In a case that required no action at all from SCOTUS, John Roberts ignored longstanding law to allow Trump's butchery of the White House to proceed for an undetermined length of time

(WESH 2 News, Facebook)

John Roberts, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS), essentially has written Donald Trump a blank check to -- for the foreseeable future -- do whatever he wishes with the White House. That's the White House that belongs to you, me, and millions of other Americans by virtue of paying taxes. We elect members of Congress who, by law, have authority to oversee the erection of "any building or structure on . . . any public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia."

Trump's pet project for the former home of the White House East Wing has morphed from a "ballroom" to a "military installation" to a "national security structure." There is no telling what it will be called six weeks from now. We only know that, for now, Roberts has proven that he is as corrupt as Trump himself -- making an end run around Congress, everyday Americans, and two pieces of controlling statutory law that have been around for 48 and 114 years. As we explained in a post last Thursday, the facts and the law of the case required SCOTUS to take no action at all. That would have let a lower appeals court's injunction, forcing a temporary halt to above-ground construction on the East Wing ballroom, to take effect -- while allowing Trump's underground work, apparently on his bunker, to continue.

Even that was a gift from federal judges to the president because he simply does not have the authority to make major alterations to the White House property without the OK from Congress, which he does not have. So Roberts took it upon himself to give Trump an indeterminate amount of time to muck around with the White House, and God only knows what we'll have when "The King of Pain(ful) Taste" is done with it. What once was the most iconic governmental building on the planet might be nothing more than a giant mud hole -- one that probably will leak -- when Trump is done with it.

Adam Klasfeld, a legal journalist and co-founder of All Rise News, provides important perspective on the ballroom saga under the headline "Trump's shadow docket rescue: East Wing addition." Klasfeld writes:

Donald Trump might have a “get-out-of-law-free card” after all in the Supreme Court’s shadow docket.

On Friday afternoon, Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily lifted an injunction that had blocked above-ground construction of Trump's East Wing ballroom in an emergency-docket order that did not state any reasoning.

“IT IS ORDERED that the preliminary injunction entered on April 16, 2026, by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, case No. 1:25-cv-4316, is hereby stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court,” Roberts wrote.

How is that for judicial restraint. I know people -- in fact, I'm married to one -- who put more thought than that into making a grocery list. What exactly did Roberts accomplish with his exercise in "succinctness"?  Klasfeld clues us in:

The order pauses an injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, who initially blocked construction of Trump’s East Wing ballroom because of his refusal to seek Congress’s permission to raze and replace the historic building.

Leon later revised his initial order to permit construction on the below-ground security bunker.

See what I mean about federal judges showering Trump with gift rulings -- the kind you and I would never receive. In fact, we showed in an earlier post, the chance of a regular American getting SCOTUS to hear an appeal is about 1% to 1.5% -- and that's even if you have a really strong case, one that sets precedent and all that stuff. You probably have a better chance of being hit by trash from space than having your case heard by SCOTUS. But Donald Trump? John Roberts & Co. have been unlawfully showering Trump with gifts for years -- including the biggest grift, I mean gift, of all.

Here are two ugly truths: (1) John Roberts has been a whore for executive power for pretty much his entire 21 years on the high court; (2) Judge Leon was right on the first go-around, but he wimped out. Leon originally blocked all construction on the ballroom because Trump did, in fact, refuse to seek permission of Congress to raze and replace the historic building. In other words, Trump violated the law from the get-go, but Leon let him get away with it, the two-judge majority on the Circuit Court of Appeals let him get away with it, and Roberts (in so many words) said, "Yee-haw, Donnie, have at  it! Just let me know if you need more time." 

Klasfeld, meanwhile, probably can't help but notice the foul odor all of this emits. Judges higher up the totem pole seem to notice it, too. Klasfeld writes:

The D.C. Circuit’s majority agreed with Leon, finding that Trump sought a “get-out-of-law free card” by circumventing congressional approval. 

