Trump’s Assault on Judicial Review Undermines a Crucial Safeguard Against Tyranny

“This was an Obama judge,” President Donald Trump remarked in November 2018, referring to a decision temporarily blocking his restrictions on asylum applications. “And I’ll tell you what, it’s not going to happen like this anymore.”

The ruling that irked Trump involved a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that says “any alien” may “apply for asylum” if he is “physically present in the United States” or “arrives in the United States…whether or not at a designated port of arrival.” Contrary to the plain language of that statute, Trump had issued a proclamation barring asylum applications by people who cross the southern border between ports of entry. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had implemented that restriction with rules that made such aliens categorically ineligible for asylum.

In response to a lawsuit by an immigrant rights group, Jon Tigar, a federal judge in Oakland, California, issued a temporary restraining order against the new asylum policy, noting that it contradicted federal law. But as Trump told it, Tigar had ruled against him for purely partisan reasons.

Although Trump’s comment about Tigar was mild compared to his subsequent attacks on judges who dared to disagree with him, it prompted a rare public rebuke by Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee. “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in a statement released by the Supreme Court. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

It should be obvious by now that Trump is not thankful for an independent judiciary, which he views as an illegitimate obstacle to his policy agenda and personal whims. That much is clear from his over-the-top denunciations of recalcitrant judges and justices, whom he habitually accuses of political bias or cowardice, sometimes recommending their impeachment. It is also clear from the arguments that Justice Department lawyers have made in court, especially during Trump’s second term.

Again and again, Trump’s legal representatives have argued that the courts have no business reviewing his decisions or, at the very least, owe him the sort of deference that would allow him to do pretty much anything he wants. They have staked out that position in cases involving issues such as Trump’s tariffs, his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, his National Guard deployments, his retaliation against political opponents, and his plan to replace the East Wing of the White House with a huge, gaudy ballroom.

Trump’s resistance to judicial review goes beyond criticizing the reasoning or conclusions of judges who rule against him. It amounts to a frontal assault on the rule of law and the separation of powers.

On a Tuesday morning in March 2025, Trump was angry at James Boasberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do. This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”

Three days earlier, Boasberg had temporarily blocked Trump’s attempt to summarily deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to a notorious prison in El Salvador. To justify those deportations, Trump relied on a highly dubious interpretation of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), a law that Congress approved in 1798 amid a panic about a war with France that seemed imminent.

The AEA applies only when “there is a declared war” between the United States and a “foreign nation or government” or when a “foreign nation or government” has “perpetrated, attempted, or threatened” an “invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.” In those circumstances, it authorizes the president to deport “natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects” of that “hostile nation or government.”

Given that language, Trump’s use of the AEA made little sense. The United States was not at war with Venezuela, which had not launched or threatened an “invasion or predatory incursion.” Even assuming the DHS had correctly identified members of Tren de Aragua, that criminal organization was not a “foreign nation or government.” Nor were its members “natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects” of a “hostile nation or government.” But Trump aimed to eject Venezuelan detainees before any of that was sorted out, which explains why the DHS launched the operation on a Saturday without advance notice.  

After lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) caught wind of that plan, they filed a class action complaint on behalf of five named Venezuelan detainees and similarly situated individuals. Because it looked like the DHS was about to start flying detainees out of the country, the lawyers also filed an emergency application for a temporary restraining order (TRO). In light of the “exigent circumstances,” Boasberg quickly granted a TRO barring deportation of the named plaintiffs.

All of that happened before Trump published the proclamation that purported to authorize the deportations by invoking the AEA. That document did not appear on the White House website until 4 p.m. An hour later, Boasberg convened a Zoom hearing that pitted ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt against Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign. After hearing from both sides, Boasberg certified the class action and orally extended the TRO to protect “all noncitizens in U.S. custody” who were covered by Trump’s proclamation.

 During the hearing, Ensign assured Boasberg that the named plaintiffs would not be deported while the case was pending. But he was cagey about what was happening to other members of the class. It turned out the flights to El Salvador had already begun, and they continued into the night, even after Boasberg made it clear that they needed to stop.

“Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States,” Boasberg told Ensign. “However that’s accomplished, whether turning around a plane or not embarking [detainees] covered by this [order] on the plane, I leave to you. But this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.”

That did not happen. A total of 238 Venezuelan detainees were flown to El Salvador that day on three flights from an airport in Harlingen, Texas, including one that departed after Boasberg had translated his oral instruction into a written order.

