Justice Department At War With Judges & Starbucks Strikes

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1:55It's a war, man. That's Todd Blanche, the second in command at the Justice Department, saying the department is at war with federal judges. Blanche, echoing words often used by President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi, criticized rogue activist judges for their decisions against the Trump administration. These activist judges, that they have a robe on, but they are more political, or certainly as political, as the most liberal governor or DA. Speaking at a Federalist Society event, the Deputy Attorney General defended the Justice Department against claims of weaponization and then urged young conservative lawyers to join the war against judges.

2:47And I looked around and I said to myself, man, there has got to be a couple dozen young lawyers who are thirsty and hungry and ready to work because we need you because it is a war. Well, a group of federal judges is pushing back against Blanche, saying the language he used poses a grave threat to the rule of law and the judiciary. Joining me from the Keep Our Republic's Article III coalition is retired Judge Johnny Jones III, formerly of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Judge Jones, first, your reaction to the Deputy Attorney General saying that the Justice Department is at war with the judiciary.

3:35I think that the comment is at minimum inopportune. and I think writ large, it's grossly irresponsible for the number two individual at the Department of Justice to characterize anything involving the federal judiciary as a war, a war against so-called rogue judges. It is highly problematic, and I think it's causing a great deal of consternation among the judiciary, not just active judges, but retired judges as well. He said, we have judges literally telling the president, the executive, what he can and cannot do. We have seen judges not following the law and the Constitution. And he said they have a row bomb, but they are more political or certainly as political as the most liberal governor or DA.

4:23Well, June, here's a newsflash. That's exactly what judges are supposed to do is say what the law is. They've been interpreting the law, of course, since Marbury versus Madison. And again, I think he's protesting too much. What he's really striking out against are decisions that are in the judge's view in accordance with the law and legal precedent. Simply because you disagree with the decision doesn't mean that you're at war with the judge who made the call. the government is fully able to exercise its appellate rights. And in fact, they have in any number of these cases. So, you know, to say the judges are political simply because they rendered a decision that you don't agree with is really a baseless allegation.

5:07I guess red meat, if you will, for the conservative lawyers in the Federalist Society. But I would suspect that a lot of those lawyers entertained, though they may have been, no better. So his target was sort of on the district court judges, the trial court level. And he said that when it gets to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court has reversed them all except for one or two times, which is true. But that assumes that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court is right and the federal district judges are wrong. And these decisions were all made on the emergency docket without full briefing or oral arguments.

5:49Well, a couple of things I'd say about that. There are far more decisions that are standing than ones that are appealed to the Supreme Court. As you know, that court has a discretionary docket. So some of these lower court decisions have stood up simply because the Supreme Court hasn't taken them. Now, it is noteworthy that the Supreme Court has placed on its emergency docket a number of different cases. And yes, the government has been successful. I don't know that it's necessary under the circumstances for Mr. Blanche, you know, to be a sore winner and do a sort of victory dance about that and castigate lower court judges.

6:25You know, the Supreme Court gets the final word on these cases, but I can go over any number of cases that district courts have heard and have indicated that those decisions are in accordance with precedent and the law under the circumstances. You know, these are close questions in some cases as well. But again, this sort of sore winter thing is pretty wearying and unbecoming, again, I'd say, the Department of Justice that I knew and worked with and was very professional during my nearly two decades on the federal bench. The number of threats against federal judges have skyrocketed, as you know.

7:00What does it do when you have the second in command saying things like this, saying, you know, we're at war, saying that judges are not following the law, they're not following what the Supreme Court says. What does that do when the general public hears something like that? Well, you have to take it in concert, June, with what's been happening for this entire year since January 20th, which is that judges are being singled out by name, their families are being singled out, they're being doxed. Anybody can find the location of a judge, even though there's been legislation to redact and hide some of their personal information.

