Morning Report

December 17, 2025 — Morning Report

Dec 17, 2025

**Video ID:**

Treas. Emp v. Trump 25-5157

The administration issued an executive order stripping collective bargaining rights from Treasury Department employees on national security grounds — and the DC Circuit was openly skeptical, with judges pressing the government on why Treasury workers specifically posed a national security risk.

The administration had been using a statutory national security exemption (5 U.S.C. § 7103(b)) to strip federal employee unions of collective bargaining rights, department by department. The exemption allows the president to exclude agency employees from collective bargaining if their work is essential to national security. The Treasury Department employees union challenged the executive order covering their workers. Bryan flagged what made this hearing notable: the DC Circuit judges hearing the case were publicly skeptical during oral argument. The government's position — that Treasury employees' work is so sensitive to national security that they cannot have collective bargaining rights — ran into the basic problem that Treasury had never previously been treated as a national security agency in the way the CIA or NSA are. Judges pressed the government's attorney on what exactly about processing tax returns or managing the debt constituted a national security function so exceptional as to warrant stripping union rights. The administration's argument required the court to accept that effectively any federal function could be called national security if the president said so — an argument the DC Circuit panel appeared unwilling to accept without more specificity.

Constitutional question: First Amendment and the separation of powers: if the president can invoke "national security" to strip collective bargaining rights from any federal employees without particularized justification, the statutory exemption swallows the rule — and the First Amendment right of association that supports unionization becomes discretionary at the executive's whim.

Nat. Trust v. NPS 25-cv-04316

The administration planned underground construction beneath the East Wing of the White House — and preservation groups won a temporary restraining order, but the court allowed the work to proceed while litigation continued.

The administration announced plans for underground construction beneath the East Wing of the White House complex. Historic preservation groups, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation, sued under the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and other statutes, arguing the government had failed to conduct required review before starting work that could affect a historically significant property. The plaintiffs obtained a temporary restraining order. But the court then allowed the construction to proceed while the case was litigated — declining to extend the injunction in a way that would halt all work. Bryan covered this alongside the OEOB painting case (CHP v. Trump) as part of a pattern: the administration was taking actions affecting historic properties without going through the required statutory review processes, forcing preservation groups to go to court to slow the projects down. The practical problem with underground construction, as with painting a landmark, is irreversibility — if you dig under the East Wing and damage something, you can't un-dig it.

Constitutional question: NHPA's Section 106 review process is a procedural requirement before federal agencies take actions affecting historic properties — not a substantive veto. The constitutional tension is whether the executive branch's control over the White House compound places its renovation decisions outside the reach of that statutory obligation.

Oregon v. Trump 25-6268

The Ninth Circuit was reviewing the president's authority to use troops in immigration enforcement — and one judge wrote separately to lay out a striking argument that the Domestic Violence Clause of Article IV gives Congress, not the president, the power to call in the military.

The Oregon v. Trump case in the Ninth Circuit arose from challenges to the administration's use of military and National Guard troops in immigration enforcement operations. While the panel reviewed the injunction below, Judge Bibby wrote a concurrence flagging a constitutional question the panel didn't need to resolve but that he thought deserved attention. Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution contains what's called the Domestic Violence Clause — it says the United States shall protect each state against domestic violence, but "on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened)." Judge Bibby's reading: the clause requires a request from the state legislature (or executive when legislature is unavailable) before federal forces can be used within a state for domestic order purposes. If that's right, the president can't unilaterally deploy military forces to conduct enforcement operations inside a state without the state asking for them. Bryan covered this as a constitutional argument most people had never heard — the Domestic Violence Clause as a structural limit on executive military power within the states — and flagged it as the kind of textual argument that could become significant as the administration continued deploying military assets in domestic enforcement.

Constitutional question: Article IV's Domestic Violence Clause as a structural limit: if the clause requires state legislative application before federal forces operate in a state, the president cannot unilaterally deploy military to conduct domestic enforcement operations — including immigration — without that predicate request. This would significantly constrain executive authority to use the military for domestic policing.

Wang v. Paxton 25-20354

Texas passed a law barring certain non-citizens from owning property — targeting primarily Chinese nationals on F-1 student visas — and the Fifth Circuit dismissed the challenge for lack of standing, finding the plaintiffs hadn't been directly harmed yet.

Texas enacted a law restricting property ownership by nationals of certain countries, including China — the law was aimed primarily at Chinese nationals and worded to catch people who are "domiciled" in China. The challengers were Chinese nationals on F-1 student visas studying in Texas. Their legal problem: the Fifth Circuit found they hadn't established standing because they weren't currently trying to buy property in Texas and therefore hadn't suffered a concrete, particularized injury. The underlying merits question Bryan wanted to get to — which the dismissal prevented — was the "domicile" argument. An F-1 visa is a nonimmigrant visa; it's issued specifically because the student intends to return to their home country after their studies. Under immigration law, maintaining a foreign domicile is required to hold an F-1 status. So the Texas law, if applied literally to F-1 students, would bar people who are by legal definition domiciled in China — meaning F-1 students are nearly automatically covered. Bryan highlighted the circularity: the visa status that brought them to Texas to study is the same visa status that makes them subject to the property ban. The Fifth Circuit's standing dismissal left this merits question unanswered.

Constitutional question: Equal Protection and the Fourteenth Amendment: states may not discriminate on the basis of national origin without a compelling interest and narrow tailoring. Laws that target nationals of specific countries for property exclusion implicate the same equal protection concerns as laws targeting racial or ethnic groups — and the standing dismissal here left the constitutional question unanswered.

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