Weekend Law: The Chief's Warning, SCOTUS Pressured & Anthropic

0:00The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works. At IBM, we've seen this firsthand. But by embedding AI across HR, IT, and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slash repetitive tasks, and freed thousands of hours for strategic work. Now we're helping 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. 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.

0:38Manage 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. J.P. Morgan Chase Bank N.A. Member FDIC. Copyright 2026. J.P. Morgan Chase and Company. Find home wherever you roam at Sinesta ES and Simply Suites, where longer stays feel comfortable, flexible, and easy. Stretch out and enjoy spacious accommodations and home-like amenities designed to help you settle in and stay productive or relaxed for however long you need.

1:21And when you're a Sinesta Travel Pass member, staying at Sinesta ES and Simply Suites means earning points toward free nights, upgrades, and more with every eligible stay. Go to Sonesta.com to book your stay and unlock the best rates with Sonesta Travel Pass. Here today, Rome tomorrow. Join now at Sonesta.com. Terms and conditions apply. This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. With violent threats against federal judges rising, the Chief Justice of the United States issued a warning this week. Judges around the country work very hard to get it right, and if they don't, their opinions are subject to criticism.

2:09But personally directed hostility is dangerous, and it's got to stop. It was Chief Justice John Roberts' first response to President Trump's extraordinary verbal attacks on the justices who voted to strike down his global tariffs a month ago. Trump called them fools, lapdogs, unpatriotic, and disloyal to the Constitution. And there's also the continued rhetoric from the administration, calling out judges by name and sometimes ridiculing them. The problem sometimes is that the criticism can move from a focus on legal analysis, to personalities and you see from all over, I mean not just any one political perspective on it, that it's more directed in a personal way and that frankly can be actually quite dangerous.

3:12It's not the first time the Chief has felt the need to come to the defense of federal judges. My guest is retired federal judge Johnny Jones III. He's the president of Dickinson College. Judge Jones, what's your take on the chief justice's warning? Yeah, this is a big statement from the chief, and I absolutely respect the chief justice. I think that he's been a terrific leader of the federal courts, agree or disagree with his decisions. He became chief justice when I was on the bench. you know, he's stood up historically for his judges. But for him to go this far means to me that he appreciates that this has reached critical mass.

3:54I was privileged to be on 60 Minutes a couple of weeks ago and a spot on threats against the judiciary. And I said very straightforwardly that we're going to get a judge killed if we're not careful. And I think this is resonating now with the Supreme Court. And while I know that the chief was being cautious, although his statements were pretty strong, pretty profound that it has to stop. Look, there's only one set of offenders right now. You could go back and talk about Chuck Schumer, and you can talk about other people who made comments about decisions by Republican appointed judges, but they're completely different in their nature than the constant drumbeat from this administration, literally from January 20th of last year.

4:43And, you know, I think the president's rhetoric, the attorney general's rhetoric, Todd Blanche, for example, saying there's a war on the judiciary. I think this is really, really beyond the pale. And, you know, we're seeing judges doxed, we're seeing judges having pizzas delivered to them anonymously, and somebody's going to take up arms and they're going to do harm to a judge or a judge's family. And I think the chief's had enough of it. And that's why he picked his spot at Rice University and decided to speak out. Good for him. Do you have any confidence that this is going to get the president or those in his administration to tame their remarks?

5:22Well, it won't stop, June, but I'll tell you what's happening. You know, you're seeing for the first time now that grand juries are not indicting people. They're issuing no bills in cases. So this president would want to, I think, use the apparatus of the criminal justice system of the Justice Department to, you know, bring punitive actions against his enemies. And what he's done is I think he's poisoned the well and good citizens who are called to serve on grand juries are not buying it. And judges too. Judge Boesberg, for example, you know, who quashed a subpoena almost never happens in the case of Jerome Powell.

5:58So judges and grand jurors are wise to the ways of this administration. I mean, the sort of consequences of this are expanding. For example, you know, the duty of candor to the court is observed in the breach, I think, by government attorneys daily. They have utterly lost their credibility with the federal judiciary. You know, judges simply don't believe what lawyers are saying to them. And that's really sad because, Because, you know, I learned over my almost 20 years on the bench that the Justice Department was extremely professional and reliable. And, you know, you typically could take them at their word.

6:32That has been eviscerated by this administration. So while I don't expect them to stop, they're reaping what they're sowing. And, you know, I've never seen so many no bills issued from grand juries. It's remarkable. Judge, let's turn now to a different topic, a very different topic that's gotten a lot of attention this past week. For the first time, 27 appellate court judges on the Ninth Circuit issued a harsh rebuke to one of their colleagues for the crude language he used in a dissenting opinion. The full court had decided not to review, on bank, a three-judge panel's ruling against a Christian-owned spa that wanted to exclude transgender women on free speech grounds.

