President Trump ordered the demolition of the White House East Wing and launched construction of a massive new ballroom complex without obtaining the required authorization from Congress. This, despite longstanding federal law that bars building or altering structures on federal grounds in the District of Columbia without express congressional approval.
The Supreme Court just allowed the project to continue. The media trumpets that the justices greenlit the whole enterprise, as if they blessed its legality. Nonsense. Read the opinion: the majority refused to rule on the merits and instead tossed the case because neither the National Trust nor Alison Hoagland, the architectural historian and historic preservationist it relied upon for evidence, had standing. The dissent, including Chief Justice Roberts, made it plain that the project is likely unlawful. So here we sit, watching an unauthorized multimillion-dollar monument to executive whim rise because of a legal technicality.
This is government by technicality at its most absurd. A president tears down part of the people’s house and pours concrete without the power of the purse, and the courts allow it to proceed solely because the challenger lacked standing to bring the suit. This illustrates a severe problem. When the president flouts the law, Congress could always push back. But Congress is so divided that that’s not going to happen.
The Constitution was written by our founders under the assumption that the three branches would stay in their lanes and that presidents would act with honor and integrity. They never anticipated a president who, as a matter of routine, oversteps his legal bounds, and they provided no mechanism to stop illegal acts other than impeachment, which was reserved for the most egregious situations. A system must be allowed to evolve that can hold the president accountable when he blatantly violates the law. It’s not clear how to do this, but such a system needs to be developed.
Once Trump’s illegality is clear, since he acted without authorization, he personally—not the United States government or the taxpayers—should be required to reimburse the full cost of restoring the site to its prior condition. That personal responsibility is important; it might prevent him from going off half-cocked in the future if he knew he would be held accountable for blatantly violating the law.
When the law becomes a game of who has standing rather than whether the action is legal, the rule of law itself is the casualty. Property rights and limited government demand better than this: no official, not even a president, gets to build on the public’s dime and the public’s land without clear authority.