The Dictatorship

Ballroom blitz: Battle back in court and argument will be a matter of national security

Published

4 weeks ago

June 5, 2026

Ballroom blitz: Battle back in court and argument will be a matter of national security

Jun. 5, 2026, 5:00 AM EDT

The battle over one of President Donald Trump’s signature projects, the White House ballroom, returns to a federal courtroom Friday as the government hopes tapping into fears after recent attempts on the president’s life can help support its case for the project’s construction.

The administration is making national security its main argument to continue construction of the White House ballroom and will make the case to three judges in the D.C. Court of Appeals on Friday morning. Immediately following the April 25 shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, when a gunman stormed a Secret Service security checkpoint and allegedly attempted to assassinate Trump, the president declared that such an attack would not have happened in the planned ballroom.

“It’s drone-proof, it’s bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom,” Trump said. “That’s why [the] Secret Service, that’s why the military are demanding it.”

In court documents, the government argues, “such unacceptable threats to the President’s life and to the continuity of government will persist, because the President has no secure facility capable of hosting large-scale events on the White House grounds.”

But the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the nonprofit organization that brought the suit, has pushed back vigorously on that assertion, saying that a new, “massive” ballroom is not a national security necessity.

“Its absence has not prevented any past president from residing in the White House over the past two centuries, or prevented this President from residing there in the seven months since the East Wing was demolished,” it writes in court documents.

And the group maintains that regardless of any argument the administration makes, the project requires congressional authorization, which it neither sought nor obtained.

“[The administration’s] late-breaking assertion that the ballroom itself is necessary for national security does not change the calculus,” they write. “The President may ask Congress for the ballroom. He may ask Congress because he believes that the ballroom is necessary for national security, or simply because he wants it. But the President is a temporary tenant of the White House, not its owner. What he cannot do— what the Constitution, federal law, and equity all prohibit him from doing—is build the ballroom on his own.”

The national security argument was not a part of the government’s initial legal strategy.

The argument emerged after U.S. District Judge Richard Leon issued a preliminary injunction in March, blocking the administration from continuing construction on the ballroom. This order marked the first major blow to one of Trump’s construction projects.

While the administration alluded to some general “security” concerns as early as December, those concerns related to the construction going on at the White House — the aftermath of the demolition of the East Wing. Lawyers noted that a giant hole in the foundation was a security risk and asked the court to allow “below-grade work to continue.” There was no mention of the ballroom itself being critical to national defense.

But by early April, when the administration made an emergency appeal to the D.C. Circuit, it was now a matter of national security. That court sent the case back to Leon, who updated his ordermaintaining the block on all above-ground ballroom construction but allowing below-ground national security-related construction to continue. The administration appealed that decision, arguing all construction must continue.

By late April and the Washington gala that saw a third attempt on Trump’s life, the ballroom had become an urgent necessity to ensure the president’s safety, according to the administration. The Justice Department demanded the National Trust for Historic Preservation drop its lawsuit against the construction of the ballroom.

“When the White House ballroom is complete, President Trump and his successors will no longer need to venture beyond the safety of the White House perimeter to attend large gatherings at the Washington Hilton ballroom,” Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate asserted in a letter to the group immediately after the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

One month after the dinner, a gunman opened fire at a Secret Service checkpoint outside the White House. The gunman was killed and his motivation is still not known, but the administration seized on it as yet another example of why it says a fortified ballroom is necessary on the grounds.

There have been at least three attempted attacks on the president’s life by gunmen in just under three years. In addition to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump’s ear was wounded when he was shot at by a gunman at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024. Two months later, a gunman lying in wait with a rifle shot at the president while he golfed at his golf club in West Palm Beach.

Whether a ballroom like what the administration looks to construct would have prevented the gala attack will never be known. Additionally, the gala, hosted by the White House Correspondents’ Association, has traditionally been held at venues independent of the White House.

But the appeals court hearing the case today has at least initially appeared sympathetic to the administration’s national security argument, allowing all construction to continue for now. Those three judges will now weigh whether the apparent national security risks outweigh constitutional concerns.

Fallon Gallagher is a legal affairs reporter for MS NOW.

