Trump has turned the White House into a construction zone, leading to communication problems that helped cause an airline jet and a presidential helicopter to have a close call at Reagan National Airport

A plane approaches Reagan National Airport (AP)

Chief Justice John Roberts, in a brief U.S. Supreme Court order that provided no reasoning behind it, essentially gave Donald Trump carte blanche to do whatever he wants with the White House for an undetermined amount of time. That raises this question: Are Trump and his loyalists competent enough to handle such a responsibility? We have new evidence that the answer is a resounding no.

Earlier this month, air-traffic controllers cleared an airline jet to take off at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. (DCA), while Trump's helicopter, Marine One, was preparing to lift off, according to a report at Associated Press (AP). Was that a problem? The neighborhood between Reagan National and the White House is congested with commercial aircraft, so air-traffic controllers are supposed to receive a warning call three minutes before Marine One takes off. But ongoing construction at the White House on Trump's ballroom/military bunker project apparently caused a communication problem that led to the helicopter and the airline jet coming closer than expected to each other.

initial accounts indicate neither Trump nor anyone else was in danger, but reporting by AP's Josh Funk suggests there was enough confusion, and a few missteps, that the situation could have turned dangerous at a number of key points. And much of the confusion was caused by White House construction that Trump initiated in fall 2025 without authorization from Congress, as required by law per 40 U.S.C. § 8106. Under the headline "White House construction contributed to radio problems that let Trump copter come close to jet," AP's Funk writes:

The ongoing White House construction contributed to radio problems that kept air traffic controllers from hearing calls warning that President Donald Trump’s helicopter was getting ready to take off, so they cleared an airline jet to take off just as Marine One took to the air earlier this month, federal investigators said Thursday.

The week before the president’s helicopter got too close to that Envoy Air jet near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, air traffic controllers and Marine One pilots met to discuss controllers not receiving the standard three-minute warning call ahead of Marine One flights, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board. They made plans to relay radio calls through someone else if there were future problems but that was also unsuccessful on the day of the Aug. 4 incident.

Funk provides details about a moment that characterized the confusion that took hold at times as the incident unfolded. Reagan National holds the distinction of having the single busiest commercial runway at a U.S. airport. That made the air-traffic controllers' jobs, already demanding, even more challenging  during this event. Funk writes:

Communication issues came up again on Thursday, when air traffic controllers at the Reagan airport weren’t able to hear Marine One and had to ask a support helicopter for help just before takeoff.

“I can’t hear Marine One,” an air traffic controller says to the support helicopter. “If you hear Marine One, can you let me know?”

A little over a minute later, communication was functioning normally again for the afternoon flight to Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, according to recordings posted by ATC.com. It was not immediately clear what caused the brief issue.

Funk notes that Trump's ballroom/bunker is not the only project contributing to confusion. In fact, the White House has become a veritable construction zone under the Trump regime -- featuring the kind of heavy machinery, moving equipment, and loud noise that can create unfamiliar and unsafe conditions:

Since mid-July, Trump’s helicopter has been lifting off from the Ellipse, the park south of the White House, while construction has been going on for a new helipad behind the White House. Trump on Thursday was leaving the White House to head to Texas for a Republican National Committee event and present an award to the Artemis II astronauts.

After the incident earlier this month, technicians discovered that the reason Marine One was having trouble talking to the tower was because the helicopter shifted to a new location during the construction. So the Federal Aviation Administration moved the radio receiver out of a neighborhood near the airport and to the top of the tower at Reagan to fix the problem.

“Even though they were aware of some previous communications issues, they never got at the root cause,” aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said.

The FAA said in a statement that it took immediate action after the incident by moving that antenna “to improve communications” between the airport and Marine One pilots.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to the preliminary report, although the ongoing NTSB investigation does limit what it can say about the incident. 

That the Trump incident involved a helicopter, Reagan International, and a challenging air-traffic control environment raised the specter of the January 2025 crash that was the deadliest U.S. air crash in more than two decades, Funk notes:

Having both the jet and Trump's helicopter in the air at the same time seemed to violate safety procedures put in place after last year’s midair collision near the busy airport that killed 67 people, but officials stressed that the president was never in danger. The Pentagon also has a longstanding agreement with the FAA to provide controllers with a three-minute warning before the president’s helicopter takes off that predates last year’s crash.

