{"id":162070,"date":"2026-09-02T06:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T14:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/02\/its-time-to-tear-down-the-supreme-court-building-to-build-a-bigger-ballroom-for-um-national-security\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T06:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T14:35:11","slug":"its-time-to-tear-down-the-supreme-court-building-to-build-a-bigger-ballroom-for-um-national-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/02\/its-time-to-tear-down-the-supreme-court-building-to-build-a-bigger-ballroom-for-um-national-security\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Time To Tear Down The Supreme Court Building To Build A Bigger Ballroom\u2026 For, Um, National Security"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the Supreme Court once again exercised its shadow docket muscles to stay Judge Richard Leon\u2019s injunction<\/a> and allow Donald Trump to keep building his ballroom on top of the East Wing\u2019s corpse. The eight-page per curiam<\/em> went out of its way to explain that it was not taking on standing on whether the project itself was \u201clegal,\u201d but merely stating that the plaintiff lacked standing. And, for what it\u2019s worth, even if this is illegal (it is), probably no one has standing!<\/p>\n

In light of this opinion, a modest proposal for the next president: immediately tear down One First Street and put an even bigger ballroom there. Because, I don\u2019t know, just say national security.<\/p>\n

And why not? One First Street is a federal building sitting on federal ground in the District of Columbia. The exact same law that makes it patently illegal for Donald Trump to have torn down the East Wing and started work on a 90,000 sq. ft. event space covers the Supreme Court building too. Chief Justice John Roberts, joining with the Democratic-appointed justices in dissenting from the opinion, noted the explicit illegality:<\/p>\n

\n

Pursuant to its plenary constitutional authority over the District of Columbia and federal property, Congress has explicitly prohibited the construction of any \u201cbuilding or structure . . . on any reservation, park, or public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.\u201d 40 U. S. C. \u00a78106. The ballroom is a building or structure being erected on federal park grounds\u2014President\u2019s Park\u2014in the District of Columbia. Yet Congress has not passed any law resembling \u201cexpress authority\u201d for the Executive\u2019s construction of it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Trump administration tried to defend its actions, claiming that 54 U. S. C. \u00a7100101(a) grants presidents broad authority to conserve \u201chistoric objects,\u201d which Roberts deliciously counters with \u201cThis is likely not express authorization to raze the East Wing and replace it with a ballroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tearing down the Supreme Court\u2019s headquarters would run afoul of the same law, but since the current majority has made clear that there\u2019s no one capable of enforcing that law, the next president should be welcome to \u2014 nay, encouraged to \u2014 send the bulldozers down to the Court within the first 100 days of the next administration. After all, we NEED a new ballroom. A first-class nation needs a safe and secure location to host the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner and, as we all know, Trump\u2019s proposed ballroom is not big enough to host that dinner<\/a><\/em>. <\/p>\n

You might be asking, \u201cwait, isn\u2019t building a ballroom big enough for the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner one of Trump\u2019s arguments for this project?\u201d And the answer to that is two-fold: (1) yes; and, (2) [middle finger emoji].<\/p>\n

The Trust\u2019s standing argument, that yesterday\u2019s majority rejected, rested on the declaration of Alison Hoagland \u2014 a professor of historic preservation, longtime Trust executive committee member, and author of books on American architecture \u2014 who lives in D.C., visits the White House neighborhood about once a month, and says the ballroom\u2019s scale, height, and massing will wreck the experience. The majority\u2019s response:<\/p>\n

\n

To the contrary, we have repeatedly held that mere offense, disagreement, or distaste does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury under Article III.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Court spends a page on Lujan<\/em>, where an earlier Court greenlit environmental destruction by claiming an \u201caesthetic\u201d interest in seeing nature couldn\u2019t establish standing. Except that\u2019s not actually what Lujan<\/em> said. In fact, the Lujan<\/em> majority conceded that the desire to observe a particular animal, \u201ceven for purely [a]esthetic purposes,\u201d was \u201cundeniably a cognizable interest for purpose of standing.\u201d The plaintiffs lost because the majority declared that vague plans to \u201csome day\u201d hope to see nature wasn\u2019t concrete enough of a plan. <\/p>\n

Hoagland, meanwhile, has concrete plans. She has a recurring appointment with the location she\u2019s suing about. So the majority shifted the goalposts to reclassify a cognizable aesthetic interest as \u201cmere offense\u201d and then citing taxpayer-standing cases about people who were mad at government policy in the abstract. Roberts catches it:<\/p>\n

