Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Gets Crushed by Appeals Court in Huge Loss

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

In breaking news, a 3rd appellate court has dealt a severe blow to Trump’s efforts to rip birthright citizenship out of the US Constitution by executive order, with the 1st Circuit in Boston refusing Trump’s emergency application to block a nationwide preliminary injunction to stop Trump‘s destruction of birthright citizenship. Michael Popok explains how this new decision by the First Circuit compares to similar decisions at the Ninth Circuit and Fourth Circuit, and what that means for the next move by the Trump administration at the US Supreme Court. Head to https://manukora.com/legalaf to receive $25 off your starter kit today! 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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Ski slopes! Wait! Did we just invent California? Discover why California is the ultimate playground at visitcalifornia.com Trump administration has suffered another loss at the appellate court level about birthright citizenship with the first circuit court of appeals refusing to block a nationwide injunction on Donald Trump's enforcement of his executive order,

which ripped or attempted to rip out of the constitution birthright citizenship. You're born on US soil, so you are an American citizen, regardless of where your parents are from or what your parents' documented status or undocumented status is, you know, that part of the Constitution. The lower court, Judge Sorokin, had already issued an order, a nationwide injunction, that it was an unconstitutional exercise by the president. Donald Trump's about to take an appeal and wanted the First Circuit Court of Appeals while he's busy getting his appeal off the ground to block the injunction.

And the First Circuit said, no, I'll tell you why. You're here on the Minus Touch Network. I'm Michael Popak. Let's get into the intersection of law and politics on this breakout legal AF video. This is now the third time a circuit court has ruled against Donald Trump on this very issue. The First Circuit now joining the Fourth Circuit which covers Maryland and the Ninth Circuit which covers California because judges there also issued some sort of nationwide or other injunction to stop

this particular executive order. The executive order in particular, then I'll read to you from the order, from the judge. The executive order issued by Donald Trump said if the mother was here in an undocumented status and the father was not a US citizen, or the mother was here documented but temporary and the father is not a US citizen, that child born here is not American, not a U.S. citizen.

That's not what the Constitution says. That's not what the precedent going back to 1898, the Wong Kim Ark case says, where a child there born of Chinese parents who were still beholden to the Emperor of China, but the child was born in San Francisco area in California, the Supreme Court ruled that was a U.S. citizen.

That child, Wong Kim Ark, grew up to be a 20-year-old, tried to go back to China, got stopped at the border, coming back into the United States. He said, I'm a U.S. citizen. They said, you're not, and the United States Supreme Court said he is. And ever since then, in all cases ever looking at the issue, including at the Supreme Court level, citing Wong Kim Ark, they have found that that is what the Constitution says, that is what the Constitution means. And the Constitution can't be changed by a little piece of paper called an executive

order. It has to be changed only through a referendum, two-thirds of the states, two-thirds of the Senate, and two-thirds of the House, all that. It's very hard to change the Constitution at this point, especially given our divided United States. So we have to rely on what is in the Constitution, not what Donald Trump would fantasize about removing from it. So there was a series of cases, we filed them here on MidasTouch and Legal AF, all kind

of shot out at the same time. We had one that was filed in San Francisco, one that was filed in Maryland, and two that were filed in the First Circuit region in New Hampshire and in Massachusetts. And they all came out the same way at the trial court level. They all said, no, you can't make that change. Now the fight in this particular case, even though Judge Sorokin issued his nationwide injunction,

is whether fundamentally the 18 states, the public interest groups, the woman who's pregnant and undocumented, it's also a plaintiff, whether they have what's called standing. Standing is a threshold issue for any federal court, really any court, to determine whether the party in front of them has the right to litigate and prosecute a case because their rights have been violated. If you don't have standing, you don't get to come into the courthouse because we only let judges listen to and adjudicate cases where there is what we call a live case or controversy. There can only be a live case or controversy if two parties have a vested interest in the outcome of the case. They've been damaged in some way,

some injured in some way, and they're allowed then to go to court. Otherwise it's an advisory opinion. We don't let judges issue advisory opinions. They're very conservative about their own jurisdiction, and standing is the first way they do it. Does this party have a ticket to the courthouse? Trump administration argues, well, the 18 states don't. I don't know how they can argue the woman about to have a baby doesn't, but they were arguing primarily against the 18 states

and the state's attorney general. The states argued, we've been injured, we have standing, we're gonna lose federal funding because you're going to determine that these people that we're gonna have to support because they're in our state with social services and social security and different things, different kind of funding and programs,

that you're gonna cut off federal funding because you're going to not recognize these people as legitimate Americans. But they are, and they're here, and they're babies, and they're growing, and we have to do something about them. The states will, and will be injured as a result. That is a very compelling argument. It's called a pocketbook issue. Hitting somebody in their pocketbook is the fundamental basis of standing. Now, this appeal, just to be clear, in this little appellate law breakout session for law school, is not on the merits. It's not a merits appeal. It's not going to the heart of whether Donald Trump was right or wrong on the executive

order versus the constitutional issue, although it does in a way. It's about whether, while the appeal on the merits is going on, whether the nationwide injunction that Judge Sorokin put in place will remain in place during the duration of the appeal. Now in order to get to that, the appellate court like the first, and I'm going to read to you from their decision in a minute, the first in any appellate court has to kind of look under the hood and ask the fundamental question, the party that's asking me to do something, in this case the Trump administration,

is it likely or not that they're going to win on their substantive appeal or not? Likelihood of success on the merits is what we call it. It is a factor. They have to do a little crystal ball analysis based on their review of the record. They're not making a definitive ruling on the substance, but they sort of are. So here Judge Barron, the chief judge for the First Circuit writing for the three that ruled 3-0 against the Trump administration, took a look at these things. And here's the, you know, there's 30 pages, but here's the fundamental finding and ruling on page 10 of the brief. The government expressly declines to make any developed argument, that's the Trump administration, that is likely to succeed on appeal in showing that the executive order is either constitutional or compliant with 8 USC section 1401. That is a statute

that mirrors the language of the constitution. It implements the 14th amendment of the constitution about citizenship. But the judge continues in his order, nor does the government contest that for more than a century, going back to that case I mentioned,

