Tangle - SCOTUS and the White House ballroom.

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

On Monday, the Supreme Court decided 5–4 to allow President Trump to continue above-ground construction on his White House ballroom project. The unsigned order pauses a federal judge’s halt on above-ground construction, stating the plaintiff likely lacks legal standing. However, the majority did not decide whether Trump has the legal authority to build the ballroom without congressional approval, and litigation will continue in lower courts.Ad-free podcasts are here!Get 20% off your first year of ad-free episodes, exclusive interviews, and deep dives with Tangle’s podcast membership!Get texts from us.The news cycle is heating up as we head into the midterms, and you can follow along with us every step of the way. On our SMS messaging service, we give readers exclusive opportunities to weigh in on our daily topics, access to behind-the-scenes peeks at our editorial process, and staff analysis of breaking news that doesn’t go to the newsletter.Share your questions.Next Friday, September 11, we’ll publish a mailbag edition answering reader questions about the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as well as broader questions about other timely news topics, under-the-radar issues, and anything else of interest. You can submit a question here for consideration.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think about the legal and practical implications of this case? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast written by: Will Kaback and audio engineered and edited by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Audrey Moorehead, and Carina Pacheco. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of our take. I am your host today, senior editor, Will K. Back, wishing you a happy hump day on this Wednesday, September 2nd. So President Trump's White House Ballroom Project is back in the headlines this week, and the Supreme Court may or may not have just written the final chapter in this construction saga. Emphasis on the may have. There is a bit more than meets the eye here, especially with this court decision. So today we're going to parse exactly what went into their determination and what it means about the future of this project.

As a bonus, I'm going to finally get to connect Robert Moses to a contemporary news item, which is something I admittedly have been trying to do after spending the bulk of last year reading The Power Broker by Robert A. Kro. So stay tuned for that as well. Before we dive into the main topic, I wanted to give a plug for our SMS messaging service subtext, where we give the Tangle audience exclusive opportunities to weigh in on things like our daily topics. We give access to behind-the-scenes peaks at our editorial process, as well as some exclusive staff analysis and breaking news that you don't see in the newsletter or the podcast. So as the news cycle heats up heading into this November's midterms, that will be a great

place to follow along with us and get some more timely up-to-the-minute updates. So if you do want to check out subtext, it is completely free. All you have to do is go to the link that we'll put in today's show notes and you can sign up there. All right. Now I'm going to pass it over to Audrey to get us into today's topic. Thanks, Will. Well, first up, we have today's quick hits. Number one, U.S. Central Command said the military carried out a new wave of airstrikes

against Iranian targets in response to Iranian missile and drone attacks on U.S. bases in the Middle East. Number two, Senator Ed Markey defeated Representative Seth Moulton in Massachusetts' Democratic Senate primary. Markey will face Republican attorney and veteran John Dieton in the general election. Number three, Germany said it believes Russia was behind an attempt to, to send explosive drones to a German airport in August. Germany's interior minister said, we do not consider ourselves at war, but we are the daily target of hybrid warfare,

and pledged to seek new sanctions against Russia. Number four. The House voted 370 to 48 to pass a three-month spending bill in advance of a September 30th funding deadline. The Senate passed the bill in August, and it now goes to President Trump to sign. Number five. Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

rebuked representatives Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Glucentcamp Perez of Washington after they cast deciding votes to pass a Republican-led procedural measure advancing parameters for how a set of bills will be debated on the House floor. We have some significant breaking news from the Supreme Court. In a 5-4 decision, the court is allowing construction on Donald Trump's ballroom to proceed while legal challenges play out. The court said that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the plaintiff in this case, likely did not have the legal standing to bring the lawsuit.

On Monday, the Supreme Court decided five to four to allow President Trump to continue above-ground construction on his White House ballroom project. The unsigned order pauses a federal judge's halt on above-ground construction, stating the plaintiff likely lacks legal standing. However, the majority did not decide whether Trump has the legal authority to build the ballroom without congressional approval, and litigation will continue in lower courts. For some more context, in July of 20, the Trump administration released plans to construct a 90,000 square foot addition to the White House,

and in October, construction crews began demolishing the White House's east wing. The project, originally estimated to cost $200 million, would feature a large ballroom and underground military compound. The National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States, or NTFHP, sued the National Park Service and Donald Trump, among other defendants, alleging that presidents cannot demolish parts of the White House without congressional authorization. In March, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ordered above-ground construction on the project to pause, saying the president is the steward of the property and not the owner. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to issue an immediate administrative stay on Leon's order on August 13th. Chief Justice John Roberts granted the request on August 21st. Roberts' order temporarily allowed above-ground construction to continue while the Supreme Court considered the case.

