at the almost the exact same time telling judges innocent and stating in other places that no
We're not gonna deport him
I mean, we're not gonna try the case the criminal case as soon as he gets out of federal detention
for the criminal case
We're going to start the process to remove him and set him out.
And you'd think they'd be able to get their story straight
in a court to make the judge comfortable,
but they never did.
Remember, this is the same guy that's sitting
in federal detention right now under the federal marshals
because he asked for any federal magistrate found grounds
to protect him from the Trump administration
and hold him in federal marshal protection
until the 16th, at least of July.
That's why they ran over to judge a Zinnis,
the lawyers for Abrego Garcia, to say,
hey, we got him safe now in Tennessee,
so he's not gonna be sent to South Sudan or Libya,
but can you help us out here?
You still have jurisdiction.
She called everybody together
and she was not getting straight answers.
She says, first of all, you said to me
that you could never bring him out of El Salvador.
And then six days later,
you brought him out from El Salvador.
Why is it like, this is her quote now from the hearing,
why is it like stapling Jell-O to the ceiling
and getting the questions answered?
So she got very frustrated and found it not believable.
You also have the other subtext, which is, or context,
which is that lawyers in her courtroom,
it's been alleged in a whistleblower complaint,
lied to her, lied to her.
Lawyers that are no longer there, by the way.
Drew Ensign, who was, who one of the whistleblowers claimed
lied to Judge Zinnis to her face,
he's not showing up in court anymore.
I'm not sure where he is.
He's buried somewhere in the bowels
of the Department of Justice,
maybe never to see the light of day again.
Erez Ruveni, who was the lawyer who told Judge Zinnis
the truth, which got all this thing started,
that a judge, that Abrego Garcia had an order
of non-removal in his back pocket that ICE knew about
and sent him to El Salvador in the middle of the night anyway,
he got fired for telling the truth.
So that's the context, right?
That the Trump administration,
and we've got the whistleblower allegations
that Emil Bovi,
Donald Trump's former criminal defense lawyer,
number three in the Department of Justice,
and who's up for a lifetime appointment
at the Third Circuit Court of Appeals,
that he got a group together in March
of Department of Justice immigration lawyers
and told them to effectively not tell the truth
to federal judges and to tell them to go F off his words.
Yeah, so you got that.
Judge, no wonder she doesn't trust anybody.
So here's what she's decided to do with her new order.
She is going to, she is now ordered from today
that there be a hearing on the 10th of July
that the government, Department of Justice, Trump, whatever, needs to identify somebody
with knowledge, with personal knowledge, or can get up to speed about what is the administration's
position about what they're going to do next with Abrego Garcia.
That's fair, but she wants it under oath, not just a representation of an officer of the court because she doesn't trust them
So she wants in her courtroom on the 10th and will report on it
Somebody on a stack of Bible Bibles penalty of perjury
To be cross-examined by the court by the defense by the prosecution whatever
By the plaintiffs to answer the question. What are you gonna do next with Abrego Garcia?
Are you gonna try him in Tennessee,
or are you abandoning that?
Because it looks like they're abandoning that lawsuit.
I mean that criminal complaint against Abrego Garcia.
After much fanfare, he's terrible, he's MS-13.
Well, oh my God, he's a human smuggler,
he's a human trafficker, all pan-Bondi.
Now it's like, well, sorry, we're not using that anymore.
It even led the judge to say, well,
did you just create a criminal complaint
in order to get him out of El Salvador?
And you couldn't get a straight answer on that either.
So now I want to know what, with a person on the stand,
what you're going to do, put them in the witness box.
How you're going to do it, when you're going to do it,
what notice you're going to do. Put them in the witness box. How you're going to do it, when you're going to do it, what notice you're going to give,
or you're planning to give to Abrigo Garcia
and their lawyers in due process as a result, right?
Are you going to remove, what country, what's the process,
what's the logistics?
Be ready to answer these questions on the 10th.
This is extraordinary.
In my entire career, I've never seen,
except in this administration,
federal judges not believe the Department of Justice
when they speak as officers of the court
under ethical obligations,
and instead force them to put a witness,
whether it's a lawyer, Department of Justice person,
some sort of a civilian,
somebody to tell her under oath,
because if they violate it,
she's going to find them in contempt.
Now, what are they going to do next?
Good question.
