This is [music] Bloomberg Law with June

Graasso from Bloomberg Radio.

>> The US Supreme Court is allowing

President Trump to keep building his new

White House ballroom, brushing aside

conclusions by two lower courts that

he's probably violating the law. The

court's majority agreed with the

administration that the historic

preservation group that sued likely

lacked legal standing. The vote was 5

to4 with Chief Justice John Roberts

joining the three liberals in disscent.

Although the high court order is

temporary, it all but guarantees that

Trump can complete the vast majority of

the structure before the legal fight

concludes. Joining me is Bloomberg legal

reporter Zoe Tilman. The majority here,

the five conservative justices decided

this on uh jurisdictional grounds.

Explain that.

>> That's right. So, at this stage, what it

came down to was whether the historic

preservation group that sued had

standing to bring this case in the first

place. And lower courts had determined

that they did. And the justices here

determined that they were likely to lose

on that question. Um, this involves what

is often referred to as an aesthetic

injury, which in some cases has been a

real injury. There had been some

discussion of environmental cases where

the view of a national park or the

presence of an endangered animal, the

loss of that was a concrete injury that

would give someone standing to sue. So

in this case, the question was, could a

member of this historic preservation

group claim an aesthetic injury from

viewing the construction of the new

ballroom enough to give them standing to

sue? The majority said no, that this was

basically, you know, mere offense,

disagreement, distaste. That wasn't

enough.

>> The Trump administration has claimed

there are national security and military

reasons for the ballroom. Did the

majority consider that in the decision?

>> They did. On the other balance of the

harm, they cited representations from

different agencies, from national

intelligence, the CIA, the FBI, Secret

Service, Homeland Security, others,

saying that there were litany of

national security reasons, why the above

ground portion of the project, which is

the ballroom, that's what we all sort of

understand visually and structurally

this is really about. whether that could

be divorced from the below ground

components of the project which everyone

understood to be perhaps more tethered

to some of these other security concerns

and the lower courts had said that below

ground portion can continue just not

above ground. Today what the majority

said was they gave more weight to the

argument that you really couldn't

separate those two components of the

project. So now the surprise here is

that the chief justice John Roberts

joined the three liberal justices in

disscent,

>> right? Not just in descent but writing

the disscent really taking ownership of

that decision in a way that we should

say the majority opinion was not signed

by anyone justice. So we don't put a

name on that. It's just the remaining

conservative justices. But no, the chief

wrote a strong descent saying that you

know this is not a victory for the

separation of powers giving credence to

this idea of aesthetic injury as

providing legitimate standing to sue

over situations like this. And then he

concludes by quoting Winston Churchill

about the importance of how buildings

shape us and the significance of

following the rules in deciding he says

quote what to tear down and what to

build up at the people's house. So the

chief justice not just in the descent

but really owning the descent here.

>> Thanks so much Zoe. That's Bloomberg

legal reporter Zoe Tilman.

>> We will arrest you and where we can we

will prosecute you aggressively and we

will prosecute your parents. Back in

May, DC US Attorney Janine Pro

threatened to begin aggressively

prosecuting parents for contributing to

the delinquency of a minor if their

children were involved in so-called teen

takeovers. Those are social media

organized gatherings of teens that have

sometimes erupted into violence. The

said that parents could be charged even

if their child wasn't prosecuted. and

she mentioned a host of other possible

offenses including repeated truency.

When teens are repeatedly violating the

curfew, when they're repeatedly truent

from school, when they possess alcohol

or drugs, no matter how much, it doesn't

mean that they have to be prosecuted

when they are violating a court order or

when they're already appends a person in

need of supervision or committing

criminal offenses like we saw in

Chipotle

were coming for you and we're coming for

your parents.

>> Well, now Piro has convened a rare

special grand jury in DC to investigate

public schools, zeroing in on truency

graduation rates and attendance records.

That's according to the Washington Post.

Joining me is constitutional law expert

David Super, a professor at Georgetown

Law. David, so preliminary data for the

2025 2026 school year shows that 50.4%

of DC high school students are

chronically truent and the district

education officials have said that

chronic absenteeism and truency remain

significant concerns.

Why is the federal government getting

involved here? This seems like a very

very local matter.