Ten days later, the court ruled in favor of the administration. The five Justice Majority cited national security concerns and rejected the plaintiff's asserted basis for legal challenge based on grounds of aesthetic, cultural, and historical interests. The unsigned opinion said, mere offense, disagreement, or distaste, does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury under Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution. Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by the court's three Democratic appointed justices in dissent, argued that federal law requires congressional approval for any construction in federal parks in the District of Columbia. Roberts also cited court precedent that environmentalists can have standing based on being aesthetically injured by the destruction of ecosystems, drawing the parallel that preservationists can have similar standing based on the destruction of historic buildings. The NTFHP president and CEO Brent Leggs criticized the ruling. He said, quote, we are deeply disappointed in the Supreme Court's ruling today and

respectfully disagree with the majority's opinion on standing. It is noteworthy that the majority did not weigh in on whether the Ballroom Project was in fact legal, end quote. Donald Trump called the NTFHP lawsuit baseless and celebrated the court's decision. He said, quote, I am pleased to report that the United States Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of the ballroom slash military complex being built without any further contingency, doubt, or threat, end quote. He predicted that construction will finish in summer of 2008. Today, you'll hear views from the right and the left on the ruling.

then senior editor Will Kayback will share his take. We'll be right back after this quick break. First up, what the right is saying. The right supports the court's ruling, saying the plaintiff's standing argument was weak. Some push back on claims that the Republican-appointed justices are rubber stamps for the president. Others note that many presidents have renovated the White House in the past.

In National Review, Dan McLaughlin suggested the ruling looks like the right decision. Allison Hogan, who serves on the NTFHP, Board of Trustees, hasn't been personally harmed in any way. She just doesn't like the way the place looks. That would be a flimsy basis for a property owner to complain of a neighboring building, short of meeting the common law standard for a nuisance, let alone a person who just walks by a building now and then. As it happens, aesthetic standing really is a thing in the law, however, if a dubious one. The doctrine, like so many silly things, comes out of a 1970s opinion, Sierra Club v. Morton. It is, however, largely a creature of environmental,

law, in which courts tend to stretch the law of standing on the theory that the legal protection of nature is intended in good part to benefit people who use parks. This case, however, is quite different. If Trump is breaking the law in renovating the east wing of the White House, the real victim is Congress. Chief Justice Roberts argued, the White House is not just any building, and when it comes to historic preservation, Hoagland is not just any person. But in a republic where all of us are created equal, maybe she is. The Washington Post editorial board wrote about what Trump's ballroom win really says about the Supreme Court. Those who want to portray the court as a puppet for President Donald Trump will point to Monday's

ruling on the White House ballroom as supposed proof. But look at the case's details. The majority based its decision on standing. In general, a person needs to face a concrete and particularized injury to bring a valid lawsuit. Millions of Americans are offended by Trump's unilateral effort to change the White House, but that doesn't give court standing to enter a judgment on their behalf. Saying so reflected venerable conservative priorities. In general, while liberals have been open to relaxing rules around standing, conservatives have resisted. This was a conservative decision, not a pro-Trump one. It's a shame that the separation of powers didn't work as intended, with Trump and Congress agreeing on what reasonable construction would look like. But the Supreme

Court wouldn't have strengthened the constitutional order by overstepping its own legal role. In PJ media, Matt Margolis said being offended isn't a legal injury. Presidents from both parties have wanted a White House ballroom for years. State dinners have been hosted in a tent on the South lawn, forcing foreign dignitaries to trudge outside to portable toilets. This was never about the ballroom itself. It was about the fact that Trump is finally the one building it, and the left can't stand it.

In his dissent, Roberts wrote that the construction was likely unlawful, and argued the majority was letting it proceed, not because that construction is legal, but because the trust likely lacks standing to sue. There's no reason to justify the claim that the project was unlawful. In fact, presidents have been renovating and expanding the White House for more than a century, and nobody sued over it then. Franklin D. Roosevelt installed an indoor pool and expanded both wings.

