Will the Supreme Court Rescue the Trump Ballroom?

President Trump, in his appeal to the Supreme Court over his thwarted ballroom construction project, is stressing the national security dimension of his White House renovations. A panel of circuit riders is ordering a halt to the rebuilding at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, arguing that Mr. Trump “has no — and claims no — constitutionally assigned authority over that property.” The president decries such “judicial overreach.”If the circuit court’s pause on the project is “allowed to go into effect,” avers Mr. Trump’s solicitor general, John Sauer, that “would wrongfully install a single district judge as sole arbiter of what further construction is ‘strictly necessary’ to protect the safety of the President, his family, staff members, and visitors to the White House, including foreign dignitaries, and presidents and prime ministers of other countries.”By contrast, two members of a panel of three riders of the District of Columbia appeals circuit reckon that “each president is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House.” They report being “aware of no instance in American history in which a president unilaterally and using privately collected funds demolished substantial portions of the White House that Congress authorized to be built and American taxpayers paid for. Until now.”The circuit riders contend that Mr. Trump ought to have sought permission from the solons on Capitol Hill to make the proposed renovations. “Congress has 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,” the circuit court panel majority concludes. They fret over the White House’s “historic appearance.”Such aesthetic considerations, Mr. Sauer asserts, pale in comparison to the need for the new secure ballroom and the underground security installation. He describes this as a “secure, state-of-the-art facility that provides for the physical protection of the president and the command, control, and communication capabilities necessary” for Mr. Trump to execute “his constitutional duties when under conventional or even nuclear attack.”Mr. Trump has claimed authority to build the ballroom, and what Mr. Sauer calls the “integrated military complex” beneath it, under federal law. The district court judge, Richard Leon, deems that law “a statute authorizing the president to conduct ordinary maintenance and repair of the White House, up to the limits of the congressionally appropriated amount.” Invoking “national security,” he contends, cannot surmount the lack of legal authority.Past presidents did have congressional support for White House renovations. When, in 1949, the 33rd president sought to fix the building’s “architectural inadequacies,” Truman’s library reports, he asked Congress for a “commission” to oversee renovation. For now Trump rejects asking Congress. Mr. Sauer says “forcing the president to come hat-in-hand to Congress so the people’s house is safe gives the legislature dangerous leverage.” The most convincing opinion, in any event, was the dissent by Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump nominee. The circuit panel’s majority included Judges Patricia Millett, an Obama nominee, and Bradley Garcia, nominated by President Biden. Judge Rao insists that the attempt to halt the renovations was “beyond the proper province of the federal courts” and “a blatant abuse of discretion.” She suggests that the district court’s ruling relied on personal preferences.“The district court,” Judge Rao writes in her shrewd dissent, “elevated the aesthetic displeasure of a single passerby” — a member of the board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Alison Hoagland — “over the government’s security interests in the ballroom and the security risks of leaving an open construction site at the President’s home and office.” The Supreme Court has a chance to vindicate her hard-headed look at the underlying issues.

Will the Supreme Court Rescue the Trump Ballroom?

Will the Supreme Court Rescue the Trump Ballroom?

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