Balls to the White House Ballroom

The edifice complex of the Trump administration is proving to be an aggressive one. As with previous presidents, the current occupant is keen to leave his architectural mark. And it promises to be an exceedingly vulgar one. In keeping with his abominable sense of taste, President Donald Trump has his sights on a large White House ballroom, valued at US$400 million and intended to cover 90,000 square feet over the area formerly occupied by the now demolished East Wing. With a degree of inventiveness that only comes with the deranged, the decision to build this beastly addition has been justified as a necessary security, even military measure.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation took against the project, convincing the district court to grant them a preliminary injunction halting construction on work on the ballroom taking place above ground. The order did not extend to halting construction to underground facilities, including the “national security features”. The White House appealed. In a two-to-one ruling, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found against Trump’s unilateral decision, citing the need for Congressional authority. In their joint majority opinion, Judges Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia (both appointees under Democratic administrations), pointed to the sheer gravity of the move: “Executive actions that take control of that property out of the hands of the people’s representatives while irreparably harming the historical and visual architecture of perhaps the most prominent public building in the United States seriously intrude on the public interest.”

The judgment is speckled with reproach and reminders. “Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Resident,” the majority ruling states curtly. “The President has no – and claims no – constitutionally assigned authority over that property, which is designed and maintained for the use of all Presidents, current and future, and for the American people.” One senses a sharp intake of breath from the justices in their reprobation of Trump’s view that the ballroom was just another one of those “alterations and improvements” justified by statute. This would grant “the President unilateral authority to carry out any construction project – up to and including demolishing and replacing the entire White House – with any source of funding he can identify.”

The justices were clear that they did not hold a position on “whether the proposed ballroom is desirable or not, as a matter of policy.” (This was a sentiment poorly concealed.) The ruling did not even mean that the ballroom could not be constructed. “What it does mean is that the Defendants may not do so during the district court’s expeditious litigation without securing Congress’s authorization, as the Constitution and laws require.” The Executive’s assertion that it could act lawlessly, “destroying treasured national landmarks and harming the interests of individuals, and that no court can stop it flouts our constitutional order.”

In the Trump lexicon, words such as “authorization” – especially when it comes to a Congress foundering in impotence – have no place. Ditto the “Constitution” and “laws”, decorative features of a lost age. This is hardly a flippant suggestion; the two justices recoiled at the suggestion from the defendants “that even if they are acting without authority and lawlessly, no court – not the district court, this court, or the Supreme Court – has the power to stop them since the East Wing has already been destroyed.” The highest magistrate in the age of the Reality Television President is nothing if not despotic, even if that despotism has no clear form or philosophy.

Judge Neomi Rao, in an obedient dissenting judgment, showed what judicial independence looks like in US courts by agreeing with Trump’s expansive, capricious authority. He had, after all, put her on the bench, and loyalism comes before the law. The National Trust, and her fellow judges, were also taken to task. The district court’s grant of an injunction “was a blatant abuse of discretion.” It had “no jurisdiction because the Trust has no standing to stop construction at the White House.” The lower court had also “elevated the aesthetic displeasure of a single passerby over the government’s security interest in the ballroom and the security risks of leaving an open construction site at the President’s home and office.” And who, pray, was the buffoon who created that construction site to begin with?

Trump was left fuming, champing at the bit to take the matter to the country’s highest court. “This unjust decision must be overturned by the Supreme Court in its entirety,” he bellowed on Truth Social. Here was a ruling “horrendous, politically motivated, and unlawful”. Again, the security canard was cited, with this “unlawful ruling” being “a National Security threat to our Nation in that the entire Complex is being built for the protection of our Country and, additionally, all future Presidents.” History chokes with instances where power was abused and subsequently justified on shaky grounds of principle and security.

The ruling against the President is the second one in a week to question his architectural judgment and his megalomaniac tendencies. The National Park Service also found Trump’s proposed 250-foot-tall (76 metre-tall) triumphal arch, to be built near the National Mall, a potentially blighting construction. Dozens of historic sites in the area, notably the key connection between the Lincoln Monument and Arlington House, former home of the Confederate General Robert E. Lee, would suffer an unwarranted interference as a result. “The bridge alignment and associated ceremonial landscape,” the report by the service notes, “were intended to physically and symbolically unite North and South through a coordinated monumental composition extending across the Potomac River.” The White House sees it differently: adding the arch would be a “fitting addition to the monumental axis between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House.” More litigation, contentious disputation, and gaudy construction projects await.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

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