7:19And judges from across the ideological spectrum condemned Judge Lawrence Van Dyke for his use of vulgar language to describe transgender women in his dissent. They said the language used by Van Dyke, a Trump appointee, makes us sound like juveniles, not judges, and it undermines public trust in the courts. What did you think about his dissent? Well, I've never quite read a judicial opinion like what Judge Van Dyke rendered. And, you know, at the end of the day, I think it's unfortunate and it's inappropriately worded. I agree with his colleague who opined that we're better than this. It's way too sensational.

8:04It's way too cavalier. And the other appellation that he used in the opinion is referring to his colleagues as woke. And it's just wholly intemperate. And I think it portends that he's going to have a very difficult working relationship if he didn't already with his colleagues on the circuit. Have you ever heard of a rebuke like that from colleagues on the bench? No, I haven't. And I've read, you know, some really vigorous dissents. Justice Scalia could really sharpen his pen in his dissents. They were kind of entertaining in part because he didn't do it with a particularly animus. There was one time in history that I've read about where he and Justice Kennedy clashed and they both regretted it.

8:51But the rhetoric wasn't anything close to what you see in this rendering. You know, appellate courts like the Ninth Circuit have to work together and they may have widely disparate views. But the interesting thing about courts is that while people come from all stripes, and I had a very diverse court in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, the district court, you know, you tend to check your sort of sensational activities and attitudes at the door and really work to get along with your colleagues for the good of the third branch. And this kind of, I can only characterize it as grandstanding, I think really casts Judge Van Dyke in an unfortunately bad light.

9:32And this is not his first rodeo, as they say. You know, having a dissent by video is, I would also say, probably too cute by half. Yeah, he recorded an 18-minute video in his judicial robes handling several firearms as part of a dissent from a Ninth Circuit decision that upheld a California gun control law. Sometimes when judges write these opinions with shock elements, they're referred to as auditions for the Supreme Court. A judge is trying to get the attention of President Trump in order to get nominated to the court. You know, I guess that you could say that he's auditioning for something.

10:13I don't know what. And I think that he's going to have a hard time. If his quest is, you know, to be taken seriously as a Supreme Court nominee, he's getting an F grade in that. I don't think it's going to work for him. This is the kind of stuff that would really get you beaten up, perhaps in a bipartisan way in a Senate confirmation. So good luck to him. But he doesn't look like a Supreme Court nominee to me in any way, shape or form. Do you agree with the judges who said that this undermines public trust in the courts? It depends how widely disseminated the opinion is, to be perfectly honest, but it could get viral, I guess.

10:50It's certainly been written about in a number of different places. I don't know that the general public reads these things. But at a time when I think the third branch has been under assault by the administration and judges' integrity has been questioned every time they They rule in a way that displeases the president and the attorney general and so forth. You don't need this. This is not helpful. Judges on appellate courts have disagreed since the beginning of the Republic and the creation of the circuit courts, which came along, of course, after the Supreme Court was created. And they've done it with a modicum of civility, but sometimes very directly.

11:29This is really beyond the pale. You know, it's, hey, look, notice me, because I can say really sensational inflammatory things. And I don't believe that that's appropriate. We mentioned that other instance. Is there a point where there could be disciplinary proceedings? You know, that's an interesting question, June. I don't know. I don't think there's anything particularly actionable in the opinion from a judicial discipline standpoint. Generally, something like this. you may get a call from the chief judge of the circuit and, you know, kind of be taken to the woodshed by the circuit and say, look, you know, this isn't helpful.

12:06I read up on the good Judge Van Dyke, and I don't think he's of a nature that that would resonate with him. And I'm guessing that perhaps after the video dissent in which he was literally brandishing firearms, that he's already had a brushback pitch thrown at him by some colleagues in the circuit. He doesn't appear to be of a mind to listen. So I don't think that would be particularly efficacious in this case. Also, I just want to point out that when he was nominated, the American Bar Association rated him not qualified, with some lawyers and judges saying he was arrogant, lazy, and an ideologue who doesn't have an open mind.

12:44Other than that, he's perfectly qualified for the bench, obviously. I read that. And, you know, if you get dinged like that, and of course, a lot of people don't like the ABA process and so forth. But if you get dinged like that as you're going through your confirmation, you would think that you'd want to sort of enhance your reputation and prove to everybody that you're qualified. By doing things like this, it's just the opposite. And to my comment earlier, June, about working in close quarters, just imagine the next time this guy is sitting with some of the colleagues who castigated him in this case, it's going to be I like that to kind of act as according to what I would describe as judicial norms.