“The bold assertion that the Executive can act with utter lawlessness, destroying treasured national landmarks and harming the interests of individuals, and that no court can stop it flouts our constitutional order,” U.S. Circuit Judges Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia wrote. “And it is no basis on which to claim the favor of courts’ equitable judgment. While this court accords great weight and deference to invocations of national security and the safety of the President, such arguments are not an automatic get-out-of-law-free card.”

Notice that the Circuit judges refer to Trump's actions as "utter lawlessness." What does it say that the chief justice of America's high court allows it to proceed? It says to me that Roberts is compromised, with perhaps an international gangster type holding dirt over his head. It also says the rot in America's federal courts goes way beyond obvious rogues like Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch (who only sits on the bench because Mitch McConnell stole a nomination that lawfully was President Obama's to make and sat on it until Trump took office. If Gorsuch had a smidgen of integrity, he never would have accepted the nomination, but there he sits. And GOP senators supported McConnell's skulduggery by confirming a justice who has no business on the high court.)

That brings us to the subject of money, and the tab for Trump's "ballroom" seems to be growing exponentially. Klasfeld writes:

When the D.C. Circuit decided the case, the East Wing ballroom had been estimated to cost $400 million, supposedly funded through private donations. Studies showed those donors reliably receiving favorable government treatment — with suspicious timing, and the price tag for the construction ultimately ballooned to more than $900 million, mostly on the taxpayer’s dime, according to the Washington Post.

Despite lopsided defeats before federal judges, Trump has had a far better record before the Supreme Court in applying for emergency relief.

That suggests the following: The higher up you go in our hallowed court system, the more secretive the proceedings and the more crooked the umpires who, as Roberts likes to say, "call balls and strikes." Major League Baseball now is backing up human umpires with an Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) System, implemented by the ABS Challenge System. Maybe flesh-and-blood litigants would get more fair treatment if we had nonpartisan robots sitting on the high court, all decked out in the finest robes. Robots probably would be more likely to dispense justice than many of the con artists who sit on the federal bench now. I know from personal experience that the primary concern of many federal judges has nothing to do with justice. It's all about protecting the interests and the bank accounts of the legal tribe. Often, the bigger the scoundrel, the more likely he is to be protected. Klasfeld writes:

In a study released this past March, the Brennan Center found that the Trump administration prevailed roughly 80 percent of the time that it sought emergency relief. Those rulings typically do not state the reasoning for reversing lower court decisions, even on a temporary basis.

In short, Trump emerges triumphant when he has John Roberts to carry water for him. But when a judge  has to rule according to the facts and law, and issue an opinion with actual reasoning, Trump often becomes just another loser.

Natalie Harp says Donald Trump saved her life by pushing for the Right to Try Act, which led to a treatment for her bone cancer, but experts express doubts about that story

Natalie Harp appears on FOX Business (Facebook)

Natalie Harp has stated publicly that Donald Trump saved her life by pushing for a law leading to treatment that helped her overcome a battle with cancer. Experts in science and bioethics, however, say that probably is not how it happened.

A jointly published article by the The UK Telegraph and Yahoo! News, examines a variety of issues Harp's claim raises. Under the headline "Natalie Harp claims Donald Trump saved her life. Really?" Ben Stockton writes:

Donald Trump's devoted aide Natalie Harp has long told the story about how the president – whom she refers to as "my Good Samaritan" – saved her life.

In June 2019, the then-27-year-old was interviewed on Fox & Friends. She spoke gushingly about the president, suggesting the Right To Try Act, which he had signed into law the year before, had given her access to experimental drugs to treat her bone cancer.

"As I like to say, I'm not dying from cancer any more, thanks to President Trump," she said.

The interview caught the eye of Mr Trump: "She lit up the television screen like very few people I've ever seen," he said during a speech in Washington DC a couple of weeks later.

"She talked about how they were preparing her for death. And because of Right To Try, she's now living."

