美最高法院维持白宫宴会厅建设现状，暂缓裁决

Joining us now to explain is Greg Stohr who covers the Supreme Court for Bloomberg News. Alright. Greg, this decision from Roberts is well, this order, excuse me, is 64 words. I counted them. Can confirm that. One sentence. This is David's notes that I'm reading. 64 words. In layman's terms, what does this do? Well, I meant to count the words, but I'm glad that you did it for me because I because I forgot to. I mean, it's really just a holding pattern.

It's as you said, it gives the court more time. We're expecting an order that will say either that the president can keep constructing until the litigation is over or that he has to stop at least with the above ground work. And instead, what what's probably gonna happen is we'll get that order, not until, you know, next week sometime. And for the time being, the status quo prevails, and that means he can keep building and building very quickly.

Greg, talk about the the arguments that have been made on both sides here, and it seems like a flurry of paperwork here in in recent weeks. I'll But read from a statement filed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in The United States after they submitted their brief to the court. In a statement, the organization said it reiterated in its filing to the Supreme Court earlier this week that the administration has no unilateral legal authority, constitutional, statutory, or otherwise to build a ballroom on the site of the now demolished East Wing unless and until congress expressly, approves.

Expand on that a little bit if you would. What is this organization arguing? So it's essentially arguing that the power over federal property belongs to congress. And unless Congress delegates that authority authority to the president, he can't do this sort of thing. He can't build. He can't spend money to construct something. So that's kind of the underlying question, and there are couple of different statutes that are involved.

And then there's kind of another question that the president is using, which is to say this group, which is designed to sort of protect the country's architectural and cultural heritage, doesn't have legal standing to sue because they haven't been harmed by this. The supreme court in general, is pretty restrictive when it comes to somebody saying, we wanna sue because we don't like how something looks, and that's what the administration says is going on here.

So if the court were to decide that they don't have standing, are there other potential litigants in the wings waiting to try to refile on this, or is this probably gonna be the end of this, least for now, if the if the court does say you can go ahead with it? Yeah. Yeah. I think I think it's probably gonna be the end of it. And, you know, really, you know, even if the court you know, I mentioned that the stay that they're seeking is just while the litigation goes forward.

But the administration has said this ballroom is 65% complete. They have essentially said it's it's gone so far that it would be impossible to take it down at this point. And certainly if the Supreme Court says you can keep building for another x number of months until this legal fight concludes, it's gonna be so far along that it's gonna be really, really hard to imagine a court coming along and saying, okay. Now you have to take it down.

But, Greg, is that almost a way of dodging the issue? Is that them knowing that that will be the case if they grant this state? It will already be built, and then it will be like, oh, well, you know, it's a fair to complete at this point. What are we gonna do? That is certainly the criticism. That's a criticism the National Trust is is making and other opponents of the ballroom that the president is just charging straight ahead.

In in the administration's filing, the other day, they said we are building, 20 we have 250 workers out there going twenty hours a week twenty hours a day, seven days a week. And, yes, that is the criticism that they're making it such that there's nothing the courts can do even if they conclude that the president is acting illegally. It is the thing to behold. I mean, it's been a couple of months since I've been down there, but it's it's I've I've seen a few construction sites where they've been moving with more celerity than there in Washington DC at the White House.

Before we move on, a couple of things we wanna ask you about beyond this. But before we move on, we did get this decision from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, that two to one decision that's led to this coming before the the Supreme Court. As you've thumbed through that, leafed through that that decision, what did you you learn about the way that that court has approached this issue? It, you know well, first of all, it was, you know, two Democratic appointed just judges in the majority, a Republican appointed judge in dissent.

So it is another one of these issues that is dividing, the judiciary along ideological lines. Yeah. That standing issue that I that we were talking about seems to be the biggest sticking point. That's also something that commentators have pointed to that may be the if the administration gets this stay, that may be the reason, less than than a court saying that they actually have the authority. Greg, there's there's two other issues on the the emergency docket.

One, I think, is a little complicated for us, but I do I do wanna ask you about these mail in voting cases. You've got Alabama v California and Trump v California. What are these about, and are we expecting to get some sort of decision stays? Are we gonna see action on them soon? Yeah. So I've been expecting action on that for about two and a half weeks now, and, it's been fully briefed and just kind of waiting. What it's about is that executive order that you may recall from the president that would use the postal service to limit the availability of mail in ballots.

Essentially, the postal service would come up with a list of eligible citizens and would send ballots only to those people. And that is is on hold because of the federal district judge's ruling. We're we're rapidly getting to the point, and we may well be past the point where it's too late to try to put this system in place even if the Supreme Court were to say it's okay. The administration told the Supreme Court, when it filed that we need to have this system up and running by early to mid August.

We're obviously past that now. Even if the Supreme Court were to grant the administration the state it's seeking, there's actually still a bunch of other procedural stuff that has to happen before it can kick in, including the postal service actually issuing the rule that would be be, in force here. In the minute we have left, I just wanna ask you about what we've learned overnight here, Canada and US walking away from from trade talks and now in place these tariffs that the administration has put in place based on, yes, the Smoot Hawley Act of 1930, which scholars of the Great Depression know kicked off that sterling moment in our nation's history.

You know, we've we've been through the challenge to the IIPA tariffs, seen the decision from the Supreme Court there. What is your assessment just to the legal foundation on which the the administration is making this next move? Well, there will certainly be a challenge to these these tariffs, maybe multiple challenges. Big thing to remember, with that supreme court decision, that was a different statute, and that was a statute that never mentioned the word tariffs.

And so the question was, does the president have authority to implement tariffs under this law? And the supreme court said no. This is a statute that does talk about tariffs, and the question is whether the president is imposing these tariffs in the right way. So it's a very different legal question, and it's possible the answer won't be a black and white. It may be that, you know, some of these tariffs