MIKE DAVIS: Trump's ballroom win highlights need for serious judicial nominees

Last year, President Donald Trump ordered construction of a White House ballroom and a secure underground military facility. A D.C. busybody sued to stop it, and on Aug. 31, the Supreme Court killed this laughable lawsuit by a single vote. Mid-construction, long after the East Wing’s demolition, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three Democratic women justices to try to shut down the president of the United States’ security improvement, expressly permitted by federal statute and Article II of the Constitution, to the White House complex. This narrow 5-4 ruling proves precisely why Republicans must continue to nominate and confirm rock-solid constitutionalists all across the federal judiciary.

For decades, the White House hosted large events in outdoor tents, with women’s high heels sinking into the soggy Rose Garden and other White House grounds. But that open setting provides a rich target for terrorists, including too many of today’s Democrats, who wish to harm the president. The threat is all too real. Just over two years ago, Matthew Thomas Crooks nearly assassinated Trump at an open-air campaign rally in Butler, Pa. Two months later, Ryan Routh attempted another assassination of Trump at a Florida golf course. In April, a third would-be assassin attempted to murder Trump in a D.C. hotel ballroom at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

The dire need for a highly secure White House ballroom is obvious – and presidents and their guests long after Trump will enjoy its beauty, utility and convenience. The White House regularly hosts heads of state, members of Congress, foreign diplomats and other high-value targets of America’s enemies. Any reasonable person ought to know that, in these disturbing times, we need the most enhanced security imaginable. Trump acted. He ordered the demolition of the run-down, long-past-its-prime White House East Wing to build a privately funded, 70-foot-tall indoor ballroom, a subterranean military bunker, and rooftop security facility.

WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS' DINNER SHOOTING SHARPENS FOCUS ON TRUMP’S BALLROOM CONSTRUCTION PROPOSAL

Enter Alison Hoagland, an underworked D.C. busybody and member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who claims she leisurely strolls by the White House vicinity about once a month – while real Americans, in real America, work real jobs.

She filed suit, claiming the new ballroom was unsightly and offended her apparently very delicate aesthetic sensibilities. D.C. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee who suffers from severe Trump Derangement Syndrome like so many other Republican-appointed D.C. federal judges, took the bait. He blocked all new above-ground construction for the East Wing unless the subsurface military facility strictly required it.

APPEALS COURT LETS TRUMP RESUME WHITE HOUSE BALLROOM CONSTRUCTION, SEEKS LOWER COURT CLARITY

D.C. federal judges are legendary for their self-imagined expertise in… well, everything. But a judge who has never had a real job in his adult life deluding himself into believing his job is now to moonlight as the construction foreman over the White House complex, instead of the duly-elected president of the United States (who happens to be one of the best builders in the world for over 50 years), is next-level judicial narcissism and lawlessness.

Unsurprisingly, the Democrat-dominated D.C. Circuit upheld Leon’s rogue ruling over a superb dissent by U.S. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, a former law clerk to America’s all-time-greatest justice, Clarence Thomas. The Trump administration took the fight to the Supreme Court, as these D.C. federal courts would turn the White House complex into a stop-work construction site for years.

TRUMP'S WHITE HOUSE BALLROOM CONSTRUCTION GETS ANOTHER LIFELINE FROM SCOTUS AMID HEATED LEGAL FIGHT

Article III of the U.S. Constitution requires a plaintiff to have standing. In order to bring suit in federal court, a plaintiff needs a concrete, redressable injury that has already occurred or which imminently looms. Plaintiff/D.C. busybody Alison Hoagland had nothing but her hurt feelings. The high court has never held that mere personal offense gives someone the right to bring a federal case.

Five of the six Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices correctly rejected Hoagland’s crackpot standing claim. Ruling for her would let anyone file a lawsuit to stop any government building project in America based on aesthetics and hurt feelings. The majority also torched Leon’s unworkable injunction. Leon, the self-appointed construction foreman as even former U.S. Attorney General William Barr – certainly no Trump cheerleader – mocked him, demanded the White House prove every foot of the project served a critical purpose, a subjective standard that would require endless court appearances, construction delays for years and unnecessary security risks at the White House complex.

Yet Chief Justice John Roberts ignored this basic logic and decided to pen a truly cringeworthy dissent. He argued standing depends on whether a government building is "iconic." He cherry-picked a century-old quote from Theodore Roosevelt to invent a limitless theory of standing. This ludicrous view came within one vote of prevailing. There must be something in the water in these D.C. federal courthouses.

Earlier this year, Leon enjoined lawful sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the International Criminal Court’s head prosecutor. The ICC had issued an absurd arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump rightfully sanctioned the ICC and its officials. But that didn’t faze Leon. Leon protected Albanese simply because her husband and children hold American citizenship. Thankfully, a D.C. Circuit panel stayed Leon’s stunning injunction, and the sanctions against Albanese remain in effect.

TRUMP SUFFERS MAJOR SUPREME COURT DEFEAT AS JUSTICES UPHOLD BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP

Roberts’ record is even worse. He cast the deciding vote to uphold Obamacare in 2012, killed the first Trump administration’s U.S. Census citizenship question in 2020, and protected DACA in 2020. He penned a gratuitous concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), explicitly noting he was not voting to overturn Roe v. Wade (1973), one of the worst decisions in Supreme Court history.

This June, Roberts delivered his coup de grâce. He authored Trump v. Barbara, an egregiously wrong opinion constitutionalizing birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants – including 1.5 million (and growing) Chinese birth tourists. Roberts' ruling is the gravest betrayal of our most crucial sovereign power as We The People, the sovereign citizens of America: to control who becomes one of us. Yet Roberts’ ballroom dissent read like a fever dream, following a bad bout of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

JUSTICE THOMAS WARNS PROGRESSIVISM IS A THREAT TO AMERICA IN RARE PUBLIC REMARKS

It could have been worse. Bush put former U.S. Circuit Judge J. Michael Luttig on his Supreme Court short list. This is the same Luttig who advocated throwing Trump off the 2024 ballot under the preposterous theory that he committed "insurrection" on Jan. 6, 2021. That ludicrous argument ultimately didn’t garner a single vote at the Supreme Court – not even from the three Democratic women who generally rule against Trump after simply seeing his name in the case caption.

The Article III Project proudly stands with Trump. We demand staunch constitutionalists in the mold of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Decades of spineless Republican judges – particularly in the D.C. swamp – have severely damaged this nation, and the Article III Project will lead the fight to ensure those days never return. Bold and fearless constitutionalists in the mold of new Trump-appointed U.S. Circuit Judge Emil Bove is our future. We won’t get fooled again.