SCOTUS makes MAJOR RULING on Election…

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2:10Join them to save up to 90 % off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for certified mail, registered mail and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to Stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply. We're watching a proverbial race to the courthouse. It's like a Formula One race about mail-in ballots, the way that one-third of Americans vote and have voted since the Civil War. Who's winning the race? Who's in the race? Well, you got Judge Talwani, who's issued first a temporary restraining order, then a preliminary injunction on one side, trying to block Donald Trump from abusing the Postal Service to deny you and me our right to vote by mail.

2:57by the creation of a voter database portal that's not even done yet, despite the fact that ballots have already been mailed out in multiple states and the use of a secure ballot envelope that has to be approved by the post office. All of this is just barriers and hurdles established by Trump to having the states do their job under the Constitution and Article One of running federal elections with congressional oversight. Presidency has no role over that, certainly not the post office. So you've got Judge Telwani in the race, issuing the TRO, the temporary restraining order, the preliminary injunction.

3:39And then you've got on the other side, Donald Trump's Solicitor General, John Sauer. He first files a emergency application against the temporary restraining order to try to stop Judge Talwani from stopping their evil machinations about mail-in ballots. And you know what the Supreme Court does coming up through Ketanji Brown Jackson, who sits over Boston and the First Circuit? Nothing. They didn't enter the administrative state. They didn't block North Carolina from mailing out their ballots. They didn't block Alabama from mailing out their ballots tomorrow. No, they didn't. They said, well, we'll take some briefing and the briefing will take us over to tomorrow, till Tuesday at about 10 a.m.

4:20Then what happened? Well, Judge Talwani still has the case. So it went through to preliminary injunction hearing and then right on cue a preliminary injunction. And during the preliminary injunction hearing, she said, Judge Talwani, and I quote, said she was flabbergasted by the argument by the Department of Justice that we should just do a test run and see how this is going to work. We just screw with the sacred right to vote. We don't know if the portal's going to work. We don't know if ballots are going to be rejected en masse. We don't know if people's right to vote is going to be disenfranchised.

4:54Let's run it up the flagpole and see if anybody can vote. The judge was flabbergasted by that suggestion. Then right on cue, we got her preliminary injunction order, and then the race again back to the United States Supreme Court. Are you on the edge of your seat? I hope you are. I'm going to solve this cliffhanger for you right here on the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF. I am Michael Popak of Legal AF. Okay, let's get to it. So Judge Talwani holds that hearing brought by the states. There's about 24 Democratic attorneys general who brought the case along with public interest groups on the other side, like the Women's Legal Voters of Massachusetts and organizations like the ACLU.

5:37That's up in Boston in front of Judge Talwani. OK, now, after hearing the evidence such as it was from the Trump side, the judge was also swayed, I believe, by a whistleblower, anonymous, sure, but a whistleblower who came forward and said that they are deep inside the post office of the Trump administration and they know that bad things are happening, like the portal's not done. Like there's an easy way if you took these mail-in ballots and these envelopes that now the post office under Donald Trump's executive order has to approve, it can get jammed in the scanner and reject tens of thousands of ballots along with it.

6:16Meaning you and I never get our mail-in ballot that we expected and we certainly don't return it in time to be counted for the election, which is what Donald Trump wants to have happen. So there's all this testimony about how it almost intentionally seems like the system is error-ridden and riddled in order to reject votes. Yes, a crappy system that's not even done yet, half-baked, is going to just disenfranchise people. Now, I'm not sure how this entirely helps Donald Trump because rural voters, which are part of his MAGA base, vote by mail as well. But I'll leave that as it may. The judge heard the testimony of the whistleblower who said it's intentionally created.

7:01It's a half-baked system. John Sauer for the Department of Justice, Donald Trump's former federal criminal defense lawyer, of course, what does he say? This isn't about taking away the constitutional right of the states to control the federal elections as the framers and founding fathers wanted. This is just about the envelope design. Oh, yeah, this is like when you go to the stationery store and you order envelopes and stationery or an invitation for a wedding or a baptism or something. Yeah, that's all it is. Except the Postal Service gets to reject if they don't like the ballot, if they don't like the envelope, if there's a mismatch between names in a portal that's not even yet created, and the data that they have and the envelope name, it's all a cluster, as they say, cluster AF.

