The Trump administration filed an emergency motion Friday night to save its $400 million ballroom.
The administration’s lawyers told a federal appeals court that halting construction was “shocking” and warned that canvas tents on the grounds are vulnerable to missiles and drones. “Time is of the essence!” they wrote, with the exclamation point, in a brief about a ballroom.
The canvas tents are there because the administration tore down the historic East Wing and turned the White House grounds into a construction site. The security risk they cited is one they built with their own bulldozers, and the last time a foreign enemy struck the White House was 1814.
The Bush-appointed judge who stopped the project had already reviewed the classified security evidence and found no such risk. He reminded the president that he is the steward of the White House, not its owner. Call your representatives through Resistbot and 5 Calls and tell them the government just defined what it considers an emergency, and it’s a ballroom.
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Pentagon holds Protestant-only Good Friday service with no Catholic Mass for the first time, weeks after Hegseth invited a pastor who advocates banning Catholic worship.
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