Chief Justice John Roberts signed a one-sentence order Friday evening letting Donald Trump keep building his $400 million White House ballroom, hours before a court order would have stopped the work.
Roberts wrote almost nothing. The preliminary injunction entered April 16 by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia "is hereby stayed pending further order of The Chief Justice or of the Court." No reasoning. No date. No schedule.
That is a pause, not a verdict. Roberts did not decide who wins. He froze the order telling Trump to stop, and he kept the power to unfreeze it himself, any hour, without a hearing.
Roberts acted alone. He handles emergency applications out of the D.C. Circuit by standing assignment, and application 26A203 reached him that way — not because nine justices met and voted. Fox told readers the Supreme Court allowed it. CNN said the Court temporarily allowed it. MS NOW named the man. Only the third is right. One judge signed this.
Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, entered the injunction in April, four months after the National Trust for Historic Preservation sued. A divided D.C. Circuit panel upheld him this month, 2-1, holding that Congress carries "full constitutional control over federal property and the funding of its maintenance and development," and that no statute authorized this ballroom.
