Weekend Law: Elections, Pardons & Endangered Species

0:00So 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. 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. Some people like working twice as hard just to stay right where they are. And in Ohio, we really don't get it. Because to us, owning a home in your 30s, working in tech without the traffic, and still being able to make it to your kid's soccer game, sounds pretty good.

0:48In fact, Ohio is the second most affordable state to buy a home. Your move. Learn more at yourmoveohio.com If your best finance people are doing expense reports, chasing receipts, or spending time on month-end close, it's time to get Brex AF, a gentic finance that eliminates that work before it starts. Learn more at brex.com slash AF. This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. A serious software error in New Jersey's motor vehicle system led to the improper voter registration of what we believe to be roughly 6 ,600 people in our state. New Jersey Governor Mickey Sherrill blamed a software glitch for the state mistakenly adding 6 ,600 non-citizens to its voter rolls, leading to around 400 of them improperly voting since 2023.

1:52Although Sherrill said there's no evidence those votes swayed the outcome of any election. Still, President Trump seized on the disclosure to support his unproven claims of widespread voter fraud and the need to pass the Save America Act. And Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen says DHS has identified hundreds of thousands of non-citizens on voter rolls in four states. We've identified 250 ,000 non-citizens registered to vote in California and Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada. And Mullen went further, threatening state officials who don't go along with the administration's election security demands.

2:42If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time. My guest is Jonathan Diaz, Director of Voting Advocacy and Partnerships at the Campaign Legal Center. Jonathan, explain what happened in New Jersey. So it appears that there was some sort of technological error in New Jersey's DMV system where about 6 ,000 or so individuals who correctly identified themselves as non-citizens, you know, they weren't trying to register to vote, nevertheless were erroneously registered.

3:28New Jersey's election officials and governor made this announcement. They identified this problem. They've directed officials to remove them from the rolls. They are fixing the glitch in their driver's license system. And this is, I think, an example of how the system is supposed to work. The state and local officials who are responsible for overseeing voter registration identified a problem, made it clear to the public, and announced steps to mitigate the problem. You know, they don't need the federal government to step in and do it for them. But that does mean that as many as 400 non-citizens ended up voting illegally.

4:05So I think it's important to remember that more than 4.1 million ballots were cast in New Jersey in 2024. So that number, you know, even if it was 400 in total, that's less than 1 % of 1%. It's 0.009 % of the total votes cast in New Jersey in 2024. which is nowhere near affecting the outcome of any federal election that took place in New Jersey in that year. Trump and other Republicans are using this to boost claims of widespread voter fraud and the need for the SAVE Act. There's nothing in any of the proposals that the federal government has put forward that would have addressed this scenario.

4:51This was a simple case of human error, of technological error. Somebody misprogrammed the system. And so, you know, requiring, as the Trump administration wants, requiring voters to provide additional proof of citizenship to show a passport or a birth certificate to register to vote wouldn't have stopped this because these people said that they were not citizens. They weren't trying to register to vote. But, you know, elections are run by people. Sometimes people make mistakes. Sometimes there is a glitch in the system. And, you know, that's why we have safeguards built in to ensure that it can be caught and fixed for the next time.

5:26And even in a scenario like this, where there was a technological problem that did result in some people being erroneously registered, it's not happening anywhere near the numbers on the scale that the president and the White House are suggesting that it is. You know, this is a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of the votes, so small that it doesn't affect the outcome. And so, you know, in my view, this technological error, which is really all that it is, does not justify the kind of draconian restrictions that the Trump administration is proposing for voter registration, because those things, A, wouldn't have solved this problem, and B, would have prevented many more people than this who are eligible from actually registering and voting.

6:12Mark Wayne Mullen, DHS secretary, said that in New Jersey, reviews found 35 ,152 non-citizens registered. The governor said that we've asked them for any evidence of this, where they got that number, who this is. We've received nothing back yet. I don't know where DHS's numbers came from, nor does New Jersey. If you look at the numbers, Secretary Mullen released, and you compare not just these New Jersey numbers, but, you know, DHS and the White House released data about a number of states who have voluntarily shared their data with the federal government. And the White House and DHS's numbers for states like Texas and Louisiana are incredibly inflated compared to what those states themselves are reporting.

7:01And Texas reported lower numbers than the White House did about, you know, suspected non-citizens on their roles, and then had to backtrack because they had wrongfully identified naturalized citizens as being ineligible. So whenever a federal or state agency makes, you know, inflated claims about huge numbers in the tens of thousands of, you know, ineligible registrants, I think we have to look at those with some skepticism because almost inevitably they get walked back. And especially in the case of DHS, there's just nothing that they have given us in terms of where they got their data, what methodology they used.

