Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Court Exposes Campaign Lies BEFORE he Takes Office

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Trump promised the vaping industry he’d be their savior, and the MAGA-aligned 5th Circuit delivered, ruling that the Biden FDA couldn’t ban candy and cookie-flavored vapes clearly marketed to kids and teens. Now, the Supreme Court is set to weigh in this week, just as Trump’s anti-science health team, including RFK Jr. and his picks to lead the FDA and CDC, prepare to take over. Michael Popok examines what to expect from the court hearing and the future decisions that could further undermine public health and weaken regulatory power. Get started today at https://OneSkin.co and receive 15% Off using 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to your Uber account today. Donald Trump wants to be the savior of the vaping industry. Huge case coming up at the United States Supreme Court this week, an oral argument about whether vaping companies can use flavored products as a gateway drug to hook their teenagers and children into smoking cigarettes. You like the sound of peachy strawberry flavor or cookies and cream flavored vape? Then you're going to hate this case that's up at the United States Supreme Court this week.

We're in a weird period. The Biden administration and the Food and Drug Administration under Joe Biden is against vaping companies marketing to children and teenagers. But the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, led by MAGA, who were all trying out for the United States Supreme Court, think, oh, we've been unfair. The FDA has been unfair to the vaping industry. And now we've got a new administration coming in that's probably more pro-vaping because Donald Trump is pro-vaping.

But right now, the oral argument is before the old Biden administration, the lame duck one, and the Food and Drug Administration. What do we make of all this? Well, I'm going to break it down for you right here on the Midas Touch Network. I'm Michael Popak. You're on Midas Touch and Legal AF.

Let me talk about the Triton case that's going to be heard on oral argument this week at the United States Supreme Court. What is it about? And what is all the changes now that Donald Trump has nominated all of his health cabinet members? RFK Jr. for a Department of Health and Human Services to which the Food and Drug Administration and its new nominee reports and that's

Marty Makrey, a doctor out of Johns Hopkins, a British doctor out of Johns Hopkins who is a pancreatic surgeon. He's going to be apparently the head of the Food and Drug Administration. He's anti-vax. He thinks vaccines cause autism. He's now going to be running Food and Drug Administration. He thinks there's too many regulations and wants to get rid of them all. Then there's a surgeon general who's coming off the Fox and Friends or Fox News. She's a TV

doctor, Jeanette Nash-Wyatt, and she looks to be pro-vaping. We got a whole bunch of issues, but that's not now. Now is the oral argument. And I guess fundamentally, as an American people, are we okay with marketing and advertising and the use of flavored vaping devices and flavored devices that are cookies and candy-based? Who's that for? It's not for me. I mean, everyone, the vaping industry likes to say, well, we're just a tobacco nicotine reduction system. We're just trying to get people off of cigarettes. Yeah, and hooked on vape. Vape has nicotine.

In fact, every product that's ever come out, each generation of vapes actually has more nicotine than the last. Do you see what they're doing? They're increasing the nicotine in order to increase the addiction. I mean, what an amazing consumer product if it didn't kill people and impact negatively public health. Just imagine if in podcasting, there was an addictive element to it. Maybe there is. We can just calibrate it exactly to make our people stay with us. I mean, it's ridiculous. This is why it has to be regulated.

But we're in a weird interstitial moment here, right? We've got lame duck Joe, lame duck FDA director, who is completely against vaping, Robert Calliff, and that's a good thing. And then we've got the solicitor general who's currently under the Biden administration, right? And they're right there. And then you've got the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which in an en banc decision,

meaning the entire Fifth Circuit got together on an appeal, and 10 to 6 ruled in favor of Triton, which owns all these vaping companies, and against the Food and Drug Administration under Biden and said just a month ago, no, no, no, FDA's regulations are so confusing, nobody can figure them out. I mean, I'm summarizing here. This is a set of regulations that an agency only Kafka would appreciate. That's a quote from one of the judges that this is the old switcheroo. This is from the written decision by