13:25And this isn't like blazing new territory and deciding cases. This is sensationalistic. And I just don't think it has a place. It's always a pleasure to talk with you, Judge Jones. Thanks so much. That's Judge Johnny Jones III. Coming up next, anthropic showdown with the federal government. I'm June Grosso, and you're listening to Bloomberg. Support for the show comes from Public. Lately, it feels like there are two types of investing platforms. Some are traditional brokerages that haven't changed much in decades, and others feel less like investing and more like a game. Public is positioned differently.

14:01It's an investing platform for people who are serious about building their wealth. On Public, you can build a portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto without all the bugs or the confetti. Retirement accounts, Yep. High yield cash. Yes, again. They even have direct indexing. Public has modern design, powerful tools, and customer support that actually helps. Go to public.com slash market and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash market.

14:42See complete disclosures at public.com slash disclosures. The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works. At IBM, we've seen this firsthand. But by embedding AI across HR, IT, and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slash repetitive tasks, and freed thousands of hours for strategic work. Now we're helping 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. If you follow markets, you know the value of long-term thinking. You plan, you diversify, you prepare for volatility.

15:24But even the best strategies can't prevent every bad day. For more than 75 years, Cincinnati Insurance has helped individuals and businesses navigate tough moments with expertise, personal attention, and independent agents who focus on relationships, not transactions. The Cincinnati insurance companies. Let them make your bad day better. Find an agent at CINFIN.com. It's the first time the government has branded a U.S. company a supply chain risk. And Anthropic is fighting back in court to stop what it calls an unlawful campaign of retaliation. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the designation following a dispute with the AI company over guardrails the company wants to prevent the use of its technology for government surveillance or to power fully autonomous weapons.

16:23Dario Amadei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, explained some of his concerns in an interview with The Economist. There are norms about serving in the military. You're supposed to follow orders. But, you know, if something crazy enough happened, the soldiers would say, I'm not going to do that, right? What if you have an army of 10 million drones instead of, you know, 10 million human soldiers? What are the norms of the AI-driven drones? Anthropic is asking a California court to issue a preliminary injunction to block the government's ban. Joining me is Dorothy Lund, a professor at Columbia Law School and co-director of the Ira M.

17:04Milstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership. Dorothy, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic as a national security supply chain risk. That's a designation that's usually used to bar companies that are linked to foreign adversaries. Yeah, this is quite unusual. I think this is the first time in U.S. history that an American company has been given this designation. So if you look at the companies typically on this list, it's companies with ties to China, ties to Russia, that, you know, the government wants to say there's particular risk. You know, we would be very cautious about contracting, you know, this Chinese company or this Russian company.

17:47It's never happened before that a U.S. company has been given this designation. What are the grounds for Anthropic's suit against the government? Essentially, Anthropic is saying this designation is not being given for the right reasons. Instead, this is retaliation for our refusal to accede to certain demands that you made that we didn't want to accede to. So, you know, you haven't really identified a security threat that would cause us to really deserve this label. Instead, you're just punishing us and retaliating against us for not going along with what you've demanded from us in a way that violates our rights.

18:26Anthropic says this is about the guardrails it wants around the use of its technology for mass surveillance or to power autonomous weapons. Is it unusual for a private company to be setting limitations on how its tech is used by the military? You know, the typical sort of thinking here is that it's a matter of corporate governance or corporate decision making for a company that is providing a service to set certain guardrails on that, right? You know, this should only be used in certain ways. And the client, even if the client is the Pentagon, the client has the right to say, well, I don't want to work with you.

19:11I don't like this contractual limitation that you've given me, but I can break my contract with you. I can go with somebody else and, you know, we'll deal with whatever repercussions the contract says about that. But this is how things work in a free world, right? And sort of another interesting moment where, you know, historically, the conservative ideology has been very accepting of this idea that private markets will lead to the right result. You wouldn't want to have the government interfering with private markets. And if a private entity doesn't want to do a deal on certain terms, you know, that's that and the market will sort it out.

19:48Maybe there'll be somebody else that's willing to provide that product at that price or that service under those terms, but that the government wouldn't then try to get into that space and influence it. And so I think it's sort of this interesting moment of the Trump administration doing something that historically conservative politicians have not wanted to do, which is to interfere with markets and sort of how markets set prices and terms and contracting parties that don't like it can walk away. But there's nobody forced to contract with anybody else. The government filed papers in opposition to Anthropik's motion for a preliminary injunction.

20:22And it said that Anthropik showed hostility in its negotiations with the Pentagon. And that led the government to question whether it could be trusted. But the government didn't point to any real security justification for the designation. So it sort of missed the point. And just back to where we started in this conversation, you know, the idea of somebody posing a supply chain risk is this idea of like, you know, foreign infiltration. The idea that some foreign government that is hostile to the United States is going to get some information or some advantage by virtue of this organization freely contacting in the United States.