Based on their track record,
and especially against Judge Zinnis,
even though she's been defended and confirmed
and affirmed by the Supreme Court, nine zero,
the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals twice,
they're gonna defy her.
They're gonna do it two ways, right?
We can do the script.
We know the script, we could do it ourselves.
We're so fatigued and bored with their routine.
Right on cue, social media attack,
social media influencers for Donald Trump
attack Judge Sinis
as being a Marxist, a leftist, a radicalist,
never, wasn't elected, you know,
that's how federal judges work in this country.
And then the Department of Justice is gonna file a motion
for a hearing, a reconsideration.
They're gonna say it's all privilege.
We can't tell you what we're gonna do.
We're not gonna tell you what we're gonna do.
They've said that before.
We're gonna, where we have the presidential privilege,
we have the state secrets privilege,
we have the diplomacy privilege,
they'll make up privileges along the way.
And we're not gonna tell you, and don't make us tell you.
And then she's gonna say, F you,
you're showing up on the 10th in her own way,
I wear the black robe.
And then we're not, they're not gonna show on the 10th.
She's gonna start contempt proceedings.
They're gonna run to the DC Court of Appeals
or skip a step and try to go to the United States
Supreme Court and see if they can lob another Hail Mary
and get a positive result from the United States
Supreme Court.
That's what's going to happen.
That doesn't mean that I don't believe that Judge Zina
should do exactly what she's doing.
She should do exactly what she's doing. She should do exactly what she's doing.
We should make this hard work for judges.
I mean, for the Trump administration
and the Supreme Court justices.
It's not a sterile exercise.
It's important.
She can't just allow all of these actions
and all of these conducts and behaviors against her
to chill what she wants to do,
to influence or impact her decision-making as a jurist,
I'm just giving you the likely outcome.
And I'll know more when I see the next filing
by the Trump administration, which should happen,
I would think sometime by tomorrow,
come back on a hot take here on the Midas Touch Network
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Welcome back to The Intersection with Michael Popock.
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Let's talk about what's going on with birthright citizenship
because there is a relatively new development
I wanna talk about.
Now that the dust has settled,
a lot of people thought coming off the order
about 10 or 11 days ago about nationwide injunctions
that the Supreme Court issued,
that there would not be any ability
to block birthright citizenship.
Well, as I reported, many of the cases returned
to the courts to try to argue that they should be converted
into class actions with temporary restraining orders,
which are all being considered by various judges,
to try to do an end run around
the United States Supreme Court who said,
well, we're not going to touch birthright citizenship
in terms of its substance right now,
but we don't like any of the nationwide injunctions
that have been issued, although they left open the door.
Well, what if multiple states bring an injunction motion?
Can't that therefore be a nationwide injunction?
So a lot of them ran back and said,
we'll do class action, all right?
So that's in the works.
But there was one case standing that's still law.
Up in Massachusetts, there's 29 states that got together,
including Massachusetts and Arizona,
that ran to Judge Sorokin around the time
that other cases were filed in Washington State,
in Maryland, in New Jersey, and other places.
The difference is that Judge Sorokin's
is not a nationwide injunction.
So if you're being told all nationwide injunctions
cases sit down, Sorokin stood up because he's not a nationwide injunction.
He's a state, 29 state injunction.
What does that mean?
That means that Judge Sirokin's
temporary restraining order now a preliminary injunction,
banning the Trump administration from its executive order,
ripping out the beating heart of birthright citizenship
from the constitution does not apply,
that executive order does not apply
to change the 14th Amendment while the Supreme Court
one day gets around to making that decision
in at least 29 states.
Now, that's not great for the other 31,
but there is 29 states where if you're having babies at the moment,
you don't have to worry about that state
rejecting your baby's birth certificate,
obviously issued in the United States
and saying you're not entitled to federal rights
or federal benefits, including like passports
and federal funding and children's health funding
and children's health funding and children's food funding
and children's education funding and the rest.
Now it's the blueprint because that case is still standing
for how we should handle this matter.
Just create, as I've said before,
just create multiple cases representing subclasses
of states.
So you got 29, so do another case with 21, the other 21.
The problem is the other 21, a lot of them are red.
And they're not, they don't want to join together in this
because they like Donald Trump's executive order.
So what do we have besides a civil war
and the country being divided along the Mason-Dixon line
again, plus California and other places out West?
What can you do?