7:37And I think fairly, judges are frightened. It puts a bullseye on judges. And you correctly cite the U.S. Marshals Service as indicated that threats against judges, there were 500 plus bona fide threats in the last fiscal year, and they're growing exponentially. I've always said that, you know, there are a lot of people that disagree with judges' decisions. That's the nature of the business. But it's that small percentage of unbalanced people who kind of hear this as a dog whistle. And I have said for years, because of this inflammatory rhetoric, that we're going to get a judge hurt or killed. You need only look back at my former colleague Esther Salas's tragedy, you know, where his son Danny was shot and killed back in 2020.

8:20I fear that's going to happen again if we don't dial down the rhetoric. Again, this goes to the irresponsibility of Mr. Blanche's comments. We need to level set here instead of making it worse. And to put this in context, these weren't casual remarks, because we've heard similar remarks from the Attorney General, Pam Bondi. She's actually called out individual judges for their decisions, and the president himself. I mean, is there some kind of strategy at play here by the Justice Department? Are they trying to scare judges? What's at play? Well, if they're trying to scare judges, that won't work because I think fairly my friends and former colleagues in the judiciary are not easily frightened.

9:06Sure. I mean, there may be a motivation to have them look over their shoulders. I think what it is, is it tears down the integrity of the judicial system. All three branches, I think, at bottom have a responsibility to uphold the integrity of their existence as co-equal branches of government. We are seeing this unitary president going wild now. There's another problem here, June, and I think it's that we are losing any line of distinction between the president and the Department of Justice. Of course, I'm not naive. There's always some interaction between the president and the Department of Justice, but they've almost become one and the same, which I think is truly troubling.

9:48So this is the number two man and, in fact, the attorney general, doing the bidding for the president of the United States and simply parroting his view of federal judges and carrying out, we know this now because we've seen some of the things that the president has written and thought that he was playing to an audience of, for example, General Bondi and instructing them to prosecute people. I think my conservative lawyer friends, you know, for example, who listened to Todd Blanche ought to be careful what they wish for, because in a world like that, I don't think anybody is particularly safe.

10:24And Blanche denied that the Justice Department was being weaponized. And he said the Justice Department had been weaponized before in the Biden administration. And then he talked about the prosecutions against Trump. Of course, he didn't address the prosecutions against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. My response to that, June, is, you know, I saw in the news a little earlier today that there was a statement made by the New York Bar Association criticizing Blanche and his response was LOL to that. Well, my response to what Mr. Blanche said about weaponization is LOL.

11:04You know, it's the same thing. If this isn't weaponizing the Justice Department, you know, people may disagree or agree about weaponization during the Biden administration. I'm talking about the here and now. I don't think we've seen a stark weaponization of the Department of Justice ever. Think about the DOJ as it participated in the efforts, the executive orders against law firms. You know, they litigated those cases. You know, it was lawyer on lawyer through that. You know, think about Mr. Blanche traveling to federal prison to see Ghislaine Maxwell and getting a statement from her. We know now that he probably had access to emails that directly contradicted what she apparently told him, looking like every bit the president's personal lawyer instead of the number two man at justice.

11:52I mean, we're in a world that is vastly different than anything I've ever seen in terms of the interaction between the Justice Department and the courts. When I was a judge, by the way, you know, I thought federal judges had pretty enormous power to be used very sparingly and carefully. We're now living in a time when essentially the president of the United States and the Department of Justice, they're saying in as many words, just disregard district court judgments. They're not worth the electronic ink that's being used to render them. I don't think that that's helpful or appropriate in any way in terms of the integrity of the third branch of government.

12:29Judge Jones, he didn't just attack judges. He also attacked the bar associations. And explain this to me if you can. He vowed to take away the Bar Association's oversight power, saying that the DOJ would now be reviewing complaints in-house first with its ethics department, which I'm not sure exists anymore because the head of it was fired a while back. Aren't the complaints against Justice Department lawyers filed with the Bar Association's? I mean, does the Justice Department have any power here? I confess, June, to confusion as well about how that could be accomplished because you're a member of a bar association.