7:40We don't know where those numbers came from. They could have pulled them out of a hat. So if we're going to take those numbers seriously, I think we need a lot more information from DHS about how they came up with them. Do you think this disclosure by New Jersey has any connection to the Trump administration's recent push? You know, the announcement from New Jersey's governor seems to me to be completely unrelated from what DOJ sent them. This was their own investigation into their own system, which every state is doing all the time. And I think that's the key takeaway here is that state governments who are the ones legally responsible for running our elections are constantly going through their voter registration rules and their election systems to fix errors and to make sure that they are as accurate as is humanly possible.

8:25And what they don't need is wild accusations from the federal government based on no evidence that they're doing it wrong. You know, I think this incident in New Jersey shows that states are more than capable of maintaining clean voter rolls and addressing the problems as they arise. Because, you know, we have a very complicated election system and it's totally decentralized. It's run by states and in most important ways by counties and municipalities. You know, one of the things that makes it so resilient is that we don't have a single national election infrastructure that could be compromised or, you know, have some problem with it that would affect everybody.

9:04Are you concerned that if the Trump administration doesn't like the results in New Jersey in the midterms, that they'll use this disclosure to try to attack those results? I'm sure that no matter what New Jersey officials say or do, that the Trump administration is going to point to this incident and claim that New Jersey's results can't be trusted. But that's why New Jersey, like every state, has audits and recounts and hand-marked paper ballots that can be checked after the fact. And, you know, that's why they're making this announcement now and removing these ineligible individuals from the rolls so that this can't happen again in November.

9:44But regardless of what New Jersey does, I expect the White House to use this as ammunition, not just in any claims that they make about the results in November, but also in their push to pass the Save America Act and to enable federal agencies to have a bigger role or take control of certain election administration functions, despite their lack of legal authority to do that. DHS Secretary Mullen has made threats against election officials. But what exactly is he asking them to do? That's a good question. DHS sent letters to these four states. And those letters were pretty tame. They said, you know, DHS had done an analysis and identified suspected, you know, potential non-citizens on the rolls, reminded the states that, you know, federal law requires them to maintain accurate voter rolls and that non-citizens are prohibited from voting in U.S.

10:35elections. But then otherwise just kind of said, you know, DHS is ready to help you if you need it. The letters were very, very tame. His remarks on Friday were not. And, you know, in his speech, he did both say that DHS is directing the states to remove all of those individuals from the rolls, which number one, DHS doesn't have the authority to direct states to do anything with their voter rolls. And number two, the states can't just take thousands of people off the rolls because somebody in the federal government tells them to. There is a process that they have to go through under both state and federal laws to verify those claims.

11:10They have to do their due diligence. They have to check. I imagine that the states will. They will take this seriously. But Secretary Mullen also, much like Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dillon did a couple of weeks ago, threatened election officials and said that they'll be prosecuted if they don't cooperate with the federal government. And I don't think that's an empty threat. I think that this administration is very willing to lean on its criminal enforcement authority and go after election officials if they don't go along with the administration's policy priorities when it comes to elections.

11:45Fortunately, I don't think that those charges would hold up. And election officials have very good counsel kind of across the board, have litigated against a lot of them. They know what they're doing. But it is alarming when senior officials in the federal government are threatening state and local election officials with criminal prosecution. You know, it's almost like it's like watching a mob movie to do what we want or else. And that's just not the relationship that we have seen between the federal government and the states in the past when it comes to elections. And the federal government typically provides resources and support and assistance to state and local election officials in carrying out their responsibilities.

12:22But this kind of aggressive posture towards election officials is really something new. But election officials have the winning record in federal court against the Trump administration over the administration's quest to get unredacted voter rolls. I believe the states are 16-0. Thanks so much for joining me, Jonathan. That's Jonathan Diaz of the Campaign Legal Center. Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show, the Trump administration is gutting the Endangered Species Act, and environmental groups are taking them to court. I'm June Grosso, and you're listening to Bloomberg. This is Tony Ayo from The Real Report with Tony Ayo and Uncle Murda.

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13:36Imagine something in your budget actually staying the same. You'll pay the same for unlimited wireless when you're posting mirror selfies in your 20s and when you're posting mirror selfies in retirement. Some things never change. Switch now for unlimited wireless at a price that will never go up. Only at Boost Mobile. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers will pay$25 a month as long as they remain active on a Boost Unlimited plan. Some people like working twice as hard just to stay right where they are. And in Ohio, we really don't get it. Because to us, owning a home in your 30s, working in tech without the traffic, and still being able to make it to your kid's soccer game sounds pretty good.

14:20In fact, Ohio is the second most affordable state to buy a home. Your move. Learn more at yourmoveohio.com. If your best finance people are doing expense reports, chasing receipts, or spending time on month-end clothes? It's time to get Brex AF, a gentic finance that eliminates that work before it starts. Learn more at brex.com slash AF. It's really quite troubling to see that monarch populations are declining. And if there aren't enough flowers to feed monarchs, imagine all of the lesser-known pollinators that aren't getting the things that they need. The iconic orange and black monarch butterfly is one of the most recognizable species but 80 percent of the butterflies have been wiped out since the 1990s.