Well, we've got protection in the blue states.
We've got the cases running back on class action
up to the United States Supreme Court.
And one of these or all of these cases will end up back at the United States Supreme Court. And one of these or all of these cases
will end up back at the United States Supreme Court.
It just won't be this summer through an emergency
application.
They're not going to touch it.
They're not going to touch it because they had the opportunity
to and they didn't.
Which means in the next term, which starts the first Monday
in October, we will be reporting on when they,
not if, they take the birthright citizenship case.
And then, and only then, it will be on the substance,
what we call the merits of the appeal.
Can a president, named Donald Trump or anybody else,
through executive order, amend the Constitution
and rip out birthright citizenship?
Now, their argument of the Trump side is they're not amending.
They're just interpreting because they think
it's been interpreted wrong for the last 100 years,
even by the United States Supreme Court.
These are, the 14th Amendment is part of a series
of amendments, 14th, 15th, 16th, that came out
of the Reconstruction Era of the United States
after the Civil War.
That's why Donald Trump, you'll hear him say sometimes
when he's pressed, you know, come out of that weird stew
of Donald Trump, a mental state in decline,
where he'll say, well, 14th Amendment was just
for the babies of newly freed slaves.
Yeah, that's historically where it came from.
But when you're, we're talking about amendments
to the Constitution by the framers or in this case, a group of people
in and around the civil war, you know,
it's not just for the people.
It doesn't say only newly freed slaves.
It says all people, all persons.
Because that's how you write a constitutional amendment.
So, we'll continue to follow it.
29 states, you're okay.
21 states, I feel sorry for the blue dots
within these red states
because these red states will never band together.
That's why you have to use a nationwide injunction,
but now that's not available to us, or is it?
You have to use the class action method.
The reason I'm hesitant about the states joining together
is because one interpretation of what the Supreme Court
did about 11 days ago is they left open the door
for multiple states joining together like these 29
and being able to enter a nationwide injunction
on behalf of everybody.
And so there is a group that wants to argue
that judge,
the judge up in Massachusetts is,
Sorokin is effectively a nationwide injunction.
And that could be an aspect of the appeal as it goes up
to the United States Supreme court as well.
Okay, now as we round out our, the intersection,
I think what I want to talk about is some new developments
that just came in terms of deep fakes
and the Secretary of State.
This is an administration that has been using
insecure communication methods for its State Department,
Defense Department and Homeland Security since they got an office.
They've used the Signal platform,
and according to new reporting out of the Washington Post,
it's been exploited again.
The fact that they use not government approved,
not Pentagon encrypted level communications platforms,
but they use an off the shelf app
that you can download from the app store called Signal.
Well, we knew that it got breached
in this use three months ago in the Signalgate scandal
that started by Mike Waltz,
who was a national security advisor,
but now has been sent to the UN,
who had 30 people on a Signal Chat,
including Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic Magazine
about war plans against the Houthis in Yemen.
Not great.
So some of those people got fired,
some of those people got relocated, and the rest.
But the bad guys out there, Russia, Iran, China,
know about Signal, and they've hacked it now twice.
It looks like Suzy Wiles, the Chief of Staff,
and Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State,
have both had deep fake AI used against them
where somebody impersonating them,
both their voice and what they look like,
have contacted elected officials,
foreign officials, people in the secretary of state's office
and outside, federal workers,
all trying to influence their decision-making.
Now, the irony here is not lost on me.
This is an administration that,
if it wasn't for the fact that the last minute
that 90 senators, nine zero senators voted against it,
the Trump administration wanted to block all states
from regulating artificial intelligence,
including in the area of political
and electoral interference through deep, deep fake AI.
They wanted to block that for 10 years.
Even the smag of senators couldn't abide that.
90 to one, they ripped it out
of that big, beautiful bill thing,
allowing each state to regulate artificial intelligence.
See, the feds could come in and regulate it,
but Trump doesn't want to regulate it
because he has a warped
perspective because he owes so much to the tech bros and the AI bros who supported his administration. And so it warps his entire policymaking and makes us insecure. So this administration,
administration who does not want to regulate AI just got hacked again, by deep fakes using deep fake versions of Marco Rubio's
voice and Suzy Wiles, the chief of staff's voice to try to do
harm to our country into the Trump administration. How do you
do it? It's easy. You take, you know, 15 to 20 seconds
of either of their voices from interviews,
from speeches or the like,
you run it through AI, artificial intelligence,
and then it learns the vocal pattern, the voice patterns,
and then you type in what you want it to say instead.
