Birthright Citizenship Again & 'Justice in Motion' Bus Tour

Hi, I'm David Weston. Join me every week for the Wall Street Week podcast to hear stories of capitalism from around the world, from geopolitical tensions and central bank decisions to artificial intelligence, energy and infrastructure. We sit down with the CEOs, economists, policymakers and thought leaders whose decisions are shaping markets everywhere we find them. Subscribe to the Wall Street Week podcast on Apple, Spotify or anywhere you listen. This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. At the end of last month, the Supreme Court upheld more than a century of legal precedent by rejecting President Trump's attempt to end automatic U.S. citizenship for babies born here. It was a 6-3 decision that cut across ideological lines and rejected the Trump administration's contentions about what it calls birth tourism. Women traveling from countries like China to give birth in the U.S. to get citizenship for their children, something Trump has long argued. It wasn't for billionaire Chinese people who have 57 children that become American citizens. But now Trump says he'll ask the Supreme Court to re-hear the case. An extremely long shot move. Joining me is immigration law expert Leon Fresco of Holland and Knight. Leon, they haven't filed the papers yet, but do you have any idea what the administration is going to base this request for a rehearing on? Well, the Trump administration, as you said, is asking for a rehearing of the decision in the birthright citizenship case. A losing party has 25 days to request rehearing. And basically what the Trump administration is saying is that there are ads that he is pointing to, including one from a Texas hospital aimed at expected mothers in Mexico. And he's saying that those ads are showing that the Supreme Court's decision has led to a surge in birth tourism, and therefore the court's ruling is wrong. And so he's saying that the court needs to revisit the decision. Now, is that actually true? Are more people coming? I think all of these safeguards are in place to obviously prevent people from entering the United States. now the Trump administration actually has language in the foreign affairs manual that says don't give a visitor visa to anyone who appears as coming to give birth in the United States unless there's very clear medical necessity for it and clear evidence that there's sufficient money to pay for it. And so from that perspective, I think the systems are in place already to prevent this kind of birth tourism. But nevertheless, the Trump administration is pushing and saying that the court's decision has unwittingly unleashed a new round of birth tourism in the United States. The actual number of cases of birth tourism is very low, isn't it? That's correct. Do you know what the number is? The problem is it's one of these prove a negative things. No one will actually know for sure because when people travel to the United States, they very rarely disclose that they're doing it for the purposes of giving birth. Very rarely do people go through the actual formalities of getting a visitor visa that's for the purpose of getting medical treatment to give birth. But people think at the maximum it's in the low thousand, so not even in the 10,000 range of people who are actually coming and sort of circumventing the U.S. policies and giving birth while on visitor visas. And the Supreme Court made its decision on constitutional grounds that Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship couldn't be squared with the 14th Amendment. So what's happening now is not going to change a decision based on the Constitution. Correct. I mean, the last time the Supreme Court agreed to rehear a fully argued case was in 1965, and a full plenary rehearing hasn't been granted since 1956. So this is clearly a very long shot bid. And I mean, the beginning of the oral argument in the birthright citizenship case was the Solicitor General talking about birth tourism and saying it was a new world. And Chief Justice Roberts says it wasn't a new constitution. And so I think this issue, as they say in the law, has been asked and answered. And so I don't think that question can be re-asked again, because I think that that was fully considered. Also, a bit of irony this week that the American soccer star that President Trump intervened on behalf of is a birthright citizen. Correct. The leading goal scorer for the U.S. men's national team, Fuller and Balagan, by all intents and purposes, should have been born in England, but his mother was not permitted to board a plane because she was in the eighth month of the pregnancy. And so Fuller and Balagan was born in the United States. And because of that, he was conferred U.S. citizenship. And a few years ago, he was becoming a very promising soccer player. And the U.S. Soccer Federation realized that he had this birthright citizenship. And so they asked if he would be willing to play for the U.S. men's national team. And he said yes. And so the rest is history. And had there not been birthright citizenship, that would not be an individual who would have been allowed to play in the United States soccer team. Let's turn now to the growing number of shootings by ICE agents. There was another deadly shooting on Tuesday. An ICE officer shot a 39-year-old Mexican national who was in his car during an immigration enforcement stop in Houston. He'd been living in the U.S. for decades without legal status. Federal officials say he weaponized his vehicle. But they say that all the time in