7:46and so yes they are interfering with the right of the states the constitutional obligation of the states to run their elections we've got ballots out already 27 states in america allow mail-in ballots without having an excuse you want a mail-in ballot that's the way you want to vote 27 states say here's your ballot another 13 states say we'll give you the ballot just give us a good excuse. Mobility or illness or I'm out of the country or something like that. And then there's a couple of other states that do it another way. There's some states that's universal mail-in balloting. Everybody votes by mail-in balloting, like in the state of Washington.

8:26I was driving around Florida yesterday and I saw this weird non sequitur. It said that this was a location for secure mail-in ballot drop-off. I'm like, what are you even talking about? If I got my mail-in ballot, I got my ballot by mail, I want to return it by mail. That just indicates to me that everybody knows that the Postal Service can't be trusted. I mean, they got sued the first time around in the Trump administration, in the first Trump administration for screwing with ballots. I got to take my ballot, bypass the Postal Service, and drop it off in a box because nobody can trust them. You know who you can trust?

9:07Midas Touch, Legal AF. Did I mention to you that you should come over to Legal AF YouTube channel over this weekend and hit the free subscribe button? A big fat button says free and subscribe, I think. Hit the subscribe button. Come over to Legal AF Substack. You'll be able to read a lot of my receipts I'm gonna be reading from today about this very case. And I'm running a 50 % off sale for new annual membership until I think midnight tonight. midnight, Labor Day at least, and you can hit the subscribe button there and help us. Let me read to you from what Judge Talwani. I gave you the parties in the race.

9:41I gave you the racers. Judge Talwani, the 24 attorneys general for the Democratic states, public interest groups on one side, Donald Trump's post office and his solicitor general on the other. Programming note, completely by coincidence, I'm going to be with the Democratic Attorneys General Association and all 24 Democratic Attorneys General for some exclusive briefing and content starting on Tuesday in Detroit at their conference. And I'll be interviewing them about voting and voting and I think voting and certainly about mail-in voting and this case, because here's the update. After Judge Talwani issued a preliminary injunction on Friday, and I'll read it to you, immediately the Trump administration filed yet another application for stay of the injunction and a request for immediate administrative stay.

10:35That went up to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, because she sits over the First Circuit, which sits in Boston. And she, on a new docket entry that I just saw in the last 24 hours, acknowledged that the Department of Justice Solicitor General has withdrawn his original motion for a stay and an injunction against the temporary restraining order, that was a good move because nobody in the Supreme Court gave him an administrative stay and they let the ballots get mailed out in North Carolina. So he then ups it and he says, all right, well, now she's entered her preliminary injunction. So our new motion to enjoin her, to block her and to get another emergency administrative stay is based on that new order.

11:23So Justice Jackson let him withdraw, let him file against the new one, and she reset the dates. Originally, the states and the other parties were going to have to respond by Tuesday at 10 a.m. It's now Wednesday at 4 p.m. on the new briefing. And that's about all she wrote, folks. There's not going to be, I don't think, a oral argument. It's very rare in the shadow docket world. These judges are going to make this ruling on their own sometime late in the week. And this is going to control what happens at the midterms. Now, if I was a betting man, sometimes I am, I would say that the Trump side is going to lose, at least as it relates to the midterms.

12:07We're 50-something days away from the midterms. Ballots are going out. We got Alabama going out tomorrow. We got five more states going out on the 13th. North Carolina already went out. How are they possibly going to be able to do a bit? The portal, this database of citizen records is not even built. It's not even functional yet by the Postal Service because they had no goal of actually implementing this process. This was all about monkey wrenches and sand in the gears of voting and to screw with the Democrats. That's all this ever was.

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14:09Michael Popok:That's Q-U-A-L-I-A life.com slash legal AF and use code legal AF. Thanks to Qualia for sponsoring this episode. You know, when they asked Trump about, well, ballots are going out in North Carolina. How is the Postal Service ever going to do this? He said, I won golf there three times. Play the clip. There are states like North Carolina that have ballots that go out next week. How are states supposed to implement this? Well, they're able to say North Carolina is great. It's a great place. I won a goal three times. And they do some mail-in ballots. But basically, they ruled on the legitimacy and the way we want to make them legitimate.