Trump was clearly intent on deporting his targets before they received any judicial review. And when Boasberg nevertheless managed to protect a handful of them, the president was livid. As Trump saw it, voters had given him “AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE” to crack down on illegal immigration, and Boasberg—who “was not elected President,” “didn’t WIN the popular VOTE (by a lot!),” “didn’t WIN ALL SEVEN SWING STATES,” “didn’t WIN [by] 2,750 to 525 Counties,” and in fact “DIDN’T WIN ANYTHING”—had no authority to question how he went about delivering on that promise. By presuming to do so, Trump said, Boasberg showed that he was unfit to serve as a federal judge and therefore deserved impeachment.

Like Trump’s 2018 slam against Tigar, that suggestion provoked a response from Chief Justice Roberts. “For more than two centuries,” Roberts said a few hours after Trump’s Truth Social rant against Boasberg, “it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

In court, the Trump administration’s lawyers did not call Boasberg a “troublemaker,” an “agitator,” or a “radical left lunatic.” But they made it clear that they thought he should not be weighing Trump’s authority under the AEA, the legality of his proclamation, or even the government’s identification of individuals who allegedly were subject to it.

“The Court lacks jurisdiction because the presidential actions [the plaintiffs] challenge are not subject to judicial review,” Attorney General Pam Bondi and 10 of her underlings declared in a March 2025 motion asking Boasberg to lift his TRO. “The President’s authority and discretion under the AEA is not a proper subject for judicial scrutiny.” They added that “the President’s invasion determination,” which equated illegal immigration and criminal activity with “an invasion or predatory incursion,” was “not subject to judicial review.”

Even if judicial review were available, Bondi et al. argued, it would be limited to habeas corpus petitions filed in Texas, where the detainees were held, rather than Boasberg’s court in Washington, D.C. “At most,” the motion said, “a plaintiff seeking to challenge application of an AEA proclamation would be challenging the legality of detention, a habeas claim that is limited in scope.” Assuming it was allowed at all, the inquiry would be restricted to “just a few, very narrow questions,” such as “whether, when relevant, there is a ‘declared war'” and “whether the ‘person restrained is an enemy alien fourteen years of age or older.'”

The government’s lawyers did not actually concede that AEA detainees had a right to file habeas petitions. That would have been awkward, since the Venezuelans who already had been deported as “alien enemies” never had a chance to exercise that right.

When the case landed at the Supreme Court that April, the majority agreed that Boasberg did not have jurisdiction and vacated his TRO. But the justices unanimously rejected the proposition that judicial review was unavailable. The majority made it clear that AEA detainees had a due process right to challenge their detention by filing habeas petitions in Texas, meaning the government had to give them a realistic opportunity to do so. 

“‘It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law’ in the context of removal proceedings,” said the unsigned decision in Trump v. JGG. “The detainees are entitled to notice and opportunity to be heard ‘appropriate to the nature of the case.'” Specifically, the Court said, “AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”

Review of those petitions may include “questions of interpretation and constitutionality,” the justices said, casting doubt on the government’s claim that “the President’s authority and discretion under the AEA is not a proper subject for judicial scrutiny.” The Justice Department nevertheless re-upped that argument at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit two months later.

“The president’s determination that the factual prerequisites of the AEA have been met is not subject to judicial review,” Ensign told the 5th Circuit in June 2025. Alternatively, he argued, “it’s subject to extremely deferential review.”

The 5th Circuit did not buy it. That September in WMM v. Trump, a divided three-judge panel concluded that there was “no invasion or predatory incursion” to justify the president’s proclamation. The Trump administration asked the full court to reconsider the case, which it agreed to do. But on August 13, seven months after hearing oral argument, the 5th Circuit dismissed the case because the three named plaintiffs threatened with removal under the AEA had instead been deported under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Trump’s use of the National Guard, which he deployed last year in California, Oregon, and Illinois without state or local consent, raised similar issues of statutory interpretation and judicial authority. To justify those operations, Trump invoked 10 USC 12406, which authorizes the president to “call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State” in three circumstances. Trump relied mainly on Subsection 3 of that law, saying protests against his immigration crackdown had left him “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” 

After U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer issued a TRO against Trump’s Los Angeles deployment in June 2025, the government asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to override that decision. During the ensuing hearing, 9th Circuit Judge Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, asked Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate whether the government maintained that “the court has no role at all in reviewing what the president has done in calling forth the militia under Subsection 3.”

Yes, Shumate said: “Our view is that the statute commits the decision whether to call up the forces to the president’s unreviewable discretion. So no, there’s no role for the court to play in reviewing that decision.”

Suppose a president “simply invokes the statute, gives no reasons for doing it, [and] provides no support for doing it,” Bennett said. Suppose “there are no facts offered by that president” to support that decision and “there is nothing which would appear to a court to justify it.” Would it still be true that the court “has no role at all in determining” whether the president “correctly invoked Subsection 3”?