\n

With the Court\u2019s rejection of Hoagland\u2019s standing today, however, it now is the case that \u201cI want to look at a crocodile\u201d can adequately answer the ever critical \u201cwhat\u2019s it to you?\u201d question of Article III standing, while \u201cI want to look at the White House\u201d cannot.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Wait, John Roberts wrote that? The same guy who has spent two decades throwing up barricades around the courthouse steps to keep almost every plaintiff out? It\u2019s telling when the justice most committed to shrinking standing to the size of a postage stamp refused to go along with this constriction. <\/p>\n

Roberts had issued the administrative stay<\/a> that kept the bulldozers running while the Court considered this application. An administrative stay doesn\u2019t necessarily telegraph a justice\u2019s ultimate vote, of course. But it doesn\u2019t not<\/em> do that, either. When the chief personally cleared the way for construction to continue, it looked like well-appointed curtains for the ballroom case. Which, I guess, it was. But he wasn\u2019t willing to join his colleagues in ripping them down.<\/p>\n

The opinion\u2019s reverse-engineering borders on comical. In Part II, the majority pads out the equities with declarations from every security official the administration could force to sign one. They cite the Secretary of the Army explaining that the ballroom\u2019s \u201cheight and mass\u201d are \u201ccrucial\u201d to shield the underground military installation \u201cfrom kinetic impacts,\u201d and that without them \u201cengineers would need to dig impractically deep.\u201d Weird how the underground installation was always planned and yet no one thought the East Wing needed to be replaced until Trump decided he wanted a ballroom.<\/p>\n

For what it\u2019s worth, the Secretary of the Army resigned yesterday. <\/p>\n

Roberts refused to let the majority\u2019s acceptance of this obvious falsehood slip by unnoticed, bringing the administration\u2019s own past statements to the lower court as receipts:<\/p>\n

\n

[T]he Government informed the District Court that its construction work on below-ground secure facilities was \u201cdriven by national security concerns independent of the above-grade construction\u201d of the ballroom.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The administration litigates by throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it sticks. Except it\u2019s Trump so it\u2019s egg noodles and ketchup hitting the wall, but the result is the same. Lucky for Trump, there\u2019s a critical mass of justices willing to inspect the mess and declare it a masterpiece of modern art. <\/p>\n

One might say that, unlike with the aesthetic standing hook in the East Wing case, proposing to destroy One First Street might give the justices themselves standing. Maybe? On the other hand, the building is just a federal office building. Would Fox Mulder have standing to block the demolition and rebuilding of the Hoover Building? Could a district judge enjoin a move to a new courthouse complex? That can\u2019t be right. But it\u2019s the logical extension of any claim that the justices have some special standing to block changes to their office space. <\/p>\n

So go ahead and tear it down. Rent them a WeWork in D.C. \u2014 those still exist, right? \u2014 and tell them to pound sand. When they sue, the answer writes itself. <\/p>\n

Gee, standing is a tricky thing, sport. You go on such long vacations every summer, some of them paid for by parties with interests before the Court<\/a>. How were we to know you had any concrete plans to come back? And, you see, my newly appointed Secretary of the Army signed this napkin about the dire security necessity of shielding Union Station from attack with a giant ballroom here. You understand, right? What is it your boy used to say? Oh right, \u201cThank you for your attention to this matter.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Is it petty and ridiculous. Sure. But those also happen to be the two best words available to describe this majority. As they say in A Man For All Seasons, the sort of pretentious quote justices like to quote, \u201cand when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide?\u201d Not in One First Street!<\/p>\n

And if the threat of sending a backhoe over to Alito\u2019s office is what finally makes court reform<\/a> a reality \u2014 then so be it. A switch in time saved nine before.<\/p>\n

Earlier<\/strong>: Bunker Ballroom Blocked<\/a>
Ballroom Blitz Blocked<\/a>
Trump Gets Brutal News Flash: The White House Ain\u2019t Mar-A-Lago<\/a>
Judge Gives Trump\u2019s \u2018Of Course I Can Bulldoze The East Wing If I Wanna\u2019 Argument The Side-Eye It Deserves<\/a>
DOJ Files Ballroom Brief That Reads Like Truth Social Post \u2014 Because Trump Probably Wrote It<\/a>
Looks Like Trump Dictated Another Barely Coherent Ballroom Brief<\/a>
Supreme Court Term Limits Are The Least Dangerous, Most Necessary Reform On The Menu<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post It\u2019s Time To Tear Down The Supreme Court Building To Build A Bigger Ballroom\u2026 For, Um, National Security<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the Supreme Court once again exercised its shadow docket muscles to stay Judge Richard Leon\u2019s injunction<\/a> and allow Donald Trump to keep building his ballroom on top of the East Wing\u2019s corpse. The eight-page per curiam<\/em> went out of its way to explain that it was not taking on standing on whether the project itself was \u201clegal,\u201d but merely stating that the plaintiff lacked standing. And, for what it\u2019s worth, even if this is illegal (it is), probably no one has standing!<\/p>\n

