The mother of all lawsuits maybe filed by the Democrats, Democracy Forward and Norm against the Trump administration. Shock and Awe meet Shock and Awe legal style. We break it down on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF the podcast.
Take a listen. Carol, why don't you tell our audience about this new filing? You circulated it internally uh with the Midas people.
I was really excited by it. Uh and and uh talk about the new filing that was just made against the Trump administration. and then we'll talk about what we think the impact of it's going to be.
Yeah. Well, I don't have any inside information, that's for sure. All I have is uh the complaint that that you um that you've read.
It's incredible complaint. It's like this is a monster lawsuit. This is the lawsuit of all lawsuits.
All these smaller cases that have been brought because of what Doge has done walking into the federal government and literally trying to dismantle it through executive order. and Doge has thousands of employees have have lost their jobs and the government the federal government is shrinking and they're doing lasting damage. I mean damage that I think it's going to be very hard to recover from right when you don't fund for example a scientific program that's doing research and those scientists no longer can work on something.
Not only are you not having the the medical advances, you're losing that expertise. you're losing that knowledge and that that is just stopped in its tracks. The other thing that's that's happening is is people are going elsewhere, right?
Whether it's whether it's to work in different industries or sectors etc. And so what Doge is doing is it's trying to dismantle the federal government, the all the people who work in all the agencies which are supposed to be non-political, right? Only the heads of the agencies are supposed to be political and that's what the president always appoints the head of an agency and with the advice and consent of the Senate.
But the employees remain the same because they have institutional knowledge. They are experts in whatever it is that they're doing whether it's clean water or the environment or science or medicine or law, whether it's the Department of Justice, whatever it is, the FBI. I mean, the training that goes into being a law enforcement officer or any number of these other these other agencies, the Pentagon, you name it.
These are significantly very important agencies with people who you don't just pluck someone off the street. It takes years and years and years and years to develop an expertise to be able to work competently in one of these agencies. And it's one of the crown jewels of the United States of America, frankly.
And it's one of the reasons I think we we have such a great country. And what has Doge done? they've come in and they've just firing people left and right and there's been a bunch of lawsuits that have successfully gotten whether it's temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions and but they've been sort of these singular I don't want to call them one-offs cuz they're quite significant some of these lawsuits and some have been lost as well but this one is a monster case it's like everybody in the world suing everybody in the world is is kind of how I look at it it's 115page complaint which is quite Ong the caption alone, okay?
You know, the caption that's like plaintiff, whoever versus defendant, whoever. Usually, it's just like at this this little square at the top of the at the top of of a complaint that's filed. The caption alone is five pages long.
That's how many plaintiffs and defendants there are. It is unbelievable. And and I'm going to just read from the press release that was released about it because I think it it really succinctly synthesized what this what this is about.
Plaintiffs are a coalition of labor organizations, nonprofit groups, and local governments that filed this complaint to hold unlawful and stop the unconstitutional dismantling of the federal government by the president of the United States on a scale unprecedented in this country's history and clear and in clear excess of his authority. So it it goes on to say that reorganization and massive reductions in force across federal agencies violate core constitutional concepts of separation of powers because why is that? Because of what we just said.
It's very very clear that only Congress can create an agency. President can't. The Congress creates an agency and the and Congress funds the agency and gives it money appropriates money to an agency and it's the president who can then interpret right it's come in and appoint the head of it and kind of interpol interpret through policy how the ma how that statute that created that is going to be enforced.
So, they put together this huge coalition, again, this nationwide labor organizations, um, many, many nonprofit groups and several governments, several cities and counties, and it they include California, Illinois, Maryland, Texas, Washington, and others to challenge the Trump administration and this massive reorganization of the federal government without legislative authority. So, uh, it's it's just this incredible lawsuit that, um, just by the sheer breath of it is what's so incredible. It says, "Since taking office, Donald Trump has attempted to usurp the powers of Congress through his attacks on the federal government and its basic functions, which hundreds of millions of Americans rely on every day.
" That's a quote from Norm Eisen, um, who's spearheading this lawsuit. The separation of powers was created by our nation's framers to prevent this very sort of unchecked power. The American people will not stand for these clearly illegal and unconstitutional efforts by this administration which seek to upend the most basic tenants of our nation's constitutional democracy.
So, it's it's a very large sweeping case and it rather than individually kind of going after these various um these various agencies that Trump is trying to uh take down and dismantle. It's it's doing kind of what Trump is doing, which is flooding the zone and and tackling it all at once because it's literally the first defendant that is like the president of the United States and then every single one of um his cabinet members. So, it's it's it's an incredible lawsuit and I think it's going to have sweeping sweeping um just implications and it went, you know, as this goes and and it's necessary because you have to you have to meet this what I like about Norm's focus here.
You have to meet flood the zone and shock and awe, which is what Donald Trump exhibited during the first 100 days with exactly the same thing back. You know, a um an outofcontrol uh presidency that's issued more executive orders than any other president in history already. um combined with the just the sheer volume of lawsuits.