Wong, Kim, Ark in 1898, persons in the two categories that the executive order seeks to prevent from being recognized as US citizens have been so recognized. That's women who are here temporarily documented but whose husbands are not US citizens giving birth and women who were here illegally or undocumented who give birth with the husbands who are not US citizens. Those have always been recognized, those children have always been recognized as US citizens

or as they're derisively referred to in the mango world, anchor babies. They're not anchor babies, they're US citizens that could one day grow up to be the president of the United States in a way that many members of Congress in the Senate can't because they weren't born here like Ted Cruz. Are you looking for something simple and delicious to add to your wellness routine?

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five honey travel sticks, a wooden spoon and a guidebook. That's manukor.com slash legal AF for $25 off your starter kit. Instead, the government contends that it can make the requisite showing for a stay of the preliminary injunction. That's the court recognizing that what the Trump administration wants here is us to block the temporary injunction put in place by the lower court judge, Judge Sorokin. But in order to do that, the Trump administration makes an argument that they can do it without developing

an argument to us, to the court, that the executive order is lawful. And even though the enforcement of the executive order would dramatically break with the executive branch's long-standing legal position and thereby disrupt long-standing governmental practice, citing a series of cases. So what they're saying here, let me translate one more? So what they're saying here, I'm gonna translate one more time, what they're saying is, you don't even take a shot Trump administration in developing any compelling argument

that what you are planning to do is constitutional. It is against the line of precedent, is against the line of historical precedent about the executive branch and its approach to these types of born children. And so since you haven't done that, you haven't even taken a shot at it, or as they say, they've expressly declined

to make any developed argument, meaning you've not only not made an argument that makes any sense in order for us to block the temporary restraining order, the injunction, you expressly say you don't have to do that. Well, you do because we're not at the merits yet. So here's what's going to happen now that they've lost with this order by Judge Barron joining the Ninth Circuit ruling the exactly the same way over the California trial judge,

Judge Kofenor, who made a similar ruling at the top of the Trump administration. We have a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals sitting over a federal district judge in Maryland who made an identical decision and she also had a nationwide block. So we have these multiple overlapping nationwide blocks that all have to be, they have to run the table if you're the Trump administration in order to have your executive order, which is obviously unconstitutional, survive appellate review. Now we've got three courts that agree. What happens next?

Supreme Court. There's no other way to put it. We've got to get to the Supreme Court. Now, fortunately, because of the jurisdictions and venues that the democratically oriented public interest groups and attorneys general picked the ninth, the first, the fourth, they all feed into first stop on that train are US Supreme Court justices that are more liberal. Yeah. It's the ones that Sotomayor and Kagan and Katanji Brown Jackson sit over.

And so they make the first decision on any emergency writ by Donald Trump. They make the first decision as to whether they're going to refer it over to their other eight on their United States Supreme Court, or they're gonna make the ruling on their own to reject the appeal, the writ, which would be to block the unique issue here again, whether the temporary, sorry,

whether the nationwide injunction issued by any of these judges against having the executive order take away birthright citizenship, whether that's going to be put on ice while an appeal plays out over the next six months to a year. I think that's a loser at the Supreme Court level. It can be shot down by each one of these judges without any other reference to the rest of the court. It's called a shadow doc. It happens all the time. We'll have to see if they're going to do it on an issue like birthright citizenship, where they're going to make a referral to the rest of the bench. If they make a referral to the rest of the bench,

there's got to be four people that are interested in hearing the case and five that vote in favor of the Trump administration. I think that the Trump administration will be able to count to four to find it interesting. We know who the four are, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas, but I don't know if they can count to five. And the five would be, again, here we are again, Amy Coney Barrett, who has eight children, including one, a number that are adopted, including one or two number that are adopted, including one or two from Haiti, which I only mentioned because MAGA has gone crazy figuring out that she's not totally in favor of everything Donald Trump does and they've attacked her.

I celebrate that aspect of her. Not many things that she's done in the court I've celebrated, but that's one. And then Chief Justice Roberts, what's he going to do with an out of control rogue president who's trying to rip away the beating heart of birthright citizenship from the US Constitution by executive order? What say you Chief Justice Roberts, if you side with the three, the democratic wing, if you will, of the moderate wing of the Supreme Court and Amy Coney Barrett joins you, it's five to four and Donald Trump loses. If they decide on the injunction not to block it and allow it to stay in place, and so it

won't, birthright citizenship remains intact as a concept through the appeal, it's probably a hard loss that Donald Trump won't recover from, but we'll have to see. It's going to get to the Supreme Court relatively quickly. I think it'll be there in the next two weeks to three weeks, and we'll be reporting on it right here on the Minus Touch Network and on Legal AF. Take a minute, hit the subscribe button here. Of course, Minus Touch, but come over to the collaborative channel that we have with Minus Touch.

Just rolled over 500,000. It's called Legal AF, of course, the YouTube channel I curated. We got Court Accountability Action, Lisa Graves, Alex Aronson, Mike Sacks. We've got Shan Wu, you know, we've got me, we got Dina Dahl, it's an amazing collection of legal commentators at the highest level

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There's a rumor out there that we're in the top 10 in the world, it's crazy. It's all because of you. We're humbled by it and I appreciate each and every one of you. Until my next reporting, I'm 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 LegalAFMTN.

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