The Supreme Court sided with President Donald Trump on Aug. 31 in the fight over his demolition of the White House East Wing to make room for a sprawling new ballroom. In a 5-4 order, the justices lifted two lower-court rulings that had been set to freeze above-ground work, letting crews keep building while the underlying lawsuit grinds on. The conservative majority never touched the actual question of whether tearing down a century-old wing of the executive mansion without congressional approval was lawful. Instead, the unsigned opinion found that the challenger, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, probably lacked the legal footing to sue in the first place, since its case rested on a single member's objection that having to look at the finished building would injure her sense of the White House's history and design.
