The courts can probably do more than one thing at a time. It is, however, unfortunate that tearing it down is likely to get tied up in the court system when Trump bypassed all that by just ignoring it. Can you imagine the outrage if a democratic president didn’t get permits, didn’t get bids, ignored the courts and just hired a demo crew to come in and remove it?
Yes, just because Trump built it.
The semi-demolished White House needs to be restored quickly, till it looks like a completed building, not a construction site.. After a couple years, the ballroom will no longer be associated with Trump. The White House will continue functioning as the seat of government..( The interior design of the ballroom will be obnoxiously gaudy, but that can be changed later without too much fanfare. Trump won’t really be involved. )
But I have a related question–about Trump’s Arch. That’s a project that has Trump’s stench all over it. And unlike the WHouse ballroom, it serves no purpose. It has no natural [i]raison d’etre[/i] or connection to American history, and does not belong on the National Mall . It will forever be known as Trump’s Arch. So if it does get built, the next Democratic president should definitely demolish it. What is the current status of it?
We’ll need to tear out all the listening devices at least.
And of course redecorate it so that it doesn’t make anyone that enters nauseous.
I would be happy if the next POTUS just quietly assigned a few flunkies to remove all the tacky gold bullshit from the Oval and elsewhere, and put the presidential plaques quietly in the nearest dumpster.
I think that’s missing the forest for the trees. Assuming that the Democrats win in 2026 and win big in 2028, de-Trumpification is the last thing they need to concentrate on.
If they are elected with a mandate, that mandate will be to get back to solid, prudent governance and to get away from absurd vanity projects, personal vendettas, and overtly ideological policies. All of which pretty much typify what you’d call “de-Trumpification”.
And even where that’s necessary and unavoidable, that ballroom is way down on the list of things to get done for that same solid, prudent governance to be effective.
Now that triumphal arch… that is something that we can and should get rid of, because it is not what we stand for as a nation, and not what we want visitors to the country to see when they visit DC.
Wen anything remotely acceptable to Ds is received by the Rs as virulently anti-American political grandstanding, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that is not overtly political.
It’s past time to get over the idea that anything in US politics can be viewed as good for everyone. Maybe in 50 years, but not until then, and probably not even then.
Auction off participation in a, large celebratory, de icking the White House and surrounds.
Pretty sure the money raised could pay for a new building easily. Of the opinion they could get it done faster than a wrecking crew.
Given the opportunity people would love to participate in tearing it all down, ballroom, bunker beneath, arch, mounted monstrosity, names off of everything he smacked it onto.
Be sure to video it all, so those at home can enjoy it. Then send it out for the world to see and rejoice.
When he loses, there won’t just be Americans, Canadians and Mexicans celebrating. I’m betting the whole world will be burning effigies and dancing in the streets till late into the night.
Army Corps of Engineers, request a demolition detail. No civilian involvement. Pure internal issue.
I disagree. There are things that have been overtly political that in the past have been primarily political as far as the appropriations process goes, but that generally weren’t driven by political ideology, but rather science or a notion that it is good for the people.
Take Trump’s insertion of politics into the CDC, or into the National Parks’ displays. That’s overtly political nonsense that needs to go away. Or the diminishment of the system for… reasons? That’s not something any previous President did- they generally created sites and improved the system. And they certainly didn’t direct changes in signage for political reasons.
Nor did any of them overtly politicize the websites or Federal government bureaucratic language to explicitly call out their political opponents.
That’s the sort of overtly ideological stuff I’m talking about getting rid of.
Except the CoE doesn’t really do anything by themselves in the wider world. They’re more like an engineering design and oversight type organization for the most part. Having them demolish it would require plans made by some civilian outfit, then the awarding of a contract for demolition.
Maybe you could get a combat engineering unit or a Navy Seabee unit to come do it, but even that might be a bit weird.
I agree those changes you describe are unprecedented and purely ideologically driven. I also agree those should be gotten rid of / reversed ASAP.
