Slavery Exhibit, Climate Suits & Zuckerberg Testifies

0:00Madlin Mekelburg:This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card members can earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases wherever they shop. This means you could be earning daily cash on just about anything, like a slice of pizza from your local pizza place or a latte from the corner coffee shop. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app to see your credit limit offer in minutes. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at AppleCard.com.

0:28Pat Parenteau:Being a small business owner isn't just a career, it's a calling. Chase for Business knows how much heart and effort go into building something of your own. Manage all your business finances, from banking to payments to credit cards, all in one place with Chase's digital tools. Plus, access online resources designed to help your business thrive. Learn more at chase.com slash business. Chase for Business. Make more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. Member FDIC. Copyright 2026. JPMorgan Chase and Company.

1:04Madlin Mekelburg: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. Now, a global workforce of 300 ,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94 % of common questions. Not noise.

1:24Sheryll Cashin:Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM.

1:37June Grasso:This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio.

1:42Pat Parenteau:A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration must restore 34 educational panels about slavery at a site in Philadelphia where George Washington lived as president. Judge Cynthia Roof compared the display's removal last month by the National Park Service to the government mind control employed in George Orwell's novel 1984. The judge found that the federal government does not have the power it claims, quote, to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts. Joining me is Cheryl Cashin, a professor at Georgetown Law. What's your reaction to this 40-page opinion by Judge Roof?

2:27Sheryll Cashin:Oh, well, I think it's a beautiful piece of Americana now. because, you know, first of all, she's a George W. Bush appointee, and she issues a preliminary injunction basically saying to a sitting president, you don't get to be Orwellian. You don't get to be like the Ministry of Truth in this science fiction novel and impose your view on objective facts. We have a complicated history. That history includes slavery. Yes, our greatest founder was a slave owner. We're not going to hide that. And we're going to learn from that history. I actually found there were passages in the opinion that were quite patriotic and soaring.

3:14Sheryll Cashin:So I'm very appreciative of what she did in this Black History Month and on President's Day.

3:20Pat Parenteau:You can't get past the symbolism there.

3:22Sheryll Cashin:No, no.

3:24Pat Parenteau:When she criticized the Trump administration, she said, Truth is no longer self-evident, but rather the property of the elected chief magistrate at his whim to be scraped clean, hidden or overwritten. Why? Solely because as a defendant state, it has the power. What was the Trump administration's defense to taking these panels down?

3:45Sheryll Cashin:It's only defense. First of all, it was the National Park Service that was sued. They're the ones who took them down. But their only defense and the judge points to this seem to be, that Donald Trump issued an executive order requiring things like this. That was it. They didn't offer any reasons for it. And I think it's important to bring out to your listeners exactly what these 34 panels covered, the stories they covered. And I greatly appreciated the judges doing this. They covered the fact that the Washingtons in the president's house brought nine enslaved people there. And she named them in the opinion, and I think it's worth us taking a quick moment to name them.

4:33Sheryll Cashin:She named them all. Oney Judge, Martha Washington's maid, Austin, her brother, Christopher Shields, the president's valet, Giles, the carriage driver, Hercules Posey, a supremely talented chef to the Washingtons, Joe Richardson, the coachman, Maul, Martha Washington's nanny for the grandchildren, Paris, a stable worker, and Richmond, who was the son of Hercules in a chimney sweep. The complicated history that these 34 panels told was that George Washington, our first founder, would rotate these nine people out every six months to evade a law that Quaker abolitionists agitated for and won that would allow them after six months to petition for freedom.

5:22Sheryll Cashin:He didn't want them to be free. OK, that's complicated, but it's true. The other story that I think that the White House was probably uncomfortable with was the story of Oney Judge, a freckle-faced, bushy-haired teenager who escaped, probably with the help of a free Black community. Overwhelmingly, the black people in the city at that time were free. Hundreds and hundreds of black people. In fact, the black community was blocks away from the president's house. And this young teenager escapes. It's beyond Martha's imagination that the person who catered to her every need would want to leave her.