these cases, and this time they've offered no evidence. This case is already one of the more complicated cases from the standpoint that ICE usually tries in order to avoid any conflagration like this, to go to an individual's home or to, at worst, go to their workplace or a specific check-in site to conduct arrests. But at the moment, the White House is really pressing. And now the new secretary of Homeland Security is really pressing again to try to get 2000 arrests per day, although he's trying also to say, try to make these arrests as low profile as possible. and nevertheless when you try to get these numbers now they've caught this individual in traffic as opposed to at home or at work and so it's unclear if this individual was someone they were trying to catch at home and they couldn't and found them on the road or whether this was an individual that just looked suspicious to ICE who was happy to be on the road as well But the point is, once ICE confronted this individual, who was clearly undocumented, this individual sort of reacted in a manner that led ICE to shoot them. And we'll have to wait and see with regard to body camera footage and other witness testimony. Was this like the situation in Minnesota where people argued that the ICE agents were not under threat from the vehicle and still shot the woman in their car? or is this a real situation where someone was trying to run over ICE officers in order to avoid detection? I mean, anyone who tries to comment without knowing the facts really is doing a disservice. But the point is, when you do these car apprehensions, that's always a risk that doesn't exist when you do the home apprehension or the office apprehension is obviously no one's going to run you over with a car if they're not in their car. According to the New York Times, as you referred to, there's been a major surge in arrest and, you know, orders from the top. And ICE agents have been arresting people at check-ins with immigration authorities during traffic stops and on the streets. And apprehensions doubled from the 1,000 picked up each day earlier this year. So in trying to increase the numbers, they have to go outside of arresting people at their homes. Correct. It's basically impossible because what you need when you go into a home is you need a warrant and you need a group of people because you can't just have one person because of safety reasons. And so all of that takes time and energy and resources and manpower. And so if you need 2,000 arrests a day, you have to find easier ways to do that. And to the extent ICE has now been given permission to arrest anyone it deems to be suspicious on the road, then there's no doubt more situations like this are going to happen, whether they be from the person that gets arrested or whether they be from people who are protesting the person getting arrested. Because we've seen both kinds of situations flare up where now we've seen the person getting arrested involved in a shooting, but we've also seen the people protesting the arrest. get involved in a shooting. And so, you know, this is sort of like a push-pull where when there's less of these operations, then there's less of these incidents. But any sort of intensification of these operations, unfortunately, always seems to carry an intensification of these incidents. More than 20 people have been shot by ICE since September, and nearly all of them in their cars. At least six have been killed. I mean, last year there was a federal immigration agent shot a fatally shot a 23 year old U.S. citizen during a late night traffic stop. And in most of these cases, the federal officials said that the actions were justified because the vehicles had been weaponized and the agents lives were in danger. Shouldn't there be better procedures if they're going to do these traffic stops to eliminate this? right no absolutely i mean at the end of the day the traffic stop really should be for someone who is avoiding being apprehended at their home or at their work where they sort of gotten in their car and they're trying to run away now but i think routine traffic stops for ice where ice is being told you have the authority to arrest people who you if you're driving around you think they look suspicious, that to me is impossible to think that it's not going to continue to lead to these situations because someone is in their car. They're desperate. They now are thinking in their head, oh my Lord, I'm going to be apprehended. I'm not going to be able to see my children or my spouse. I'm not going to be able to tell them where they are. And they just flip out. And the first thing they think to do is to drive the car away. And that act of driving the car away can easily be seen as a weaponization of the car. It's not justifiable. It's just predictable is the only point that I'm making. And so I'm not trying to justify the act of the foreign national who's moving their car. I'm just trying to say that in some number of cases, if you were actuarially analyzing this, you would say it's predictable that the foreign national is going to try to get away if they're inside their car. So the Department of Homeland Security Inspector's general's office is conducting an investigation. The FBI has opened an investigation into a possible assault on a federal law enforcement officer. But once again they are excluding local authorities. So the DA of Harris County that covers Houston said that federal authorities unfortunately are continuing to exclusively handle all aspects in this case Isn this a problem You have the administration