Somehow, I feel like there should be a short snippet of the Hallelujah Chorus in here.
You know what?
I'm going to anyway.
Now, I didn't use the whole chorus because, as with everything in Washington, this is a temporary reprieve from an irritating problem.
But it is another win notched on that golden belt.
Chief Justice Roberts signed off on a temporary 'let the building continue,' and it was good...
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is allowing the White House to continue construction on President Donald Trump's $400 million ballroom project for now.
Roberts signed a temporary order on Friday allowing work to continue while the court considers an emergency appeal from the Trump administration.
Lower courts had ordered a halt to the project, finding that it must have congressional approval. That ruling was set to take effect on Friday. Roberts signed the order because he oversees appeals of Washington-based cases.
The case comes before the nation's highest court as Trump, a Republican, exercises unparalleled assertions of presidential power and increasingly seeks to mold the capital in his own image.
...besides making just a ton of sense.
Can President Trump continue constructing the ballroom? Yes, per the Chief Justice. More to come soon. Huge win for President Trump, @TheJusticeDept and SG John Sauer, and for the continued national security at the White House. No noted dissents. pic.twitter.com/T9tgjaGOMT
— Eric W. (@EWess92) August 21, 2026
For crying out loud, there's a hole in the ground, as we all had a good snicker about two weeks ago, when the D.C. Circuit told Trump NOT to...um...knock the East Wing down.
AWKWARD
Can’t demolish the East Wing…. pic.twitter.com/NdzD0pQaK7
— Lord of Misrule (@ComeAndFakeIt) August 7, 2026
Even the ABC grudgingly acknowledges that Trump has been successful in challenging most of these unrelenting judicial assaults.
...The Trump administration has scored a series of victories on the high court's emergency docket, though the justices have ruled against some of the president's signature policies after fuller review.
And why? Because most of them are judicial activists flexing their muscles and using authority they don't have to make new law or advance the suits of angry partisan groups who have no standing in the issue they're suing over, such as in this case. This arose from nothing more than the National Trust having a hissy fit over the 'aesthetics' of a building they weren't inclined to approve of anyway.
They didn't think it was pretty. It offended their refined sensibilities, so therefore it must not be built.
Yes. The rendering of the finished new ballroom exterior is such a downgrade from the old FDR-era office building attached to the White House.
Chief Justice Roberts Stays DC Appellate Court Ruling - White House Construction of Ballroom Can Continue https://t.co/eLLR8C0Z3H
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) August 21, 2026
Whatever was Trump thinking?
More importantly, who do those guys think they are, and why, other than TDS, did a federal court indulge their tantrum in any event?
Hurt feelings are not a constitutionally protected right, and it's not the National Trust's building to begin with.
These courts need a refresher course on what they are and are not permitted to meddle in, and a permanent smackdown that's long overdue.
...The Constitution limits federal courts to deciding only cases brought by parties with standing—that is, a concrete injury sufficient to give them a stake in the matter at hand. This limitation is designed to confine the federal courts to their appropriate role in our system of separated powers, so that they don't become “roving commissions” imposing their policy preferences and usurping the powers of the executive and legislative branches.
In this case, the National Trust, a private nonprofit organization, plainly lacks the standing mandated by the Constitution. To have standing, an organization like the trust must show that (1) it has members who have suffered a concrete injury sufficient to have standing in their own right, and (2) that the interest the members seek to vindicate is germane to the organization’s purpose. Here, the lower courts found that the trust had standing based solely on the fact that a single member who claims to walk near the White House about once a month expects to dislike the design of the new East Wing.
The subjective displeasure of an offended observer isn’t an injury that confers standing under the Constitution. Injuries sufficient to support standing must be concrete and particularized, not generalized grievances. An individual emotional response to a government policy or action isn’t an injury courts can redress. The proper forum for such grievances is the voting booth, not a court.
Even if a trust member’s aesthetic dissatisfaction were a cognizable injury, the trust itself would lack standing. The member’s interest the trust seeks to assert isn’t germane to its purpose. The trust’s mission is to preserve particular historic properties that have been donated to it. When chartering the trust in 1949, Congress expressly excluded the White House from its purview.
Allowing a lawsuit to proceed based on such a flimsy claim of injury would open the floodgates to all manner of claims that rest on nothing more than individuals’ feelings, not concrete injury. There would be no limiting principle. It is difficult to imagine any government project that wouldn’t be susceptible to challenge under such a regime.
Naturally, President Trump expressed his umbrage in his usual bald language, and he was pretty much dead to rights about the National Trust's standing to stop the project.
...“There is absolutely no argument that a woman walking her dog in the vicinity of the White House has STANDING to stop such a desperately needed National Security structure for the people of the United States of America,” he continued in part, “especially when she never saw the Building, because it had not risen, and she had no rendering, or pictures of the Building because they, also, were in the formative stages of production. This woman is not a ‘walker,’ she is an activist, or serial plaintiff.”
“It is this kind of gross and flagrant abuse of our Courts that is exactly why Americans are losing faith in our System of Justice. It is so bad for our Country!” Trump concluded.
The entire argument from that perspective is ludicrous, and wasting time and money to fight over it is unconscionable.
Surely an aesthetic injury caused by the *fully built ballroom* is less than an aesthetic injury caused by *the current construction site*. The old East Wing is gone. What are we doing here?
— Eric W. (@EWess92) March 31, 2026
But par for those with septic TDS
If Obama had built a ballroom because it is unsafe in this era of drones and other madness to host state dinners in tents on the White House lawn, no one on the Left or the Right would have batted an eye.
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) August 21, 2026
It's the right thing to do.
This was never about the White House itself.… pic.twitter.com/iwSpJVfSDQ
...This was never about the White House itself. It was ONLY about hating anything Trump does.
No other reason. And two lower courts agreed.
Just another day that ends in 'Y.'
Leonard Leo on this news: “The ballroom case is really about who can sue in federal court, and there’s no question that the plaintiff here can’t. For decades the Left has been abusing standing doctrine to push its agenda through our federal courts, and the Court has an… https://t.co/VaDqCnSVjN
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) August 21, 2026
...and the Court has an opportunity here to put an end to that abuse."
But so does 'victory,' and we'll take it.
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