On Friday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about a recent judge’s decision regarding the ballroom President Trump is constructing at the White House.
The article reports:
In an earlier era, improving the East Wing of the White House by adding an underground secure area and an above-ground facility large enough to host significant international social events, and that includes bathrooms–something now lacking when such events take place in tents on the White House lawn–might have been uncontroversial. But Democrats fanatically oppose anything the Trump administration attempts to do, so they have tried to halt construction of the East Wing ballroom.
Today a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Trump administration to cease all construction of the ballroom, while allowing construction of the secure underground area to go ahead. You can read the Court’s opinions here. The majority opinion was written by Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, and Bradley Garcia, a Biden appointee. Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, dissented.
The majority opinion goes on just about forever, 101 pages, but doesn’t seem particularly persuasive. The threshold issue is standing. The plaintiff in the case is the National Trust for Historic Preservation, but that organization has nothing to do with the White House grounds, which are under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. The Trust claims to have standing to sue because it has a member who occasionally walks past the White House and thinks she will consider the new ballroom to be aesthetically unpleasant. This strikes me as just about the weakest possible reed on which to hang a standing claim.
The article concludes:
Past presidents have made various repairs and improvements to the White House without specific Congressional authorization, but the majority dismisses these instances as “anomalies.” One imagines that in past eras–that is, eras not dominated by the Democratic Party’s insane hatred of Donald Trump–much-needed improvements to the White House grounds would have proceeded by consensus. But these days, there is no consensus on anything, and everything is a federal case.
The Supreme Court will have the opportunity to resolve this dispute, if it chooses to do so. Meanwhile, construction of the ballroom will stand idle and potentially exposed to the elements.
Hopefully this case will get to the U.S. Supreme Court quickly before the structure of the exposed building succumbs to black mold and other consequences of being left exposed.