investigating the administration with local authorities always cut out Well, so we have a couple of cases recently that sort of talk about these issues. We have these cases where the states are trying to impose obligations on ICE and the courts are saying, no, you can't do that. You can't impose obligations on how federal law enforcement officials operate and enforce federal law. And then you have the general doctrine on this issue, which came up when Minnesota tried to prosecute these ICE agents, which is that you have to show that these federal agents are basically acting so far outside of the scope of their employment that they're basically murderers because that's the only way that their immunity can be taken away. And that's very hard to prove. And in Texas, the local officials don't want to get in that business. Maybe like in New York or Minnesota or some other places, they are more willing to try to get into that business of saying that the ICE agents were not acting within the scope of employment and were essentially murdering someone. But the local officials in Texas don't want to go down that route. Coming up next, the Department of Homeland Security is stuck between two conflicting federal court rulings. This is Bloomberg. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card puts the power of titanium in the palm of your hand. What does that mean? It means the power to earn unlimited daily cash back on your purchases every day. It means a materially different credit card accepted anywhere in the world. MasterCard is accepted. Ditch the plastic. Upgrade to titanium. Apply in the wallet app on iPhone today. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch. 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I'm Matt Miller in New York. And I'm Hannah Elliott in Los Angeles. Subscribe today wherever you get your podcasts. The Department of Homeland Security is stuck between two conflicting federal court rulings. One in Florida compels it to play ball with red states looking for information on immigration status. status. The other in D.C. does just the opposite and compels DHS to shut down such bulk inquiries using social security numbers. The dispute boils down to whether federal privacy laws prevent states from utilizing SAVE, the systematic alien verification for entitlement system, to perform checks on migrant status for use in state licensing and election registration processes. I've been talking to Leon Fresco of Holland and Knight. He was the former head of the Office of Civil Immigration Litigation in the Obama administration. Leon, explain the issue with this SAVE system. So this is a little bit complex. So I want to take your listeners through this so that they understand everything that's going on. So there's a database called SAVE, Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Database. And so that actually has a meaning for entitlements, meaning that the purpose of that database was originally for states to determine in programs like Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, et cetera, whether people had the correct immigration status to be able to collect those entitlements, what people used to call welfare programs or public benefits programs. And if you didn't have the correct immigration status to collect, then you wouldn't get it. You'd run the system, and that was required by Congress, that DHS provide these databases to the states in order to check for welfare benefits. Now, what happens is you have the election in 2020. You have President Trump say that he was cheated from winning because undocumented people were voting en masse, et cetera. And many states took this to heart. And in 2024, they sued the federal government, the Biden administration, and said, look, we want access to this safe database in order to determine if our voter rolls are filled with undocumented people. And they argued that there were a number of statutory requirements that basically required the states to actually do this. So they said that there was four statutes, the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1960, and there were actually already memorandums of agreement between the states and the federal government that all said that states had a duty to make sure that illegal voters could not vote. And so the state sued and said, if you don't give us access to this SAVE database for the purposes of clearing our voter rolls of undocumented individuals, then you are basically putting a mandate on us and not giving us the materials we need to fulfill that mandate. And that case didn't get adjudicated. What happened was DHS reached a settlement with the states and said, fine, we'll give you access to the SAVE database and we'll actually add some citizenship information in it that we know whether it be from passports or social security numbers and driver's licenses and other things. We're going to add all of that into the database because now they have all this very expert IT and AI and everything else. And we're going to give you this so that you can then purge your voter rolls of undocumented people. But then what happened is public interest organization sued in Washington, in the District of Columbia, and they said, wait a second, this information that you're providing about citizens now, not just about foreign nationals, which was what used to be the SAVE database, you didn't run this by the correct Privacy Act, Social Security Act, e-government act of 2002. You didn't do any of that privacy protections and analysis. And so now you're having DHS, which is supposed to only be