Trump’s White House Ballroom Is a Monument to His Lawlessness

After President Theodore Roosevelt began building the East Wing of the White House in 1902, he thanked Congress for approving the project and appropriating the necessary funds. When President Donald Trump demolished the East Wing last fall, by contrast, he acted without permission from Congress, which the Constitution empowers to control federal property.

That difference is unlikely to matter in practice, thanks to a stay the Supreme Court issued on Monday, which allows Trump to continue work on the huge ballroom he is building on the site of the East Wing. But Trump’s insistence on acting unilaterally will make his vanity project a monument to his disregard for the rule of law and the separation of powers.

In an unsigned opinion joined by five justices, the Supreme Court blocked a preliminary injunction against continued construction of the ballroom, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld in August after concluding that Congress had not authorized the project. But the justices said they were not addressing the legality of the ballroom.

Rather, the Court issued the stay because the majority thought the government was likely to prevail in its claim that the main plaintiff, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, lacked standing to sue. In a dissent joined by the Court’s three Democratic appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts disagreed, saying the “aesthetic injury” asserted by architectural historian Alison Hoagland, a member of the National Trust, was enough to pass that test.

Unlike the majority, Roberts did venture an opinion about whether the ballroom project is legal. By issuing the stay, he complained, the Court was “allowing the Executive’s likely infringement of the Legislature’s power of the purse and authority to regulate federal property in the District of Columbia to continue.”

That characterization was consistent with what U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, said when he issued the injunction at issue in this case last March. “The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families,” Leon wrote. “He is not, however, the owner!”

The National Trust “is likely to succeed on the merits because no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims,” Leon concluded. The D.C. Circuit agreed, saying “whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide” rather than “a matter for Executive self-help.”

Under federal law, “a building or structure shall not be erected on any reservation, park, or public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.” In lieu of such express authority, Trump cited two laws: one allowing the president to spend appropriated money on maintenance of “the Executive Residence at the White House,” the other instructing the National Park Service to “conserve…historic objects” under its control, including the White House.

By combining those two laws, Trump asserted, he could do whatever he wanted with the White House, such as using $400 million in privately donated funds to replace the East Wing with a new structure that will be 60 percent larger than the executive residence in square footage and more than three times as large in cubic volume. Like Leon and the D.C. Circuit, Roberts was skeptical.

The first law, under which Congress allocated $2.5 million for White House maintenance this fiscal year, “likely does not authorize the President to use hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations to tear down the East Wing and construct a ballroom in its stead,” Roberts said. The second law, he added, “is likely not express authorization to raze the East Wing and replace it with a ballroom.”

The project, in other words, is probably illegal. But it should be clear by now that Trump, who has illegally imposed tariffs, waged war against Iran, deployed the National Guard, and used his powers to retaliate against his political opponents, is unfazed by such considerations.

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