The Daily Signal - City Punishes Pub Owner for Opposing COVID Mandates

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

Government mandates and authoritarian COVID-19 rules have crushed small businesses in America. In the nation’s capital alone, hundreds of restaurants are now closed. Others are struggling to make ends meet. Despite all the happy talk from President Joe Biden in last week's State of the Union address, some businesses will never recover. For every Democrat politician who is suddenly abandoning COVID mandates, there are scores of shattered businesses left in their wake. For nearly two years, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the D.C. Council have invoked emergency powers—imposing mask mandates for schools and businesses and requiring restaurants to check customers’ vaccine status. A few courageous Washington, D.C., business owners spoke at The Heritage Foundation last week about the city's restrictive COVID rules. They've felt the effects firsthand. One of them is Eric Flannery, a Navy veteran and co-owner of The Big Board on H Street NE in Washington, D.C. Flannery and his lawyer, Robert Alt, president and CEO of The Buckeye Institute, joined "The Daily Signal Podcast" to explain why they're fighting for The Big Board's survival in a city where political leaders have amassed unprecedented power. And follow the links below if you are interested in learning more about organizations helping the people of Ukraine: World Vision's Ukraine Fund Operation Blessing Samaritan's Purse International Fellowship of Christians and Jews Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, March 7th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rob Bluey. On today's show, I speak with Eric Flannery, co-owner of the Big Board, a restaurant in Washington, D.C., and his lawyer, Robert Alt, president and CEO of the Buckeye Institute. They talk about D.C.'s restrictive COVID policies and why Eric took a stand that led D.C. to shut down his business. We also read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about how people all over the world are showing their support for Ukraine, by singing the country's national anthem. But before we get to today's show, Rob and I want to tell you all about a brand new addition to the Heritage Foundation podcast network,

the Kevin Roberts Show. Dr. Kevin Roberts is the president of the Heritage Foundation, and now you can hear his analysis on the most important issues facing America. Each weekly episode of the Kevin Robert show is a rally and cry for lovers of freedom everywhere. Every show is packed with analysis on the issues of the day in deep conversations

with the movers and shakers of American politics and culture. And this week, you can hear his interview with Rob about the media. That's right, Virginia. This week, he talked to Julio Rosas of Town Hall about his experiences, and I was able to join him to tell them about the Daily Signal. That's excellent. New shows are available every Wednesday. You can find the Kevin Roberts show on Apple Podcasts, Google Play,

or wherever you like to listen, and the full episode is even up on YouTube. Now stay tuned for today's show coming up next. Today we are joined by a courageous Washington, D.C. business owner who has felt the effects of COVID restrictions firsthand. Eric Flannery is a Navy veteran and co-owner of the Big Board, a restaurant in 8th Street in Washington, D.C. He's joined by his lawyer, Robert Alt, president and CEO of the Buckeye Institute, and a former colleague of mine here at the Heritage Foundation. Welcome to both of you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

The Daily Signal has closely followed Eric's story, and we'll be sure to share a link to our VACI, video interview with him in the transcript of this show and the show notes. Eric, let's start with you. Take us back to the beginning of the Big Board. Give us a little bit of the history and the customers that you serve in your neighborhood. So Big Board opened in October of 2011. It was a life dream of mine to come out and open up a bar restaurant. My brother had moved to Washington, D.C. a couple years before here, and he called me up and said,

hey, I think we've got a great place to go open up right here in Northeast D.C. I was living out in Washington State at the time, and honestly, I laughed at him on the phone because I remembered what Northeast D.C. had looked like many years before that. And he brought me out, and I met his neighbors and met the neighborhood and the people and looked around and said, oh, no, you're right. Northeast D.C. is going to be a great place for us to open this. up. Signed a, looked around, a lot of places called all the for sale for lease signs that

were there and was introduced to my landlord and he took a chance on us. The last time I worked in a restaurant was, I don't know, 1992 when I was working in Chucky Cheese. So he took a chance in 10 years later, we were still around and mostly, well, we were Well, I have fantastic staff and coworkers. They really are. And we have clientele from everywhere. All shapes, all sizes, all people.

We've had one-year-old birthday parties. We've had 40-year-old birthday parties. You watch sports. You don't watch sports. We are always happy to have you. It's a fantastic place to be, Eric. And thank you for what you're doing. Now, unfortunately, you're here under not the best of circumstances.

Because of the District of Columbia's COVID mandates and some of their other restrictions, you have taken a stand and they have come after you directly. Bring our listeners up to speed about the situation that the big board finds itself in today. So today the big board is currently shut down. We are liquor license, health license, and basic business license have been revoked. They were revoked because when the city decided to implement these mandates in December of 21, we did some soul searching and decided that we weren't going to participate with the mandates.