My point was entirely that the RW universe will contend that everything you’re talking about doing is purely ideologically driven and what trump et al have wrought in the last few years was removing, not inserting, ideology in government.
As such, there is nothing that’s not ideology in the eyes of one faction or the other.
Perhaps I misunderstand you, but I thought you were saying that the removal of ideology you’re suggesting would be met with cheers on both sides, since it’s objectively and manifestly the right thing to do. I’m saying that expecting cheers from the Right is misguided.
I have mixed feelings.
A project to restore the original architecture has merit. It might also be good to adapt it to multiple non-ballroom uses, including spaces for work on environmental and civil rights issues, and a museum dedicated to remembering the abuses of the Trump administrations, including dioramas of his idiot projects and gilded vanities.
The Rose Garden does need to be restored and improved.
I think the ballroom will be a monstrosity, dwarfing the historic building. Keep the underground bunker but tear down the Epstein Ballroom and build a modest East Wing on top of it, symmetrical with the West Wing but with modern amenities. It we need a ballroom, build it adjacent to the Pentagon where the north parking lot is. Rebuild the Rose Garden as it was. Paint Donnie’s face into every urinal of the White House. Get all that gold trailer trash shit out of the Oval Office and have a bonfire.
The symbolism is important. Reminders of this evil bastard must be purged from the public eye with the exceptions of museum pieces.
Yep. How likely is it that it will be another reflecting pool?
That’s my take on it. Political issues aside, there will be legitimate structural reasons to tear it down.
Well, tell the CO of Submarine Base New London to pitch the SeaBees out and tell them to demolish the ball room, easy peasy. Keeping a seabee from destroying stuff is the tricky part. They would probably love relief from rebuilding the confidence course yet again. [I swear in the 20 years stationed there, the confidence course got rebuilt every 3 or 4 years whether it needed it or not. ]
I think the difference was that at no point did Carter, Clinton, Obama, or Biden direct that the signs at National Parks and the Smithsonian be modified to reflect their political party’s opinions. It just happened as a sort of natural consequence of public opinions and scholarly opinions about those sorts of things changing. Nor did their Republican sucessors and predecessors with the exception of Trump.
It’s this whole notion of cultural war that the GOP has that’s the problem. This idea that opinions changing over time, and that they may not be complimentary to the way they think things should be is always going to be a problem. It’s basically trying to politicize history in a lot of ways, which was never a goal of previuos administrations.
This would result in lawsuits, and properly so. Congress has not appropriated money for this purpose. By law, military engineers are only allowed to work on military projects with some small exceptions than are in the law. This may be the one exception:
Military base reuse studies and community planning assistance
Maybe I shouldn’t be counting democratic chickens before they have hatched. But since everyone else is – detrumpifiction would be extremely difficult. The fact that it is generally slower to do stuff in a democracy than in a dictatorship is inescapable. The next Democratic administration should not be attacked in advance (or in arrears) for failure to act like the prior dictatorial regime.
P.S. Obviously, the supporters of dictatorship would attack the Democrats for doing things slower AKA red tape. I’m not against all efforts to reduce red tape. Have real experts write a law to speed up federal contracting. But I’m against no-bid contracts, and I want to continue with some sort of environmental impact studies. The next president would be on a balance beam here, and I won’t want them knocked off.
De-trump everything in the first month, and then go back to sanity for the rest of the term.
Are you familiar with the Pareto principle? The last 20% of a project takes 80% of the time and effort.
My vote goes to demolish on day one. During the inauguration speech, with a big bang. But non US votes don’t count, I am afraid.
I believe it impossible to have a one month dictatorship and then stop.
Suppose we are in month three and a court orders the ballroom replacement project, begun on new administration day one, to stop. Does the new administration defy the courts in month three? Then it wasn’t really a one month dictatorship. Instead it was a left-wing dictatorship replacing the right-wing dictatorship.