dealing with foreign nationals, having a database of citizens that's violating their privacy, that that settlement agreement violated all these statutes, violated their privacy. And so the district court in D.C. issued an injunction saying, stop it. Stop it, Department of Homeland Security. Do not share this information with the states about the citizenship and the voter rolls and who's undocumented and who isn't. And then the court where there was the settlement, which was in Florida, came back now and said, hey, the D.C. court is wrong. The government is now violating the settlement. So the government, we're going to hold you in contempt if you don't give this information. So now DHS is stuck between a rock and a hard place because it's either violating the court order in D.C. or it's violating the court order in Tallahassee. Obviously, the Trump administration wants to comply with the court order in Tallahassee, not with the one in D.C. The Florida federal judge, a Trump appointee, said the court understands that this puts defendants in a bind because they're subject to two contradictory orders. One of the orders has to give. And not surprisingly, the court is not persuaded by defendants and amici's arguments that its order is the one that should give. So what happens? So the Trump administration has had a high priority of trying to enforce these purging of the voter rolls for undocumented people. So they're going to comply with the Florida court, with the Tallahassee court that says that at the end of the day, you have to provide this information. So what that will lead to is the district court in D.C. holding the federal government in contempt for violating its order, which then the federal government will have to appeal to the D.C. Circuit and then ultimately to the Supreme Court if the D.C. Circuit doesn't give the government relief from that. I don't think that anything's going to happen in the 11th Circuit because what I think is going to happen is the government is going to abide by the Florida court's order. And so then the litigation will end up coming through D.C. in order to try to get relief from the D.C. order. That's what I think is going to happen. Another immigration case at the Supreme Court. No surprise there. On another topic, employers looking to hire workers from outside the U.S. may be feeling a little whiplash about the $100,000 fee required for every new H-1B visa petition. It's caught up in litigation. Start by giving us the background on this, Leon. We all remember, starting in 2017 and working our way through today, 2026, the Trump administration has been using what's called INA Section 212F, which is a statute that says when the president thinks it's in the national interest to ban certain foreign nationals from coming to the United States, the president could ban those foreign nationals. So we knew that from the context of what was called the travel ban or the Muslim ban. That was the original ban of six countries. And then it got extended to other countries like North Korea. And there was the Trump versus Hawaii case where the Supreme Court said, yes, the banning authority is legal and it can be used. So after that, the Trump administration started using the ban for more things. COVID, public charge that they think that people from certain countries are going to have welfare. There's 39 countries that are currently banned after the shooting that happened in front of the White House by an Afghan refugee. There's 39 countries that are fully banned from getting any visa. So a new ban, like six months ago, was to say, instead of a ban, what we'll do is we'll have a ban on all people who want to get an H-1B visa, which is a visa for high-skilled immigrants who want to perform work in the United States, we're going to ban those people from coming in unless their employer pays $100,000. And so the question in this litigation is, is that just a normal ban that has an exception to it, or is that really a tax? That's not a ban. It's just a tax. And if it's a tax, then Congress has to pass the tax. It's not something that can be done as part of the banning authority that the president has under INA Section 212F. How has the $100,000 fee affected the number of people getting H-1B visas? There are a lot of companies that hire foreign students in the U.S., so it hasn't affected those people because those people are inside the United States, so they can't be banned because they're already here. But there are some companies that have a business model that what they do is that people get educated in the prestigious universities in India and then they hire those people directly from those prestigious universities in India to come directly into the United States and provide work whether it's in AI or IT or whatever else it is. And now those individuals cannot come into the U.S. because the employers do not want to pay this $100,000 fee to bring in those employees. They'll take them to Canada or somewhere else. They won't bring them into the United States. And so the question is for those employers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce first filed a lawsuit in D.C. And then others, there's a lawsuit that was filed in the First Circuit and there's a lawsuit that was filed in the Northern District of California. But different employers have filed and have argued that that law was illegal. And really what happened was the first court in the District of Columbia said it was fine because it was part of the ban authority. So if you can impose a ban, then why couldn't you impose a way around