The city's response was swift and severe, and all of those items that I described there, those all happened within three weeks of the mandates happening. Could we have complied? Maybe we could have complied, but I have to look myself in the mirror and like what I see. So we just didn't. And I have really true, we're hopeful. And I have faith that the big board is going to be reopened and the city is going to do the right thing. But we will, we didn't, nor will we ever participate in a government-sanctioned form of discrimination.

Robert, let's bring you into the conversation. You've stepped in from the Buckeye Institute to help Eric get through the situation. What is the current status? And really, what is at stake here with his case? Sure. First, just a little bit of a background of where we are now in terms of the regulations in D.C. So as of February 15th, there's no longer a vaccine mandate for restaurants. And as of the end of February, there's no longer a mask mandate.

And so if you were to walk down the street today, you could walk into a restaurant. It would be open. They're not going to check your vaccine card. At least not, there's no legal requirement for them to do so. And there's no legal requirement that you wear a mask in that restaurant. And yet, the big board remains closed. Mr. Flannery is that Navy veteran who was singled out simply because he spoke up and tweeted, Everyone is Welcome.

And they're penalizing my client because he actually had the courage to say something. Now, as to where things currently are, as Eric mentioned, his licenses remain suspended, at least the licenses that he would need to be able to operate. And so as to his legal claims, D.C. has operated under a state of emergency now for two years. Two years. That's no longer a state of emergency. That's a full term of Congress. And the complicating issue here is they have stacked emergency order on top of emergency order in such a way as to exceed the 90-day limit. And by doing so, the D.C. government has evaded the requirement under the home rule charge. charter that ensures Congress has the ability to conduct meaningful oversight over acts of the D.C.

government. Additionally, the D.C. law actually specifies that during states of emergency, individuals who are aggrieved by agency actions do not have a right to appeal. They don't have the ability to appeal. It functionally closes the courthouse doors. And again, while that might seem, you know, in some way permissible for a 90-day emergency order. When you have stacked these in perpetuity for a full two years, the lack of any oversight by Congress, the lack of any meaningful access to the court denies the fundamental due process rights of my client. So the Bacae Institute has sent demand letters to the relevant agencies. We have filed a motion for reconsideration with regard to agency action.

And indeed, the D.C. government is required to respond by tomorrow with regard to our motion for reconsideration. So stay tuned. Hopefully we'll know more soon. Eric, can you explain what it was like when some official from the D.C. government presumably showed up at your establishment. Walk us through that situation. Robert mentioned that you have been tweeting.

and obviously I think for your regular customers they knew, but obviously somebody must have ratted you out to the D.C. government for them to show up. It was, to be fair, a tweet that I sent out that said everybody would be welcome at all times. The city government came in very quickly. Within a day of my tweet, they were there to inform me of the rules and regulations, and I treated them with dignity and respect and was very kind to the agents that came in. They came in again the next day, the day after, skipped a couple days because of snow and a holiday. I came in again. I think a total of ABER, which is the D.C. Alcohol Regulation Administration. They came in in that three-week period nine times and on top

of that, they sent in the Department of Health inspectors four times during that time period. So I was not only dealing with the ABRA regulators, I was also working with the Department of Health regulators. Robert, he used the words swift and severe based on what he just described. I mean, it's certainly, I think, is an apt description. There must be other businesses that had a similar view as Eric on this. Why do you think they picked on him and targeted him so directly? Well, if one simply looks at reports that you can find online, it seems like Eric was not the only business that at the very least wasn't complying in a uniform fashion with regard to the vaccine mandate requirement.

Eric just spoke out about it. And I think that is the fundamental difference, that he spoke out and therefore became a target. because of his speech. Have you talked to other business owners, Eric, in the city who may be afraid to speak out as you did, but have similar views as to how they should treat their customers? Yes. There are lots of businesses in Washington, D.C. who did not comply with these mandates. And obviously I wouldn't name them.

But I've also talked with – well, I've been lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet a bunch of other wonderful bar owners. And there are a lot of them who agreed that this was, but these mandates weren't, weren't the right thing to do. Let's go back to the early days of COVID. What was it like for, for you and your staff to adjust to these restrictions

that the mayor put on all businesses in the city financially for your customer base? And how did you adapt to that? So when COVID first came in March 15th of 2020, the mayor's office said, hey, you have to move all your bar stools out of the restaurant and you have to have your table six feet apart. That bed order came out somewhere around midday by 4 o'clock that afternoon. All my bar stools were in storage and all my tables were six feet apart. Two days later, they changed the rules for us and they said, you can't even have anybody. inside.