The NTSB said recordings from the tower showed that the controllers never heard the calls from Marine One’s pilot that day warning that the helicopter was getting ready to take off, but separate recordings posted by ATC.com show the helicopter did make those calls.

How close did the jet and Trump's helicopter get to each other? Funk has details:

The FAA has acknowledged that the helicopter and airliner briefly got too close before the two aircraft started to move away from each other. The airplane quickly climbed above the helicopter after Marine One’s pilots saw the plane and paused until it safely left the area.

The NTSB said preliminary estimates show the helicopter and plane were just over 0.8 mile (1.3 kilometers) apart laterally and about 700 feet (215 meters) apart vertically at their closest. The crew of the Envoy Air flight told investigators they received a traffic warning from their collision avoidance system right after they took off, but they never saw the helicopter. 

It appears the pilots of Marine One handled the situation just as they should have. But that still did not keep confusion from entering the equation, apparently because White House construction contributed to cloudy communications. Funk writes:

The official FAA recordings from the tower at Reagan did not include the warnings that Marine One was getting ready to head to Andrews Air Force Base with the president aboard that day.

A recording posted by ATC.com showed the Marine One pilot telling the tower that the helicopter was “three minutes to lift” just like the 2013 agreement between the FAA and the military calls for. But the controller seemed surprised a few minutes later when the helicopter took off.

“Uh, Marine One, you said, uh, you’re proceeding as briefed?” the controller asked before giving the helicopter directions and commenting, “OK, no three minutes, roger, proceed as briefed.”

After the controller warned the helicopter about the plane taking off, the Marine One pilot said he saw the traffic and declared, “We’ll be doing a momentary delay.”

An expert close to the situation refused to point fingers at anyone connected to the Trump incident. His primary message seemed to be this: Everyone involved -- pilots, controllers, administrators, and more -- do their best to handle life-and-death situations in conditions that often can be imperfect. Funk writes:

Guzzetti, who is a former crash investigator for both the NTSB and FAA, said he doesn’t fault the controllers because they never heard Marine One’s warnings. And once they did realize the helicopter was taking off, they quickly warned the pilots and ordered another plane coming in to Reagan to abort landing and circle around.

“In this case, the controller did absolutely nothing wrong. He did not receive the transmission saying that they were three minutes away from taking off. So he had no reason to hold the airplane that was lining up and waiting,” Guzzetti said.

After last year’s midair collision, it became clear that poor communication between air traffic controllers and the military had been a longstanding issue. During a congressional hearing, it came out that a hotline connecting the Pentagon to the tower at Reagan hadn’t been working for more than three years, and the FAA hadn’t even realized it.

Evidence suggests Trump knew the White House already had a bunker when he started pushing for one of his own; from there, the story takes on a distinct Nixonian scent

(NPR, Facebook)

When last we wrote about Donald Trump's plans to build a ballroom/military bunker where the East Wing of the White House once stood, we closed with a question that readers of a certain age will recognize as a condensed version of perhaps the most famous quotation to come from the Watergate scandal of the 1970s. Here is our question: Did the Trump administration know a White House bunker already existed when it started unauthorized construction on [what began as its ballroom project]? The famous quote noted above came from U.S. Sen. Howard Baker (R-TN), who asked White House legal counsel John Dean: "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"

The president in question then  was a Republican, Richard Nixon. The president in question now is another Republican, Donald Trump. (Do you see a trend here?) The site of presidential chicanery in the '70s was the Watergate complex; now, the site is the White House. 

As noted at the end of our previous post about the ongoing tempest over Trump's ballroom project -- which since has morphed into a "military installation," then a "military "complex," or simply a "bunker" -- I planned to conduct research about whether the Trump administration knew an underground bunker already was in place when it began pushing for its own subterranean "Panic Room." As promised, I am back to report on the progress of my research -- and while the Trump White House story is convoluted and evolving -- I have reached at least two preliminary conclusions: (1) The administration definitely knew a White House bunker already was in place, although we see evidence that officials took a "play dumb approach" when it came to sharing that news nugget with the public; (2) While I, like many Americans, have much to learn about the White House drama and related legal battles, the story gives off a strong whiff of Nixonesque "trickiness." 

Does that mean Americans should prepare to brace themselves for perhaps the second most infamous political scandal of our time -- one that has the potential to fly past Watergate into the No. 1 spot, with Donald Trump playing the role of "Evil President Surrounded by Yes Men (and Women) Who Finds Himself Forced Out of Office?" I think the answer is yes because the Trump bunker story seems to be developing that kind of stench.