In light of this opinion, a modest proposal for the next president: immediately tear down One First Street and put an even bigger ballroom there. Because, I don\u2019t know, just say national security.<\/p>\n

And why not? One First Street is a federal building sitting on federal ground in the District of Columbia. The exact same law that makes it patently illegal for Donald Trump to have torn down the East Wing and started work on a 90,000 sq. ft. event space covers the Supreme Court building too. Chief Justice John Roberts, joining with the Democratic-appointed justices in dissenting from the opinion, noted the explicit illegality:<\/p>\n

\n

Pursuant to its plenary constitutional authority over the District of Columbia and federal property, Congress has explicitly prohibited the construction of any \u201cbuilding or structure . . . on any reservation, park, or public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.\u201d 40 U. S. C. \u00a78106. The ballroom is a building or structure being erected on federal park grounds\u2014President\u2019s Park\u2014in the District of Columbia. Yet Congress has not passed any law resembling \u201cexpress authority\u201d for the Executive\u2019s construction of it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Trump administration tried to defend its actions, claiming that 54 U. S. C. \u00a7100101(a) grants presidents broad authority to conserve \u201chistoric objects,\u201d which Roberts deliciously counters with \u201cThis is likely not express authorization to raze the East Wing and replace it with a ballroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tearing down the Supreme Court\u2019s headquarters would run afoul of the same law, but since the current majority has made clear that there\u2019s no one capable of enforcing that law, the next president should be welcome to \u2014 nay, encouraged to \u2014 send the bulldozers down to the Court within the first 100 days of the next administration. After all, we NEED a new ballroom. A first-class nation needs a safe and secure location to host the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner and, as we all know, Trump\u2019s proposed ballroom is not big enough to host that dinner<\/a><\/em>. <\/p>\n

You might be asking, \u201cwait, isn\u2019t building a ballroom big enough for the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner one of Trump\u2019s arguments for this project?\u201d And the answer to that is two-fold: (1) yes; and, (2) [middle finger emoji].<\/p>\n

The Trust\u2019s standing argument, that yesterday\u2019s majority rejected, rested on the declaration of Alison Hoagland \u2014 a professor of historic preservation, longtime Trust executive committee member, and author of books on American architecture \u2014 who lives in D.C., visits the White House neighborhood about once a month, and says the ballroom\u2019s scale, height, and massing will wreck the experience. The majority\u2019s response:<\/p>\n

\n

To the contrary, we have repeatedly held that mere offense, disagreement, or distaste does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury under Article III.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Court spends a page on Lujan<\/em>, where an earlier Court greenlit environmental destruction by claiming an \u201caesthetic\u201d interest in seeing nature couldn\u2019t establish standing. Except that\u2019s not actually what Lujan<\/em> said. In fact, the Lujan<\/em> majority conceded that the desire to observe a particular animal, \u201ceven for purely [a]esthetic purposes,\u201d was \u201cundeniably a cognizable interest for purpose of standing.\u201d The plaintiffs lost because the majority declared that vague plans to \u201csome day\u201d hope to see nature wasn\u2019t concrete enough of a plan. <\/p>\n

Hoagland, meanwhile, has concrete plans. She has a recurring appointment with the location she\u2019s suing about. So the majority shifted the goalposts to reclassify a cognizable aesthetic interest as \u201cmere offense\u201d and then citing taxpayer-standing cases about people who were mad at government policy in the abstract. Roberts catches it:<\/p>\n

\n

With the Court\u2019s rejection of Hoagland\u2019s standing today, however, it now is the case that \u201cI want to look at a crocodile\u201d can adequately answer the ever critical \u201cwhat\u2019s it to you?\u201d question of Article III standing, while \u201cI want to look at the White House\u201d cannot.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Wait, John Roberts wrote that? The same guy who has spent two decades throwing up barricades around the courthouse steps to keep almost every plaintiff out? It\u2019s telling when the justice most committed to shrinking standing to the size of a postage stamp refused to go along with this constriction. <\/p>\n