>> This is a very unusual thing to do. DC

schools have a history of problems. They

also have a history of local efforts to

improve them. They're far from fixed,

but it's seems unlikely to be a

situation that a prosecutor could

accomplish much dealing with. My

suspicion is that the reason we have

this special grand jury is because of

the other special grand jury looking

into the reflecting pool fiasco. I'm

sure prosecutor Piro

irritated the president with that and

this is an effort to mllify. She

threatened in a press conference back in

May, I to prosecute parents whose

teenagers break curfew, city curfew, and

participate in whatever this teen

takeovers. I mean, prosecuting parents

criminally for their child's failure to

attend school. Is there any precedent

for that? It seems like the parents

would have a lot of defenses.

No, this is a very theatrical move. This

isn't ordinary law enforcement. This

isn't a sensible approach. Indeed, in

many circles around the country, it's

controversial to prosecute parents when

their kids shoot up a school. If we

don't want to hold parents responsible

for their kids taking lives, we're

actually going to hold them responsible

for kids taking too many absences. And

even if there were a prosecution, would

it be the US attorney's office

prosecuting or would it be the attorney

general for DC? Well, it's an odd

situation because DC is different from

other from states.

>> Well, this is another example of which

we have many of DC's lack of power being

used for grandstanding. Democrats have

done it occasionally in the past, but

lately it's mostly been Republicans.

President Trump takes over the DC Police

Department for no apparent reason.

Accomplishes nothing. President Trump

deploys National Guard troops to the

streets of DC. I walk past them every

day. They're standing around looking

really bored, really unhappy, and as far

as I can tell, uh accomplishing nothing

other than running up a big tab. He has

threatened DC with all sorts of things.

They've said that they'll take away DC's

ability to govern itself if DC doesn't

follow their agenda. So, the mayor of DC

is really almost a full-time federal

relations officer. She has to be. She

probably would do a better job in the

city if she didn't have to deal with all

of this grandstanding. So this is still

going on from, you know, the highly

publicized calling in of troops to help

DC, help in quotes, to help DC with

crime. I mean, National Guard troops

have been withdrawn from from other

cities, from Minneapolis and LA. And

>> those cities have governors who could

say, "Get them out of here." And indeed

in in California, they litigated. I'm

not sure if they did in Minnesota or

not, but here they don't really have any

legal standing to do it because we are a

colony.

>> So, also, I mean, with her calling a

special grand jury,

that means that that grand jury can

issue a report even if they decide not

to bring any criminal charges. So they

could bring out a report that's critical

of certain people that names people

without having to bring charges. Isn't

that dangerous?

>> It is because a grand jury is completely

controlled by the prosecutor. If a grand

jury, as they saying goes, would indict

a ham sandwich at the prosecutor's

behest, the grand jury would certainly

denounce the ham sandwich. And the

expectation is that the grand jury will

do what she wants for political reasons.

She wants DC condemned. Neither the

mayor nor the superintendent of schools

nor anyone else has any right to present

arguments or testimony before the grand

jury. So they will see only one side of

the argument. And if prosecutor Piro is

any good at all, if you get to

completely dominate the information

people receive, they will come to the

conclusions you want them to come to.

>> So, and I'm also wondering since there

was a city investigation in 2018 and

also since there's data about how many

kids are skipping, what exactly

are they investigating? It seems like

the information's out there already.

When I investigate, it's usually things

I don't know. Here, I don't know what

they don't know.

>> There are so many reasons why high

school kids may skip school. It seems

like you need a social scientist or a

psychologist more than a grand jury to

discover the causes and cures for

truency.

>> And you say that quite correctly that

there are many different reasons why

kids don't come to school. Um, kids may

have behavioral problems, kids may have

nutritional problems, and yet we're

cutting kids off of food assistance and

Medicaid under Trump's one big beautiful

bill act. So before we start pointing

fingers, we should stop making things

worse ourselves. Also interesting is

that the Legal Accountability Center, a

legal watchdog group, filed bar

complaints last week accusing Piro and

two of her lieutenants of violating

their ethical duties by seeking to

charge six Democratic lawmakers with

federal crimes for appearing in a video

that called on troops to resist unlawful

orders. Of course, a DC grand jury

refused to indict those lawmakers. How

long does it take for a bar committee to

act and you know what would it take for

a bar committee to say, "Oh, the US

attorney has violated legal ethics."

