A man tried to assassinate the President of the United States at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April. Trump’s response was to build a more secure venue on White House grounds — a $400 million, 22,000-square-foot ballroom that eliminates the need to hold major events at external venues where security gaps are harder to control.
Two judges just told him he can’t.
The D.C. Circuit Court ruled 2-1 that the Trump administration likely cannot demolish the East Wing or proceed with above-ground construction on the new White House Ballroom without congressional authorization. The two judges in the majority — Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, and Brad Garcia, a Biden appointee — apparently believe that the executive branch needs legislative permission to renovate the president’s own residence and working facility.
Judge Neomi Rao, the lone dissenter and the only Trump appointee on the panel, disagreed — and her dissent goes to the heart of why this ruling is constitutionally dubious. The executive branch has inherent authority over the White House compound. The president lives and works there. The security infrastructure of the presidency is an executive responsibility. Requiring congressional authorization for White House construction and renovation decisions turns a fundamental executive prerogative into a congressional veto over the president’s ability to run his own house. And never mind that many previous presidents have renovated parts of the White House without fussy political hacks disguised as judges interferring.
There’s also a small logistical problem with the majority’s ruling that the article notes almost in passing: the demolition of the East Wing has already happened. The construction is already underway. The court is issuing an order to stop something that is partially built — raising the question of what exactly it expects the administration to do at this point.
The 14-day pause gives the Trump administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court. They should do so immediately and they should win. The legal argument for congressional authority over White House construction decisions is weak. The president controls the White House. The White House is both a home and a national security facility. A court ruling that Congress must authorize specific renovation decisions at the executive residence would create a constitutional framework with no historical precedent and severe practical consequences.
The broader pattern here is as important as the specific ruling. Democrat attorneys general coordinated secretly for months before Trump took office to build a legal war machine against his presidency. Democrat judges have been issuing nationwide injunctions against executive actions at an unprecedented rate. And now two Obama-Biden appointees have decided they get to weigh in on the president’s construction plans at his own residence — based on a legal theory that the dissenting Trump-appointed judge found insufficient to justify the intervention.
This is going to the Supreme Court. The court that just cleared the way for the SAVE America Act’s mail ballot verification order — with a 6-3 conservative majority — is the right venue.
Build the ballroom. Win the appeal.
