President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Miami International Airport, in Miami, Fla., Sunday, May 3, 2026 (AP Photo/Matt Rourke).
The emoluments wars have officially returned, as a new federal lawsuit claims that Florida has unconstitutionally — and for “nothing” — gifted roughly $300 million worth of Miami property to Donald Trump so he can build a “presidential library” with “waterfront views.”
The National Archives notes that each president since Herbert Hoover has some form or another of a “library,” and, as Law&Crime previously reported, former President Barack Obama”s Presidential Center in Chicago faced challenges all the way up to the Supreme Court during Trump’s first term. Just as unsuccessful before the justices during that time period, however, were various lawsuits by Democrats and left-leaning watchdog groups claiming that Trump violated the Constitution by profiting from foreign governments and their officials through money spent at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., while sitting as president.
The corporate parent of Dunn’s Overtown Farm, a nonprofit farm and market in Miami co-founded by historian and psychology professor Dr. Marvin Dunn, filed the case in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Wednesday. The court filing immediately cited Trump’s own expressed disdain for libraries and museums as proof that “corruption” is afoot, the likes of which Benjamin Franklin tried to prevent by insisting on a domestic emoluments clause in the first place.
“With its waterfront views and central location in bustling Downtown Miami, the MDC Parcel would likely sell for over $300 million on the open market, according to local real estate experts. But President Trump paid nothing for it,” the lawsuit said, citing reports of Trump asserting that he doesn’t “believe in building libraries or museums.”
To try to establish standing, individual plaintiffs who claimed they can see the so-called “MDC parcel” from where they live joined the lawsuit. So did Carmen Salcedo, a Miami Dade College student and “mentee” of Dunn’s who claimed she “has an interest in her state-operated college making decisions that benefit her and her education, rather than decisions that line the pockets of President Trump at the expense of students.”
“As a student who pays money to attend a state-run institution, Ms. Salcedo has an interest in MDC and its Board making decisions that benefit students and their education, rather than decisions that line the pockets of a sitting president,” the complaint said.
The plaintiffs collectively said the “giveaway” of the land to Trump to build “components of a Presidential library, museum, and/or center within five years of conveyance” plainly runs afoul of the Constitution, considering that Trump himself has since said “it’s most likely going to be a hotel with a beautiful building underneath and a 747 Air Force One in the lobby.”
In short, the lawsuit argues that Florida Republicans cannot just give the sitting Republican president of the United States a new hotel spot on land valued in the hundreds of millions for free to build a “library” that is, according to Trump, “most likely going to be a hotel[.]”
“With respect to the receipt of unlawful emoluments, the Clause prohibits the President from receiving emoluments directly or constructively, through persons such as his immediate family members or corporate entities that he controls formally or informally. If gifts to the President could simply be routed to those with whom the President necessarily shares interests, like a spouse or legal representative, the Clause could be easily circumvented,” the complaint said, again arguing that the Framers “wanted to ensure that the President would have ‘no pecuniary inducement to renounce or desert the independence intended for him by the Constitution.'”
U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Armando Ruiz II, a Trump appointee, was randomly assigned the case, the court docket reviewed by Law&Crime shows. The plaintiffs asked him to declare that the “land transaction that resulted in the Domestic Emoluments Clause violation” is “null and void.”
Law&Crime reached out to a Trump spokesperson for comment.