>> Bar committees vary enormously in how

fast they are, how efficient they are,

and how fair they are. And I don't know

either of these bar committees at all

well. If I was on a bar committee or

staffing a bar committee and I got a

complaint about a sitting US attorney, I

would want to make sure that we had all

of our ducks in order before we did

anything with it. So, I would not expect

it to move rapidly.

>> And one of Piro's subordinates accused

of violating his ethical duties is

Steven Vandervelden. He's the one who's

in charge of this special grand jury. He

was also in charge of the investigation

into former Fed chair Jerome Powell,

into the six Democratic lawmakers,

into allegations that the DC police

force purposely skewed its crime

statistics. So, you have to expect

something.

>> But the list you mention are not the

biggest crime threats in DC. They're the

biggest political threats in DC. And so

apparently he's the person who she

trusts to carry out political uses of

her office.

>> Let's turn now to the Supreme Court.

Today the full court decided on the

ballroom which we had been waiting for.

Things are very much in flux due to

another decision of the Supreme Court

recently where the court lifted a block

on Trump's executive order to restrict

mail-in voting over the dissents of the

liberal justices. And as surprised as

I've been over the past few years with

the decisions of the Supreme Court

allowing Trump to expand executive

power, that decision really shocked me

because the president and federal

agencies like the post office have no

role to play in elections. And that

seems crystal clear.

The Supreme Court is taking the position

that anyone challenging the

administration will be held very very

strictly to the letter of all procedural

rules. And at the time the plaintiffs in

this case filed suit, no one outside the

federal government had been harmed. Now

under the Supreme Court's precedent, you

can sue over an imminent harm. And when

the president of the United States, who

this very Supreme Court is empowered to

completely control the federal executive

branch, says we will interfere with male

voting. That strikes me as an imminent

threat. But the Supreme Court said there

were enough details that had yet to be

filled in and there was time for a

challenge if the administration ever did

move forward. But it was striking to me

that the opinion of the court said

absolutely nothing about the merits.

Some of these cases they say we're not

deciding the merits and then they tell

you what they think about the merits.

This one didn't do that. This one the

only thing they said about the merits is

time will tell. Of course it will. So I

was actually fairly encouraged by the

action that they had no consensus to

reach out and give the president a boost

on that. And they had to know that this

case was coming right back to them

within a matter of weeks because the

president has now put out a rule to

interfere with male voting and by the

standards they set out in their opinion

um plaintiffs are certainly free to

challenge that. So I mean we have seen

this court you know given to Trump

especially on the emergency docket twice

last term two notable examples where

they didn't which is the tariffs and uh

birthright citizenship. Do you have any

confidence that when this comes back to

them as it will I guess within the next

couple of weeks maybe do you have any

confidence that they'll reject Trump's

attempt here? Yes, I have a lot of

confidence actually and the two cases

you mentioned are good examples of that.

Trump won preliminary procedural rulings

in both of those cases. The first case

involving birthright citizenship got all

the way to the court and they said no

nationwide injunctions and sent it back.

After the procedural tees were crossed

and eyes were dotted, the case came back

up to them and five justices said, "This

is screamingly unconstitutional. you

can't do this. Similarly with the

tariffs, Trump was allowed to keep his

tariffs in place, even though they

certainly looked very illegal for the

better part of a year, but when they got

around to the merits, the court said,

"This is ridiculous. You can't do this."

So, I would expect that this is going to

be a similar pattern. Trump clearly has

no argument that he's entitled to do

this. his uh order and rule are dramatic

overreaches and I would expect that when

forced to deal with the merits the

Supreme Court will get rid of it. I can

think of several different ways they

might get rid of it and I'm obviously

hoping for the more sweeping one, but

we'll see.

>> Tell us about the different ways they

could get rid of it.

>> One thing they could simply do is allow

an injunction against it to stand on the

principle that it's too close to the

election. The Supreme Court has

repeatedly said it's improper to change

rules right before an election and

there's even some mention of that in the

court's opinion last week. A better

result that I'm hoping for is to say,

"Wait a minute, what makes you think you

get to run election and to get to the

merits of this and to kill this idea

once and for all?"

>> Let me ask you this. not for the

midterms that are coming up, but is

there any way that it's possible for the

post office to say we will only accept

this kind of ballot to go through the

mail system? We'll only accept an

envelope with these characteristics.