Roberts had issued the administrative stay<\/a> that kept the bulldozers running while the Court considered this application. An administrative stay doesn\u2019t necessarily telegraph a justice\u2019s ultimate vote, of course. But it doesn\u2019t not<\/em> do that, either. When the chief personally cleared the way for construction to continue, it looked like well-appointed curtains for the ballroom case. Which, I guess, it was. But he wasn\u2019t willing to join his colleagues in ripping them down.<\/p>\n

The opinion\u2019s reverse-engineering borders on comical. In Part II, the majority pads out the equities with declarations from every security official the administration could force to sign one. They cite the Secretary of the Army explaining that the ballroom\u2019s \u201cheight and mass\u201d are \u201ccrucial\u201d to shield the underground military installation \u201cfrom kinetic impacts,\u201d and that without them \u201cengineers would need to dig impractically deep.\u201d Weird how the underground installation was always planned and yet no one thought the East Wing needed to be replaced until Trump decided he wanted a ballroom.<\/p>\n

For what it\u2019s worth, the Secretary of the Army resigned yesterday. <\/p>\n

Roberts refused to let the majority\u2019s acceptance of this obvious falsehood slip by unnoticed, bringing the administration\u2019s own past statements to the lower court as receipts:<\/p>\n

\n

[T]he Government informed the District Court that its construction work on below-ground secure facilities was \u201cdriven by national security concerns independent of the above-grade construction\u201d of the ballroom.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The administration litigates by throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it sticks. Except it\u2019s Trump so it\u2019s egg noodles and ketchup hitting the wall, but the result is the same. Lucky for Trump, there\u2019s a critical mass of justices willing to inspect the mess and declare it a masterpiece of modern art. <\/p>\n

One might say that, unlike with the aesthetic standing hook in the East Wing case, proposing to destroy One First Street might give the justices themselves standing. Maybe? On the other hand, the building is just a federal office building. Would Fox Mulder have standing to block the demolition and rebuilding of the Hoover Building? Could a district judge enjoin a move to a new courthouse complex? That can\u2019t be right. But it\u2019s the logical extension of any claim that the justices have some special standing to block changes to their office space. <\/p>\n

So go ahead and tear it down. Rent them a WeWork in D.C. \u2014 those still exist, right? \u2014 and tell them to pound sand. When they sue, the answer writes itself. <\/p>\n

Gee, standing is a tricky thing, sport. You go on such long vacations every summer, some of them paid for by parties with interests before the Court<\/a>. How were we to know you had any concrete plans to come back? And, you see, my newly appointed Secretary of the Army signed this napkin about the dire security necessity of shielding Union Station from attack with a giant ballroom here. You understand, right? What is it your boy used to say? Oh right, \u201cThank you for your attention to this matter.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Is it petty and ridiculous. Sure. But those also happen to be the two best words available to describe this majority. As they say in A Man For All Seasons, the sort of pretentious quote justices like to quote, \u201cand when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide?\u201d Not in One First Street!<\/p>\n

And if the threat of sending a backhoe over to Alito\u2019s office is what finally makes court reform<\/a> a reality \u2014 then so be it. A switch in time saved nine before.<\/p>\n

Earlier<\/strong>: Bunker Ballroom Blocked<\/a>
Ballroom Blitz Blocked<\/a>
Trump Gets Brutal News Flash: The White House Ain\u2019t Mar-A-Lago<\/a>
Judge Gives Trump\u2019s \u2018Of Course I Can Bulldoze The East Wing If I Wanna\u2019 Argument The Side-Eye It Deserves<\/a>
DOJ Files Ballroom Brief That Reads Like Truth Social Post \u2014 Because Trump Probably Wrote It<\/a>
Looks Like Trump Dictated Another Barely Coherent Ballroom Brief<\/a>
Supreme Court Term Limits Are The Least Dangerous, Most Necessary Reform On The Menu<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post It\u2019s Time To Tear Down The Supreme Court Building To Build A Bigger Ballroom\u2026 For, Um, National Security<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the Supreme Court once again exercised its shadow docket muscles to stay Judge Richard Leon\u2019s injunction and allow Donald Trump to keep building his ballroom on top of the East Wing\u2019s corpse. The eight-page per curiam went out of its way to explain that it was not taking on standing on whether the project […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":162025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Headshot-300x200-nunFTp.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}