Originally published at: The Supreme Court’s Ballroom Decision Gave Trump the Only Thing He Cared About - TPM – Talking Points Memo
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at Balls and Strikes. Last fall, President Donald Trump demolished the East Wing of the White House so that he could build a gigantic honking ballroom in its place, using a conspicuously fuzzy combination of private donations and hundreds of millions…
The answer is yes, at least until the next Democratic president promises to raze the ballroom at their earliest opportunity, at which point the Court will suddenly rediscover its passion for preserving both D.C. landmarks and the separation of powers, and decide that before anyone goes tearing anything down here, it really ought to let the legal process play all the way out.
This is what I actually find frustrating about the current make up on the Court, the unashamed double standard of “its only a problem when Democrats do it.” I could live with a Court that made consistent decisions based on questionable logic, but trying to apply logic to the Christo-Federalist Society Justices gives me a tension headache,
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The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is a lackey. Think about that.
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“Federal law prohibits the construction of any new buildings on federal property in Washington, D.C., without the “express authority” of Congress, which, in news I am sure will astonish you, Trump did not bother obtaining first.”
Law is a whore of a thing. Something can, in fact, be illegal (see above), but in fact is NOT illegal unless SCOTUS says otherwise. So, once you own SCOTUS, you can do whatever you want — the situation that obtains with Trump.
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I think of him more as stakeholder in this swindle. He’s a little reluctant to do harm, but not that much.
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We should just demolish the SCOTUS building too.
NOTE: I did NOT say build a new one.
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And I note nor did you say “empty it out first”… 
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The six Nazgûl are not applying law, they are playing Calvinball.
ETA: And I’m very grateful to them for all the work they’re doing to build public support for Clyburn’s baker’s dozen.
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Baker’s Dozen, so, right now there are 6 votes to destroy our country and everything it aspires to on a fairly consistent basis.
How far is it to have 7 votes to do the same?
1 stinking justice, one.
I think that 23 is better. Have a 9 justice “Court” and 13 justices sitting in the Circuit courts and rotating into the 9 that hear cases. On a regular basis. Oh, and 1 Chief Justice who is the CAO (Chief Administrative Officer) for the Court, and is also in the rotation.
I think 23 sitting for each case is a bit much, but if those two assholes don’t get to sit on every case and shit all over our Country, sanity, logic, and Constitutionality can return to the Courts.
Then we can really get down to erasing trump from everything. And that ballroom? It’s got to go, and it can be paid for out of trumps bribes and kickbacks and fraudulent actions, him and thomas and alito and roberts and many others can fund the American Restoration with all their money until they are flat broke.
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The next President should demolish it on day one. If the Calvin Ball 6 Supreme Court objects, throw this decision about Tr*mp and his ballroom in their face, ignore them and demolish it anyway.
Although the federal courts have some tools to enforce compliance, their effectiveness depends on democratic cultural norms—and those norms in turn depend ultimately on the vigilance of the American people.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/courts-force-trump-comply/682545/
The Court has no standing army to enforce its orders, its relies solely on the belief by the American electorate that it is exercising fair and impartial rulings under the law. The Calvinball 6 lost that legitimacy starting with the first Tr-mp Administration in 2016.
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I agree wholeheartedly with you that the current Court has no legitimacy and reformation of the Court needs to be a priority in order to begin restoring any faith in it.
While I hate the idea of the ballroom I also hate the idea of demolishing it and wasting all of the resources that went into the construction. I’d much rather see the space cleaned of all the gilded-age faux gold, opened to the public, and converted into a boon for the local community. It would still be an architectural monstrosity but at least it could serve some good.
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You’re nicer than me!
Maybe they can revise it to reduce it’s footprint, up down, left and right, to something less abysmal.
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