Bake your cake ahead of time and allow to cool completely
Crumble your cake into fine crumbs with your hands
Add 1 Tbs of cream cheese frosting to your cake and mix with your hands. If needed, add more frosting to the mix, but don't get the mixture too wet. It should be crumbly, but able to stick together to form tight balls.
Form 3 inch balls, tightly packed (1 inch balls if you're going to simply make round pops, skipping the cookie cutter step)
Press balls slightly to flatten them, cut with star cookie cutter
Melt a small handful of chocolate melts
Dip one end of stick into chocolate melts and insert into the star, repeat for all stars or balls
Freeze cake pops for 20 minutes
Melt chocolate melts and dip stars into chocolate, allow excess to drip off
Immediately decorate with red, white and blue M&M's
Video
Notes
Use chocolate chips + 1 tbs shortening melted in leu of melts.Wait to melt the chocolate until the final steps of the recipe.