 What could save Trump and his band of incompetent bootlickers? I can think of two things: (1) No one in authority at the moment, in either party, seems to have a clue how to deal with a criminal of Trump's "skillset." And we're talking here about just the ballroom/bunker scenario. That doesn't count fatal attacks on boaters in the Caribbean; the violent overthrow of Venezuela's government, plus apparent theft of the country's oil; a Congressionally unauthorized attack on Iran, resulting in estimated deaths across all parties at roughly 9,000 to more than 18,000; the use of the U.S. military for domestic law enforcement, plus attacks by ICE on U.S. citizens and routine use of "state-sanctioned kidnappings' against migrants denied due process . . . and the horrifying beat goes on; (2)  Many have called Howard Baker a hero of Watergate for standing up to a president of his own party. But if there is a similar figure in today's GOP, I can't imagine who it would be. 

Trump should have been impeached, investigated, prosecuted (and upon conviction) imprisoned a long time ago. That job gets harder the longer he stays in office. Perhaps Democrats will take over the House and Senate in this year's midterms. But with so-called socialists causing a rift in the party, Dems might be too divided to prevail. And who knows if our country even is capable of conducting honest elections at this point. We see signs that Trump, Elon Musk, and others are doing their best to prevent it.

For now, let's return to point No. 1 in the third paragraph above. It states that the Trump administration definitely knew a White House bunker was in place when it began it's ballroom construction project. How do we know that? Let's consider the following from the Wikipedia entry for the White House State Ballroom, which goes into detail about the demolition process that began in October 2025:

The White House State Ballroom is part of a new East Wing under construction at the White House, the official residence of the president of the United States. The new East Wing will replace the original, which was torn down in October 2025 in preparation for the new wing's construction. The site, in Washington, D.C., has been under construction since September 2025.

Announced in July 2025 and planned to open in September 2028, the stated purpose of the White House State Ballroom is to add a venue with a higher seating capacity than the East Room for formal events such as state dinners, and to add a secure event space for future presidents. The new East Wing is being built atop an under-construction six-story bunker that will replace the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOD) that was demolished with the original East Wing.

What do the sentences in yellow tell us?  (1) The new East Wing will replace the original, which was torn down in October 2025, and; (2) The new East Wing is being built atop an under-construction six-story bunker that will replace the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) that was demolished with the original East Wing.

In short, the administration knew the White House bunker existed because Trump ordered it to be demolished -- and he apparently did it with no authorization or consultation from Congress, as required by law. As we wrote in a post dated August 20, 2026:

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.  

This is where Trump's actions start smelling Nixonian. We have more on that in upcoming posts.

Trump has been pushing for a ballroom/military bunker at the White House, but now we learn that such a bunker already exists; did the administration know or is it clueless?

White House construction in progress (AP)

Of all the damage Donald Trump has inflicted on the United States and its reputation, nothing he's done seems to have enraged Americans like his demolition of the White House's East Wing to make room for a ballroom, which morphed into a "military installation" and then a "military bunker." Now we learn there never was any need for a bunker-style facility at the White House; it already had one  -- and in a show of the incompetence that has become its trademark, the administration apparently did not know about the bunker's existence. 

In a jointly published article at The UK Independent and Yahoo! News -- with original reporting from The Washington Post -- we learn just how clueless Trump and his minions can appear to be. Under the headline "White House secret bunker undermines Trump's security case for Trump's $600m ballroom: report," Joe Sommerlad writes:

President Donald Trump's insistence that his $600 million White House ballroom is justified because of the security upgrades it will bring is undermined by the fact that the complex already has a secret bunker, according to former officials.

The Washington Post cites three ex-officials who point to the existence of the nuclear-proof underground base as grounds for rejecting Trump's case for proceeding with his pet project.

What prompted a White House bunker to be built, what features does it include, and how long has it been there? Sommerlad has the details:

The bunker was commissioned in response to the 9/11 attacks and completed during Barack Obama's tenure to keep the commander-in-chief safe.

It is reportedly situated 60 feet below street level, is accessible by private elevator, stores a month's supply of food, has its own air supply system and is intended to shield its inhabitants from a range of threats, including the blast of a weapon of mass destruction.