Harry Truman gutted and rebuilt the entire interior in 1948. Richard Nixon added the press briefing room in a bowling alley. Barack Obama spent two years in $375 million, turning the tennis court into a basketball court, and nobody on the left blink. and you didn't see that project get tied up in lawsuits either. Now what the left is saying. The left opposes the ruling, with many arguing the ballroom construction is illegal.

Some accuse the Republican-appointed justices of favoring Trump. Others say Chief Justice Roberts' previous opinions laid the groundwork for this outcome. In Vox, Ian Milheiser said the court just gave Trump his illegal ballroom. Notably, no member of the court argued that Trump's ballroom an enormous structure that the president plans to build on the former side of the White House's East Wing is legal. Because the majority opinion is so poorly explained, it is hard to tell what its implications will be. If the court had explicitly overruled its past decisions holding the plaintiff

may often sue to challenge the destruction of something beautiful, that would be an existential threat to countless environmental, conservationist, and historical preservation laws that all exist to preserve natural or historic beauty. But the court's failure to explain why Lou v. Defenders of Wildlife does not require them to rule against Trump, leaves lawyers and judges to guess at what the court just did to the rules governing standing. Perhaps this is a one-off decision intended solely to do a favor for Trump. Or maybe it's the harbinger of a future decision setting much of America's environmental protection regime on fire. The five justices in the majority barely explain themselves, so we cannot yet know what National Park Service means.

But one thing that is clear is that the decision makes no sense. In balls and strikes, Jay Willis suggested the ruling is everything Trump could have asked for. The upshot of National Park Service versus National Trust for Historic Preservation is that whether or not Trump's already in progress ballroom is legal, something that, in my view, the Supreme Court of the United States really ought to weigh, but whatever, no one has the power to stop its construction, even temporarily. As a result, if a federal court eventually rules on the merits that no, Trump can't build the ballroom, that conclusion will be academic. The ballroom will already be complete. National Trust for Historic Preservation is yet another entry in the canon of cases in which the

conservative justices cobble together some half-ass gibberish to assert that the law compels their preferred result. An abstract concept like standing doctrine is especially useful in this context, since its contours are flexible. The fight over the ballroom lays bare the absurdity of the court strategy of resolving Trump-adjacent cases by pretending to do something, anything else. For Trump and the trust and everyone else watching this case, the only thing that matters here is whether the conservative supermajority's favorite president gets to build what he wants. In Mother Jones, Pamelaevie argued the president's lawlessness is the chief justice's fault. While Roberts clearly doesn't want to be blamed for the ballroom, he wrote many of the

precedents that undergird the majority's decision to let it go forward. In case after case, the majority presumed that the harm to Trump is greater than the harm to the targets of his actions, even when those are far more irreparable and concrete. There is an irony in Roberts's unwillingness to go along with this view of executive prerogative in the ballroom case, because he is largely responsible for it. In decision after decision, Roberts has imbued the presidency with the powers of the so-called unitary executive, a king-like ruler with total control over the executive branch. The country, he promised, would be better off with a decisive leader, rather than one who

must answer for his conduct in court. Just one year later, Trump decisively but illegally, raised the East Wing and started building a giant ballroom. On Monday, the court once again told Trump to go ahead with an illegal scheme. The lesson is clear. That's it for what the right and left are saying. Now I'll pass it off to Senior Editor Will Kayback for his take. Thanks, Audrey.

All right, here is my take. A brash New Yorker sets his sights on a legacy-defining construction process. He knows he'll face staunch opposition, and access to the necessary funds to complete the project is not guaranteed either. But he hasn't ace up his sleeve, or really a willingness to exploit flaws in the system. And that is, you just start building. The New Yorker I'm talking about was urban planner Robert Moses, and the project writ large was his incalculably large transformation of the city from 1924 to, to 1968, often at the expense of its lower-class residents and, especially in Moses's later years, with very little regard for the law. Here in the 21st century, though, that description also applies

