Trump tears down Kennedy sculpture, argues he owes the public nothing else — the Chief Justice, for once, dissents.

…(cont) The window opened. On Monday the Supreme Court ruled that a historic preservation group likely has no standing to sue over the East Wing ballroom now going up on White House grounds — on the theory, argued and accepted, that the administration owes no accounting of what it tears out of a building it doesn't own outright and cannot un-demolish once it's gone. Fox News ran a segment that same day asking whether Americans support the ballroom, as if the ruling had left "support" anywhere in the chain of custody.

One member of the Court did not go along. Chief Justice John Roberts has sided with the majority more often than any chief since 1953 — a man who does not dissent, structurally, by inclination, by the job description. He dissented anyway. Not from a stirring principle read out in open court, just from the plain math of it: tear out a sculpture, rename a building you can't rename, defeat a lawsuit over a demolition you haven't finished, and "public" has stopped meaning anything that includes the public. That is not malarkey. That is the whole shit ledger, itemized, in one week's mail.

Born, we assume, sometime after the republic itself. Preceded in death by the National Historic Preservation Act's teeth. Survived by the sculpture's flatbed, the ballroom's foundation, and a plaque that may yet carry two names for one man's satisfaction.

In lieu of flowers, call your representative and ask them, plainly, whether anything the government holds in trust is still held in trust.