Dems Score Major Win as Supreme Court Allows Ballroom Construction to Proceed

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Democrats rightfully complain that the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority is too often ignoring the Constitution and precedent to do the bidding of Donald Trump and the GOP, e.g., when it gutted the Voting Rights Act to clear the way for racist gerrymanders or shielded the president from prosecution. On Friday, however, Chief Justice John Roberts did them a favor by allowing construction on Trump’s ballroom to proceed for now.

While that may seem paradoxical at first glance, bear with us.

The president’s bizarre fixation with the ballroom is a gift to the Democrats. They shouldn’t want it to be shut down now. After all, the East Wing has already been destroyed, and halting construction might get Trump to stop talking about the chandeliers he wants to install and the marble that should be used.

Every time he does that, Democrats get another opportunity to point out that taxpayers are shouldering the bulk of the burden of the project, which was initially supposed to be paid for by donors (in what was already a super shady arrangement) and cost $200 million.

Since then, the price tag has ballooned, the scope widened, and Americans are now supposed to foot much of the bill, which it is hardly surprising that the ballroom is very unpopular.

Therefore, ordering the end to construction would have been like a court telling Trump that he could no longer lie about how he brought down prices or that the Iran war has been won.

All of those things are essentially in-kind contributions for Democratic candidates, who should want the historically unpopular president to do all of those things as often as possible.

On Friday alone, he posted about the ballroom five times, and a week ago he kept sharing AI slop showing him giving a tour of the ballroom to George Washington.

Of course, politically, the savvy thing for Trump would be to abandon construction. However, that’s clearly not going to happen since the president is obsessed with his ballroom.

That is why we imagine that Republicans secretly hoped that the Supreme Court would shut it down.

At least they have convinced the president to change his narrative a bit.

While the project was initially billed exclusively as a ballroom, the White House shifted its rhetoric once the project was in jeopardy by emphasizing its national security aspect.

Trump did so again when he celebrated Roberts’s stay of an appeals court ruling from earlier this month that had ordered a stop to construction that would have started Friday.

“We are grateful for the Decision of the United States Supreme Court. The Military/Ballroom Complex being built on the hallowed grounds of the White House, which is so vital for National Security, will be THE GREATEST OF ITS KIND!” Trump wrote on his social media page. “It is something that Presidents have wanted for 150 years, and that the Military has been seeking for the last 100 years. Their wish will soon be fulfilled! Construction is under budget and ahead of schedule.”

Needless to say, it is not under budget.

As for being ahead of schedule, while the White House claims that the project is 65 percent complete, it is not scheduled to be finished until 2028, which gives Trump lots of time to keep talking about it.