You need to kind of get one big mother of them all lawsuit together and I'm glad that he was able to pull that all together and I we're in the right courts. I think we're the right judges and um you know the more we can you know as out of control as Donald Trump is I'll just leave I'll leave my point on this. As out of control as Donald Trump is in his Department of Justice and his FBI and all of that, can you imagine a world where there weren't the Norm and others and Court Accountability Action and Mark Elias and uh and Democracy Now and Democracy Forward and the American Civil Liberties Union and the Attorneys General in 22 states.
Can you imagine a world where they didn't exist and there weren't close to 200 uh lawsuits filed and 200 injunctions obtained and a uh and the winning record already at the United States Supreme Court. How much more unleashed and and out of control and lawless Donald Trump would be without the push back that's being provided by the court system. We don't have it anywhere else.
We got a a wet noodle at a doormat of Congress. uh we don't have we can't count on anybody even the way we could in the first Trump administration um to whether it's a joint chiefs of staff or you know a general there or um one or two members of his cabinet or anybody that seems to have any type of um morals or values or character other than pure unadulterated greed and coupled with unbridled uh attempts at power grab that that defines his entire cabinet. So, we don't have any of that to rely on that somebody like Mark Millie is going to put his hand between Donald Trump and the nuclear button or call his counterpart in China and say, "Don't worry, I'm not going to let a Chinese war break out over this guy.
" We don't have that. So, what are we left with? We're left with the thing that you and I uh talk about at length, which is the law and politics intersection.
Uh that this is the break the glass moment. We are willingly or unwillingly whether we wanted to be this or not. We are the foot soldiers to defend the constitution.
Uh and we do it in our way with this community talking truth to each other here shoulder-to-shoulder to fellowship that we're building on the Midas touch network and on legal a talk about the action part. They they take it from there into the courtrooms and the courouses. I mean, you can't I I just if we lived in a world where there weren't the federal judges like Judge Zenis, Judge Amy Amy uh uh Amy Burman Jackson, Barl Howell, Jud Jeb Boseberg, Judge uh you know, the list goes on.
Judge Khan, all the judges that we've talked about, the judges up in New Hampshire and Massachusetts and Washington and in California and and the and DC. Think think how much worse this would be because every moment that we're able to tie Donald Trump and his Department of Justice up and exhaust them and tie them down and stop their progression is one less day on the clock between now and the midterms. Donald Trump knows he's the lamest of lame ducks.
Donald Trump knows and if he didn't know it, he knows it now from these polls that that the chances of him being able to grow a brain and fix this problem in the next 16 or 18 months is virtually nil. So blue, you know, there's going to be a red blood bath. You think the red wedding during Game of Thrones was bad?
Wait till you see what's going to happen hopefully at the House and the Senate when the Democrats take over both. So, he's got to acco, you know, he's he's he's uh he's on he's on borrowed time and that's why we're saying maximum destruction. And that's why cases like you just described are so important as we continue to get these injunctions after injunctions after injunctions.
And Donald Trump doesn't care because that's not why he ran for office. He also doesn't care because every injunction he uses for a political expediency and political capital to try to I don't know it's not working whatever he thinks he's doing with it but to to try to continue to make his his point and support MAGA principles but that ain't working either. So what doesn't make any sense to me pop is just do it the right way.
You control Congress. You control the House and the Senate. No executive orders.
Do it through the laws. Correct. Just fine.
You want to you want to dismantle the federal government, you control them. They they have proven themselves. Congress has shown that they are essentially going to do whatever he wants.
MAGA has complete control currently over the entire entire uh Congress and the presidency. So do it the right way and then none of this would happen. But instead, it's like this lawlessness, right?
I I think it's a combination. I think one he really doesn't think he has the votes that there'll be enough peel away where Hakee Jeff who has who has eaten Donald Trump's lunch and that of Mike Johnson a number of times because I think he's really the shadow speaker of the house. There's just not enough votes to do the the I mean, when you read these executive orders, and I know you have, one after another, you know, from birthright citizenship all the way to the new one I just did a hot take on, which is unleashing the America the the police department on Americans to make more aggressive policing.
I That's not the problem in America. The problem in America is not too too aggressive, not aggressive enough police. That's not the problem.
And nobody thought that was the problem. So this stuff would never get through Congress. So but he's just paying his debts one after another with these ridiculous executive.
But you're right, some of it he could have probably squeaked through with Congress. But he's got a feckless guy who probably doesn't trust in Mike Johnson. He's got a crazy coalition.
You know, the uh the the um what do you call her? Uh uh Green Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world. All that Tea Party Republican thing in there.
and uh you know it's very reliable. Somebody hands him a folder, he takes out a Sharpie and he signs it. And until until we get a ruling, which may be coming soon, from the United States Supreme Court, not in the shadow docket, not on procedure, but on the merits, when they start reaching the merits of cases against him, and they start talking about executive orders, as they've said in the past, is the weakest type of of order to ever enforce because it has to color inside the lines of law by Congress.
Once the real separation of powers issue, the the uh the spending clause, the all of those issues really get decided by the Supreme Court or others, I I think he's going to have to change his tactic because this is, you're right, the executive order thing is not defensible and I think he starts losing in big numbers at the Supreme Court. Welcome back. I helped found legal AF about 5 years ago.
starting to sound like Abraham Lincoln at the Gettysburg Address for Score. And seven years ago, we formed Legal AF. And uh if you didn't know what legal AF stood for, now you do.
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