Shumate again said yes: “That’s correct, because if the statute is unreviewable, it’s unreviewable.”

Eric Miller, another Trump-appointed member of the three-judge panel, pressed the point: What if the president “articulated a justification for his action that was not one of the enumerated purposes” in the statute? Even then, Shumate replied, the answer would be the same: “If it’s unreviewable, it’s unreviewable.” While “there can be cases where discretion can be abused,” he said, “there are other checks [on] the president through the political process,” and it is “not for a court to exceed its authority” by determining whether the president complied with the terms of the statute.

That was too much for Bennett, Miller, and the third member of the panel, Joe Biden nominee Jennifer Sung. Two days later, they agreed to block Breyer’s order while the case was pending, but they unambiguously rejected Shumate’s position that Trump’s use of Section 12406 was a “political question” beyond judicial review.

“Because the political question doctrine is grounded in the constitutional separation of powers, it has traditionally been limited to constitutional cases,” the 9th Circuit panel noted in a unanimous, unsigned opinion. “It has not been available in statutory cases. Applying it in statutory cases would ‘systematically favor’ the President over Congress by ignoring the limitations that the latter placed on the former’s authority, threatening the very separation of powers that the doctrine is meant to protect.” 

Although “our review of the President’s determinations in this context is especially deferential,” the 9th Circuit said, there were limits to that deference. It rejected “the federal government’s position that the President could federalize the National Guard based on no evidence whatsoever, and that courts would be unable to review a decision that was obviously absurd or made in bad faith.”

The appeals court added that “we do not think that any minimal interference with the execution of laws is, by itself, enough to justify invoking” Subsection 3. “The statutory context confirms that,” it said. “Subsections one and two of the statute discuss unusual and extreme exigencies—invasions and rebellions—that threaten the normal operations of civil government. If we were to adopt the federal government’s reading of subsection three, it would swallow subsections one and two, because any invasion or rebellion renders the President unable to exercise some federal laws.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, which in October 2025 declined to block a TRO against Trump’s National Guard deployment in Chicago, likewise did not agree that judges were powerless to assess the legality of the president’s actions. Urging the Supreme Court to override the 7th Circuit, Solicitor General D. John Sauer reiterated that “the President’s determination to call up the National Guard” is “not judicially reviewable at all.”

The Supreme Court disagreed in December 2025, leaving the TRO in place by a 6–3 vote. The majority in Trump v. Illinois said the president seemed to have misread the statute on which he was relying.

“We conclude that the term ‘regular forces’ in §12406(3) likely refers to the regular forces of the United States military,” five justices said in an unsigned ruling. “This interpretation means that to call the Guard into active federal service under §12406(3), the President must be ‘unable’ with the regular military ‘to execute the laws of the United States.’ Because the statute requires an assessment of the military’s ability to execute the laws, it likely applies only where the military could legally execute the laws.” Such circumstances “are exceptional,” the Court noted.

A week after that ruling, Trump announced that he was withdrawing National Guard troops from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland. “We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again,” he warned on Truth Social. “Only a question of time!”

When Trump announced stiff tariffs on goods from nearly every country in 2025, he likewise relied on a controversial interpretation of a federal statute that he said gave him essentially unreviewable authority. Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that does not mention tariffs and had never been used to impose them. He claimed to have discovered a previously overlooked power to completely rewrite the tariff schedule approved by Congress, which has the constitutional authority to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.”

Among other things, IEEPA authorizes the president to “regulate…importation” in certain circumstances. Under that heading, Trump argued, he could tax imports of any goods he decided to target from any country he chose at any rate he deemed appropriate for any length of time he thought was necessary. The only requirement, he said, was that he first had to declare a “national emergency” involving “an unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad that endangered “the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.”

Trump perceived two such emergencies. To justify the punitive tariffs against China, Mexico, and Canada that he announced in February 2025, he cited “the extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs.” When he announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs two months later, he cited “large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits.”

It seemed doubtful that any of these longstanding phenomena could reasonably be described as “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States. But according to Trump, that determination was entirely up to him.

“The ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’ asserted as a ‘national emergency’ by the Liberation Day Order is not an emergency, and is not unusual, extraordinary, new, unexpected, odd, or even surprising,” the businesses that challenged Trump’s IEEPA tariffs in the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) argued. “Trade deficits are not unusual or extraordinary—the United States has run a net trade deficit at most times since World War II, and consistently since the 1970s.”

