All posts tagged "White House Ballroom"

President Donald Trump's attempt to dodge lawsuits against his construction projects is paving the way toward another Reflecting Pool-style disaster, experts contend.

Trump's rushed construction of projects, including the East Wing ballroom and triumphal arch, were subjected to a scathing critique from The Atlantic on Saturday.

"Compressed schedules could lead to shoddy work that will require more repairs later," The Atlantic warned. "Trump's botched repairs to the Reflecting Pool ahead of the nation's 250th-birthday celebrations, in July, offer a classic example of the problem."...

A Supreme Court ruling that let President Donald Trump keep demolishing part of the White House opened a damning loophole, an analyst warned.

In a Tuesday podcast episode, progressive political analyst David Pakman broke down the 5-4 Supreme Court decision that let construction of the East Wing ballroom continue. He noted that the decision refused to declare the project legal, and that Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three liberal justices in dissent.

Pakman called the reasoning of the majority of the court bizarre because it admitted the demolition might be unlawful even as it cleared the way for it to proceed....

Legal expert Ryan Goodman reacted to reporting that suggested the Trump administration lied to the Supreme Court about the White House ballroom.

On Friday, the Washington Post published an investigation into the claim by the Solicitor General that the White House ballroom is 65% complete. The Solicitor General made the claim to the Supreme Court to argue that the project was too far along to shut down.

Goodman, a former special counsel for the Department of Defense and co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, reacted to the possibility that the White House was lying to the Supreme Court....

Trump went on a late-night Truth Social posting spree on Friday that pushed depictions of him as a military champion.

On Friday at 9 p.m. Eastern Time, Trump shared statements from his Cabinet officials and AI-generated images amid criticism about his treatment of the military and the ongoing conflict in Iran.

Some of the material was recycled, including an AI-generated image of Trump holding an American flag on top of a ship with an Iranian flag lying on the deck. "It's Our Oil Tanker Now!" the header of the post read. One post showed a graph touting that 18 Americans have died in the Iran military conflict compared to death counts in other wars....

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 is embroiled in an arsenic-laced dirt fight — and opponents say his administration is fighting dirty, reports show.

The Trump administration is refusing to allow testing on soil it dumped on a public golf course in Washington, D.C. despite National Park Service findings the dirt contains arsenic and lead, according to new reporting from the Wall Street Journal.

The East Potomac Golf Links, where the administration plans to build a major golf championships facility, has been topped with dirt from the East Wing demolition where Trump wants to build a ballroom, the Journal reported....