>> I don't think so. Um, the post service

comes from a very, very long centuries

old tradition of having to take anything

that is offered to it unless there's a

very specific compelling reason not to.

They don't have to let you ship

biologically hazardous materials or

explosives. Um, they don't have to allow

you to ship illegal drugs. Um, but

ballots are not going to wreck a post

office or a mailbox. And uh at least at

the moment they're not illegal. So I

don't think there's anything in the

tradition of post offices or common

carriers that allows them to reject

things simply on the basis of disliking

them or having policy disagreements with

states.

>> There's enough chaos around the

elections. This just adds unnecessary

litigation up and down the chain. Well,

it only does that because we've never

had an administration before that was so

uninterested in the law before it acted.

If anyone proposed this in the Biden,

Bush, Obama, Bush, whatever

administrations, lawyers would shoot it

down before it got to first base and

would say, "We have no authority to do

this. We live in a federal system. This

is up to the states." and the lawyer for

the post office would say no. If they

were pressed, they'd threaten to resign

and the whole idea would die without

anyone ever hearing of it. It's this

administration where if they want to do

something, they just do it. Legalities

notwithstanding.

>> Thanks so much for joining me today,

David. That's Professor David Super of

Georgetown Law.

President Trump dismissed concerns that

the conflict in Iran was draining

American firepower, saying this is a

relatively little war for us. The

comments came as the US and Iran

exchanged strikes for the first time in

about a month. Joining me is Notre Dame

Law School professor Mary Ellen

O'Connell, an expert on international

law and the use of force. Mary Ellen,

you've said that this is on a long list

of wars. is the US has lost. Has the US

definitely lost the war?

>> The standard wisdom is that the US has

lost this war already. Uh certainly the

initial war aims that the president

announced within a few weeks there would

be nothing left of any um nuclear

facilities that the regime would change.

that there would be no more support for

forces um in the region that um are

sponsored by Iran and none of those

three things have happened. So certainly

not within the weeks the initial war

aims are lost.

Whether you want to now say that there

are longer term that the the same war

aims hold they just need more time. I

don't know many observers who believe

within

months, years that they will be

accomplished. The standard wisdom is

that this conflict will turn into

another of these long draggedout

conflicts because the US can't win this

kind of war the way we're trying to

fight it. and our presidents have been

reluctant to show the lack of US power

um by withdrawing before there's

something they can claim as a victory.

Of course, that didn't happen in

Afghanistan. That didn't happen in

Libya. That didn't happen in uh Iran,

Vietnam.

War after war. So I consider this to be

unlawful

and that the illegality is a major

factor why the US has not been able to

win this war or so many others.

>> Tell us about the circumstances

surrounding the liberation of Kuwait in

1991.

The one clear win was when we defended

Kuwait after the invasion of Iraq in

1990.

We only needed 100 hours of combat to

liberate Kuwait. We lost very few of our

personnel and we made money. Why?

Because that was such a clear violation

of the UN charter. And to that point,

the US had been defending the actual

words of the UN charter that we wrote

after 1945 that said you cannot use

military force except in two narrow

situations if you've been the victim of

an armed attack, which Kuwait had been,

or there's security council

authorization, which Kuwait also had for

the coalition of forces. That's the kind

of conflict and clear rule that the

world got behind, supported, and that

the United States was able to lead. And

since then, for over 30 years, Kuwait

has been free.

Compare that to the 2003 invasion of

Iraq. We did have two of our close

allies join us in the combat, Australia

and the United Kingdom. We know that

both of those countries seriously regret

that invasion. My colleagues in

political science said it would be the

worst foreign policy decision in US

history to invade Iraq in 2003. We paid

trillions. We're still paying. We still

have troops vulnerable as a result of

that long misguided conflict. Well,

after that example, which countries in

the world want to follow the United

States into another war? The British

were with us from 911 for um over 20

years in Afghanistan. And the way that

that failure, that loss unfolded again

gave countries concerns about joining

the US in another unlawful war. So that

is what has happened before. Finally,

we're seeing countries that say they're

committed to the rule of law putting

their actions where their spoken

commitments are. They're now seeing the

value of only using military force,

risking their soldiers lives and their

national treasure when defense is really

called for. The Europeans are seeing how

Ukraine is suffering from the failure to

support the rule of law and really make

bold actions in 2014 against Russia when

it seized territory in much the same way

Iraq had done against Kuwait. All these

years later, failure to step up then and

going to war, wasting money and lives in

other unlawful conflicts. we are where

we are today in 2026,

but maybe we're about to see a

rebuilding, a recommmitment to the

fundamental law that should be governing

international relations. And President

Trump has made it very clear what

happens to a country when it doesn't

support the international rule of law.