The Dictatorship

Trump filing shows he took in about $1.2 billion from crypto businesses last year

Published

6 hours ago

July 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump filing shows he took in about $1.2 billion from crypto businesses last year

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump took in nearly $1.2 billion from his crypto businesses last year, a federal filing released Tuesday shows, locking in profits while his investors were socked with losses.

Mere startups when he took the oath of office, the new ventures have now eclipsed in revenue much of his vast property portfolio that took him decades to accumulate. Fueling their rise were billionaire investors and Trump’s own move to quash a federal crackdown on the industry.

Trump got more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial business selling new crypto products, including “governance tokens,” according to the required annual disclosure report with the Office of Government Ethics. It also showed another crypto business, CIC Digital LLC, took in more than $600 million from sales of souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with his face.

Both the tokens and the coins have plunged in value since the sales.

Trump also took in millions last year from selling Trump-branded Bibles, sneakers and other small items in another unprecedented move for the presidency. The sale of Trump-branded watches alone brought in $4.7 million.

The 927-page disclosure form paints a stark, if incomplete picture of the massive growth of the president’s wealth since taking office last January through a web of business interests — many of which have benefited from the policy moves of Trump’s own government. Trump has insisted that his sons direct his finances but the arrangement rejects the conflict of interest protections that his recent predecessors in office had instituted.

Forbes estimates Trump’s net worth at $6 billion, up from $2.3 billion in 2024.

The Trump business is growing abroad

The rise of crypto relative to Trump’s property is especially noteworthy because he first rode to office boasting of his property wins. It’s also remarkable because that mainstay business also boomed last year. Trump took in tens of millions in fees from a flurry of new hotel, resort and condo deals overseas that amounts to the biggest property expansion ever in the century since the family business was founded.

Many of those countries were negotiating with the U.S. over tariffs, military aid and other important matters while the family business was striking the deals.

A property in the United Arab Emirates generated $10.4 million for the Trump business last year. One in Saudi Arabia being built by a real estate developer close to the ruling family sent the president’s company $9 million. And one in Bucharest, Romania, and another in Qatar sent him $5 million each.

One of his prominent domestic properties, Mar-a-Lago in Florida, notched big growth last year, too.

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Trump took in $77 million from the property, a 50% jump from the year earlier when he was just another citizen, as heads of state and business people flocked to it in his new term.

The disclosure report doesn’t give profit figures, just revenue, so it’s impossible to know how much he is earning.

Trump is now the billion-dollar crypto man

Trump said Wednesday that most of his gains last year came from the stock market and he’s just riding along with everyone else.

“We’re all profiting,” he said. “I’m profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash.”

But crypto was clearly the big revenue generator last year in part due his own moves since taking office — pushing policies friendly to the industry and reversing a Biden administration regulatory crackdown.

The regulators are still worried. Before Trump’s World Liberty began selling “governance tokens,” they issued warnings about this new kind of crypto asset, saying that unlike stocks, the tokens offer no ownership stake in the issuing company, just voting power on certain corporate policies, and are difficult to value.

Buyers pounced anyway, including a Chinese billionaire who spent $75 million on the tokens and $200 million on the souvenir coins. In February last year, a federal lawsuit charging him with duping investors was paused before being settled for a $10 million fine.

The billionaire, Justin Sun, has repeatedly denied his spending on Trump businesses had anything to do with his federal case, while World Liberty has dismissed the notion of a conflict of interest.

Meanwhile, investors have seen the value of their Trump-tied holdings drop significantly.

The price of World Liberty tokens has fallen 80% since they started trading in September. And the Trump souvenir coins that spiked to more than $74 in the days after launching in January 2025 now sell for $1.68.

The White House says Trump only acts in the public interest

The White House has repeatedly said Trump put his business in a trust managed by his sons and is not involved in its decisions and that there are no ethics issues to discuss.

“Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged — or will ever engage — in conflicts of interest,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”

The Trump umbrella company, the Trump Organization, has said its deals overseas were with private companies, not with governments.

Still, it is difficult to know what is truly private in countries ruled by authoritarians, royal families and one-party governments.

