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The Supreme Court just gave Trump his illegal ballroom

And the justices didn’t even bother to explain why…

Welp, the Supreme Court has decided that President Donald Trump gets to build his ballroom. The decision in National Park Service v. National Trust for Historic Preservation is 5-4, with Republican Chief Justice John Roberts joining the three Democratic justices in dissent.

Notably, no member of the Court argued that Trump’s ballroom, an enormous structure that the president plans to build on the former site of the White House’s East Wing, is legal. As Roberts points out in dissent, a federal law prohibits the construction of any “building or structure … on any reservation, park, or public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.” And, as Roberts writes, “Congress has not passed any law resembling ‘express authority’ for the Executive’s construction of” Trump’s ballroom.

Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser.

Nevertheless, the five Republicans in the majority manage to rule in favor of Trump by effectively immunizing his ballroom from federal lawsuits.

Their opinion highlights two of the most troubling things about the current........

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