Judge Oldham. It's the old switcheroo bait and switch and the vaping company gets hit with both sides of the stick. But let's completely ignore apparently the addictive quality of vaping, it being marketed by teenagers and children. I mean, who else is going to enjoy by teenagers and children. I mean, who else is gonna enjoy peachy strawberry and cookies and cream and all these other flavors? I don't know, 58-year-old males? I mean, seriously? And the tobacco companies are all in on vape

because they're losing on the cigarette side, but they're gaining on the vape side. And it's not like vape is, everyone's like, oh, vape is just flavored water. I mean, look, there are ones that are out there that are completely nicotine-free. I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about the nicotine, the ones that have nicotine in them in the vaping system and the nicotine delivery system is what it is.

That's what we're talking about. There's other ones out there, I don't want to cast aspersions here. There's other vapes out there that are just water, water and air, and it's really used to give you a substitute while you move over or try to get off of the addiction. I get that. This is not that what I'm talking about. This is not what Triton makes. This is not what the tobacco companies have invested in.

But it's weird, right? Because the oral argument, which is following full briefing after the 10 to 6 decision against the FDA by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, of course the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, right? They file the case in Texas, that's the MAGA way. It ends up at the Fifth, which leans heavily right and MAGA, a lot of them appointed by Trump. They're all on the Fifth Circuit, all those judges, Judge Ho, Judge Oldham, they're all trying out for the United States Supreme Court with Donald Trump. Pick me, pick me.

And they write their opinions that way. Like who can out-MAGA the MAGA? And Oldham wrote this one, which didn't surprise me because he's trying to get front and center on all these issues to get attention of Donald Trump to be picked. It's a battle right now between Judge Ho and Judge Oldham for them to get picked to be on the United States Supreme Court should Donald Trump get another pick. And so Oldham writes in favor of the vaping company, basically in favor of getting your children and teenagers hooked on vape that has nicotine in it. There's no other way to put this. I mean, you could get inside, you know, they get inside all this cogitating and marinating,

oh my God, the regulations are so hard, who could figure them out? I don't know. The people in the vaping industry have lawyers, have lobbyists, they can figure out regulations. I mean, they donated a lot of money to Donald Trump. Millions and millions of dollars to get him to change his stance, but the hearing is, the oral argument right now, is the Biden office of Solicitor General, okay? Not the new one coming in with John Sauer, Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyer, heading the Solicitor General's office, the old Solicitor General is arguing this.

The old FDA is justifying it and defending the regulation against Triton's lawyers, which do a lot of work in the nicotine and vaping industry. And this is coming up at the Royal argument. People often say they are surprised to learn that I'm 58 years old and I'm a grandmother. Well, I attribute that to my skincare routine because I am always trying to have younger, healthier looking skin.

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It keeps your skin looking and acting younger for longer. For a limited time only, you can try OneSkin with a 15% off code using legal af at one skin.co that's 15% off one skin.co with legal af after you purchase they'll ask you were you heard about it please support this show and tell them we sent you go to one skin.co there's no m at the end it's not.com thank you one skin now the Supreme Court's not dumb, and the MAGA Supreme Court justices are not dumb, and they know there's a change in administration,

and they know Donald Trump is pro-vapor and vaping, sorry. I say vapor, is pro-vaping. And they know his new heads of all of his science and medicine-based departments, many of them have outlandish outlier theories like Rob, the, you know, the admitted heroin addict to Donald Trump picked to run the health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the anti-vax denier who wants the FDA to permit all sorts of crazy therapies for people.