21:03So even under the terms that the government is bringing up in its suit, the idea that there's hostility towards the government, it doesn't really even speak to foreign infiltration. It just sounds like negotiations didn't go so well. So, again, I think the hook to the designation seems to be quite tenuous. Anthropic is asking the court for a preliminary injunction, as I mentioned, saying it could damage the company's reputation and cause multiple billions of dollars in losses this year. The hurdles to get a preliminary injunction are high. Do you think Anthropic might clear those hurdles? Typically, a preliminary injunction, in order to win, you have to show that without giving this injunction, there's going to be irreparable harm.

21:49And there has to be a strong likelihood of winning on the merits. And by the way, this harm can't be something that can be fixed after the fact using money damages. And so I think here in this case, I think this is a really a good example of where a preliminary injunction would make a lot of sense. I think, okay, so Anthropic is going to lose this government contract, right? So that is hundreds of millions of dollars. But I think the bigger impact here is the government's demand that no federal agency do work with Anthropic and also that other third-party entities that contract with the government also stop doing business of Anthropic.

22:27And that for a company that is in an early stage of growth, that is in a really competitive race, AI race, not just in the United States, but also globally, for them to sort of be blacklisted like this is really quite harmful. I mean, you know, I think there are commentators who've looked at this and said, this is the equivalent of giving Anthropic the death penalty. And I don't think that's a real exaggeration. I think, you know, in this moment for Anthropic to lose the ability to contract with a broad swath of entities would really be damaging. It might not be able to recover from that. Forgetting the legalities for a moment, even if Anthropic wins and this is lifted, this ban, is any agency in the government then going to start doing business with Anthropic, knowing the administration's opposition?

23:18So won't there be serious consequences for Anthropic, even if it wins this lawsuit? For sure. I think the Trump administration really believes in loyalty. And now that they've sort of been given this scarlet letter by President Trump and Pete Hegseth, I'm sure that loyalists and individuals across the government will be wary to work with Anthropic. You know, the government has directed all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic. So I think your intuition is right there. Although I think, you know, the consequences for Anthropic, although that's not great, there's a much broader market, right?

23:58Anthropic is looking to a lot of different places for clients, including other governments, you know, other corporate clients. And by the way, there's been a little bit of backlash already against OpenAI in the wake of their signing up a deal with the government. So I don't know quite how this would sort out? Would Anthropic be rewarded by some swath of clients for sticking to its guns and be able to make up that loss in the future? Maybe. And will OpenAI suffer some backlash for its decision to kind of get in there and essentially poach this client? Maybe. So I think it's just not clear how this is all going to shake out.

24:37Other tech companies have filed legal briefs to support Anthropic. Do you think that there is a concern that if this punitive label on Anthropic sticks, that it would establish a precedent? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're already in a moment, a sort of unprecedented moment in American history of executive branch interference with private markets. And I don't want to say this is only a feature of this administration that's happened during the Biden administration and prior administrations as well. But I think we've really seen the Trump administration take this to new heights. And so I'm sure tech executives all over are looking at this and saying, we don't want to be in a situation where we don't want to agree to certain terms with the U.S.

25:27government, whether it be price or substance. And then the U.S. government basically puts us on a list that ensures that we can't survive. You know, I think that's a scary thought. That's a scary path to walk down. And I think even beyond just sort of the typical tech company, AI companies should be looking at this moment and be quite chilled because, you know, the AI industry is looking down the barrel of a complex relationship with government. Some people say, well, because this technology is so important, it should be nationalized. Others say, you know, this is going to have to be really carefully regulated.

25:59And so those regulations haven't come. And I think anthropics thought, well, let's get in with the government and hopefully we'll have some ability to influence the path and future direction of how this goes, and it didn't work out so well for them. So for the subset of tech executives that are also working in artificial intelligence, this is sort of a chilling moment because it's just showing you how the government is really willing to go far in interfering with private markets and their functioning. And it suggests, again, the people that say, well, artificial intelligence should be subject to really burdensome regulation and a lot of government interference.

26:32It suggests that, yeah, the Trump administration is on board for that. Where does it fit in the picture that Anthropik's technology is being used right now in the Iran war? So I think this is a way in which this decision for the government to not just decide, you know, okay, sure, maybe Pete Hegseth doesn't like how the conversations are going with Anthropik. Maybe Pete Hegseth says, we don't longer want to work with them going forward, and we'll figure out a way to sort of disentangle this. You know, the second step, though, of trying to basically decapitate this company that is really providing a valuable service for the U.S.

27:09military and its ongoing operations that I think most sensible people think there aren't great replacements available. So, you know, this is sort of a moment where the government is handcapping its own military. And if you have everything sort of up and running on Anthropik to then cause the military to then pivot to a completely different platform that most people think is not as well cut out for this task. You know, that's a time-consuming, distracting, burdensome, expensive endeavor. So to sort of handicap yourself like that. And then Anthropic is one of the most important and vital artificial intelligence companies that's produced in America.