All posts tagged "Ballroom"

The Supreme Court has a new way to hand President Donald Trump victories that threatens to leave "blatant" lawbreaking unchecked, a legal scholar warned.

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, laid out the warning during an interview with Slate's Amicus podcast. Rather than deciding whether Trump's actions are lawful, the court's conservative majority has been increasingly tossing lawsuits against him on procedural grounds and deciding no one has the right to sue in the first place, Chemerinsky warned.

"If no one has the ability to go to court to challenge something, then the illegal and unconstitutional action will continue," Chemerinsky said....

Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman warned that the Supreme Court's latest Trump ruling carries a "real tragedy" that outlasts the ballroom case.

In a Thursday piece for his Talking Feds Substack, Litman wrote about the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in the White House ballroom. The Monday decision cleared President Donald Trump to "proceed full steam ahead to construct his monstrous ballroom," Litman wrote.

The decision lifted a lower-court block on the White House project, but the "per curiam, 5-4 order on the shadow docket expressly offered no opinion on the merits," Litman blasted. He argued that the wording of the ruling has little to do with legal arguments about who could sue and who a construction pause would harm....

A biographer detailed when devoted aide Natalie Harp began to emerge in President Donald Trump's circle and tied her to one of his pet projects.

During an episode of Inside Trump's Head, author Michael Wolff said that he started hearing Harp's name during the 2024 campaign, and he credited her as one of the minds behind the East Wing teardown and the push for a White House ballroom.

"People within the White House say that Natalie was one of the people who argued for the ballroom and getting rid of the East Wing," Wolff said....

Critics were mocking President Donald Trump's appeals court loss for his White House ballroom project on Friday.

A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed 2-1 with a federal judge's ruling from April requiring construction to halt until Congress expressly authorizes the project, which they referred to as "utterly lawless."

Political commentators and legal experts reacted to the news on social media....

President Donald Trump's claim that wealthy donors will fund the White House ballroom continues to unravel, as reports unearth the real cost to taxpayers.

"Trump has been lying the whole time with full knowledge of the cost and the cost to taxpayers," political analyst Brian Tyler Cohen said, pointing to new reporting by The Washington Post.

The Post looked at early project cost estimates by the contractor tasked with building the ballroom and found that it will cost about $600 million, with about half of that coming from taxpayers....

President Donald Trump's latest White House makeover touches have taken a new turn as it becomes a "construction zone eyesore," The Daily Beast reported.

Images on Monday revealed two cranes building a metal arch for lighting over the UFC Freedom 250 stage, just near the White House’s Executive Residence.

As the ballroom construction has been ongoing, the White House "began looking more like an oversized event venue on Monday as crews prepared for the UFC extravaganza Trump is throwing on June 14 to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday and his own 80th," The Beast reported. ...