The plaintiffs also questioned Trump’s assumption that trade deficits are inherently problematic: “Nor are trade deficits an emergency or even necessarily a problem; they simply mean that some other country sells lots of things Americans want to buy, or that its people are unwilling or unable (often because of poverty) to purchase many American goods. Moreover, trade deficits go hand in hand with capital surpluses, which increases investment in the United States.”

In response, the government’s lawyers argued that none of that was legally relevant. “The question whether a threat is unusual or extraordinary is reviewable only by Congress,” they said. “Courts have consistently held that the President’s emergency declarations under the National Emergencies Act, and the adequacy of his policy choices addressing those emergencies under IEEPA, are unreviewable.”

Trump, in short, claimed that Congress had completely delegated its tariff authority to the president, subject only to his own determination that the requisite emergency existed. That claim was rejected by every court that considered it, including the CIT, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. 

Trump’s response to the Federal Circuit’s decision reflected his knee-jerk assumption that judges who rule against him are motivated by political bias. The court was “Highly Partisan,” Trump explained. He described the majority as “a Radical Left group of judges,” implying that the result was dictated by ideology rather than a careful consideration of the facts and the law.

That characterization was hard to take seriously, especially since the Federal Circuit had upheld a unanimous decision by three CIT judges, including one appointed by President Ronald Reagan and one appointed by Trump himself. And while six of the seven Federal Circuit judges who ruled against Trump’s tariffs were appointed by Democratic presidents, the majority also included Alan Lourie, who was nominated by President George H.W. Bush. The four dissenters, meanwhile, included two Obama nominees.

More to the point, the majority’s reasoning was fundamentally conservative. The court noted that Trump’s use of IEEPA was unprecedented and asserted authority that implicated the major questions doctrine, which aims to uphold the separation of powers.

According to the Supreme Court, that doctrine applies when the executive branch tries to exercise a power of “vast economic and political significance.” In such cases, “the Government must point to ‘clear congressional authorization’ for that asserted power,” the Federal Circuit noted. “The tariffs at issue in this case implicate the concerns animating the major questions doctrine as they are both ‘unheralded’ and ‘transformative.'” The Supreme Court “has explained that where the Government has ‘never previously claimed powers of this magnitude,’ the major questions doctrine may be implicated.”

Trump claimed to have identified a heretofore unnoticed delegation of unlimited tariff authority in a statute that was nearly half a century old. That claim, the Federal Circuit concluded, “runs afoul of the major questions doctrine.”

Far from an invention of “Radical Left” judges, the major questions doctrine stems from a series of Supreme Court decisions spearheaded by conservative justices. The late Antonin Scalia, whom Trump has described as the very model of a “great” jurist, explained the rationale for the doctrine in 2001: “Congress, we have held, does not alter the fundamental details of a regulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary provisions—it does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouseholes.”

The Supreme Court had applied that logic in several decisions rejecting assertions of agency authority, including the Food and Drug Administration’s attempt to regulate tobacco products without explicit congressional approval, the national eviction moratorium imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the COVID-19 vaccine mandate that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration tried to impose on employers in 2021, and the Biden administration’s student debt relief plan. Whatever you might think of those decisions, they are hardly evidence of a “Radical Left” mindset.

Notably, Lourie was one of four judges who went further than the majority in the Federal Circuit case, arguing that IEEPA “does not authorize the President to impose any tariffs” (emphasis added). Last February in Learning Resources v. Trump, the Supreme Court agreed.

Trump again rejected the possibility that there might be sound legal reasons to question his assertion of untrammeled tariff authority. The three Democratic nominees in the majority were a “disgrace to our nation,” he told reporters, because “they’re an automatic no, no matter how good a case you have.” They are “against anything that makes America strong, healthy, and great again.”

That much was to be expected, Trump said. But he was especially angry at Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, the two Trump nominees who joined the decision, saying he was “ashamed” of them because they did not have “the courage to do what’s right for our country.” They were “an embarrassment to their families,” he said, revealing themselves as “fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical-left Democrats.” They “may think they’re being politically correct,” he averred, but “they’re very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.” 

Trump was still seething about the tariff decision a month later. Justices like Gorsuch and Barrett “go out of their way, with bad and wrongful rulings and intentions, to prove how ‘honest,’ ‘independent,’ and ‘legitimate’ they are,” he wrote on Truth Social. In their eagerness to demonstrate their independence, Trump said, such justices “openly disrespect the Presidents who nominate them.” Although “the Court knew where I stood” and “how badly I wanted this Victory for our Country,” Trump complained, Gorsuch and Barrett had the temerity to reject his interpretation of IEEPA.

