A plain reading of the law about presidents on coins says the face of a living president should not be on currency. And yet President Donald Trump’s is, after his Treasury Department exploited a different law related to commemorative coins.
The law says a president must not commit the US military into hostilities for longer than 60 days without congressional approval. The US has been in a conflict with Iran for more than six months, although the administration says it has taken time-outs in the war. Previous presidents from both parties have danced around this requirement, but nothing on the level of Trump’s war on Iran.
Chief Justice John Roberts called it “likely unlawful” for Trump to tear down part of the White House and build something else. And yet construction is happening around the clock to get that White House ballroom done for Trump to enjoy.
Laws would seem to require Congress to approve the construction of a triumphal arch adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery. The administration isn’t waiting and the Department of Interior appears primed to start excavation shortly.
The law says suspected criminals should not be put to death without a trial. And yet the US military has taken out numerous alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific.
The law says Congress creates agencies of the federal government, like USAID, the US Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Trump has tried to end some of them anyway, either through starvation or outright deletion.
The law says Congress decides where money should go. That didn’t stop Trump’s administration from cutting research funding and aid money it simply disagreed with.
The law says the government should not be entering people’s homes without a judicial warrant. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement has utilized that power.
The law says the Federal Reserve should operate independently, but that isn’t stopping Trump from trying to pressure the Fed to lower interest rates — most recently via a threat to cease trade with top partners.
The list goes on, and with it the complicated legal arguments the Trump administration has made – in those instances when it has had to make them.
Even when faced with setbacks in court, Trump’s administration has brazenly looked for end-runs.
A judge ruled Trump’s administration can’t ignore the law and put his name alongside John F. Kennedy’s on the Kennedy Center. But the administration plans to add it to the building anyway, by adding an inscription giving Trump credit for the rehab job. And if the administration can’t put the name on the building, it threatens to tear the whole thing down.
The tearing-down of buildings the president should not be able to tear down is an apt analogy for this whole presidency. Once something is gone, it’s gone. It doesn’t matter if getting rid of it was illegal.
John Roberts’ lament
Roberts sided with liberals on the court to argue – in an unsuccessful dissent – that Trump’s East Wing project should be halted because it was “likely unlawful.” In his dissent, Roberts quoted Winston Churchill during World War II.
“We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us,” Churchill had said. Roberts didn’t mention that Churchill made those comments to argue the British House of Commons should be rebuilt as it had stood before it was destroyed by Nazi bombs. Churchill wanted to rebuild it as a monument to the British form of government.
Trump saw the White House East Wing as a tear-down project — a (likely) illegal tear-down in Roberts’ eyes. But Trump’s monument to himself – one of many — is getting built nonetheless. Asking Congress for the taxpayer money to help with the project came only after the walls were torn down.
It has become a pattern during Trump’s second term that the president does something; Congress shrugs; and the Supreme Court allows him to proceed, regardless of whether what he’s doing is, strictly speaking, legal.
‘Catch me if you can’
A week before Roberts’ historical lament, the liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted the court’s conservatives, including Roberts, for allowing Trump’s executive order meant to cut down on mail-in voting to proceed, again on a technicality.
The White House has a “Catch-Me-If-You-Can approach,” Jackson said.
In the case of disrupting mail-in ballots, Trump may ultimately get caught; the executive order still faces lawsuits and a new injunction that make it seem impossible to impose, at least for this election.
Trump also got caught on birthright citizenship, where justices rejected his attempt to set aside the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. And on tariffs, they said no, he could not exploit national emergency laws to upend the economy.
He’s still looking for ways around that decision.
But on so many other issues, Trump’s administration has picked the laws it wants to follow, diverted funds here or there, and said little in public about what it’s up to. Congress has shrugged. Courts have had trouble keeping up, and the Supreme Court has preferred to let Trump go about his business while things get sorted out.
That dynamic seems likely to change, at least somewhat, come next year if Democrats win control of either the House or the Senate. They will try to restrict funding for Trump’s goals.
But it will be an interesting question for Democrats who want to replace Trump in the White House in 2029. Should they spend even more taxpayer money to tear down the East Wing behemoth he’s building? They won’t be able to go back and take the coins with his face out of circulation. They can’t un-deport people who didn’t get a hearing. And it will take time and effort, if the next president is so inclined, to rebuild the system of scientific and medical research funding the Trump administration cut back.
On so many of the things Trump has done, catching up may not even be an option.