Harp has become an almost constant presence around the president, earning the nickname "the human printer -- and in the past week, turning into a headline-making news figure. Stockton writes:

Ms Harp, now 35, worked on Mr Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. And since he re-entered the White House in 2025, she has become one of the president's closest staffers, known in Washington as a conduit for getting information to him.

But experts have raised doubts about key elements of the story that first brought her into Trump's orbit.

"The details never made a great deal of sense," Jeremy Snyder, a bioethics professor at Simon Fraser University, said.

He has questioned whether Ms Harp accessed the treatment because of Mr Trump's Right To Try Act, as she and the president have claimed. 

Ms Harp has previously said a medical error led her to be injected with sterile water, which left her "housebound and searching for care."

"Instead of studying my symptoms to diagnose my condition, my Democrat-controlled state and country offered me opioids, barbiturates, medical marijuana, disability, do-not-resuscitate orders, and yes, Death With Dignity," she wrote in a now-deleted LinkedIn post in 2019. 

She developed bone cancer, which she said was not cured by the two chemotherapy treatments available. Doctors apparently told her she would have to wait for other treatments to be approved.

The act became a focal point of Mr Trump's health policy during his first term, and when he signed it into law in May 2018, he said it would give "terminally ill patients the right to try experimental life-saving treatments."

In her LinkedIn post, Harp wrote:

When I failed two available chemotherapies for my rare disease and was denied from clinical trials, my oncologist said I would have to suffer through the symptoms for several more months . . . while awaiting a new round of FDA approvals for the clinical-trial drugs to which I was denied access.

Donald Trump had another option ready: Right to Try. While some may argue this legislation has not benefited the terminally ill or was repetitive to existing law, I beg to differ. My oncologist didn't tell me I had other options; Donald Trump did. So I found another oncologist who was willing to try a different approach -- an FDA-approved immunotherapy drug for an unapproved use. Now my numbers are stabilizing and so is my pain. 

 From The Telegraph/Yahoo! report:

Ms Harp suggested she was one of those patients who benefited – an experimental treatment she was prescribed apparently worked and her condition improved.

Two days after that 2019 LinkedIn post, she was invited onto Fox & Friends, where she was spotted by Mr Trump. And a couple of weeks later, during a speech at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority annual conference in Washington   DC he invited her onstage. 

Before the end of the year, according to The Washington Post, she had joined the advisory board of his 2020 campaign.

But Mr Snyder pointed to the fact that Ms Harp had first posted on X (then Twitter) about receiving treatment for her illness in March 2018, two months before Mr Trump signed the Right To Try Act.

She still credited the president with her treatment, who she said was "setting records in speeding up the drug approval process," according to an archived version of the post reviewed by The Telegraph. 

"The chemo I'm on now wasn't approved five years ago," she added. She has not disclosed which drug she was treated with. 

In her later LinkedIn post and public appearances, she appeared to suggest that Mr Trump's Right To Try Act was responsible. 

"You got an experimental treatment because there's Right To Try?" she was asked during an interview with Fox Business. "Yes," she replied. 

For Mr. Snyder, it just does not add up, Blockton writes:

But, Mr Snyder said, "the timeline makes no sense as it's prior to any changes that he [Mr Trump] made."

He first wrote about her story's apparent discrepancies in an article for The Washington Post in November 2019. 

Snyder is not alone in having doubts, Blockton reports:

A year later, Peter Lurie, a former FDA official, wrote in a blog post that Ms Harp's telling of her story has "dubious encounters with the truth".

He pointed to Ms Harp's claim that, according to her LinkedIn post, she had been treated with "an FDA-approved immunotherapy drug for an unapproved use."

Mr Trump's Right To Try Act, however, sought to open up access to drugs that had not gone through the FDA approval process. 

"What she said cannot be true," Mr Lurie, who is now the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told The Telegraph.

"It cannot be that -- but for Right To Try -- she would not have had access to this drug. By her own description, if it was approved, she could have had access to the drug, and Right To Try wouldn't have improved her access." 

