Ballroom Judges Brilliantly Troll Trump in Devastating Judgment

Federal appeals court judges who ordered Donald Trump to halt construction of his beloved ballroom trolled the president with a history lesson in their scathing judgment.

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They cast Trump as a mere “tenant” of the “people’s house,” compared his gaudy vision with the Palace of Versailles, and insisted he had no authority to go ahead with the $400 million ballroom.

The appeals court ruled in a 2-1 decision to back historic preservationists who have branded the 90,000-square-foot project a blight on the famed Washington landscape.

Trump immediately blasted the decision as unjust and said he would appeal to the Supreme Court.

However, Judge Patricia Millett, who was appointed by Barack Obama, and Judge Bradley Garcia, a Joe Biden appointee, insisted that history was on their side.

In their opinion, they cited Pierre L’Enfant, the founding architect of the nation’s capital city layout, and his intention to “focus on the towering Capitol building—the gleaming palace of the people in the new democracy—and to contrast it with the simple humility of the White House.”

Quoting Scott W. Berg’s 2008 biography, Grand Avenues: The Story of Charles L’Enfant, they wrote of the enduring difference between the grandeur of Versailles and the Frenchman’s modest blueprint for the White House. “Where the king’s bedroom was placed on the central axis of Versailles, enshrining the rule of divine right transferred via primogeniture, here in L’Enfant’s plan the home of Congress took center stage.”

In an apparent rap across the knuckles to Trump, the court continued: “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.”

A central tenet of the decision was the judges’ determination that it should be Congress, and not the president, who funds any renovations to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

“Throughout history,” they wrote, “Congress has appropriated funds both for the White House’s maintenance and for necessary physical improvements and additions. Congress, for example, authorized the repair and reconstruction of the White House after the British attempted to burn it down during the War of 1812.

“Congress also specifically appropriated the funds that were used to build the original East and West Wings of the White House. We are aware of no instance in American history in which a President unilaterally and using privately collected funds demolished substantial portions of the White House that Congress authorized to be built and American taxpayers paid for. Until now.”

The judges’ annoyance at the way Trump knocked down the East Wing without seeking permission is palpable.

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“Over just three days in October 2025, without undertaking promised consultations or obtaining Congress’s permission, President Trump bulldozed the entire East Wing in order to construct a massive, 90,000 square-foot ballroom paid for by private funds with no congressional oversight,” they wrote.

They added that the administration had initially insisted that the ballroom project and the underground security bunker were separate projects, before changing the approach and insisting they came as a package deal.

“The court first pointed out that, through all previous stages of the litigation, the Defendants had repeatedly represented that the project’s ‘underground elements’—not anything above ground—impacted national security … and that construction of the security bunker below ground and the ballroom above were ‘independent’ of each other.

“Further, the Defendants had assured the district court in January that the project’s below-ground elements do not ‘lock in’ the design of the above-ground ballroom.”

“The district court found that the Defendants’ current claim that the ballroom and below-ground bunker construction have been an inseparable and integral whole all along is ‘in direct conflict with Defendants’ prior representations’ to the court.”

The judges also hit back at claims by Trump’s lawyers that people who didn’t like the aesthetics of the ballroom could simply “avert their gaze.”

The judges said that theory “would deem no one injured by a decision to raze the Statue of Liberty, to obscure the names on the Vietnam War Memorial, or to install a political billboard atop Mount Rushmore.

“People wounded by the lost historical view could just ‘shift [their] gaze.’ Yet the harm would remain from being unable to look upon, learn from, or commune in a location where, for example, a personal hero was born, an ancestor first arrived in the United States, a relative died on September 11th, or the battle for the individual’s equal rights and dignity first started.

“The Defendants’ argument, in other words, simply brushes off the signification, emotion, meaning, and particularized value to individuals of witnessing certain places where their history happened, looking upon architectural marvels, reveling in sweeping landscapes, and viewing buildings, memorials, and monuments that tell the American story.”

The dissenting judge, Trump-nominated Judge Neomi Rao, argued that, “this case is not about tearing down the White House and building a skyscraper or razing the Statue of Liberty.