When Democratic appointees disagree with Trump, he says, they are a “disgrace” because they “automatically vote no,” elevating party loyalty above their responsibility to assess the merits of the case. But when his own appointees refuse to automatically vote yes, they are “an embarrassment to their families.” Trump, in other words, values judicial independence—as long as the courts side with him.

After the Supreme Court nixed Trump’s IEEPA tariffs, he announced another sweeping round of import taxes, this time invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. That provision allows tariffs in response to “fundamental international payments problems” caused by “serious United States balance-of-payments deficits.” The main issue raised by the new legal rationale was whether Trump was right in asserting that the United States faced such a situation.

As in the IEEPA cases, the Justice Department said the courts had no authority to address that issue. Trump’s perception of “a large and serious balance-of-payments deficit,” Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate told the CIT in April, “constitutes an unreviewable exercise of the President’s judgment.” The CIT disagreed. In May, the court ruled that the new tariffs were “unauthorized by law” because Trump had failed to “identify balance-of-payments deficits within the meaning of Section 122.”

The government’s lawyers took a similar position when they defended Trump’s punishment of law firms that had represented clients or causes he abhors. Among other things, Trump’s executive orders suspended the security clearances of lawyers at the targeted firms, crippling their ability to represent clients in cases that required access to sensitive information.

“Courts may not review a decision to deny or revoke a security clearance even when the denial or revocation is challenged on statutory or even constitutional grounds,” acting Associate Attorney General Chad Mizelle told Richard Leon, a federal judge in the District of Columbia, after one of the firms challenged Trump’s politically motivated penalties. Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, disagreed. While individualized decisions regarding security clearances might be unreviewable, Leon ruled in May 2025, Trump’s broad retaliation against disfavored law firms violated the First Amendment.

A year later, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit considered similar challenges by other law firms, the Justice Department was still arguing that Trump’s blanket suspension of security clearances was unreviewable. Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee, posed a hypothetical: Suppose a Democratic president decides that any lawyer “who represents a Republican” is ipso facto “a threat to national security” and therefore should lose his security clearance. The answer would be “the same,” Justice Department attorney Abhishek Kambli said, “because it’s a threshold issue as to whether you can review it or not.”

Even when courts conclude that the president has violated the law, the Trump administration says, that does not necessarily mean they have the power to do anything about it. In June, for example, a Justice Department lawyer told the D.C. Circuit that an order barring the president from completing his White House ballroom would be improper.

Last October, Trump demolished the East Wing of the White House, which he plans to replace with a new structure that would be 60 percent larger than the White House residence in square footage and more than three times as large in cubic volume. In addition to architectural criticism, that plan provoked a legal challenge by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In March, Leon ruled that the project was illegal because “no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims.” 

The president is “the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families,” Leon wrote. “He is not, however, the owner!” Leon issued a preliminary injunction that barred Trump from proceeding with the project without congressional approval.

During a June 5 hearing, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Yaakov Roth urged the D.C. Circuit, which had already temporarily blocked Leon’s order, to permanently vacate it. Even if the appeals court ultimately agreed with Leon’s reasoning, Roth said, it would be an “abuse of discretion” to affirm the injunction because the ballroom project serves national security interests and was already pretty far along.

“When did it become impossible for courts to stop this project?” Judge Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, asked Roth. “I think it would’ve been improper to enjoin it even on day one,” he replied.

Even if “this were complete lawlessness by the government,” the project “couldn’t be stopped?” Millett asked. “I think that’s right,” Roth said. He conceded that Congress could pass a law prohibiting the project, in which case the Trump administration presumably would be obliged to obey.

“So this is really something that can’t be stopped [except] by Congress?” Millett asked. Correct, Roth said: “I think that’s right.” He allowed that the appeals court could “issue a declaratory judgment that it’s illegal,” after which Congress could “figure out how to deal with that, given the fact that we have these national security imperatives” and the project is “well on its way.”

Millett pressed the point. “If the government decides, very quickly, to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty,” she asked, “but the government moved too fast, nothing can be done?” Roth was unfazed. “I think that’s right,” he reiterated. That exchange, ABC News noted, elicited “audible gasps in the courtroom.”

Two months later, in an opinion joined by Biden appointee Bradley Garcia, Millett rejected Roth’s position that “the policy goals of having a ballroom are so imperative that construction must continue regardless of its legality.” By Trump’s logic, “the President could bulldoze the entire White House and replace it with a new building of his own design,” she noted. “The Defendants have not shown that Congress delegated that authority to either the President or the National Park Service. Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help.”   

As the audience at the D.C. Circuit hearing recognized, Trump’s assertions of unreviewable authority are breathtaking. By trying to cut the courts out of the picture painted by the Framers, he aims to undermine a crucial safeguard against tyranny.