the ban, a conditional ban? And so the court said it was fine. But then in between that decision and the decision that happened in the district court that was in the First Circuit, there was a case involving tariffs that the Supreme Court said that the tariffs were really a tax and that the tax needed to be done by Congress. And so then the plaintiffs changed their argument to say that, alas, this is the problem. The problem is not that the banning authority was used improperly. The problem was that this is actually a tax and a tax needs to be done by Congress. And so the district court agreed with that and has basically said, I'm enjoining this hundred thousand dollar fee. But the only problem is that then the district court stayed its order while it's on appeal in the First Circuit. And so even though there's a District of Massachusetts decision that currently says that the fee is an illegal tax, the fee is still being charged because that decision has been stayed. And we will see what the First Circuit says about this. And there's also similar litigation in the Northern District of California. So in the end, what this means is that the Supreme Court is likely going to get involved and decide whether not just the banning authority is legal, because we know that that's legal, but whether the president can say you're banned unless you pay a fee. can they do that or does that become now a tax? And so you can either do a ban or no ban, but you can't do a ban with a fee to work your way around the ban. And so yet another immigration case for the Supreme Court. Thanks so much for covering the gamut on immigration with me, Leon. That's Leon Fresco of Holland and Knight. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. 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A bipartisan group of state and federal judges, both current and retired, are hitting the road in a first-of-its-kind bus tour across three states to bring judges out of the courthouses and into the communities. The Justice in Motion tour is designed to promote public trust in the judiciary. By explaining the role courts play in our lives and countering disinformation, The judges will travel through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, meeting with students, civic leaders, attorneys, business owners, and others, answering their questions and giving them the rare opportunity to speak directly with judges. My guest is one of the judges on that bus, Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, retired from the Ohio Supreme Court. Thanks for joining me today, Chief Justice. So tell us why you decided to go on this bus tour and what you hope to accomplish. To draw attention to the fact that the judiciary is under attack. You know, we have, obviously, I don't have to tell you, the three branches of government. They're supposed to be co-equal. And what we, at the public, see almost daily is elected officials, usually in Washington, but other places, denigrating, personally denigrating judges and attributing motives to those judges that are just not true. You know, they're not corrupt. They're following the law. Never is the criticism of the opinion based on a legal analysis by the person who is speaking. It's they don't like the results. And so they're going to do a personal attack on that judge. They're going to name the judge. You know, the president, for example, berating justices on the Supreme Court because they weren't loyal to him. You know, I want to say, yes, Mr. Putin. You know, that's exactly what it sounds like. So, you know, these personal attacks on judges are dangerous. The increase in the number of reports for the federal judiciary, I think they had almost 600 investigations last year. And at this point in time, they have, I think, about 250, 260 trusts against judges that they are investigating. You know about the pizza deliveries to judges' addresses, so that's the message. We know where you live sort of thing, or to their children. It's diabolical. And they're doing it because they don't want to follow the rule of law. They want to influence and intimidate. And then, you know, think about it. The less informed individual would believe that it's okay to target a judge. And there have been attempts and there have been murders of judges here in the United States by parties to the cases or parties that are interested in the cases or somebody who's a zealot. And, you know, they always use the example of the federal New Jersey judge whose son was killed and her husband was wounded. She wasn't home at the time. And in Ohio in 2017, a party was laying in wait for Judge Brzez, trial judge. And he had had a conversation with his attorney and the attorney was preparing him for losing the case because, you know, legally it was an unsound case and the judge was probably going to rule against him. So he shows up in the morning as the judge is parking his car in a parking lot. This guy's laying in wait with a gun. The judge almost dies. Again, that was 2017. He's back on the bed. But, you know, immediately then you think, well, if that happens, is that going to inspire another kook, you know, to take action? The rhetoric that is being thrown around now is, you know, doing just that. We're under attack. And if the judiciary is under attack, the rule of law cannot stand. You can't stop President Trump and members of the administration even from saying these things about judges. So what are you trying to do specifically on this trip? We're trying to identify whatever is being said as misinformation and political theater, really. And