6:08Sheryll Cashin:and she basically, I think more than anyone, put pressure on George Washington to find her. George Washington, as president, spends two years trying to recapture her and does not succeed. And so they're outwitted by this young black teenager who desperately wanted to be free and lived free for the next 50 years. And that's the story that the Trump administration suppressed. And the judge, to her credit, talked about how the display recognized Oney Judge and her fierce struggle for freedom and how it represented the country's progress away from the horrors of slavery, where everybody could live with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

6:54Sheryll Cashin:What was the legal basis for the judge's ruling? For years, I taught administrative law, right? A basic tenet of administrative law is that government does not get to reverse itself on a whim without explanation, particularly when a policy has been in place. There were several pieces of congressional legislation. There was a legislation going back to 1948 creating this National Independence Park. There was a 2006 law in which Congress encouraged the telling of this complicated story. And as we discussed, they didn't offer any explanation for why you had this extreme reversal of taking down exhibits that told this complicated history.

7:49Sheryll Cashin:So that was arbitrary and capricious. That's one thing. The city of Philadelphia also had a statutory right to be consulted on any changes at the president's house. They paid for this project. They paid for these interpretations, these panels, the videos telling this story. They invested$5 million in the project, right? So they had a statutory expectation and right to be consulted before any changes were made. That law was violated, right? So arbitrary and capricious under administrative law. Also, it was a breach of separation of powers. The court made it abundantly clear that the president of the United States does not get to, by executive order, frankly, executive fiat, authorize an agency to violate a law Congress passed.

8:47Sheryll Cashin:Right. So there's that. The court also alluded to federalism. Judicial conservatives generally tend to like the idea of federalism, of allowing local and state control, you know, 10th Amendment values. Well, you know, the governor, Governor Shapiro, filed an amicus brief saying, you know, we supported telling our public this complicated history and the city supported. And certainly, you know, the black cultural institutions that helped shape the content, they were outraged that, you know, this interesting, complicated history where African-Americans are present and featured was ripped out with no explanation.

9:33Sheryll Cashin:So all of those reasons the judge brought to bear. So the judge issued an injunction ordering the government to restore the panels, but she didn't give them a date certain.

9:46Pat Parenteau:And the government is going to appeal the ruling. What do you think their chances are on appeal, since we don't really know what their argument was in the first place?

9:54Sheryll Cashin:I think this is an airtight case. I want to say hundreds of lawsuits have been filed to stop the Trump administration from violating law. There's more than 150 orders have been issued to the Trump administration, blocking them from doing something that's unlawful. And I want to applaud the federal courts, particularly the trial courts, are checking this presidency and upholding the rule of law. I do not see how the Court of Appeals, even if they get lucky and get a panel that's all conservative judges, it's pretty airtight. Right. There are two statutes that make it clear that the city, first of all, the city owns the land where this presidential site is.

10:51Sheryll Cashin:There was a federal law that sanctioned this cooperative arrangements and the federal government had entered into a series of cooperative arrangements. They took and benefited from the$5 million that Philadelphia put forth to put up this display. And by the statute, they were entitled to be consulted on any changes. So it's pretty airtight. I do not see how any judge that's operating with intellectual integrity to the rule of law would uphold this. Violates separation of powers, Congress's intent, violates principles of federalism, violates principles of vested interest. And also, frankly, in a lot of these federal court opinions, there are allusions to what's morally right.

11:49Sheryll Cashin:You know, this judge used the literary reference of 1984, Georgia Orwell's 1984, right? She quoted explicitly from it. There's a law and there's also what ordinary people would recognize as morally right. Let me underscore this. And it's part because I'm more familiar with this. I'm a Black American and I'm a law professor and I've written a lot of books in which I play an amateur historian. This effort, the removal of these panels here, was part of a larger despotic erasure of Black history by this administration, right? He issues this executive order last March, March of 2025, which basically tells every single agency in the government to scrub the government of references that put any American, including colonial Americans, in a bad light.

12:56Sheryll Cashin:They purged any reference to Black Americans and their contributions from websites. They have threatened any school district that has black or ethnic studies in a curriculum with withholding of money. It's just clear that black American history and the African American struggle for freedom, for some reason, they seem to feel that puts particularly white leaders of the past in a bad light. I actually happen to have a very patriotic view like the judge did. Like there's nothing more patriotic than people of all colors and genders claiming the words of the Declaration of Independence is theirs. I'm a proud American.

13:41Sheryll Cashin:I believe in our self-evident truths. Let me tell my story of how I, you know, how I live as an American. And that's what's at stake here, whether it's attacking black history or LGBTQ history or feminism. I think in 2026, 250th anniversary of our country, we ought to be mature enough to hear complicated history and place it in the context of, yes, there are things that happen that are unpleasant, but it was part of a larger journey of us achieving our professed values.