He said, wow, I was talking with my brother and I was like, I don't think I want to go down there and be a carryout operator. It's not, that's not the fun. And he just talked with me and he said, you know what, Eric? Why don't you just go down there and try it? And wow, if he wasn't right again, the, our customers came in from everywhere. We're not, we're not a very digitally savvy company. We get to go food from us by calling us on the phone.

and then we plug it into our computer and send it down. And you come and pick it up. And the people from the neighborhood just, they just kept coming. And there were people who would come every Friday. Every Friday, I could set my clock by it. I was going to get a call from Brandon at 745 on Sunday night. Some in the news media, including the New York Times, have tried to brand your establishment as a conservative bar.

I think you would take issue with that label. You serve everyone. You've said it here on this interview. Tell us about the customers and maybe some past experiences you've had that illustrate why you do welcome people regardless of their political views. I think the easiest way to talk about this is to talk about the two busiest days that we've ever had at the Big Board. And they were both equally busy and they occurred right after each other. The first one was the inauguration of President Trump, and the second one was the Women's March the very next day.

On both of those days, we had people inside the big board who were wearing Trump flags and Make America Great Again hats, sitting next to people with pink hats on their head. And they got along. They had fun. There wasn't any incidents. There wasn't even so much as loud yelling. And when I say those days were busy, what I mean is for a very busy day for us, they were 150% more busy than one of those days. It doesn't make sense to not cater to welcoming everybody.

Robert, you have talked about how the District of Columbia has moved away from the mandates, the vaccine passport and now the mask. What is the response that you're hearing, if you're hearing a response, when you raise this point that if the mandates are not. no longer in effect, Eric's business should be able to reopen. Well, as I said, we are in fact waiting. We filed a motion for reconsideration on that very basis, noting that the authority that they relied upon is no longer in force.

And when you think about it, I mean, the regulatory basis, you know, if you're trying to get him into compliance, if you walked into his restaurant today, of course, it's closed, but the fact that he, you know, if he's not checking vaccine cards and if he's not, you requiring masks, that's in compliance with what the law requires today. And so there really doesn't seem to be any regulatory purpose in keeping him closed. Have you thought about taking the argument to members of Congress? D.C. is unique in the sense that Congress does have some authority and any response or reaction that you had from any of the members.

We actually just spoke on Capitol Hill, Eric and I yesterday at an event that was a arranged, sort of corresponding with the State of Union address by Leader McCarthy. And we specifically raise the issue that Congress has the unique authority with regard to oversight. So we have definitely raised those issues and I hope that Congress will, in fact, look into what's going on here because, you know, it's not just that they're trampling on Eric's rights here. It's that in fact they're infringing on the requirements of the home rule charter by entering into this perpetual state of emergency. Ordinarily, when a piece of legislation

passes from the D.C. Council, there's a 30-day period in which Congress has the authority to overrule it by a joint resolution that does not occur with regard to an emergency act, but the emergency act is limited to a 90-day period. They have stacked these emergency orders, one on top of the other in a way that has extended this state of emergency for more than two years and has created a zone where Congress has not had any opportunity to have meaningful oversight over these regulations. And it's difficult to think of legislative or regulatory acts that D.C. could be engaged in that wouldn't have more impact on the operation of Congress within the federal city. obviously shutting down businesses, placing requirements upon who can enter those businesses. That impacts not just members, but people coming to do business in Washington, D.C., with Congress,

with other federal agencies. And so, you know, it simply makes sense that Congress should have the authority to oversee this under the Home Rule Charter. It certainly seems like it should. Now, just for clarity's sake, even though the – mandates have ended, is the emergency order still in effect? My understanding, I think the emergency order is still in effect. I believe they've continued a series of extensions. I believe it's in effect through mid-March, if I recall correctly.

Okay. And Eric, you've had some fairly prominent guests when the big board was open, Senator Rand Paul, a delegation from Congress there. What has it been like to be thrusted? to the spotlight like this over the course of the past couple of months? It's certainly not what I expected to happen. I most definitely appreciated the support of everybody who has wanted to help us and help us operate without these mandates being in effect.

The support from somebody with that kind of political power is overwhelming. But all of our other customers, all of the people who come in, that's always been our bread are the people who come in from our neighborhood, the people who are there to support us and been supporting us for the last 10 years. And I'm really looking forward to being open again when we can welcome them back into the restaurant. When you are able to reopen again, will it be as simple as calling the staff and telling them to come in the next day?

Or what does that actually look like in terms of informing your customers and getting the workforce back in place? How do you go about doing that operationally? So it's going to take a little bit of time. And what I mean is we had to, because we were shut down and shut down completely, we had to get rid of our inventory. So I will have to restock the kitchen. I will have to restock the bar. We'll have to do all of our preparation work.

