They Used an Assassination Attempt to Sell a Ballroom
Let’s talk about what the Trump administration did in the 24 hours after an armed man was stopped at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — because it tells you everything about how this White House operates and what it considers a crisis worth exploiting.
Before the scene was fully secured. Before the injured Secret Service officer had been discharged from the hospital. Before most Americans had processed what had happened at the Washington Hilton Saturday night, the Department of Justice had already drafted a letter.
Not to Congress. Not to security experts. Not to the families of the people who were in that room.
To the lawyers for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The Letter
Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate wrote to the National Trust’s outside counsel on Sunday, demanding the organization voluntarily dismiss its lawsuit against Trump’s proposed White House ballroom by 9 a.m. Monday morning.
The logic, stated explicitly and without apparent embarrassment, was this: Saturday night’s shooting “proves, yet again, that the White House ballroom is essential for the safety and security of the President.” Therefore the lawsuit opposing it “puts the lives of the President, his family, and his staff at grave risk.” Therefore the organization must drop its case immediately or the government would move to dissolve the injunction.
“Enough is enough,” Shumate wrote.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche amplified the letter on social media with two words: “It’s time to build the ballroom.”
The National Trust’s response, delivered Monday morning, was exactly what it should have been. “Your assertion that this lawsuit puts the President’s life at ‘grave risk’ is incorrect and irresponsible,” wrote their counsel. The Trust noted that ballroom construction is continuing unabated while the injunction is on appeal. And it made the point that should have ended this conversation immediately: building the ballroom lawfully simply requires congressional approval — something the administration could seek at any time and has chosen not to.
The Trust declined to dismiss. The case continues.
The Problems With This Argument Are Numerous
Let’s start with the most obvious one.
Trump’s proposed White House ballroom seats 999 people. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner — the event that was just used to justify building it — draws over 2,500 attendees. The ballroom Trump wants to build is not large enough to host the event he is citing as the reason to build it. This is not a minor detail. It is the entire premise of the security argument, and it is false on its face.
The judge who originally blocked the ballroom’s above-ground construction, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, rejected the administration’s national security rationale at the time, calling it “incredible, if not disingenuous.” He noted that the lawsuit challenges only the above-ground ballroom — not the underground bunker and secure facilities, which are being built and which the National Trust has never opposed. A separate secure facility was already in place at the Washington Hilton before Saturday night’s event — a covered, shielded presidential entrance constructed after Ronald Reagan was shot outside the same building in 1981. That secure entrance was in use Saturday night. The breach happened elsewhere.
And critically — attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is not an official presidential requirement. It is a voluntary social event. This was the first time in his current term that Trump chose to attend. He could have declined. Future presidents could decline. The argument that a ballroom is essential to presidential security because the president chose to attend a voluntary event at a hotel is not a security argument. It is a real estate argument wearing a security costume.
When the DOJ filed its full court motion days later — signed by Acting AG Blanche and two other officials — it read, as Above the Law described it, “like a Truth Social post.” It included accusations that the National Trust’s name is “FAKE,” claimed the organization suffers from “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and used excessive capitalization throughout. Federal lawyers, representing the United States government, filed that document in a federal court. A former State Department spokesman called the entire post-shooting ballroom push “a manufactured argument that is cynically taking advantage of this moment.”
What Was Actually Happening While This Was Going On
The ballroom pressure campaign was designed, at least in part, to crowd out a story that broke the day before the shooting — and that deserves far more attention than it has received.
The New York Times reported Saturday that the Trump administration secretly awarded the company building the White House ballroom — Maryland-based Clark Construction — a separate no-bid federal contract to repair two ornamental fountains in Lafayette Park.
The Biden administration estimated the cost of those fountain repairs in 2022 at $3.3 million. A straightforward job. The kind of thing that gets competitive bids, goes through normal procurement processes, and gets posted in public federal spending databases as required by law.
The Trump administration did none of those things. Instead, in January, the National Park Service quietly awarded the contract to Clark — the same company already building Trump’s ballroom, the same company Trump has repeatedly praised by name and said he wants to hire for projects all over Washington — for $11.9 million. Later additions brought the total to $17.4 million. The contract was not posted in public databases. It was not opened for competitive bidding. To justify skipping the standard open-bidding process, the administration cited a rarely used “urgency” exception — the kind typically reserved for war or natural disaster — arguing the fountains needed to be fixed before America’s 250th anniversary celebration.
The original cost estimator, speaking to the Times, described what happened plainly: “They just took the cover page of my estimate and just added a bunch of money.”
Independent contracting experts described the Lafayette Park fountains as relatively simple to repair — among the easier jobs of their type in Washington. The other eight fountain repair contracts issued at the same time went through normal competitive bidding. Only Lafayette Park went to Clark, with no competitive process, at more than five times the original estimate, without public disclosure.
This is taxpayer money. Federal contracting law requires competitive bidding to protect taxpayer money. The urgency exception exists for emergencies. Fountain aesthetics before a celebration do not constitute an emergency under any reasonable interpretation of that standard.
Trump’s response to the Times report was to say the paper should “congratulate” his administration rather than making the deal look shady. He offered no explanation for the cost inflation, the lack of competitive bidding, or the failure to post the contract in public databases.
The War Powers Clock
And here is the story that all of this — the shooting, the ballroom letter, the DOJ filing, the fountain contract — is being used to obscure.
The War Powers Act requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of beginning any military action. It then gives the president 60 days from that notification to either get congressional authorization or stop the action.
Trump launched strikes on Iran on February 28. The 60-day window closes May 1.
Trump has claimed the War Powers Act is unconstitutional — a position that, if accepted, would mean a single person can commit the United States to any military action anywhere in the world for any duration without a single congressional vote. That is not a minor constitutional interpretation. That is the demolition of one of the fundamental checks the Framers built into the document — the requirement that the people, through their elected representatives, have a say in how their lives and their treasury are spent on war.
Republicans in Congress have spent 60 days avoiding having to vote on this. They hoped Trump would find an exit before the deadline hit. He hasn’t. The ceasefire collapsed. The strait remains disputed. The war continues.
Now they must either vote to authorize a war that 65% of Americans say has cost too much, or allow a president they have refused to check to continue waging it without their approval — providing the most concrete evidence yet that the constitutional separation of powers has, in practice, ceased to function.
House Minority Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts put it directly: “Republicans have been saying that is a crucial timeline for them. So put your vote up on the board.”
They have until May 1.
There is a lot happening at once — a genuine security incident, a cynical legal maneuver exploiting it, a buried corruption story about fountain contracts, and a constitutional deadline that could define what kind of government this actually is.
The ballroom letter was designed to consume the conversation. The fountain story was published the same day as an assassination attempt, which helpfully buried it. The War Powers deadline lands this week, and virtually no one in the media is treating it with the urgency it deserves.
Pay attention to all of it. Because the noise is the strategy. It always is.