the judicial system is suffering. So here's what judges really do. We explain that. We have just a varied audience. I just left a group called Law and Leadership, which are high school students, minority students primarily, and we just had a wonderful conversation with them. So we're imparting information, you know, straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak, about the judicial system, about it being under attack, how these personal attacks are misinformation, disinformation. and, you know, we talk about the rule of law and we talk about if we don't have the rule of law, in other words, if judges are making decisions based on intimidation or party affiliation or, you know, being loyal to someone who's helped them become a judge, that's a breach of the rule of law. And when that breaks down, society breaks down. We don't have, you know, a law that we can rely on. Businesses can't, you know, conduct their business with certainty because they don't know what the roles are now. You know, it really reverberates through society. And that's the message. And I know it's a big message, but the way it can be done, we ask these people to be messengers once we explain things and say, help educate your family, help educate, you know, your circle of friends about this and, you know, be messengers. And how has it been going so far? There have been some really delightful times, and we're getting crowds of people that are so sincere. We just left the Ohio State University, and we were with a group called Law and Leadership, which is primarily minority membership for kids in high school. And the goal is to encourage them to go to college and give them experiences. And I have been involved with Law and Leadership, you know, since its inception. And we got to do a lot of small group interaction with them. I had two young ladies, and we just had a wonderful conversation. And, you know, I wish them well. They were just delightful and smart. I'm curious about something. And I know you have both federal and state judges on the bus tour. So the National Center for State Courts in December of last year did its yearly survey, and it found that 62 percent of respondents expressed trust in the state court system. And that's more than expressed trust in the federal court system. That was just 52 percent. And I'm wondering if you have a feel for why that's the case. Well, the state judiciary is much closer to the people. In Ohio, for example, all of our judges are elected. So judges campaign. You know, I always have said to judges, get off the bench and get out into the community. You know, you come from the community and then you isolate yourself. You know, some judges do. You know, don't do that. You know, still speak to the Rotary, you know, whatever the organizations are. Speak to high school classes. It's a wonderful thing to do. You help educate the public about the third branch of government. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Chief Justice. And good luck on your tour. That's retired Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor of the Ohio Supreme Court. Join us for Bloomberg Power Players on September 10th in New York. Set against the backdrop of the U.S. Open Tennis Championships, Bloomberg convenes the leaders shaping the future of sports business. From athletes and team owners to commissioners and investors, Hear the market-moving conversations driving the multi-trillion dollar sports economy. Register now at BloombergLive.com slash Power Players Radio. That's BloombergLive.com slash Power Players Radio. The D.C. Circuit has rejected the Justice Department's request to temporarily lift a judge's ruling against the renaming of the Kennedy Center. A three panel ruled unanimously that President Trump name must stay off the Kennedy Center facade while the administration fights in court to reinstate its renaming of the historic Performing Arts Center My guest is Bloomberg Law reporter Suzanne Moniak, who's been covering all these cases on the challenges to Trump's attempts to redo D.C. Suzanne, start by reminding us what the D.C. federal judge had ruled in May. Judge Casey Cooper in D.C. ruled in May that Trump essentially didn't have legal authority to change the name of the Kennedy Center to his own. He found that a law passed by Congress making this a memorial for the late President John F. Kennedy was clear and that it couldn't be named for somebody else. And so as a result, that his name couldn't remain on the building. I'm recalling, if I'm correct, that at the time of the ruling, President Trump said, okay, they're dropping it, but they didn't drop it. They took it to the D.C. appellate court. Well, it just sort of looked that way because the judge gave them 14 days to do something about it before his ruling would take effect, and they didn't do anything. So for a minute, it looked like, oh, they're going to take his name down and they're just going to abandon this fight. But then at the very last minute, they filed a request to Washington, D.C.'s Federal Appeals Court and asked them for a ruling, giving them relief for some temporary reprieve from this lower court ruling while they appealed it. But the D.C. Circuit has now twice said no dice. Initially, they said no. They didn't say much about it, but I think the thought was that it had been very last minute. And they said, no, I'm not going to lift this ruling. They initially denied what's called an administrative stay, so just a very temporary stay. So they denied that. So the name came down, but then they did brief it. And this