Mr. Trump, Your Ballroom Will Not Stand

As the famed 19th century architectural historian and critic John Ruskin observed, “All good architecture is the expression of national life and character.” As countless visitors have seen, the White House is plain and simple. There is nothing gaudy or ostentatious about it, unlike the gilded pretensions of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. The White House is an appropriately understated dwelling and working space for the leader of a republic that rotates its president every four years. It was never intended to be a palace for a king or a pharaoh, nor a playground for the rich and heinous.

Style necessarily communicates a statement about its creator. Trump’s unilateral decision to level the East Wing, erected in 1902, and build a golden ballroom reveals his disdain for tradition and the sensibilities of previous presidents, not to mention for the First Ladies who conducted their business in the East Wing. In an interview with the New York Times on January 7, Trump also revealed his plans for the West Wing, which include adding a second level on top of the colonnade that connects the West Wing to the White House residence. When people of good will and common decency recapture political power, Trump’s vandalism of this iconic site must be reversed.

Trump’s plan for the White House desecrates the venerable property, which was last destroyed intentionally in the War of 1812 when British troops burned it beyond repair. Today’s self-proclaimed master builder is now erecting a 90,000 square foot ballroom, which is nearly twice the size of the existing White House. Though he earlier promised the ballroom construction would not touch the White House itself, in September and October 2025 he proceeded to demolish the East Wing along with clear cutting nearly 2-acre swath of White House grounds, felling decades-old oak trees and sending them to the woodchipper. This new palatial structure, designed to entertain and cajole the wealthy and powerful, will dwarf the existing building designed to house the guardians of our democracy.

It is not just that the ballroom-East Wing project is a garish disfiguring of the White House and its grounds, it is absolutely unnecessary. The Andrew Mellon Auditorium is owned by the federal government and is a short distance from the White House next to the National Mall. Trump surely knows this, as it was the site of much of the 2020 Republican National convention. Dedicated in 1935, the Mellon Ballroom can seat close to 700 people for dinner; and its neoclassical style has impressed architects and visitors alike. Trump first said his proposed ballroom would seat 600 or so diners, but he has recently spoken of a thousand-person capacity. In any event, unlike the Mellon Ballroom, the ballroom planned for the White House grounds will not be available for the public to rent.

But whatever the seating capacity or perceived aesthetics of this undertaking, it is clearly unlawful. Since the 13th century, under our common law adapted from the English, the doctrine known as Waste has prohibited anyone who is not the absolute owner of real estate from destroying or substantially altering it without permission from the titled owner.

Though there have necessarily been modifications and refinements to the doctrine of Waste, its core principles remain unchanged in contemporary American law. If you rent a house with a large garden, you cannot lawfully rip out the garden and construct a workshop without permission of the owner. You cannot dig up your landlord’s driveway to install a swimming pool. The fact you expend your own money “improving” the land or buildings does not miraculously make your conduct legal.

Trump is not the owner of the White House any more than Abraham Lincoln or Ronald Reagan were. He is neither a tenant of the White House under a rental agreement, nor does he have a life estate in the property. The owners of the White House are the American people. Trump temporarily occupies the White House with the permission of the American people and holds it in trust for their benefit until another temporary occupant moves in; management of the site is entrusted to the National Park Service, the National Capital Planning Commission and other government bodies. There is no evidence that Trump sought guidance or permission from any of these entities. Trump has, of course, installed worshipful loyalists in positions of authority in virtually all government bodies, thus guaranteeing no opposition to his wishes. On October 28, 2025, with his project already underway, Trump fired all members of the Commission of Fine Arts, one of the oversight groups.

Meanwhile, other organizations have taken action. On December 12, 2025, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private nonprofit organization, filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block the ballroom’s construction. In a hearing for the case on January 22, Justice Department lawyers told U.S. District Judge Richard Leon that the White House intends to wait for two federal advisory panels to review the project. However, soon after, Trump doubled down on his plans, posting online, pronouncing, “IT IS TOO LATE!” to stop the project.

Though the powers of these commissions are mainly advisory, all previous presidents have consulted with them about planned improvements. Some repairs, such as President Obama’s putting basketball lines on an existing tennis court, were so minimal that no agency involvement was needed.