to President Donald Trump and his White House ballroom. Moses' challenge was securing public financing for his enormous public works projects. But he realized that if he could obtain an initial sum to get those projects started, lawmakers and public officials would be more likely to relent and approve the rest of the funding later on. Once he'd put down stakes and spent that initial sum, city and state officials didn't want to let construction sites sit half complete, wasting both the money already expended and the work already done. More often than not, Moses got the funds he needed. Trump's challenge with the ballroom is a bit more complex. He has ostensibly raised necessary funding from private donors to start the project. But tearing down an entire wing of the White House

and putting something new in its place isn't the same thing as just constructing a new highway or a bridge. In theory, such an endeavor requires congressional authorization and multiple executive agency reviews. Trump has essentially sidestepped those hurdles by employing the Moses strategy, tearing down the east wing without following normal procedures, and daring the courts or Congress or anybody really to stop him after taking those irreversible steps. To understand how we got to this point, we can contrast what should have happened to what has happened. In the normal process, the Trump administration would have begun by consulting Congress about its plans. Yes, Section 107 of the National Historic Preservation Act exempts the White

House and its grounds from requirements that constrict other prospective building projects on federal properties. However, that exemption does not give the president boundless authority to alter the executive mansion. As the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit noted in its August decision, Congress has broad authority over federal property, which includes the White House. Next, assuming authorization and funding for the project were secured, the National Capital Planning Commission, the NCPC, and the Commission of Fine Arts, the CFA, would each review the planned construction. After clearing the final designs and ensuring permits were in place, then demolition and construction could begin. Now here's what actually happened. Trump announced the project in July of

2025, and less than two months later, site preparation work began without congressional consultation or commission review. Between October 20th and 24th, the entire East Wing was demolished. Despite this progress, the CFA was still set to review the administration. Ballroom plans, and it could have still raised concerns. However, in late October, President Trump fired all six of the commission's members before they could issue their report. In January of this year, the president appointed new CFA members, widely viewed as administration allies, and they joined loyalists that were already on the NCPC, who had been appointed in July 2025. The newly constituted CFA began its new review in January, and it apprinated. Itapesionstuted,

approved the plan in February. The NCPC's review and approval followed in April. Of course, these assessments were largely pointless by then, as the East Wing was already gone. All that was left to do was rubber-stamp the ballroom construction plan that was, perhaps unsurprisingly, already underway. In Song, the Trump administration ignored proper procedure at key steps, disregarding Congress and taking irreversible action before the courts could catch up. Whatever you think of the merits of the ballroom itself, that underlying narrative is hard to dispute. Still, the legal system eventually did catch up just in time to actually slow down new construction. Given the president's disregard for proper procedure and tearing down the east wing, you might assume that the courts would

prevent any further action while challenges to the project proceeded. How then did the Supreme Court arrive at this week's decision, which did the opposite? The answer is technical and it leaves me feeling unsatisfied. As a brief refresher, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the NH-HP, sued last December to pause ballroom construction, claiming that group member Alison K. Hoagland would suffer irreparable harm to her, quote, aesthetic, cultural, and historical interests, end quote, if the ballroom were built. It also said in a later filing that the government's national security interests wouldn't be harmed in this instance, since a lower court ruling allowed underground construction of the secure bunker to continue.

But the court's majority disagreed, deferring to the government's broad claim in its own filing, that, quote, constructing something approximating the height and mass of the intended above-ground ballroom is crucial to the security of the below-ground military installation. Furthermore, it rejected the NTHP's argument that Houghlin had standing to sue, writing, quote, mere offense, disagreement, or distaste does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury, end quote. In his dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that the court has actually held that aesthetic injury can qualify for standing in environmental cases, comparing Hoagland's preservationist interest in a public historic site to a conservationist's desire to observe an endangered species in the wild. On the narrow question of standing here, I can actually understand both perspectives, and I'm more convinced by the majority on the technical question.

I also think the principle of standing is important and worth defending. It prevents frivolous lawsuits and focuses the legal system on cases where courts can offer redress for alleged harms. Those on the left outraged by this ruling should remember all the times the Supreme Court ruled in their favor on issues of standing. For instance, California versus Texas in 2021, which preserved the Affordable Care Act, United States versus Texas in 2023, which upheld the Biden administration's immigration policies, and food and drug administration versus Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine in 2024, which upheld access to abortion medication. There are many more examples like this, too.

