A federal judge has blocked Donald Trump from building a new grand ballroom on the former site of the White House’s East Wing, which the president had torn down last year.
Judge Richard Leon, an appointee of Ronald Reagan, ruled that construction “has to stop!” until Congress “blesses this project through statutory authorization.”
“The President may at any time go to Congress to obtain express authority to construct a ballroom and to do so with private funds,” Leon wrote. “Indeed, Congress may even choose to appropriate funds for the ballroom, or at least decide that some other funding scheme is acceptable.” He emphasized that Congress “will thereby retain its authority over the nation’s property and its oversight of government spending.”
He might as well have kicked Trump right in the … ballroom. NOTHING is more important to him.
Trump even brought out poster boards with depictions of the ballroom on Air Force One while speaking with reporters on Sunday. “They’ll be Corinthian, which is considered the best, the most beautiful by far,” he said of the ballroom’s columns, while holding up a visual aid.
The president also claimed on Sunday that the military is constructing a “massive complex” under the ballroom. “I’m so busy that I don’t have time to do this,” he said. “I’m fighting wars and other things,” Trump told reporters. “But this is very important, because this is going to be with us for a long time, and it’s going to be, I think it will be the greatest ballroom anywhere in the world.”
That’s not all:
Trump has been occupied with several different of construction-related projects since retaking office — from the ballroom, to renovations of the Kennedy Center, to building a grand arch in Washington, D.C., to reimagining the city’s various monuments. Shortly before Judge Leon handed down his ruling on Tuesday, Trump posted to Truth Social that he and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum “are working on fixing the absolutely filthy Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.” Trump blamed the state of the iconic pool on “Sleepy Joe” Biden. Most have been undertaken without the standard architectural reviews and congressional oversight typical of major renovations of public buildings.
Here comes the tantrum:
Give him a bottle and put him to bed. He’s tired and cranky.