For a new Trump resort in Vietnam, the report shows Trump took in $5 million last year after the ruling Communist Party sent its deputy prime minister to sign off on the deal and, according to The New York Times, pushed farmers off the land to make way for the construction.

Whether the deals played any role in changing U.S. policies in ways these countries sought is nearly impossible to know, but the countries did get what they wanted.

Vietnam got tariff relief. Qatar got access to advanced U.S. technology previously off limits, and Saudi Arabia got U.S. fighter jets it had coveted for years.

___

AP White House reporter Josh Boak contributed from Washington.

The Dictatorship

‘REGIME CHANGE’ sold 300,000 copies…

Published

6 hours ago

July 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

It turns out readers still want to learn more about President Donald Trump after all.

“Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” the l atest book on the Trump presidencywritten by political journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, has sold more than 300,000 copies in its opening week, according to publisher Simon & Schuster.

They’re the kind of sales that numerous works about Trump reached during his first term, but had been rare during his second term. Publishers had speculated that the public had tired of Trump books, believing there was little left to know.

The total figures include preorders, print book sales, ebooks, and e-audiobooks and orders that have yet to be fulfilled because of demand, the publishing house said. Simon & Schuster said the book is into its third hard copy printing, with 200,000 copies on order, after it sold out quickly in bookstores and on Amazon. It’s the best first-week clip of any hardcover nonfiction book in 2026.

The book covers the first 14 months of Trump’s second presidency and takes readers inside the West Wing, White House residence and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, aboard Air Force One and on foreign trips with the president.

Trump, who has a long history with Haberman from her days covering him as a New York City business and society figure, has trashed the book as “mostly made up.” Haberman and Swan are now New York Times reporters.

Their manuscript depicts meticulous details of Trump’s military decisions, how he’s wielded the power of the Justice Department against his political opponents, his conversations with other power players, and the time and attention he’s devoted to remaking the aesthetics and structure of the White House.

The book spells out a thesis that Trump himself believes: Had he not lost the 2020 election, he would not be as powerful in his second term as he is now — emboldening him to trample norms, dismantle established institutions and push the limits of presidential power.

Haberman and Swan have been featured regularly across news talk shows promoting the book and sharing details of their reporting, including a sit-down with Trump in which he boasted about being compared to some of history’s great villains.

Sean Manning, vice president and publisher at Simon & Schuster, said the book “has entered the national conversation” and will hold up as “a work of historic importance.”

The Dictatorship

Vance contradicts Trump about bipartisan cooperation on housing bill

Published

13 hours ago

July 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Vance contradicts Trump about bipartisan cooperation on housing bill

As a rule, JD Vance seems to go out of his way to say whatever Donald Trump wants him to say, but from time to time, contradictions emerge between the president and the vice president.

Take the recently passed housing bill, for example, which arrived at the White House earlier this week.

As part of an interview Tuesday night with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, the Ohio Republican said, “Frankly, Laura, I would love it if Democrats were willing — you know, not that they will agree with Republicans all the time — but if they were willing to work with us on lowering housing prices, on lowering gas prices, on actually making the lives of American citizens better. You know, we could have some real bipartisan compromise. That’s not what they’re talking about.”

I realize the vice president must be very busy, but it really isn’t that difficult to keep up with the basics of current events. In this case, when Vance said Democrats are unwilling to work with Republicans on priorities such as “lowering housing prices,” he turned reality on its head. It was literally last week when Democrats offered unanimous support for a bipartisan bill to address housing prices — legislation that members such as Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts helped to write.

Democrats recognized that doing so would offer the GOP some election-season bragging rights, but Democrats did it anyway because they have prioritized governing and “actually making the lives of American citizens better” over partisan considerations.

But Vance didn’t just contradict reality; he also contradicted his boss.

Just one day before the vice president brazenly misled a national television audience, Trump was asked about the pending housing bill. “It’s very bipartisan; that means the Democrats like it,” the president saidwhile acknowledging that he hasn’t yet decided whether to sign it.

In other words, when Vance said policymakers “could have some real bipartisan compromise,” he seemed indifferent to the fact that we’ve already had some real bipartisan compromise — a detail that even Trump was willing to acknowledge a day earlier.

Whether the vice president will suffer for publicly contradicting the president remains to be seen.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”