However, what frustrates me about this outcome is what it means for challenges to Trump's Moses strategy in the future. If, quote, aesthetic, cultural, and historical interests don't meet the threshold for standing in this case, who besides Congress could bring a valid suit? In effect, the Trump administration appears to have broken the law without leaving anyone with a sufficiently direct injury to challenge it, thus allowing it to proceed. That feels really unacceptable to me, but I'm also not sure what can be done about it. And I fully acknowledge that, as Isaac wrote when we covered the demolition back in October, this ballroom project is far down the list of pressing national issues. But at the same time, it's really about more than the ballroom.

Trump is currently threatening to tear down the Kennedy Center if he can't renovate it to his liking. And I'm not confident that that demolition could be stopped if he decides to proceed. Outside of these construction projects, consider the Iran war. The Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war, though I acknowledge too that presidents have long sidestepped this by claiming, quote, military actions without congressional authorization. After six months of such actions, though, very few would dispute were at war with Iran. Trump himself calls it a war. And yet no congressional authorization has been given. And it's hard to imagine the Supreme Court or many lower courts, really, accepting that an

individual citizen or a U.S. business has standing to challenge the president. war powers, and with Congress declining to assert its own power, we're just left to accept a war that Congress never authorized, continuing in seeming perpetuity. If there's one lesson to take from the second Trump administration so far, it's that the president prefers to act fast and handle opposition later. In cases where legal standing is more easily established, things like tariffs, birthright citizenship, mistaken deportations, doge layoffs, he's all. He's all often lost in court. But the ballroom saga shows that sometimes this strategy works,

and the Iran war shows that sometimes it works in much more consequential situations. However you feel about the merits of either action, I don't think we should be comfortable with this administration or any subsequent one, having that kind of power. All right, that is it for my take. I'm going to pass this over to managing editor Ari Weidzeman, who authored a concurrence to my take, and then Audrey will take us on from there.

So, Ari, over to you. This is Tango's managing editor, Ari Weissman, with a staff concurrence. Like Will, I am also deeply concerned about the standing gap that prevents the courts from stepping in when the executive branch supersedes a willfully compliant Congress like it's happening today. But I'm preoccupied by the question of what constraints could possibly exist here. The key to me is that Congress is willfully compliant, which then begs the question, what will happen if and when Congress is no longer compliant?

Just reading the tea leaves here, but I think the Democrats are likely to win at least the House back in November. I wonder what they're going to prioritize once they're there. By January, when the new Congress is sworn in, this ball and construction could be Robert Moses levels of complete, so a stop order wouldn't make sense. Would there be enough bipartisan veto-proof momentum to pass a law curtailing executive power more sharply?

Maybe, but probably. not. So in that case, what would congressional Democrats do? One potential way forward would be particularly dramatic. Let's wind the clock back to 2014. A federal judge allowed the House of Representatives at that time to sue President Barack Obama for allegedly superseding his authority with mandating Affordable Care Act payments, which the White House appealed to the Supreme Court in 2015. President Trump was inaugurated and stopped those payments before that case was decided, but the legal question remains an open one. If it wanted to, could the House of Representatives litigate a dispute with the president

before the Supreme Court? In five months' time, you might find out. That's all I had to add today, so I'm going to pass it back over to Audrey for the rest of the pod. We'll be right back after this quick break. Thanks, Ari. Finally, we have today's How a Nice Day story. On July 23rd, Erosso-Cresanto-Valdes disappeared while fishing in Mexico, prompting an urgent search.

After two weeks, hope appeared to be lost. But on day 15 of the search, authorities found Valdez alive, trapped in a cave 328 feet below the water. Valdez told rescuers that he ventured into the cave after going underwater in the area, adding that it was pitch black inside. While trapped, he was able to breathe thanks to an air chamber in the cave, and he drank rainwater to survive.

He remains under medical care, but has been reunited with his family. People has the story, and you can find a link in the show notes. That's it for today's episode. If you would like to support our work, head over to retangle.com, where you can buy a newsletter subscription, a podcast subscription, or a bundle membership that gets you a discount on both. We will be right back here tomorrow. But in the meantime, this has been Editor Audrey Moorhead,

on behalf of Isaac and everyone else. Have a great day and peace. Our executive editor and founder is me. Isaac Saul and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited in NGFRIT. by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Keeback and associate editor's Audrey Moorhead and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at reetangle.com.