14:53And it was a great ruling for the Republican Party. Does that sound like a man who knows what he's talking about or cares about voting? You know, last night and over to Labor Day, he had 50 meltdown posts. He's busy changing the name of New Mexico to New America. Does that sound like a serious president who cares about you, who cares about your affordability problem, cares about whether you can make ends meet, who cares about having dignified policies that match our values? Does that sound like that or cares about the sacred right to vote? Or does it sound like somebody who should be in a loony bin?

15:31That's what we used to call it. You know, a round room made out of rubber so he doesn't hurt anybody. That's about where we are, folks. The Judge Talwani went through the final rule. And just so we get on the same page, page seven of her order, the final rule for the post office mandates that ballot envelopes and return envelopes must comply with certain ballot design requirements that just got published two weeks ago, that state or local officials must submit their ballot envelopes and designs to the Postal Service for approval. See how they've insinuated themselves into the process of voting.

16:09And after obtaining approval of the ballot envelope, the state or local officials must input each voter's information into a new portal, a portal that's not even done yet. And if they don't use the portal and they don't submit the envelopes and they don't get design approval, then people can't vote. Then the United States Postal Service will not mail ballots to voters. She reminds everybody about U.S. Constitution Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1, about the times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives is prescribed in each state by the legislature, but the Congress may also change those regulations.

16:51So states and Congress. And she went through all of the congressional statutes that deal with the protection of the right to vote that are violated by this postal service rule. Certainly, there's no room for any override of state or congressional power by agencies of the federal government, like the post office. She also says that portal enrollment is a problem. She says on page 38, state election officials are deeply concerned with the final rules requirement that That all absentee voter information must be uploaded to the USPS portal. The portal is not currently operational. This is as of the 4th of September.

17:37And the United States Postal Service does not plan to make the portal available until sometime next week, like this week. As a preliminary matter, some states forbid the disclosure of voter information in certain circumstances under confidentiality laws. So in other words, how are you supposed to give it to the federal government if the states preclude the disclosure of the information to anybody, including the federal government? No real good answer there. It's also an overwhelming expenditure of time to use the portal. I mean, the chief election officials are busy trying to run election. They don't have time to input ever-changing voter data about their name and address and election office states as it changes.

18:24And this data changes all the time. People, they're updating registration. People get married, change their names, move out of one district into another in time to vote. It's an ever-changing, morphing database. How are you ever going to have a static portal appropriately determine who lives or who dies when it comes to voting? I think John Sauer, who's the Solicitor General, has got a problem because in order to get, he asked immediately, immediately for an administrative stay until the full Supreme Court could rule on the issue of whether the mail-in ballots could be controlled by the Postal Service or not.

19:04They didn't enter the administrative stay. They were like, no, we're going to let a few more days tick off. They filed this thing on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. What's what's ticking down in this race? Time left in the race. You're 50 something days left till the November 3rd midterm election. Every day strengthens the hands of the states to argue that they can't do this by midterms and that it's unconstitutional beyond the midterms into 2028 for the presidential election and beyond. And every day he doesn't get his administrative stay. And he did not get an administrative stay, meaning there were not five votes to grant the stay.

19:45And Ketanji Brown Jackson wasn't granting the stay, which is good. I actually called her out a little bit. I love Ketanji Brown Jackson. But a week or so ago, I called her out during the midweek edition of Legal AF. And I said, Ketanji, Justice Jackson, don't enter an administrative stay. And no administrative stay came out, which I'm very, I'm not taking credit for it. I'm just stating, I'm just stating, I'm not making a cause and effect link. I'm just, I'm just saying I'm happy. So no administrative stay, not a good sign for the Trump administration. We'll see the briefing on Tuesday. I'll report on it.

20:18I'll be with the Democratic Attorneys General. In fact, Tuesday night after that gets filed, I'm on the intersection here on Legal, on Midas Touch Network and Legal AF, my podcast, 8 p.m. Tuesday nights. And I'm going to try to get one of the attorneys general to appear with me to talk about that new filing. Talk about real-time information. Take a minute while you're here. Hit the free subscribe button. Go over to Legal AF YouTube channel. Do the exact same thing. If you want to read everything I'm analyzing, come over to Substack for Legal AF. 50 % off new annual membership. Comes out to four bucks a month through end of the Labor Day.

20:54Until my next report, this is Michael.

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