CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS on Friday handed Donald Trump a temporary stay of a lower federal court’s injunction halting construction of his White House ballroom and underground bunker until he seeks congressional approval, as the law requires.
asserted
law → hand → approval
The injunction had allowed Trump to proceed with work on the bunker on the dubious claim that it’s vital to national security.
uncertain
it → allow → security
As for the rest, all the lower court did was push the pause button to enable Congress to weigh in.
asserted
Congress → do → button
The judge had no other choice, which is why the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed the ruling but gave Trump fourteen days to ask the Supreme Court to intervene.
asserted
Court → have → Court
Trump got what he wanted: the high court let him override the law with impunity once again.
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him → get → impunity
If this sounds hyperbolic, consider what Roberts was dealing with when he penned his one-liner.
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he → sound → liner
The Supreme Court has no legal power to suspend or revise the operation of the Constitution or statutory law.
asserted
Court → have → Constitution
The Constitution’s Property Clause (Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2) gives Congress the complete power to manage, regulate, and sell all land and property belonging to the United States.
asserted
Clause → give → States
“In 1912,” as the appeals court explained, “Congress placed a statutory exclamation point on its exclusive powers by providing that ‘there shall not be erected on any reservation, park, or public grounds[] of the United States within the District of Columbia, any building or structure without express authority of Congress.’”
asserted
Congress → explain → Congress
The key words here are “shall,” “not” and “without”—there is no wiggle room for presidents to override or outmaneuver Congress when it comes to federal property.
asserted
it → override → property
Trump’s lawyers didn’t even bother to argue to the lower courts that there is.
asserted
lawyers → bother → courts
Instead, they seized on statutory language from 1978 that states: “There are authorized to be appropriated each fiscal year to the President such sums as may be necessary for . . . the care, maintenance, repair, alteration, refurnishing, improvement, air-conditioning, heating, and lighting (including electric power and fixtures) of the Executive Residence at the White House,” and those funds “may be expended as the President may determine.”
uncertain
President → seize → House
In reality, all that statute says is that Congress can appropriate money for upkeep and the president can spend it.
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president → say → it
It does not say that the president can do whatever the heck he wants to the place.
asserted
he → say → place
The power to manage federal property begins and ends with Congress.
asserted
power → manage → Congress
But Trump’s lawyers ballooned that statute into a capacious grant of absolute power to demolish chunks of the building.
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lawyers → balloon → building
All along, all that Trump had to do was go to his friendly majorities in both chambers to greenlight this vanity project.
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Trump → have → project
This he refused to do, betting that he could run out the clock on the courts and literally bulldoze through any legal barrier until it’s basically a “fait accompli.”
uncertain
it → refuse → barrier
That’s precisely the argument Solicitor General John Sauer is making now.
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Sauer → ’ → ?
John Roberts apparently bought it.
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Roberts → buy → it
For starters, it ignores the Property Clause.
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it → ignore → Clause
It also ignores binding statutory law.
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It → ignore → law
Maybe he would have addressed these insurmountable legal barriers in a full opinion.
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he → address → opinion
But that’s not what this is.
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this → ’ → ?
Roberts also thumbed his nose at his colleagues in the lower courts, throwing shade on their relative authority to hold government officials to account, and thereby suggesting that the Supreme Court has arbitrary veto power—not only over them, but over the law that they duly applied.
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they → thumb → that
Never mind that the Supreme Court is not democratically elected and has no authority to amend the Constitution.
asserted
Court → mind → Constitution
That requires supermajorities in both houses and the support of three quarters of the state legislatures.
asserted
That → require → legislatures
It can strike down statutes if they are unconstitutional, but it has no power to simply dispense with them in a one-line order.
asserted
it → strike → order
The very concept of judicial supremacy to interpret the Constitution is a twentieth-century invention of the Court’s own making.
asserted
concept → interpret → making
There’s nothing in the Constitution that makes the Supreme Court the sovereign monarch of everyone and everything in America.
asserted
Court → ’ → America
We’ve just grown to tolerate it because, so far, it hasn’t been abjectly abused.
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it → grow → it
Commentators inclined to be more sympathetic to the chief justice might point out that the Court did the same thing on tariffs—stayed a lower court injunction temporarily, only to ultimately side with Congress’s power.
uncertain
Court → incline → power
That ruling and the birthright citizenship case are widely cited as evidence that the Court is holding the president accountable.
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president → cite → evidence
But neither of those cases required any actual judicial decision-making.
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neither → require → making
Trump was just flouting the law.
asserted
Trump → flout → law
By even entertaining his bogus arguments, the Court was doing damage to our constitutional system.
asserted
Court → entertain → system
The administration’s talking point regarding the ballroom/bunker situation seems to be that it would be too much to tear down the ballroom at this point, so what’s a court to do?
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court → regard → what
Sauer told the Supreme Court on August 13 that there was “a 250-person crew working 20 hours a day, 7 days a week to keep the Project ahead of schedule and under budget.”
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Sauer → tell → budget
To quote U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, who had to issue a second injunction essentially telling Trump that the first one isn’t optional, “Please!”
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one → quote → Trump
A fait accompli “cannot excuse the Government’s failure to follow the law and then insulate those failures from judicial review.”
asserted
accompli → excuse → review
…and 6 more, not listed.
The Aporia
