The Supreme Court declined to halt Donald Trump’s ballroom construction in a ruling this week that hinged on the plaintiff’s lack of standing. In a dissent, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the Administration’s actions were “likely unlawful.”
When cases reach the Supreme Court level, I tend to view standing as something that the majority can often game. In a great many cases, it seems that if the majority doesn’t want to rule on the merits of a case, they can simply find that there was no standing, and - poof - the case goes away. On the other hand, the same majority can look at different angles to find standing if it’s a case that they want to rule on.
I have a couple of big questions for the Supreme Court about this case. First, who does have standing to stop the destruction of the White House and the lawless construction of the new ballroom? The follow-up is: what good are laws if no one has the power to sue and force them to be upheld?
The second question is the more important one. John Adams famously said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
We are seeing the truth of that statement being played out in front of us right now. The Trump Administration is running wild and ignoring laws while the institutions that were designed to put the brakes on such abuses of power are systematically skirted or dismantled. I lay a lot of the blame for this on congressional Republicans who are too cowardly to stand up to the president and the Republican base.
The real problem is the voters, however. Not only Republican primary voters, but the voters who returned Trump to power after January 6 and after he explicitly campaigned on abusing his office if he was re-elected. The bottom line is that Trump is running amok and destroying the Republic because voters refused to hold him and his party accountable.
The greatest generation we aren’t.
A case can be made about why a ballroom should be built for state functions, but Trump’s actions are a case study in how not to handle government projects. The saga includes no-bid contracts for cronies, ignoring laws, cost overruns, subterfuge, outright lies, and frequently moving goalposts.
The ballroom may be a small piece of Trump’s corruption in the grand scheme of things, but it is magnificently symbolic of all that is wrong with his Administration. Trump was elected to fight inflation and high prices, but he is focused on the completion of a luxury vanity project that few Americans will ever see the inside of. Rather than following the constitutional process to appropriate and authorize the ballroom through Congress, Trump decreed the job with kingly authority and lied about his intentions from Day One, including falsely saying that the ballroom “won't interfere with the current building. It'll be near it but not touching it.” Days after making that statement, the president unilaterally demolished the East Wing.
The ballroom isn’t the end, either. Trump is already planning to start work on an arch monument, satirically dubbed the “Arc de Trump,” in a matter of weeks. Congress has not approved this construction either. If the president can rule by decree and appropriate his own funds, why do we need Congress?
Precedent is being set with the destruction of the White House and the construction of the ballroom. If Donald Trump can raze the East Wing and raise a ballroom in its place without congressional authorization, the next president can take equal and opposite action. Maybe the next Democratic president can demolish the ballroom and build a combination drag queen theme park and abortion clinic or something.
I’m not saying I support this, but turnabout is fair play. Frankly, I don’t want to get into a tit-for-tat in which federal buildings and historical landmarks are demolished and replaced every time we change presidents. It’s much better to use the constitutional process and involve Congress.
There is a reason that the founders and preceding generations of legislators set up processes for how to spend federal money and replace government buildings with other ones. A big reason is that the whims of one president can be easily replaced by another, and things get whipsawed back and forth.
If Donald Trump wanted a ballroom, he should have gone to Congress and asked for money, just as every president before him has done. That’s how our system is supposed to work. After all, the Constitution explicitly gives the House power over the federal purse in Article I, Section 7.
But Donald Trump wants to have his ballroom without going through Congress, and frankly, that needs to be an issue in the midterms. Let Trump and the Republicans defend the president’s gilded dance hall to voters who are worried about the rising costs of food and energy.
Trump’s ballroom fetish is about as populist as Marie Antoinette, and the Republican defense of the structure while Americans contemplate how to pay for their next tank of gas is akin to saying, “Let them eat cake.”
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Here's what needs to happen:
1. Any construction or monument not funded by Congress gets torn down. ALL OF THEM.
2. Any contractor or business who accepted a contract to build any of these illegal structures has all funds paid clawed back that were not appropriated by Congress.
3. The head of the US Mint who okayed the recent Trump coin needs to be criminally prosecuted for breaking the law against including living Presidents on legal tender. (The 1866 Thayer Amendment, Presidential $1 Coin Act)
4. Any administration official who took part in any of these illegal projects need to be publicly prosecuted for breaking the relevant laws and disobeying their oaths of office.
If SCOTUS is going to adopt a posture of learned helplessness on enforcing the law against a sitting POTUS, the next POTUS and Congress need to establish a precedent that "just following orders" is not a defense against breaking the law AND the next Administration will do everything in their power to go after those enablers to set an example for the next crop of toadies who find themselves in positions of authority.
If SCOTUS and Congress are not going to do their jobs, then it's up to the rest of us to turn these people into Cautionary Tales that has the NEXT crop declining to take part in these brazenly illegal schemes.
Is Congressional approval needed if the funds are donated? We have been told the entire build is donated. Is that a lie as the article implies.