A Fitting End for Trump’s Gaudy Ballroom

Donald Trump is going to get his gaudy ballroom. But with a little imagination, a Democratic president could give the story a socially useful ending.

The Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that the architectural experts trying to stop the ballroom don’t have standing to do so. In a stinging dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts—who is rarely in the minority—wrote passionately about historic preservation. He said the decision to go ahead was “likely unlawful.”

Of course, it was Roberts and the Roberts Court that in 2024 gave the president immunity from prosecution for anything he did in office—essentially saying, as Richard Nixon once did, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” As I wrote at the time, this was one of the worst SCOTUS decisions in U.S. history.

As Roberts indicated, only Congress can stop Trump’s ballroom. And that’s not going to happen right now.

Even if Democrats take control of Congress next year, they’ll have a hard time halting it. Construction will resume this week, and the ballroom will be nearly complete in early 2027.

So how to make a silk (or at least useful) purse out of a sow’s ear?

I found my answer during a visit last week to the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, which has a 60,000-square-foot event space that contains a large basketball court. I had thought the court was outdoors. It’s indoors—and it shows how a facility of that size can serve multiple purposes. The day I was there, a large event was scheduled, so the basketball court had a nice carpet covering it.

You could imagine a future Democratic president saying: All right, I’m stuck with this ballroom. But I can take down some of the gold and use the space a few times a year for winter state dinners or big White House conferences. The rest of the time, let’s ditch the term “Trump Ballroom” and make it “The East Wing Community Center,” a recreational facility for the young people of Washington, D.C.

The monstrosity would still be an ugly appendage that wrecks the symmetry of the historic White House. But over time, we’d grow accustomed to having a multi-purpose venue that serves the needs of both the president and the capital. As part of recovering from this sordid era, we’d turn a monument to Trump’s ego into a symbol of community and the importance of recreation.

The security would be manageable. Kids in D.C. public schools already have to go through metal detectors every day. Now they would pass through them after school, too. No big deal. And the need is there. The large Deanwood Recreation Center, built several years ago, is already too small to serve Washington beyond the immediate neighborhood.

It would be a fitting ending to the ballroom story to have children entering the East Wing every day to play basketball.

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