Continuing to debase itself, the Department of Justice filed an emergency appeal Friday in the Kennedy Center case, demanding that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals stay the lower court’s order to remove President Donald Trump’s name from everything he illegally slapped it on.

Debasing itself even further, the “appeal” is based on something that somehow the DOJ never got around to telling the lower court.

And debasing itself into the subbasement, it’s pretty clear that one Donald J. Trump authored substantial portions of this mess.

Or, as the plaintiffs in the case put it in their response: This is “a transparent effort to jam the Court and game the judicial system.”

Yes, if you, like so many others, spent your Friday with your eyes glued to a livestream, waiting for Trump’s name to come off the Kennedy Center after the court denied the administration’s whiny request for a stay, the president’s minions did everything they could to deny you the satisfaction—including hanging giant tarps to conceal his defeat.

You see, the administration has a new new theory on why Trump’s name has to stay on the building, one that was, apparently, not revealed to the lower court, but popped up in the DOJ’s last-minute filing.

Sorry—did we say DOJ? We meant Trump’s last-minute filing because it’s painfully clear they’re letting him write shouty briefs again, just as in the White House ballroom case.

Here’s a little taste: “The District Court is not allowing us to close in order to properly fix up and repair the Building, including potentially life threatening structural damage like beams and parking garage ceilings that are rusted, and in serious danger of falling onto people below — Indeed, total collapse!”

That is, you will likely note, not actually a legal argument in favor of keeping Trump’s name on a building whose name can only be changed by an act of Congress. The legal argument, such as it is, is the reveal that they secretly changed the Center’s bylaws to now read:

The Corporation may make donations to the Center in support of its educational, artistic, cultural, and performing arts functions; provided, however, that in so doing, the Board of Directors shall condition such donations to the Center upon the name of the Center remaining unchanged as the ‘Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.’ In the event the Center should at any time remove the name of President Donald J. Trump from its filings, marketing, branding, façade, or any other affiliated location, the Corporation shall recover from the Center the total of all gifts, donations, and contributions made to the Center by or on behalf of the Corporation.

In case you’re not following that little bylaw switcheroo, the Trump-ghostwritten brief is happy to spell it out for you:

People and companies, who have given, or will be giving, millions of dollars to the Center were only willing to do so with the name ‘Trump’ on the Building. Many did it because they loved the concept of two Great Presidents, one Republican, one Democrat, working together as one — In many ways, a bipartisan relationship! All of this money, hundreds of millions of dollars, will have to be immediately returned, or not received by the Center.

Is it normal in litigation to just hide something and spring it on appeal after you lose below? NOPE! Indeed, it’s actually the exact opposite of how things work. As the plaintiffs pointed out in their emergency response to this non-emergency nonsense, arguments not raised at the district court level are forfeited.

Okay, well the DOJ has another one for you. It’s this hilarious bit chiding the court about how they shouldn’t require big alterations to the building until the case has been fully litigated:

Major physical changes to the Center should await this Court’s resolution of those issues; as an equitable matter, it does not make sense to alter the Center’s name and signage now, only to potentially revert the name again after what should be a successful appeal.

You’re reading that right. The administration that tore down the White House’s East Wing without permission, the administration that insists it gets to build a giant arch and it has to start ASAP and nosiree, no approval from Congress needed, is now saying that the extremely minor act of taking Trump’s name off the building he illegally slapped it on is a “major physical change” that shouldn’t happen until the court fully resolves the issue.

This is grasping at straws, but it’s not all slender reeds. The appeal goes to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where Trump has had enormous success thanks to emergency panels stacked with his appointees, so there’s a real chance that they might find some newly discovered constitutional principle that nothing can stop Trump from doing this.

Now, we all just get to wait and see when crews will finally get around to removing the tarps obstructing the portion of the building that’s now free of the president’s name—or if it will remain stubbornly covered until Trump can figure out a way to mark it as his territory again.