latest has been that they have said, no, you can't have your name on it while the case continues. So tell us what the Justice Department's argument was, the latest argument. In this latest development, post Casey Cooper's ruling, now their efforts to lift it, they've been arguing that by having his name be taken off the building, that it would irreparably harm the government. That's the standard for getting what's known as a stay of a lower court ruling while you appeal it. They're claiming that that's for two reasons, one of which no longer applies. They initially argued that it didn't make sense for them to have to take Trump's name off the building, only to have to put it back if they were to eventually win the case, which they think they're likely to do. Of course, now his name's already off the building, so that no longer applies. The other argument that they've made was that having his name no longer be on the building, Trump's name, would hurt their fundraising efforts. They'd argued that people give money to the center because it is named for Trump and that it would undermine the center financially. But the D.C. Circuit, Washington's Federal Appeals Court, really wasn't moved by that and found that there had not been enough material facts or evidence to back up that claim. And that also it hadn't been presented before in court and was just being presented now on appeal for the first time. But specifically just said that they didn't see any evidence, just conclusory is the word that they used, assertions of financial harm. They just didn't think that what they had put forward was enough to meet the standard for a stay, which is known as to be more extraordinary relief. So that was their explanation in a relatively brief order denying the Trump administration's request for relief here. It was a unanimous ruling by a panel of two Obama appointees and one Trump appointee? That's correct. It was a per curiam ruling. No dissents. Cooper ordered Trump's name to come down. They took his name down, but then they put up a tarp? That's correct. This fight is not quite yet over. They took his name down as requested and filed a statement in the court that they had done so, but it's been covered up by a tarp and scaffolding. So now that issue is getting raised in the lower court. Judge Cooper has now said that the government must submit some kind of status report due later this month explaining the purpose of the tarp. They are trying to do some repairs on the center. So perhaps we'll see that be an explanation. But we've seen the challengers in this case. That's Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio. Raise an eyebrow at the use of the tarp and express concerns that perhaps it's not actually there for any needed repairs and it's just there to cover the name. So we'll certainly have to see what explanation the government provides when they submit that report. She called it in papers an act of petty defiance to massage broken egos. Also, they had planned to close the Kennedy Center for two years for renovations. Where does that stand? That was the other element of Judge Cooper's ruling. In addition to the renaming, he blocked board vote that had been to, like, as you mentioned, close the center completely for two years during renovations. He essentially found that the board had not had, you know, the evidence presented before it to have made a reasoned decision that it was essentially a predetermined outcome. And so he said basically that they have to go back to the drawing board. It's not that they can't later decide, hey, we do actually think it makes sense to close this while we do major renovations. It's that they have to have considered all the options, had more materials presented before them. So they're going to have to go back and eventually vote on this again. We've seen in the latest status report in June, government said that they're going to present the board with a couple of different options regarding a longer closure, a partial closure, no closure at all. So they'll have the opportunity to consider that again. So this is another loss for Trump over his efforts to change or renovate Washington's landmark. So just to remind us, I mean, the ballroom is the one that stands out. Is work proceeding on the ballroom? Work has been allowed to proceed on the ballroom. The D.C. Circuit did grant a stay in that case and as construction has continued. But it's currently on appeal on the merit. So we are waiting for the appeals court to decide it on the legal question. And what about the arch that he wants to put up? Well, that one's a little more TBD. We haven't seen them break ground. And we saw the judge in that case when she had a hearing on it earlier this year express concerns like, hey, I don't want to wake up to bulldozers here on this arch. So that one is, you know, kind of on hold of it in the lower court. And we haven't seen construction yet. I'm sure if we do, the plaintiffs in that case will come straight back to court. Let's turn now to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The former Olympian who's been charged with a felony by the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office for alleged vandalism of the pool was in court. On Wednesday morning in D.C. Superior Court, David Hearn, the Olympic canoeist who was charged with defacing the lining of the pool, was arraigned. He's pleaded not guilty. And are there any lawsuits still going on over Trump's repainting, relining, whatever it is of the pool? It was challenged and actually is still being challenged. They had