U..S. President Donald Trump speaks at the site of ongoing construction of the planned White House ballroom in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 19, 2026.
Over the course of both Trump terms, he and his allies have used a “flood the zone” approach where they attempt to overwhelm opponents with controversial actions and statements so quickly that response becomes impossible. Now, the court wrangling over President Donald Trump’s controversial ballroom reveals that he applies a similar strategy to his vanity and construction projects: “move fast and break things and nobody has standing.”
This is according to Lawfare senior editor Molly Roberts, who was directly quoting the judge overseeing the case — a characterization with which Trump’s lawyers openly agreed.
Roberts was on hand for the oral arguments between attorneys representing the White House and those for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the latter of which had filed for an injunction barring construction while the case was heard. That injunction was granted while allowing only construction “strictly necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House and its grounds” to continue pending appeal. The White House then tried to argue that the ruling actually allowed for the construction of the ballroom, arguing that the whole thing was vital for security, which the judge did not buy, reaffirming that aboveground construction must halt until approved by Congress. The president’s ‘break things’ approach was revealed in the subsequent appeal.
According to Roberts, these latest appeal proceedings are “simultaneously more like and more unlike your typical litigation than those following the matter might have expected. More like, because the lawyer presenting for the government sounds like a lawyer and not the president on a Truth Social spree… Less like, because what this lawyer is saying is that neither these judges nor any can stop the administration from building what it wants to build once it has started building them. Not now, not ever.”
During oral arguments, after much back and forth, the White House lawyers essentially argued that once the president had already taken certain actions on the basis of security — such as, say, bulldozing the White House East Wing — there was no legal mechanism allowing a lawsuit to be brought against the government. The judge then raised a specific example: what if the White House were gone? Say an administration decides that security justifies an entirely new building, tears down the White House, and then someone decides to sue. Would such a suit be legal?
According to Roberts, White House lawyers argued that it would not be if the destruction of the original White House had already occurred.
“So move fast and break things and nobody has standing?” asked the judge. “Bulldoze the Statue of Liberty, and as long as the government does it fast enough, too bad, nothing to be done?”
“I think that’s right,” said the White House attorney.
What’s more, the judge had an important question about what would happen were construction allowed to proceed while the case was heard. If the government lost a year or so down the line and the ballroom was declared illegal, would the White House tear it down, or would its argument, “for the same safety and security reasons, be we can’t take it down?” The White agreed with the latter.
“So your position is this can’t be stopped by a court?” the judge asked. “That court, this court, the Supreme Court, no court could stop the building of this?”
The White House agreed.
“If this were complete lawlessness by the government,” the judge pressed, “it couldn’t be stopped?”
“Yes,” Roberts explained. According to the Trump administration, “even if the ballroom construction were complete lawlessness by the government, only Congress — not the courts — would have any independent role in stopping it.”