Supreme Court Lets Trump Continue Building Tacky White House Ballroom

A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed President Trump to continue construction on his White House ballroom.

In a 5–4 decision that broke somewhat along traditional ideological lines, the court granted an emergency request filed by the Trump administration to proceed with construction on the president’s controversial plans for a White House ballroom. Justice John Roberts joined all three of the court’s liberal justices in dissenting.

“Construction of the ballroom has proceeded apace for the better part of a year,” Roberts wrote on behalf of the four dissenting justices. “That construction is likely unlawful. Pursuant to its plenary constitutional authority over the District of Columbia and federal property, Congress has explicitly prohibited the construction of any ‘building or structure … on any reservation, park, or public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.” … The ballroom is a building or structure being erected on federal park grounds—President’s Park—in the District of Columbia. Yet Congress has not passed any law resembling ‘express authority’ for the Executive’s construction of it.”

The conservative majority, in an unsigned decision, rejected the challenge from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which was seeking to halt construction of the ballroom indefinitely. The five justices did not rule on whether construction of the ballroom was in fact legal, but determined that the National Trust lacked the legal right to challenge the project.

“This Court has not found standing in circumstances like these before,” the court’s opinion read. “To the contrary, we have repeatedly held that mere offense, disagreement, or distaste does not qualify.”

While the court didn’t rule on the legality of the ballroom’s construction, the decision is still a major win for Trump—and an infringement on the powers of Congress.

“The White House is not just any building,” Roberts noted in the dissent. “In failing to appreciate as much, the court misconceives the plaintiff’s injury, allowing the executive’s likely infringement of the legislature’s power of the purse and authority to regulate federal property in the District of Columbia to continue.”

Trump has tried to push forward his 90,000-square-foot ballroom by arguing that it will provide a secure underground facility in case of a national emergency, but a recent report revealed that a bunker already exists under the White House to protect the president and his team if necessary. Meanwhile, the skyrocketing costs of the ballroom keeps escalating. What Trump originally claimed would be a $200 million project funded by donors has now turned into a $600 million boondogglewith taxpayers on the hook for half that amount.

This story has been updated.

“I regret ever supporting you.” “You have lost your mind.” “Horrendous messaging.”

These are just a few of the messages that President Trump’s supporters have sent him on Truth Social after his Monday morning attack on opponents of data centers.

Trump had defended data center projects, saying communities who oppose them “want to end up being backwards and poor.” “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign,” he posted, adding that China “could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement.”

Some of his supporters on Truth Social were incensed.

“This statement is insane,” said @FLBeachbird. “I’m already on a water restriction.”

“You’re an idiot. You’ll be making money I suspect. Meanwhile our lives get shittier with no water, more noise,” commented @Seigfried75.

Trump has consistently backed data centers, which are proliferating amid the artificial intelligence boom, during his second term as president. Last month he said, “You have communities that really want the data centers, and frankly those are the smart communities because it means a tremendous numbers of jobs, very little actual disruption.”

In reality, people living near data centers complain about the negative effects on their lives, from the drain on water supplies to increased noise and utility costs. Most data centers only provide a few dozen permanent on-site jobs too. Public opposition to data centers has united people on the left and right.

Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a new rule removing requirements that data centers would have to disclose how much they pollute, blocking residents who live near them from knowing what substances they’re being exposed to and denying them evidence to cite in any legal challenges.

It seems that Trump is will continue to stubbornly promote data centers, regardless not only of the environmental and economic costs, but the political ones too.

America’s 80-year-old president cannot keep his eyes open.

Donald Trump was caught on camera getting some shuteye Monday afternoon—in the middle of a health care announcement at the White House.

Surrounded by several Cabinet members and a host of health care executives, Trump started slouching in his chair after he finished speaking. Then, while Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. addressed the cameras, Trump fluttered his eyes closed.

Trump’s slumber was intermittently interrupted by a jolt awake, followed by a darting glance around the room. But the president repeatedly returned to a drooped position, resting his hands on the Resolute Desk while slowly nodding his head along to the meter of his crew’s speech, rarely blinking or flexing his eyelids.