13:09And, you know, in Pennsylvania, for example, the Pennsylvania Bar Association polices its own and they can deprive you, suspend you. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania can get involved and suspend your right to practice for a period or they can disbar you. So good luck with that. I don't know how you do that at all. You know, not only is it, I think, an overreach from a rhetorical standpoint, but I think it's mission impossible. So I confess I don't know what he has in mind there. And your group, the Article III Coalition, has responded to Blanche's remarks? The Article III coalition, of course, put out a statement today, you know, this is 50 judges banding together, retired judges, I should say, that this is something that we feel in unanimity that is really injurious to the rule of law.

14:00And, you know, if you can get 50 retired, you know, thoughtful, appointed by different presidents, you know, folks at different viewpoints going the same direction like this, you're doing, you've got something that is really, really problematic. And, you know, I was proud to join that group. I fear it's going to get worse before it gets better. And that's really troubling. Well, thank you for sharing your concerns and insights with us. That's Judge John E. Jones III. So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need.

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16:25Don't cross our picket line! Don't cross our picket line! Hey, don't cross our picket line! Don't cross our picket line! Hey, don't cross our picket line! Unionized Starbucks workers went on strike at stores in 45 cities today to protest what they call the company's union busting and failure to finalize a union deal. Starbucks workers first voted to unionize at a store in Buffalo back in 2021. Four years later, around 550 Starbucks stores are unionized, but the company still hasn't reached a contract agreement with the union. Starbucks Workers United accuses the heads of the coffee giant of stonewalling baristas on their demands for better hours and better pay and the resolution of hundreds of outstanding unfair labor practice charges.

17:16And on the legal front, Starbucks and the National Labor Relations Board squared off in a federal appeals court for the eighth time in the last two and a half years, with even more cases on deck stemming from the coffee chain's aggressive pushback against union organizing. My guest is labor and employment law expert Kate Andreas, a professor at Columbia Law School. So this is the eighth federal appeals court argument in the last two and a half years. They're arguing two more cases at the Fifth Circuit next month, and there are five other pending appellate court cases. I mean, is this number of federal appellate court cases unusual for a company?

18:00It sounds like a lot. It is unusual, and I think there's three things going on. One is that there's been a massive effort at organizing among the workers. We went from having zero Starbucks stores organized back in early 2021 to, the numbers are disputed, but it looks like about 650. So just that volume of organizing produces a lot of legal issues. The second thing I think is going on is that Starbucks has violated the law, or at least allegedly violated the law in many ways across the country. And so that produces a lot of legal cases. But the third thing, and this came through at the oral argument yesterday, is that the legal landscape is shifting.

18:40And so there's a lot more opportunity to challenge longstanding board precedent, both because of changes with the executive branch in the administration, but also because of changes at the Supreme Court with administrative law. And Starbucks workers first voted to unionize at a store in Buffalo in 2021. They're striking today in more than 25 cities. They've been negotiating, I take it, but they haven't been able to reach an agreement yet? Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I think the workers are striking for really two reasons. One is to protest the unfair labor practices committed by the company. And the other is to try to achieve a fair contract.

19:17And, you know, their demands include higher wages and more fair scheduling and things like that. The law requires the company to bargain in good faith, but it doesn't create a mechanism to impose a contract. And so it's not uncommon for it to take a long time to reach a first contract because frequently employers really resist against negotiating a first contract. And the law doesn't give the workers a lot of mechanisms to force that. The mechanism is to exercise economic pressure through a strike and through trying to put public pressure on a company. And that's what they're trying to do now.

19:50It's really fairly remarkable to see this much organizing, especially by young people across the country. And this is an expression of their effort to improve their jobs. They've struck on Red Cup Day for the last four years. I don't know, is it getting across to the public? Is Starbucks suffering at all? I think one difference, and we'll see if it ultimately makes a difference, is that they continue to organize more stores. So now we're talking about over 600 stores organized. And in order to really make an economic difference for the company, it has to be big, and it has to affect a lot of the stores.