made an initial request to a D.C. federal judge to block the recoloring of the pool. I don't want to say painting. I think it's not literally paint. But the relining of the reflecting pool, the judge didn't issue a ruling really in either way in time. And then essentially it was done. So it was like a fait accompli. So at that point, they kind of had said, you know, obviously this is done, but they still had expressed an interest in proceeding to the merits of this. Did the administration have the legal authority to do what it did without going through review processes? And that's been really the core of nearly all of these challenges to Trump's different efforts to build things or change things in D.C. when he's talking about, I want to build a monument. I want to paint this building. I want to change the color of the reflecting pool, build a new ballroom. Did he go through the correct processes? These are environmental reviews, historic preservation reviews, consultation requirements, things like that that are legally required for certain types of buildings in the District of Columbia as our nation's capital. And so that's been really at the crux of these cases are what are their obligations here? Did they satisfy them? Were they required to do more? And then there's also this secondary question when it comes to buildings and renovations that have already been made. Is there anything a court can do? So these are all cases that we're going to see play out in the next year and, you know, see how D.C.'s skyline is affected. I mean, except for the arch, the problem is that he acts first and the ballroom came down, as we've discussed before, so quickly. But the East Wing is down. So, I mean, what now? What are they looking for there since the East Wing is already down now? That was a huge aspect of the D.C. Circuit oral arguments in the White House ballroom case, which were held in early June, was this idea of courts, do they ever have authority to intervene at anywhere in this process? The government was essentially arguing that given that construction had begun, it would just be too harmful for them and for a court to step in at this point. The balance of equities, as they say in court, was just going to be on their side. They were going to be more hurt. And the plaintiffs obviously are arguing in that case that that's an injury of their own making. But it was interesting to see how far the government was willing to take that. They had even argued that they could, you know, knock down the Statue of Liberty, you know, without warning and that a court couldn't step in. So I think that has been a really interesting line of argument that we've seen from this administration that, you know, if they have begun a project, courts can't intervene. And certainly I think what happened with the ballroom is something that looms over all of these cases and really loomed over the Triumphal Arch case when Trump was posting pictures of building an arch was like, and that's, as I mentioned earlier, what, you know, Judge Tanya Chetkin in that case was, what am I going to wake up to bulldozers? And I think that's just a concern that weighs over all of these cases. They better put guards on the Statue of Liberty, I guess. Let's turn to the Supreme Court for a moment. Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett are going to testify before congressional panels next week about the court's budget. I remember seeing Kagan and Justice Samuel Alito testify about the budget years ago. But they haven't done that in a long time, right? That's right. The last time justices appeared on the Hill to testify about the budget was in 2019. Did they give a reason as to why they decided to testify this year? And I notice again, it's one Democratic appointee and one Republican appointee. So a bipartisan appearance. A top Democratic appropriator had indicated back in the spring that she would like to see the justices or someone from the Supreme Court talk a little bit about the budget. I mean, on the Hill, Congress decides how much funding different parts of the government get. And it's generally standard practice that representatives from an agency being funded would come to the Hill and justify the amount of money they're asking for. So the Supreme Court is in a bit of a unique posture that they've been asking for increasingly more money in recent years, not necessarily unjustified. there are definitely legitimate security concerns that the court has been dealing with that absolutely might merit increased funding. But they haven't had to come and, you know, testify publicly about it. Certainly, they may have been having closed-door meetings. But I think it'll be very interesting for the public to get to hear from the justices publicly in that way on their budget, on their resource needs for the first time in seven years. I know I'll be watching. Thanks so much, Suzanne. That's Bloomberg Law reporter Suzanne Moniak. And that's it for this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show. Remember, you can always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www.bloomberg.com slash podcast slash law. And remember to tune into the Bloomberg Law Show every weeknight at 10 p.m. Wall Street time. I'm June Grosso, and you're listening to Bloomberg. Bloomberg Green returns to New York during Climate Week on September 22nd and 23rd, bringing together industry leaders, policymakers, and climate innovators to explore what's next in the transition to a more resilient and future-ready world. 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