Lower-court rulings would have blocked construction of the 90,000-square-foot ballroom after finding that the Trump administration should have first sought approval from Congress.
Page A5From§Eachthe midnight edition — 1 September 2026
Supreme Court allows Trump's ballroom construction that its own Chief Justice calls likely unlawful.
As it ran on the front
I always start with my notes, because my memory's not what it used to be, and reporters have already gotten the order wrong once today. Let me find the page... here it is. This month, the Supreme Court, in a split decision, allows construction on a White House ballroom to continue. Same page, few lines down: the Chief Justice of the United States writes a dissent. His word, not mine, I wrote it down special — 'likely.' The construction is 'likely unlawful.' Not unlawful. Likely unlawful.
I keep coming back to that word. Likely. My nephew's got a torpedo level, the kind you buy at the hardware store, and I asked him — I said, if the bubble's off, even a little, even 'likely' off, do you let the wall stand? He said no. He said a level doesn't do 'likely.' It's level or it's not. But apparently the highest court in the country's got a different level than my nephew's got, because the reading came back 'likely unlawful' and the crew kept building anyway.…
…(cont) I wrote down something else too — the exact language from the dissent, because I didn't trust myself to remember it right. Quote: 'No victory for separation of powers.' Those are the Chief Justice's own words, about his own Court's ruling. That's an unusual thing to write about your own institution's decision, in my experience. Usually when you win, somebody on your side says so.
So I've got two entries on the same page, from the same week, about the same building. One says the construction is likely against the law. The other says letting it happen anyway isn't a win for how the government's supposed to check itself. I'm no lawyer — I keep a notebook, is all I keep.
Oh — excuse me, one more thing, before you go. The dissent I've got written down here, the one from the Chief Justice himself — does it call this a victory for separation of powers, or does it say the opposite?
“The Court didn't say the ballroom was legal, it said it was probably not legal and let the concrete get poured anyway — that's not a ruling, that's a permission slip with a hall pass stapled to it. When the Chief Justice himself has to write 'no victory for separation of powers,' the separation already lost.”
“The Court simply declined to issue an injunction while litigation continues — that's standard practice, not an endorsement, and the dissent is just one justice's process concern, nothing more... though I suppose 'likely unlawful' is a strange thing for a process concern to say out loud.”
The receipts
Chief Justice John Roberts broke with his conservative colleagues in a Supreme Court decision Monday that allowed construction on the proposed White House ballroom to continue, saying the ruling upsets the separation of powers. Roberts…
US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts recently let construction on President Donald Trump's White House ballroom continue in a temporary solo decision, but on Monday he sided with the three liberals against the five right-wingers who…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.