With deadline looming tomorrow, Trump admin presents no argument that justifies SCOTUS allowing ballroom construction to continue during appeal; the high court's best action is no action at all

Demolition of East Wing of White House (AP, Politico)

On Aug. 14, President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) for an emergency stay that would allow above-ground construction to continue on his White House ballroom while the case is under appeal. As we reported on Aug. 17, that put tight deadlines into play, with any action the high court might take -- including taking no action at all -- set to come by this Friday, Aug. 21. That is the date when the lower appeals court's injunction, forcing a temporary halt to above-ground construction on the East Wing ballroom, is scheduled to take effect.

If SCOTUS takes no action -- and that, in our view, is what it should do -- the temporary injunction stays in place, and the high court (with its Republican majority, including three Trump nominees) likely can do nothing to save the president's pet project. If anyone out there is even slightly inclined to shed a tear for our "Dear Leader," please don't. Here is why: As we showed in our Aug. 17 post, the ballroom project never should have gotten off the ground. That's because two sections of law make it clear that no president, including Trump, has the authority to unilaterally launch a project of such scope. Here is how we explained it, and I will highlight the two provisions of law below:

Congress has delegated limited powers to the president for the “care, maintenance, repair, alteration, refurnishing, improvement, air-conditioning, heating, and lighting (including electric power and fixtures) of the Executive Residence at the White House” pursuant to 3 U.S.C. § 105(d). That’s why no one’s suing Trump over the tacky gold shit he keeps stapling to the walls at the White House. But under 40 U.S.C. § 8106, “A building or structure shall not be erected on any reservation, park, or public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.” A gigantic ballroom is obviously a “building or structure,” and Congress has not expressly authorized Trump and pals to build one in President’s Park.

Language cannot be much more clear than that, and there is evidence that Trump knew he did not have authority to demolish the East Wing and build a ballroom in its place, so he put the demolition on a fast track to make it unlikely that anyone could launch a court challenge against the project. That takes Trump's actions from "stupid and unnecessary" to "corrupt and Nixonesque." 

What do we mean by "Nixonesque"? Well, there was a relatively quaint period when many Americans considered Richard Nixon our most corrupt president of modern times, maybe of all time. But we cited a report from the Above the Law (ATL) Legal Website for the proposition that, when it comes to deceit and corruption, Donald Trump makes Richard Nixon look like an amateur. Here is how ATL put it:

This is likely why Trump was cagey about his plans, promising in July of 2025 that any “renovations” would “pay total respect” to the existing structure of the East Wing. Then in October, before anyone could rush into court to stop him, Trump knocked down the entire East Wing and dumped the rubble at East Potomac Golf Course — another target of his “beautification” rampage.

He repeatedly insists that “the desperately needed, and totally secure Ballroom… is a Gift from President Trump and Great Patriots of the United States of America. There will be no expense to the American Taxpayer.” In reality, he’s already grabbed $352 million in funds designated for the Secret Service — more than a tenth of the agency’s budget — to build his ballroom. The New York Times now puts the total cost at $600 million, with more than half of it coming from public money. (So much for the gift.)

I added some of my own analysis, in the unlikely event that the ATL take was not exceptionally clear. (I will highlight the segments below that, in my view, describe the most stomach-churning crookedness on Trump's part):

Let's take a closer look at the material highlighted in yellow above. First, the ATL writers use the term "cagey" to describe Trump's plans for "renovations" at the White House. That is a polite way of saying Trump was sociopathically dishonest, and the writers describe how and why he was dishonest . . . because he knew he had to destroy the East Wing before anyone could go to court to stop him. That suggests Trump knew his actions were unlawful, so he lied to the American people -- the ones, who by virtue of paying taxes, actually own the White House -- in order to get his way.

Second, the ATL writers describe Trump's pledge that his ballroom would come "at no expense to taxpayers," and they state how and why he violated that pledge . . . by essentially stealing one tenth of the Secret Service's budget and applying it to the ballroom while driving up the  project's cost past the $600-million mark. 