To date, there has been scattered hand-wringing and vociferous criticism (mostly by Democrats) about the levelling of the East Wing to enable the construction of Trump’s $300 million (and still counting) ballroom; but, with one exception, none of these critics has advocated the only viable solution: tear the ballroom down and rebuild the East Wing.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) has called for demolition as a response to Trump’s ballroom project; in fact, he has urged all Democratic candidates for his party’s presidential nomination in 2028 to make this a pledge in their campaigns. Not surprisingly, on November 13, the Trump administration announced it was considering mortgage fraud charges against Swalwell, similar to the cases his administration has lodged against Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

So far, only vague details exist about the ballroom’s construction plan and timeline. The White House formally submitted construction plans to the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts in December 2025, months after the East Wing demolition, which it plans to present publicly in February or March. The White House website currently has a landing page about the “East Wing Expansion” project, which claims that construction on the ballroom “is expected to be completed long before the end of President Trump’s term.” A section on the project’s progression has only this blanket statement: “Make sure to check back here for completed phases of renovation.” Curiously, Trump told reporters in a recent interview with the New York Times that the new ballroom could even serve as a secure site to hold an inauguration, with bulletproof glass “4 to 5 inches thick that ‘can take just about any weapon that we know of.’ ”

The American people have told pollsters they are opposed to the project almost 2 to 1. Still, Trump’s plans are not without some support. The Washington Post, for example, editorialized on October 25: “In classic Trump fashion the president is pursuing a reasonable idea in the most jarring manner possible.” This enthusiasm is not surprising as the Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon billionaire who in February 2025, after Trump’s inauguration, announced sweeping changes limiting the paper’s opinion section. In addition to Amazon’s $1 million donation to Trump’s inauguration, Bezos was listed among the 37 billionaires, financiers and corporate donors who have united to help fund Trump’s undertaking.

Since the beginning of his second term, Trump has:

• Declared by executive orders that diversity, equity and inclusion policies and programs have no place in government agencies or the United States military, nor should they exist in universities, corporations, law firms or any other public or civic institutions.
• Ordered the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress purge critical references to slavery and the genocide of Native Americans.
• Renamed military bases after Confederate generals who went the war to preserve the institution of slavery.
• Discouraged the use of such words as climate change, gender, clean water, microplastics and sustainable in government documents and reports.

So much for pluralism, traditions and truth.

In addition to his ballroom, Trump wants to construct a massive marble arch on the banks of the Potomac modeled after the much-photographed Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which was commissioned by the emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806. The BBC calls Trump’s aspiration the Arc de Trump. Recent reports are that Trump wants the arch to be 250 feet tall, dwarfing the Lincoln Memorial. Someone should burst his imperial fantasy by telling him that by the time Napoleon’s Arc was completed in 1836, the French emperor had been deposed and died in exile.

Trump’s mania to rewrite history, collapse established institutions and norms, and plaster his name everywhere diverts his attention—and the media’s—from the pressing problems of cattle ranchers and soybean farmers, infrastructure repair, rural health care, homelessness and numerous other issues that affect the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans.

Trump has demonstrated during his time in office that he views the law—along with the opinions of other people—as mere suggestions he can accept or disregard as his unbridled ego chooses. According to reporting by the New York Times, Trump has told workers on the ballroom project that “he does not need to follow permitting, zoning or code requirements because the structure is on White House grounds and he has the final say.” This is not surprising, coming from someone who has declared himself “a very stable genius.”

In various exchanges with the press stated no one knows more than he does about building things, the tax code, wind, grasses, infrastructure, whale psychology, drones and a host of other topics. He claims to know more than generals do about ISIS. He has installed in the White House a Faith Office, headed by his spiritual advisor, the evangelical pastor Paula White, who has declared: “To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God.”

Despite his disdain for the rule of law or the validity of customary norms, under the doctrine of Waste, Trump has no lawful right to do what he has undertaken, any more than he could lawfully paint gold leaf on the Lincoln Memorial or sandblast from the Statue of Liberty the iconic words, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses … ” and replace them with, “They’re eating cats, they’re eating dogs … .”

Trump will ultimately vacate the premises he has vandalized. When he does, and more rational and historically sensitive people are in charge of our government, the ballroom should be torn down and the East Wing rebuilt. And, as the Waste doctrine allows, the federal government should sue Trump for the costs of removal and repair.

Justice—legal and poetic—should compel him to pay for the demolition of this ridiculous monument to himself.

Stephen FortunatoMore by this author →

Stephen Fortunato served for 13 years as an Associate Justice of the Rhode Island Superior Court. His essays have appeared in both peer review journals and publications with a more general readership, including the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics; Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left; In These Times; and Monthly Review.