15:10It's because of the destruction of their habitat, the main reason that species become extinct. By helping monarchs and restoring this diverse native habitat that's pesticide-free, we can really help a whole suite of other species. But now the Trump administration has decided that destroying the habitats of endangered species is not harmful. It's rescinded the so-called harm rule, a 50-year-old rule that's protected endangered wildlife from losing millions of acres of habitat. Thirteen environmental groups are suing the administration in federal courts in California and Washington state, challenging the decision that allows developers and private landowners to destroy the habitat of endangered species without it being considered harm to the species.

16:02Joining me is an expert in environmental law, Pat Parenteau, a professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School. Pat, start by explaining what the Trump administration has done here to the Endangered Species Act. Well, they have just published a final rule rescinding what's called the harm rule under the Endangered Species Act, which has been on the books for over 50 years, was first enacted in 1975 in the Gerald Ford administration. And it's been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1995 in the case Sweet Home versus Babbitt. So now the Trump administration is saying, forget about all that. We hereby rescind the harm rule.

16:50And oh, by the way, we're not going to propose a replacement. We're just going to say we don't need a harm rule at all. We don't need to define the word harm, which is in the statute. We don't even need to do that. So we're just going to repeal it. We're not going to comply with NEPA. We're not going to do an environmental impact statement. We're not going to comply with the Endangered Species Act itself, which requires consultation before you take an action like this and produce what's called a biological opinion to demonstrate that the action that you're taking will not jeopardize endangered species or result in the adverse modification of their critical habitat.

17:36So it's crazy on stilts what we're talking about. You can boil it down to this. The Trump administration has hereby decreed that destroying the habitat of endangered species is not harmful. The administration said this move would reduce permitting and compliance costs for farmers, landowners, and energy producers. Right. Without producing real data to show that this rule is responsible for, I guess you would call it unreasonable costs. I mean, it's certainly true that every law that Congress enacts is going to impose certain obligations on people that will in turn require the expenditure of some money.

18:24That's what regulation is all about. The money being spent is for a good purpose, a public purpose, right? You can argue about how important saving endangered species is. If you ask the American people, they will tell you it's really important. That has been a consistent polling result over the life of the Endangered Species Act from 1973 to today. The amount of public support for this law is in the 90 % range. So yeah, does compliance with laws require money? Sure they do. And the loss of habitat causes more species to go extinct than any other single factor? Yes, it is the leading cause of species extinction in the U.S.

19:12and globally. The other thing about it is the Endangered Species Act is all about habitat. I mean, the very stated purpose of the law is to conserve the ecosystems upon which these species depend. So right from the get-go in 1973, this is really kind of amazing for Congress to be this ecologically literate in 1973. They were talking about ecosystems. They were talking about habitat. That was the whole point of the law. Congress recognized that loss of habitat was driving species to extinction. And unless it was both stopped or arrested and mitigated, more and more of the species would go extinct.

19:57Tell us about the basis of the lawsuits by the environmental groups over the rescission of this rule. Multiple grounds. They start by saying the Sweet Home decision in 1995 is still the law of the land. It has not been overturned. The Trump administration is clearly aiming to get this issue back in front of the Supreme Court in their hope that the Supreme Court will reverse its decision in Sweet Home and basically adopt the dissent in Sweet Home written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Leah, you know, there's an echo here because this is the same strategy that Lee Zeldin is pursuing under the Clean Air Act to repeal the endangerment finding.

20:45Once again, EPA, the Trump administration, is saying the Supreme Court got it wrong in Massachusetts versus EPA. We don't have authority to regulate greenhouse gases, and we're going to get that issue back in front of the court so they can overturn Mass versus EPA. Same thing is happening here with the harm rule. They want to get this case back to the court in the hopes that they can get a decision overturning the Sweet Home decision. The reason they believe they have a shot at this, of course, is because the Supreme Court has now overturned the Chevron doctrine with deference to agency interpretations.

21:24If Sweet Home was based on Chevron, which the court has eliminated, and you also have a Supreme Court that just last term reversed two longstanding precedents, do you have any confidence that the court will respect the precedent of Sweet Home and uphold the harm rule? Well, we know, of course, that the court will do what the court will do with five votes. I think this one will be a closer call. I don't rule out, of course, the prospect or the danger that the Supreme Court might do what Trump is asking it to do. You can't rule that out. But here's the thing. Justice Roberts, in the Loper-Bright case, which overturned the Chevron Doctrine, said very clearly, our overturning Chevron does not mean that prior decisions of this court that relied on Chevron are not still the law.

