The Roberts Court: Poised to Bless the Trump Ballroom

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has temporarily allowed President Donald Trump to continue construction of a 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom to replace the East Wing he demolished last fall. The order has no expiration date, but it will expire after the full court reconvenes in the fall. 

Administrative orders are usually intended to freeze the status quo pending hearing and decision. But this order reshapes the status quo, since construction of the ballroom will continue while the learned justices consider whether construction of the planned ballroom can proceed. One would have to do a full box score of Roberts Court opinions and rulings, but, reading the tealeaves, when this court goes along with a lower court, it usually denies an administrative stay. When it grants an administrative stay, it’s more likely than not to reverse the court below and side with the petitioner, in this case Donald Trump. This one has that feeling to it. Maybe the Court will find the gumption to buck the president as it did in the tariffs case or by refusing his appeals to overturn judgments favor of E. Jean Carroll or in its rejection of Trump’s efforts to reverse more than 150 years of birthright citizenship, but I tend to doubt it. 

Praising the Roberts decision on Truth Social, Trump gloated, “The Military/Ballroom Complex being built on the hallowed grounds of the White House, which is so vital for National Security, will be THE GREATEST OF ITS KIND!”  

A new report on Sunday from The Washington Post undercut the national security argument, noting that an extensive nuclear bunker was completed during the Barack Obama administration The president “has claimed that the White House needs a massive new ballroom because it would provide him and future presidents with a secure, hardened facility,” the Post reported. “But former officials say the argument fails to acknowledge that the presidential complex already has one.” 

The ballroom is a monstrosity, illegally paid for largely with public funds and without Congress’s consent. According to renowned architectural critic Paul Goldberger, writing in The New York Times, the plans reveal “a ballroom that is an enormous, banal box in a vaguely classical style that, if it goes forward, will overwhelm the White House and block the view between the White House and the Capitol that has been one of Washington’s signature vistas for more than two centuries.” Goldberger’s tone was one of alarm, framing the project as emblematic of a presidency that prioritizes spectacle over architectural restraint and historical continuity. 

In the play Fiddler on the Roof, the character Tevya sings of what he would do if he were rich. Among other things: 

I’d build a big, tall house with rooms by the dozen
Right in the middle of the town
A fine tin roof with real wooden floors below
There would be one long staircase just going up.
And one even longer coming down.
And one more leading nowhere, just for show 

The most recent renderings include a similar excess, a staircase “just for show.” The drawings revert to earlier plans for the building’s design, restoring a grand staircase on the addition’s south side that was derided as a frivolous adornment that led to no entryway. 

Lower court judges have ruled that the president exceeded his authority by moving ahead the construction without approval from Congress. Even so, they had allowed the project to continue in recent months while litigation was underway. 

Roberts’s order did not provide a timeline for when the court would act next, stating only that a lower-court ruling against the Trump administration was paused “pending further order of the undersigned or of the court.” Perhaps Roberts texted his eight colleagues and was highly confident the majority would vote to let construction proceed. 

Trump initially promoted the ballroom, estimated to cost $400 million, as a much-needed expansion to properly host visiting dignitaries who have been relegated to tents outdoors because of the lack of such space—more than four times larger than the ballroom he built at Mar-a-Lago. 

But realizing how legally vulnerable the project is without congressional approval, Trump swiveled to the position that the above-ground ballroom is linked like a pilot ship on a whale to a Führerbunker to be built beneath with a national security component.  

When Trump asked the justices to intervene last week, he referred to the project on social media as a “Military Complex.” He called it “vital to our National Security, and the Safety of all Presidents.” He shared opinion essays from conservative outlets, including one with the message: “SCOTUS needs to stop courts putting the president’s security at risk.” 

The president’s lawyers have submitted sworn statements to the Supreme Court from top national security officials, including Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Jay Clayton, the new director of national intelligence. They warned that halting the construction would put the president and his family at risk and said the renovations were urgently needed to protect against possible attacks.  

Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, not surprisingly, sided with Trump’s position. I say not surprisingly since Barr endorsed Todd Blanche for attorney general, possibly accomplishing Blanche’s narrow Senate confirmation. Barr thinks that the National Trust for Historic Preservation lacks standing to bring the case, an argument rejected by the lower courts. He argues that courts should exercise “restraint” and refrain from “imposing their policy preferences and usurping the powers of the executive and legislative branches.”—a wise prescription that hasn’t stopped the Roberts court in the past.  

But Barr sidesteps the issue. No president has ever undertaken a major renovation of the White House such as the Trump ballroom without congressional approval.  

Solicitor General D. John Sauer said as of August 14 the project was 65 percent complete and that it was essentially too late to turn back. By the time the Supreme Court is ready to determine the matter, the project may be 80 percent done, and it will be so wasteful to demolish the partial construction and rebuild after congressional approval that the controversy will become moot. Turning tide is always costly. Bottom-line, the Court will likely permit construction to proceed. 

The temporary order from Chief Justice Roberts came two weeks after a three-judge appeals court panel in Washington issued a lengthy 2-to-1 ruling that said Congress had not “ceded unfettered authority to the executive branch to dramatically redesign, reshape and reconstruct the White House — the People’s House — to fit a particular president’s desires.” 

But the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had agreed to pause its order until Friday, and construction has continued in the interim. 

The National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States, a nonprofit chartered by Congress to guard public buildings, brought the challenge to the project. The group said the president had resisted oversight in violation of the Constitution and federal law, which gave Congress the power to decide which structures can be built on federal property in Washington. 

In a statement on Friday, the organization said of the Supreme Court’s order: “To be clear, this is not a final decision on the merits of the government’s stay application, and we await further action.” Lots of luck. 

When Fox News host Jesse Watters asked Trump what was really behind the controversial project, he responded, “It’s a monument. I’m building a monument to myself – because no one else will.” 

There is more to the issue than Donald Trump’s self-valorization. It is what this inveterate corruption does to the morale of the American people, and to America’s reputation all over the world. 

Peggy Noonan, the conservative columnist who wrote speeches for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who knows a thing or two about the building, writing in her Wall Street Journal column, sagely observed that, “Corruption is more dangerous, has a more deteriorating effect, than bad policy. Bad policy can be reversed. Corruption works its way into a system and changes its nature.”

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