The president’s entourage has bragged for years about Trump’s supposedly endless supply of energy, claiming that he routinely works into the early hours of the morning and that they are themselves surprised by his short sleep habits.

But the MAGA leader’s often bizarre conduct in the public eye has spurred calls for a health examination as medical experts, politicians, and voters alike fret over symptoms of Trump’s potential cognitive decline.

Over the first year and change of his second term, Trump’s speeches have become more disjointed and incoherent, his behavior increasingly erratic, and his appearances more unwilling and unpredictable. Trump has spent hours at Walter Reed Medical Center, fallen asleep during more than a dozen critical meetings, appeared lost and disoriented around foreign heads of state, frequently slurred his speech, and appeared with discolored and bruised skin on several occasions.

So far this year, he has undermined several of America’s oldest alliances, started beef with Pope Leo XIV, and thrust the U.S. into war with Iran without a feasible game plan.

Scandal-plagued Republican Representative Cory Mills has apparently gone “missing” from work after losing the GOP primary to TV reporter Ryan Elijah earlier this month.

The Daily Mail, citing anonymous sources, reports that the 46-year-old Florida congressman has decided to spend time “blowing off steam” at a $2 million beach house on New Smyrna Beach with 27-year-old aspiring model Catherine Chils. According to the tabloid, Chils and Mills have been spending time together for the last three years.

The day after the primary, August 19, Mills and his companion spent the day sitting in chairs on the beach for the whole day, a neighbor told the Daily Mail. “He had just sat outside and had kind of taken the day for himself,” the neighbor said. Mills was reportedly there through the weekend, although Chils denied to the publication that she was at the house and said she and the congressman are just friends.

However, Mills’s staff is concerned because he has stayed out of communication since his defeat. Even before the election, Mills missed scheduled TV appearances on Fox News and on a local TV station.

It’s not the first time Mills has disappeared, though. “The fact that he went missing and the staff can’t find him or hear from him is pretty bad but not surprising. He does this all the time,” another source told the tabloid. Mills reportedly has his own campaign bus that he sometimes sleeps in, making his whereabouts harder to ascertain.

The New Republic has emailed Mills’s press staff for comment and will update this story if they reply.

Mills is facing investigations from the House Ethics Committee and Department of Justice over alleged wire fraud and other financial misconduct, as well as allegations that he assaulted an ex-girlfriend, Republican state committeewoman and former Miss United States Lindsey Langston, at his apartment last year. Langston also alleges that Mills threatened to release revenge porn of her and violently attack men she dated after they broke up.

More recently, Mills has refused to deny that he dated a 19-year-old while serving in Congress, and President Trump pretended he didn’t endorse the congressman and knew he was going to lose all along. It seems like Mills is now just trying to run out the days until he leaves office in January.

Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico is sounding the alarm over potential voter suppression as Texas moves to shutter dozens of polling stations.

The Tarrant County Commissioners Court will vote Tuesday on a plan to reduce the county’s voting stations ahead of the midterm elections, the Associated Press reported. If approved, the key battleground county will scrap 92 polling stations just weeks ahead of the midterm elections.

Talarico, who is running against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, voiced his concerns about the plan at a news conference Sunday. “The most powerful people in this county, the most powerful people in this country, don’t want us to be able vote easily,” Talarico said.

Tarrant County Elections Administrator Clint Ludwig insisted that the reductions would focus on low-turnout polling sites. Voters would still have more than 200 locations where they can cast their votes.

“We’re clearly not trying to suppress the vote,” said State Representative Matt Shaheen, the Republican chairman of the House Elections Committee. “That’s a silly accusation.”

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and American Civil Liberties Union joined other voting rights groups to strongly condemn the proposal as a blatant “voter suppression tactic.”

“This proposal is a voter suppression tactic designed to impede Black voters and other voters of color from exercising their right to vote at the polls,” Demetria McCain, director of policy at the Legal Defense Fund, said in a statement.

This isn’t the first time Tarrant County officials have tried to gut the number of polling stations. In early August, they tabled plans to cut 140 sites amid overwhelming pushback.