The White House ballroom case makes the stakes unusually clear.
Congress passed a law requiring its express approval before a new structure can be built on federal grounds in Washington.
Trump proceeded anyway.
Two lower courts tried to stop the construction.
Today, five Supreme Court justices let it continue, not because they concluded Trump has the legal authority to build it, but because they concluded the group challenging him probably lacks standing.
Chief Justice Roberts dissented. He said the construction is “likely unlawful” and warned that the Court was allowing an apparent infringement of Congress’s constitutional authority to continue.
That is the larger issue.
We still have three branches on paper.
But increasingly, the President can act first, while the Supreme Court decides whether anyone else has the power to stop him.
That matters because this is occurring alongside a much broader shift:
the Court has strengthened presidential control over independent agencies, created criminal immunity for core official presidential acts, limited some remedies available to lower courts, and increasingly determines which modern institutions and rights have enough historical pedigree to survive.
Congress matters less if it can write “no,” the President can do it anyway, and the courts ultimately say the people challenging him cannot enforce that “no.”
America has had powerful Presidents before, usually during wars or national emergencies.
What is unusual now is that there is no Civil War, world war, or 9/11-scale emergency driving this concentration of authority.
The claim is more permanent:
this is simply how much power the presidency was constitutionally supposed to have all along.
That is the stake.
Not a ballroom.
Not one Trump victory.
Whether separation of powers still means that one branch can actually stop another, or whether we are moving toward a system in which the President acts, the Supreme Court decides the limits, and Congress increasingly watches its laws become arguments rather than commands.
Going back decades, Congress has opted to grant more and more power to the Executive Branch, in part because of how much bigger the government has gotten. When we were 13 colonies, it was a hell of a lot easier for Congress to be much more in the weeds when it came to issues, but now that is just an impossible task.
When the Supreme Court struck down Chevron deference in 2023, that was a huge step in Congress getting back power it had previously let slip away. However, it also created a catch-22 in that the way we had been writing laws for decades now had to be changed. Fixing all of this is going to take time and additional court decisions.
One thing that has continued to work regardless of Administrations is Congress's power of the purse. While a CR (continuing resolution) does hurt the image of Congress being in charge of the money Admins still follow the money and where it goes. The PBRs (Presidential Budget Requests) from the last 5 years look a lot different than what Congress ends up appropriating for the various agencies. NASA last year is a perfect example of this and military spending for FY 27 is another.
What happens when Congress clearly says no, as it did here, the President acts anyway, and the Supreme Court lets him keep doing it because it says the challenger can’t sue? Roberts himself says the construction is likely unlawful. At that point, what exactly is Congress’s power worth?
Trump is learning from Putin