20:24Let's talk about the case at the Second Circuit, where the issue is the wearing of union t-shirts and buttons. The average person might say, okay, they can't wear union t-shirts or buttons. I can't wear certain things at work either. Why is this so important that there have been so many cases about it? Yeah, so absolutely right. I mean, in most work sites, when there's no union and no union organizing, employers pretty much have the right to do whatever they want. They can't discriminate on the basis of race or sex or something like that, but they can tell workers what to wear, what time to show up, when to go to the bathroom, track people's movements with AI and other technology.

21:04But the law creates protections for the right to organize. The National Labor Relations Act, which was passed in 1935, gives workers a right to engage in concerted action for mutual aid or protection. And that means that workers have the right to get together to organize a union or to get together to just try to improve their jobs. And all the way back to the early days of the National Labor Relations Act, the board and the Supreme Court have held that part of that right is to engage in expression of support for union activity, including by wearing union buttons, union t-shirts, and other union insignia.

21:42At the same time, the board and the court have said, well, we have to balance that interest with employers' interests in managing the worksite. So basically, the approach has been to balance workers' right to engage in concerted activity, to join a union and show their support for the union, even if otherwise the employer might prohibit wearing buttons, with employers' right to manage their work sites. And to do that, it's been for many, many decades, the board's rule has been there's a presumption in favor of allowing workers to wear buttons or union t-shirts or other union insignia in order to vindicate their right to organize.

22:21However, if the employer can show that there's a special exception that means that particular workers should not be allowed to wear union buttons or union insignia, then the employer can prohibit them or can limit them. Certain special exceptions include things like patient care and hospitals, and also sometimes include public-facing jobs like at Starbucks. So what Starbucks is saying here is, this is a public-facing job, Our image is important. And so we can limit the extent to which workers can show their support for the union. And is it about wearing a union t-shirt and more than one union button?

23:01Yeah. The Starbucks rule is that workers can wear only one union button and they cannot wear any t-shirts with messages other than messages the company has approved. So that's what makes the case a bit complicated. If the Starbucks rule was no messages at all or no different t-shirts at all or no union buttons at all, that whole analysis might be easier. But basically, they're saying you can wear one union button and no union t-shirts. And the board says that there's a right to wear union t-shirts. There's a right to wear union buttons. And you haven't shown that there's a special exception here for you because, in fact, you allow workers to wear t-shirts with messages.

23:40Workers at Starbucks are allowed to wear various messages that are approved by the company. So that's the crux of the issue. I think stepping back, what's really at stake and what kind of came through in the argument is to what extent workers are going to continue to have the right to engage in pro-union expression at work versus how much is an employer able to control that or to limit it, even if it doesn't have a really good reason for doing so. And the Court of Appeals appear to be quite sympathetic to the employer's desire to control what workers are wearing, even if it limits their ability to engage in union expression, especially because here there was some limited right to wear a union button.

24:21Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show, I'll continue this conversation with Columbia Law School Professor Kate Andreas. We'll talk about how a recent Supreme Court decision may play in the case at the Second Circuit. I'm June Grosso, and you're listening to Bloomberg. bro from the show last night to this drive why is it never chill because this is our life backstage on the road it's loud messy real and that's the best part whole crew no plan just moving good thing nissan builds for that kind of chaos not just test tracks real life scenes late nights road trips all of it that's why it holds up nissan was ranked number one in initial quality among mainstream brands by J.D.

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26:31And the board also found fault with the company banning workers from wearing more than one pin related to labor organizing or any advocating for personal, political or religious issues. I've been talking to Professor Kate Andreas of Columbia Law School. So, Kate, this was before the Second Circuit in Manhattan. But in 2012, didn't they already uphold the Starbucks policy to wear only one union pin? They did, but they did so in a different circumstance, a different store with a different background uniform rule. So in that other store, there wasn't the right to wear all these other buttons and all these other messages.