And obviously there's going to be some of the people who were working with me who have needed to find a, a place to make some money and even though I paid them, at some point I run out of money and won't be able to pay them. And they want to work. So it's going to be there, but I don't know, 10 and a half years ago, I didn't even know anything about opening a restaurant and somehow we got it open, so I'm pretty sure we'll get it done. And what have the last two years meant in terms of that loyal support?

You talked about how the customers would. come in and get the takeout. And you've also shared with the Daily Signal previously how people all across the country have written new letters of support. Just a closing word from you on what that means to hear from people like that. It's incredibly amazing to hear from our customers and from the people around the country. It's the thing that makes me want to get up and keep on fighting and keep doing this. They're just fantastic people.

And I don't have any better words than to say thank you very much. I'm overwhelmed. Thank you. Thank you. Well, and Eric, thank you. And Robert, thank you for stepping in to help him lead this fight. We'll certainly be praying for you and hoping that this resolves in a way that allows the big board to reopen and begin serving those customers once again.

Sooner rather than later. Thank you so much. And thank you very much. really appreciate you happening us here. Do you have an interest in public policy? Do you want to hear lectures from some of the biggest names in American politics? The Heritage Foundation hosts webinars called Heritage Events Live. These events are free and open to the public.

To find the latest heritage events and to register, visit heritage.org slash events. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday we feature our favorites on this show. Virginia, who's up first? One of our podcast listeners left us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts writing great interviews. Love their objective review of the Daily News first thing in the morning. Plus, they have great interviews with truly expert interviewees. Well, we love those reviews, Virginia.

We sure do. We encourage more of our listeners to leave them on whatever podcast platform you may be listening. In response to Victor Davis Hansen's commentary, why is the left suddenly worried about the end of democracy? Gene Parker writes, As usual, Mr. Hansen writes a great article. I vote this should be the State of the Union speech, short to the point and the unvarnished truth. Your letter can be featured on next week's show, so send us an email at letters at dailysignal.com. Virginia Allen here, I want to tell you all about a great way you can stay in the know on all the news the Daily Signal covers.

Social media. The Daily Signal has an active presence on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We are constantly posting news stories, clips from interviews, videos, and more across all our social platforms. Follow the Daily Signal on social media so you can get all the latest content from Reels on Instagram to video clips on Facebook and political commentary on Twitter. Virginia, you have a good news story to share with us today. Over to you. Thank you so much, Rob. As we all know very, very well in America, there is something incredibly powerful. about a country's national anthem.

Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, people all over the world have been showing their support for Ukraine by singing its national anthem. Just last week, thousands of people gathered in Trafalgar Square in London, holding Ukrainian flags and singing the national anthem in solidarity with all Ukrainian people. And before a professional hockey game in the United Kingdom last week, Ukraine's anthem played in place of the Flowers of Scotland.

The Glasgow plan stand with the people of Ukraine during this dreadful time. This evening instead of flower of Scotland, we invite you to stand as we play the national anthem of Ukraine. The lyrics of Ukraine's anthem say, Ukraine is not yet dead, nor its glory and freedom. Luck will still smile on us, brother Ukrainians. Our enemies will die as the dew does in the sunshine. And we two brothers will live happily in our land.

We'll not spare either our souls or bodies to get freedom. And we'll prove that we brothers are all Kozhakin. Not only is the Ukrainian anthem being sung and sung, celebrated all over the world, but humanitarian organizations are also stepping up to deliver aid to the Ukrainian people. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is on the ground in Ukraine providing basic needs and emergency support to Ukraine's people. Samaritan's purse is setting up a field hospital in Ukraine to care for the wounded. Operation Blessing is also providing support along with other nonprofits, such as World Vision and Doctors Without Borders, and we'll be sure to put

all the links to those various nonprofits in today's show notes in case you want to get involved and help support the people of Ukraine in this time of crisis. Virginia, thanks for sharing that information with our listeners. I think it's so important for us to do whatever we can as far away as we are to support the people of Ukraine. Absolutely. I was heartened today as I saw the Ukraine flag flying over the Heritage Foundation building, and I think it's just wonderful to show that solidarity and support right now.

It sure is. Well, Virginia, thanks again for sharing that story, and we're going to have to leave it there for today. can find the Daily Signal podcast on the Rurkishay Audio Network. All of our shows can be found at DailySignal.com slash podcasts. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app. If you like what you're here, please leave us a review and a five-star rating. It means a lot to us and helps us spread the word to other listeners. Be sure to follow us on Twitter at Daily Signal and Facebook.com slash the Daily Signal News. Have a great week.

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