And in the voice of that person,
the deep fake sounds exactly like Marco Rubio
or Susie Wiles, their cadence, their timber, their tone,
their syntax, their grammar, broken or otherwise.
It's a fake Marco Rubio.
Some people might think that's redundant,
but it's a fake Marco Rubio
and they can do the same thing with writing.
They just funnel in all of his writing
or speeches or oral speeches
or things he's written for op-ed pieces in the newspapers
or other writings.
You shovel that all in, feed it into AI, generative AI
and out comes the other end.
You tell it, you say, write a voicemail script
or an email or a text messages
in the voice of Marco Rubio saying the following.
And then you combine that with the snippet of voice.
And now you know why like five different foreign ministers,
an elected official, governor and everything
got hit with these Marco Rubio impersonations.
Now the states are onto this.
They have, besides trying to fight off AI
generated child pornography, yes,
which was also gonna be blocked by the Trump administration.
I don't know where that fits
with their Christian right values allegedly,
but every state has some version
of trying to stop deep fakes influencing politics
or elections.
And now you see why.
Can you just imagine?
And you see why Donald Trump wanted to block it?
Cause he wants a bad guy in MAGA
to send out a fake and phony voice
of somebody who's an opponent of MAGA,
like Gavin Newsom or Pete Buttigieg
or Kamala Harris or Joe Biden,
saying crazy things about some other group
attacking Christians, attacking Jews,
using the N word, whatever,
or looking like he's having an affair.
And then they do it in a very sophisticated way, right?
They do it in a way, pardon me,
they do it in a way where it sounds like it's garbled
and oh, it's picked up at a cocktail party
by a server walking by,
and you can only catch every other word,
giving it an air of legitimacy and authenticity.
That's what you do with artificial intelligence.
But Trump doesn't wanna regulate that, he wants to use it.
But the reality is that whoever set up Marco Rubio,
a fake Marco Rubio on Signal,
and using Deepfake and Suzy Wiles and the rest,
they're not our friends, they're our enemies.
And they're trying to go after the Trump administration.
And if we had a guess, you can leave it in comments,
Russia, Iran, China, would anybody, North Korea, would anybody be surprised
if it's one of those countries?
Trying to collude in such a way
as to undermine the Trump administration.
These were the very people that wanted to get the Trump,
get Trump elected and reelected
and use social media bots and trolls
and deep fakes to do it.
We just had during the campaign,
a deep fake of Kamala it. We just had during the campaign a deep fake
of Kamala Harris.
That came out.
And I'm not sure that influenced the election,
but it wasn't a good thing for her.
So this is, it's just coming out of the Washington Post,
by the way, if you want to know where my reporting's
coming from on that.
They got a copy of the cable that was sent out
to everybody on the State Department email list
that basically said,
if you ever get anything from the State Department
or like Marco Rubio, it may not be from Marco Rubio.
You may not be able to trust it.
I'm like, that's a powerful statement to say,
you can't trust what comes out of the State Department.
Maybe you should stop using Signal, an insecure platform
and tighten up your shop over there.
And maybe you should allow regulation of AI.
Leave it to the states, it's bipartisan, red and blue,
because they see the writing on the wall.
I mean, they're also doing other regulation
of artificial intelligence,
like making sure that algorithmic bias
doesn't influence decision-making.
A lot of governments in making decisions use AI.
But if there's algorithmic bias within it
that discriminates, the output is going to be flawed.
And that's been a fight within artificial intelligence
and the ethics of artificial intelligence
for a long, long time.
They're regulating that.
New York state is leading the charge on that
and other states as well.
So when you have that trying to get rid
of AI generated child pornography,
I can't even get those words out of my mouth,
but that's out there.
And then you have the attempt by bad people to use AI
to influence elections and political discussion and debate.
And Donald Trump standing opposed to that,
that tells you all you need to know.
We've covered a lot on the intersection.
As most people know, I'm traveling,
but I could not let a Tuesday go by
without joining you here in this community and fellowship
that we have built together.
We vibrate on the same frequency.
Thanks for being here.
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So until my next, the intersection or anything involving Legal AF, this is Michael Popok and I
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