14:20Pat Parenteau:And that's a legacy to be proud of. Thanks so much for joining me on the show. That's Professor Cheryl Cashin of Georgetown Law. It took less than a week for lawsuits to be filed over the EPA's elimination of the bedrock scientific finding that greenhouse gases threaten public health. The so-called endangerment finding forms the basis for regulations to fight climate change, and its revocation could unwind current air and climate rules. So a coalition of conservation and public health groups are challenging its repeal, saying the EPA violated federal law and legal precedent. More lawsuits are sure to follow on an issue that's likely to reach the Supreme Court.

15:08Pat Parenteau:Joining me is an expert in environmental law, Pat Parenteau, a professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School. Pat, just how critical is this revocation of the endangerment finding?

15:22June Grasso:It's huge and it's ugly and people do not fully understand just how devastating this action is going to be, not just for climate, but for public health and safety generally.

15:35Pat Parenteau:And the endangerment finding came out of a landmark Supreme Court case in 2007. Right.

15:43June Grasso:So it follows on the heels, of course, of Massachusetts versus EPA, which is still the law of the land, contrary to what Mr. Zeldin thinks. And in that decision, the Supreme Court not only held that greenhouse gas pollution is regulated under the Clean Air Act, the George W. Bush administration had taken the position it wasn't regulated. And they made many of the same arguments that Trump and Zeldin are making now. The Supreme Court rejected those. It was a five to four decision. And frankly, the majority in the Massachusetts case is no longer on the court. So that's what gives Trump some hope here.

16:22June Grasso:And then secondly, the Supreme Court said, since you have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas pollution, if you make a finding that such pollution and the emissions that cause it endanger public health and welfare, you must regulate. You don't have any discretion not to regulate once you make a finding. And the Supreme Court made it clear that was a scientific finding. It wasn't policy. It wasn't even law, necessarily. It was a scientific determination that this kind of pollution is endangering people's health and welfare.

16:59Pat Parenteau:And since that point, has there been any contrary evidence to that scientific finding?

17:04June Grasso:No, quite the contrary. And, of course, I think we've talked before about how the Department of Energy cooked up this phony report based on five climate denialists. They are scientists, but they deny the consensus around climate change. And EPA was going to use that report. But then the federal court in Massachusetts said the report was prepared illegally because it was done in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. And Judge Young issued a decision just recently saying, can't use this report. So now EPA has abandoned the argument attacking the science underlying the endangerment finding.

17:49There's no basis to do that.

17:50June Grasso:The National Academy of Sciences weighed in with a special report rebutting this so-called Department of Energy report. So the science is absolutely crystal clear, and the danger is absolutely clear. You can repeal the finding. You can't repeal the danger.

18:09Pat Parenteau:There are two lawsuits and counting, one by a group of youth plaintiffs and another by a coalition of health and environmental groups. Tell us about their claims that the EPA's actions are illegal.

18:23June Grasso:Well, they're first of all saying that Massachusetts versus EPA is the law. And as I said, it states very clearly that EPA has the authority to regulate. So now Zeldin is coming along and saying, well, no, we've looked at it again through the lens that we use. And our conclusion is that the best reading of the Clean Air Act is not the reading that the Supreme Court issued in Mass v. CPA, but our reading, which is we don't have any authority to regulate greenhouse gases. They're using kind of an originalist argument here. They're trying to say that because the Clean Air Act of 1970 was focused on initially localized pollution, the smog that people were breathing and so forth.

19:10June Grasso:But it's not true that the Clean Air Act was limited geographically. we have multiple instances of where the Clean Air Act has been used to tackle long-range pollution, not just acid rain, but ozone pollution, smog pollution, fine particulate pollution that floats across the United States from upwind states to downwind states. So this notion that the Clean Air Act was never intended to regulate anything in your immediate area of the air you're breathing is simply flatly wrong. That's never been the law. No case has ever said that. The Supreme Court has never said that. Only Zeldin is saying that.

19:54June Grasso:So the first argument is there really is no legal basis whatsoever for repealing the endangerment finding. And of course, they also repealed immediately what we call the tailpipe standards, the mobile source standards, cars and trucks and so forth. They are the largest source of this kind of pollution and a lot of other pollution as well. So the notion that this isn't a significant category, that's another requirement of the Clean Air Act. You have to make a finding that there's a danger from these pollutants, but then you have to look at the sources of the pollutants and say those sources contribute to the danger.

20:35June Grasso:But if this is the largest source of greenhouse gases and these other pollutants, they surely contribute to the danger. So there's no legal basis, no scientific basis, and there are lots of other arguments for why this finding is not based on the law.