We went on to show that Trump's penchant for deceit seems to know zero limitations:

Speaking of soaring costs, Trump originally described the ballroom project as a space for social functions. But now, he describes it mostly as a "military installation." How did that happen? Well, it involves a whole lot more deceit. ATL reports:

In December 2025, the National Trust for Historic Preservation sued to block construction, arguing the project violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) because Trump never secured Congressional approval as required by § 8106. Initially, the Justice Department argued that the APA did not apply, since construction was being run by the Office of the Executive Residence (EXR), rather than the National Park Service (NPS).

EXR’s job is to oversee floral arrangements and canapés at the White House, not major construction. But unlike the National Park Service, EXR is not a federal agency, and so it cannot be held to answer under the APA. Clearly the administration hoped to evade judicial review by parking this illegal construction inside the White House, and at first it actually worked. On February 26, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon denied the Trust’s first motion for preliminary injunction, holding that EXR cannot be sued under the APA. But Judge Leon also laid out a very clear road map for the Trust to get what it wanted.

“Unfortunately for Plaintiff, its challenge fails because the White House office in question is not an ‘agency’ under the APA and because Plaintiff did not bring the ultra vires claim necessary to challenge the President’s statutory authority to complete his construction project with private funds and without congressional approval!” he wrote. Hint, hint.

Five days later, the Trust amended its complaint to add an ultra vires claim, and on March 31, Judge Leon granted their renewed request for an injunction. “The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!” he wrote. 

Let's return briefly to this point: Why do we say the Supreme Court should take no action and allow the circuit court's injunction to stay in place? Let's consider these words from uscourts.gov, which describes the process for asking the court to issue a writ of certiorari; that is the document by which the high court orders a lower court to send up the case record for review. SCOTUS hears 1% to 1.5% of the petitions for review it receives in a given year, so the chances of a regular American having a case heard before the nation's highest court are roughly nil. What factors does the Supreme Court consider in deciding whether to hear a case. Here is how uscourts.gov puts it:

The Court usually is not under any obligation to hear these cases, and it usually only does so if the case could have national significance, might harmonize conflicting decisions in the federal Circuit courts, and/or could have precedential value.

The two controlling sections or law we cited in the third paragraph above were approved by Congress in 1978 and 1912, respectively. That means they have been in place for roughly 48 to 114 years. While the White House itself has national significance, Donald Trump's attempts to unilaterally demolish portions of it are significant only for their brazen corruption. 

In its application for a stay to lift the injunction that stalled ballroom construction, the Trump administration primarily argues that the partially completed structure poses safety risks and that continued construction is needed for national security. It points to nothing of national significance in Trump's efforts to skirt Congress and the courts in his haste to raze a historic structure that he had no authority to destroy. It also points to no conflicting decisions in federal Circuit courts that would apply and no precedent that is at stake. 

In National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States v. National Park Service, et al, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided against the Trump administration primarily on the following grounds, as stated by Judges Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia, writing in the majority:

The White House is the People’s House, and under the Constitution’s Property Clause, Congress exercises plenary control over the building and its surrounding land. The White House is also the centerpiece of President’s Park, a National Park stewarded by the National Park Service. . . .  Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence. The President has no—and claims no—constitutionally assigned authority over that property, which is designed and maintained for the use of all Presidents, current and future, and for the American people. As the defendant National Park Service has explained, “[t]he White House is owned by the American people and stewarded by the National Park Service. It is more than the President’s residence; it is a site for protests and national discourse about what it means to be American.”

In short, the case at hand was decided on simple tenant-landlord law, which generally is a matter of state law. Trump is a tenant in the White House, and therefore has no authority to demolish the East Wing or make other major revisions to property he does not own.

It's hard to see where there is even a federal question raised by Trump's application, not to mention the issues we described earlier that usually must be present for Supreme Court review. If the high court is to follow its own standards, it should take no action in Trump's application and let the current injunction stand.