And then you got Marty McCarrey, who's the new head, who would be the new head of the FDA, who's never done that before, but is pro-RFK Jr. left and right with all of his regulations. And you got Donald Trump saying, I'm pro-vaping. Okay, you do the math. So I think, you know, they're gonna do the oral argument,

but they know the new administration's coming in. And the question is, can the soon-to-be-out-of-work Solicitor General's Office for Biden get Amy Coney Barrett and maybe Kavanaugh over to their side to support the FDA regulation? The reason I don't have a lot of confidence in this, and it concerns me me is that the Supreme Court decided to accept this appeal out of the Fifth Circuit, where they have to decide

whether the FDA was right or wrong right after they made a major decision ripping away a 50-year-old precedent. This Supreme Court likes to do these kind of things, which we call the Chevron Doctrine, which was on the books before I was in law school in the 80s, which took the position that, or was the law of the land, that a federal judge had to defer to the reasonable interpretations of ambiguous regulations by the agency that was empowered by Congress to regulate in that area. Sort of makes sense, right? Let the scientists, the mathematicians, and the ones that know about nuclear power come up with the regulations and the interpretations related to nuclear power, or about water, or about air, or about food, or office and workplace safety. No. The Supreme Court said that was, we don't want

Chevron anymore, because the Federalist Society and the MAGA hated Chevron because it empowered these agencies to have more power than where they wanted all the power to reside, which is in the presidency. MAGA, Federalists want an Imperial President at the expense of all the other branches. They certainly don't want an administrative state that's effing around with their business investments and their business returns on their investments. So that's the big fight. They took away Chevron in a case we called Loperbright, named after the people involved in the case, but now we call it the Loperbright decision. And right after Loperbright, when they said, no, federal judges need to make this decision without regard or respect to any of the agencies, meaning ignore the FDA

about its own interpretations, about its own regulations and you read them fresh. Okay, right after that they accepted the Triton appeal about vaping. This is not looking good for me going in here for the FDA. We're going to follow it on Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Take a moment, hit the Subscribe button there too. On a show we call Unprecedented about the United States Supreme Court that we do once a week. And we'll follow it up after I listen

to the oral argument on Monday. But I wanted to put this on your radar. Children and teens being enticed through marketing and advertising campaigns to smoke through flavors that are obviously geared for them. For years, flavored cigarettes were outlawed. Advertising on television is a reason we don't see anymore ads like when I was a kid for cigarettes or billboards for cigarettes. It's because they're not

allowed to market their product that way. That's from years of FDA regulations supported by courts in the past. Under this administration, we could have TV ads all day long pushing cigarettes because they were donors to Donald Trump. Let's be frank, that presidency was for sale and is for sale. So flavored cigarettes, long time banned for obvious reasons. You know, it is nicotine, it is addictive. We know the tobacco industry has hidden the effects of tobacco and nicotine on public health for a long, long time.

And that's why you want regulators who are not in the industry to be regulating the industry, but not Donald Trump. In every place that Donald Trump could find a industry person who hated his regulator, he put them in as the regulator. Air, water, environment, oil and gas, Interior Department, these are all friends of industry. So now you've got the foxes who are regulating the chicken coop. Good luck. But I want to see what happens. If I'm the advocate

for the United States in the Solicitor General's office, I got to aim for Amy Coney Barrett and hope I get her over because she's the only true sort of centrist right of center person left on that court. And she's starting to come into her own as she's getting more mature and more senior on there. She's not my favorite justice, and she certainly rules the wrong way on major social issues that are not aligned with my values, but I got to also be realistic. She's the swing vote in a lot of these cases coming up.

So you got to get her over. However, join the left and the moderates. Pick up one more vote. You got to count to five to get the ruling in your favor and hope you can and protect the public health and children and teenagers from getting hooked on vaping. I'm going to continue to follow it on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. I'm glad you joined. Hit the free subscribe button and join me over on Legal AF at the intersection of law

and politics where we don't blow smoke or sunshine We got a twice a week podcast called Legal AF and now we got this great channel over there with some original content I think you'll enjoy so until my next reporting on all things Legal AF. This is Michael Popock in Collaboration with the Midas Touch Network. We just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel help us build this pro-democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories the intersection of law and politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe at Legal AF MTN. That's at Legal AF MTN.