22:23They are still the law, unless and until, of course, the Supreme Court changes the law. So the argument that Loper Bright automatically means Trump wins is wrong. It's just flat wrong on the face of the Loper Bright decision. It's certainly true that if this case gets to the Supreme Court, there's a risk that it'll do the wrong thing from the standpoint of protecting endangered species. I would be naive to the extreme to think that, you know, the Supreme Court is bleeding over the fate of endangered species. But on the other hand, this principle, which is called statutory stare decisis, When the Supreme Court has said that a statute means something specifically, that is a strong precedent.

23:12So it doesn't get overruled with the snap of a finger or the fact that there's a new administration in town who doesn't like the prior ruling. So that's not enough to get that victory that Trump is hoping for in this case. I'll ask you the question I usually ask you, which is, so let's say that there's a Democratic administration that comes in next. and overturns the overturning of the harm rule. How much damage can be done in the remaining two years of the Trump administration if there's not an injunction put in place? Yeah, well, there is going to be a request for a preliminary injunction and maybe even a temporary restraining order right out of the box.

23:54The Earth Justice is handling one of the major cases, and that's the most formidable environmental litigating group in the country. They will leave no stone unturned. So the problem is by saying that the harm rule is no longer in effect, that influences all kinds of activities that are ongoing. It means that the Forest Service now, you know, the Trump administration wants to ramp up timber harvest in the habitat of many endangered species, spotted owls, marble murailettes. You go down the list, a whole bunch. So what happens now in that context of when agencies still have the obligation to ensure that their actions do not result in jeopardy or adverse modification of critical habitat?

24:39If the Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA, with regard to marine species, if they are no longer engaged in analyzing whether the destruction of the habitat is going to result in harm to the species, that's going to affect a lot of the decision making that multiple agencies are doing. The Fish and Wildlife Service won't be providing them with the kind of biological information they need to meet the demand of the Endangered Species Act. So they'll be subject to more litigation over that. Now, the Trump administration doesn't really care about that. They're happy to see chaos in litigation. That seems to make their day.

25:19But the regulated community is not going to be happy about that. Timber companies that are relying on Forest Service decisions or BLM decisions for grazing or mining or any number of things. You know, if you start tearing out the foundation of how the Endangered Species Act is supposed to work, including looking at the effects of habitat loss, you're going to destabilize the whole regulatory framework. So some of this is being laid out already. I've seen it in the complaint that Earth Justice has filed. They've called out specific projects that will be affected by this decision right now, today.

25:59I predict we will see a motion for at least a preliminary injunction very soon. And Pat, factor into all this that a recent poll shows that 84 percent of Americans support the Endangered Species Act. I think in time you're going to see more and more, maybe backlash is the word, I don't know, more reaction from the public over this. And communities that have seen the value of the restoration of endangered species. If you think about the wolf reintroduction or the fact that the grizzly bear population has improved, whether it's been fully recovered is another question. But they certainly have improved.

26:39And what has that created? It's created a really robust ecotourism industry, if you will, recreation based. Those gateway communities around Yellowstone are there to see the wolves. And that's money in the pocket of local businesses, local communities and schools and all the rest. So it's not true that restoring endangered species, you know, is a cost without taking account of the benefits that it creates. So I don't think you can make a case, frankly, that the investment in recovering these species isn't worth it. Quite the contrary. We'll watch to see if the environmental groups get a preliminary injunction here.

27:20Thanks so much, Pat. That's Professor Pat Parenteau of the Vermont Law and Graduate School. Coming up next, President Trump is pardoning companies like a 17th century English king. I'm June Grosso and this is Bloomberg. This is Tony Ayo from The Real Report with Tony Ayo and Uncle Murda. You ever notice how everything keeps going up? Rent's going up. Streaming services are going up. Even your favorite burrito spot suddenly thinks salsa should cost extra. But with Boost Mobile, you and your phone bill don't have to play the will it go up soon game because Boost Mobile has an unlimited talk, text and data plan at a price that'll never go up.

27:55It's the same price you'll pay for life, meaning you're set to never worry about your bill increasing again for as long as you're on the plan. While the world keeps finding new ways to nickel and dime you, Boost Mobile gives you unlimited wireless at one set price for life. Imagine something in your budget actually staying the same. You'll pay the same for unlimited wireless when you're posting mirror selfies in your 20s and when you're posting mirror selfies in retirement. Some things never change. Switch now for unlimited wireless at a price that will never go up. Only at Boost Mobile. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds.

28:28Customers will pay$25 a month as long as they remain active on a Boost Unlimited plan. Some people like working twice as hard just to stay right where they are. And in Ohio, we really don't get it. Because to us, owning a home in your 30s, working in tech without the traffic, and still being able to make it to your kid's soccer game sounds pretty good. In fact, Ohio is the second most affordable state to buy a home. Your move. Learn more at yourmoveohio.com.