It was itself constructed as a successor to the existing Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) in the basement of the East Wing, which was built to protect Franklin D Roosevelt in the Second World War and served to safeguard first lady Laura Bush and vice president Dick Cheney when al-Qaeda struck 25 years ago.

As it turns out, the arguments the Trump administration is making for its ballroom/military bunker already have been made, Sommerlad reports:

The unnamed former officials told The Post the arguments put forward for the bunker during the War on Terror are similar to those being made by the Trump administration now to explain the need for the new ballroom, raising questions about whether the latter is really essential.

"The East Wing Modernization Project is inextricably tied to the security of the president, the White House grounds and the certain security infrastructure assets," White House spokesman Davis Ingle countered in a statement to The Independent. 

"Recent events such as the foiled attack on the historic UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House proves exactly why the East Wing Modernization Project is severely needed for large scale events, which include drone-proof structures and drone ports among other critical security enhancements." 

As we reported yesterday, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is allowing Trump to proceed with construction, both above and below ground, even though the president clearly violated the law when he demolished the East Wing to make room for his ballroom without seeking authorization from Congress. We showed that Trump's efforts to build his ballroom/military bunker have been marked by deceitful public statements and lawless machinations largely outside of public view. We suspect the public can expect to see such a campaign continue now that Americans know a White House bunker already exists. Sommerlad writes:

The fate of the construction project currently sits with the U.S. Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts issued an order Friday allowing work to continue while his bench considers an emergency appeal arguing that it must be halted unless congressional approval is granted.

Both a U.S. district judge and a federal appeals panel have found that the support of a majority of lawmakers in the House of Representatives and Senate is required before the undertaking can proceed.  

Technically, Roberts lifted a stay that had halted construction in order to allow the full court to consider an emergency appeal. But Roberts put no timeline on when a full decision might be reached, so for now, Trump has carte blanche to do whatever he wants with the White House. That probably does not, and should not, give Americans much comfort about what is happening to an iconic governmental structure, a symbol of U.S. democracy that belongs to them due to their status as taxpayers. Meanwhile, we see signs that the administration's PR blitz already is in full swing. Whether that will be built mostly on facts or falsehoods remains to be seen. The history of the Trump administration does not give us much reason to expect facts going forward. Sommerlad writes:

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said in an August filing that the proposed complex "serves continuity-of-government interests by ensuring that the president and senior national security staff are able to operate from a protected facility during any attack on the nation's capital."

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has similarly claimed: "Securing this reinforced subterranean node guarantees uninterrupted command and control in place."

Driscoll called it "a nondiscretionary prerequisite to ensure the president can maintain continuity of government, uninterrupted operations, and effectively exercise National Command Authority during an attack or global crisis." (Driscoll seems to assume that it would be in America's best interests for Trump to be in control during a global crisis. Recent history tells us that Trump is more likely to start a global crisis than to end one. As for Stephen Miller, does anyone -- even MAGA cultists -- believe a word he says?)

Trump's unauthorized construction continues apace, and John Roberts seems perfectly fine with that. But it's a scary proposition when it remains unclear if the administration is aware a bunker already is in place. Could this be a construction accident -- perhaps a devastating one -- waiting to happen? Sommerlad writes:

Lawyers for the White House told the Supreme Court earlier this month the complex is 65 percent complete and that a 250-strong construction crew was working on it 20 hours per day, seven days a week to get it done.

Trump himself has meanwhile claimed that opposition to the project is "disloyal" and attacked the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the organization tasked by Congress with preserving D.C. institutions and landmarks, for challenging the ballroom in court, suggesting their lawsuit risked compromising national security. (Memo to the president: Maybe there would be no lawsuit, and no national-security concern, if you had followed the law and received authorization from Congress before beginning construction.)

"I said the problem with the suit – I told them this – is that we have many military things in this ballroom, and ideally, they shouldn't be revealed," he complained in the Oval Office last week.

"But now they are revealed, so the world knows about it." 

 Notice that our president -- supposedly the "Leader of the Free World" -- is blaming someone else for a problem he caused. How very Trumpian.

Who knows what will happen next in the ballroom/bunker saga? But here is one major question hanging out there: Did the Trump administration know a White House bunker already existed when it began unauthorized construction? I'm going to do some research on that question, and I will keep you posted on my progress. We hope you will stay tuned.

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.