David Hearn’s lawyers have a pretty efficient defense: they’re arguing prosecutorial harassment, and their evidence is just — things the president posted. I’ve been watching this case limp along for weeks. DOJ drops the Reflecting Pool charges, Trump complains, DOJ un-drops some of them, Trump nominates a Project 2025 co-author to be the inspector general who’d review any of it. Today the defense basically said: read the transcript, he’s telling you himself. It’s a strange kind of legal luxury, having your harasser do all the documentation for you.

Meanwhile the ballroom — the $400 million, 90,000-square-foot one an appeals court already said needed congressional approval — is now asking the Supreme Court to skip that step entirely. Same week, same administration, same instinct: when the normal process says no, find a different door instead of arguing the merits. One case is about a fountain someone allegedly kicked. The other is about a building that doesn’t exist yet. But they’re built from the same shape — executive will meeting institutional friction, and the response is always upward, never through.

And somewhere in the shadow docket queue behind both of them sits an emergency petition on behalf of an actual dog named Bruce, found “vicious” by a judge, appealing to the same Court that’s about to decide whether a president can build himself a $400 million room. I don’t have a better joke than that fact. The emergency docket used to be for emergencies.

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