>> The general consensus is that this war

is against international law. Explain

why.

>> It's quite simple. The Iranians had done

nothing to trigger the right of

self-defense by either the US or Israel.

And of course, the Security Council was

never going to authorize this kind of

attack. So the UN charter, the actual

words of the charter that were written

by a great professor of international

law at Harvard in 1945 at the

negotiating sessions for the UN charter.

They say that the prohibition on the use

of force is a general prohibition

against all major uses of force unless

an armed attack occurs. And then it is

it is acceptable for a defending state

and others to join with that defending

state in using military force to

reestablish its defense until a security

council acts. But we also know in

addition from the International Court of

Justice that not only does a state have

to suffer an actual armed attack, that

has to be a significant attack for which

military force and response is necessary

and proportionate to reestablish the

security of the attacked country. Iran

prior to February 28th, 2026 did not

commit the requisite armed attack on the

US or Israel.

>> The administration claimed a preemptive

strike was necessary due to an imminent

threat, even if it's true. Does that

help the cause?

>> It it doesn't help. The one thing I'll

say for the administration is that

they're not the first to believe or to

want to have a right of preemptive

attack, a right to preempt because some

future threat. Every president since

9/11, even before 9/11, President George

W. Bush wanted to expand US rights to

use military force. the in the confusion

of 911 there was some sympathy for the

US and that's part of the reason why we

launched a 25 year long uh global war on

terror which has also been in my view in

violation of international law and not

having the results that a lawful

approach would have taken but in trying

to justify this longunning war on terror

President Bush, President Obama and

President President and Biden have all

tried to build up some kind of a right

of preemptive force. And there is some

confusing discussion of that in the

literature, but I'm one of the people

who writes regularly and leads

committees on the use of force of

international law organizations. And

consistently and at our most recent

meetings, we are seeing rejection of

those expansive attempts because we are

living in a world in which there are

more on conflicts than at any time since

1945.

So we in the international law community

are growing impatient and pushing back

against these attempts to manipulate the

law to create exceptions for a few

states only. Certainly the United States

in making these arguments for preemptive

war never thought that the Russians

should have a right to use force. One of

their arguments, Putin's arguments in

Ukraine has been we've got to preempt

NATO expansion. Well, NATO expansion is

probably a more tangible threat to

Russia than some future

nuclear program in Iran, which has been

constantly shown not to have a weapons

capacity. So, if the US can attack Iran

on some preemptive theory, so can

Russia. Now, I hope everyone realizes

the danger of these kinds of subjective

preemptive arguments. They are not part

of the law. And also, let's just talk

about how this violates US law. So,

Congress obviously didn't authorize

this, but there was the War Powers

Resolution. Congress didn't even pass

that as Congress just sort of given up

its authority in this area.

I'm afraid that's how it looks. There

are some courageous and persistent

members of Congress um including Ran

Paul and um Tim Kaine. They have tried

um to get a war powers resolution before

President Trump was elected during the

Biden administration. The senator from

Indiana, Todd Young, co-wrote draft

articles on the war powers resolution

and explained how important it was that

Congress do its job under the

constitution and authorize the use of

force if it's going forward. And then he

was awall when those votes came. So yes,

we have a serious problem inside the US.

It parallels this problem of US

interpretation of international law.

Presidents have been allowed to use

force really in conflict with the

Constitution and Congress has let

presidents do this, not just President

Trump. This is a longunning problem as I

think Americans in general are

understanding that this is the ultimate

way of doing harm outside in the world

and we are looking at so many broken

relationships on trade on use of

military force on the harms we're

causing and the problems we're not

dealing with while we're busy violating

international law and the use of force.

I think there's a sense we were doing

things better in the years after the

Second World War. We can do them well

again. And that means being strict on

our constitution and strict on our

treaty and higher law commitments in the

world.

>> Thanks for joining me today, Mary Ellen.

That's Notre Dame Law School Professor

Mary Ellen O'Connell. And that's it for

this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show.

Remember, you can always get the latest

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You can find them on Apple Podcast,

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