The People’s House Is Not a Palace

In the spirit of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense

In the autumn of 2025, the American people awoke to a spectacle that ought never to have occurred in a republic. The wrecking ball had been cast upon the East Wing of the White House—the People’s House. Not by the consent of the people. Not after the searching inquiry of Congress. Not following the careful judgment of those entrusted with preserving our national inheritance. It was done by the unilateral will of an administration that appears to have mistaken temporary occupancy for permanent, private ownership.

A ballroom may indeed be desirable. The existing East Room accommodates only 200 guests, and a larger ceremonial space may one day serve the nation well. But must such a hall be purchased by the destruction of an historic wing? Must grandeur come only through destruction and demolition? Is there no difference between improving the People’s House and remaking it in the image of one man’s ambition?

The White House was never intended to rival the palaces of Europe. There are edifices erected for the vanity of princes, and there are houses maintained for the service of a free people. The White House was built to be the latter.

It was conceived not as a palace to magnify the officeholder, but as the People’s House—a visible reminder that in America, the magistrate is the servant of the nation, not its master.

Here would reside not a monarch or autocrat but a citizen entrusted, for a season, with the highest office in the land. General Washington selected its site, but he did not choose a throne. James Hoban designed an Executive Mansion whose dignity would arise not from extravagance but from republican virtue. It was built by skilled craftsmen, immigrant laborers, enslaved men and women, and free Black artisans whose hands fashioned a home for liberty while many were denied its blessing. Every stone speaks not of privilege but of sacrifice.

It has endured fire, war, depression, and division because each generation understood that it held the house in trust for the next. Through more than two centuries the White House has been repaired, restored and renewed, Theodore Roosevelt modernized it for a growing nation and need for office space outside of the family residence. Harry Truman rebuilt its failing interior to save the house itself from collapse. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy restored its historic character so that Americans might better understand the story of their Republic. None sought to make the Executive Mansion a monument to themselves. Each understood that they were stewards of a trust they would soon relinquish.

The American presidency is temporary. The White House is permanent.

To tear away an historic wing and replace it with a $250m grand ballroom, a massive edifice of at least 90,000 square feet, almost twice the size of the White House itself, is not merely an architectural choice. It asks a deeper question: Who owns the White House?

The answer is not the President.

It is the American people.

This principle has now found expression not only in history but in the courts. The federal courts have not issued a final ruling on the legality of President Trump’s proposed White House ballroom. The litigation continues. Yet the interim rulings issued by U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon have spoken with unmistakable force.

Judge Leon concluded that the President is likely without statutory authority to undertake so sweeping a reconstruction of the White House grounds without authorization from Congress. He observed that no existing federal law appears to authorize demolishing the East Wing and replacing it with a large new ballroom under the authority claimed by the administration. He therefore ordered that above-ground construction be halted while the case proceeds, permitting only limited work necessary for national security.

When government lawyers argued that replacing an entire wing of the White House should be regarded as merely an “alteration,” Judge Leon replied that describing such demolition in that manner required “a brazen interpretation of the laws of vocabulary.” He also rejected the contention that national security justified continuing the ballroom project in its entirety, writing that national security could not become a blank check for otherwise unauthorized construction.

Most striking was the judge’s reminder of a truth older than any statute:

“The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!”

Thomas Paine would have recognized this argument immediately. In Common Sense, he rejected the notion that any individual could claim hereditary dominion over what belonged to the public. Government, he wrote, derives its legitimacy from the people. The same principle governs the Executive Mansion. Its occupant receives stewardship, not possession.

The White House is more than stone and columns. It is a covenant between generations. Every visitor who passes through its gates, every schoolchild who sees it standing at the center of the Republic, understands instinctively that this house belongs equally to farmer and factory worker, teacher and soldier, immigrant and descendant of the Revolution. Its walls are the inheritance of 340 million Americans, not the canvas upon which one administration may permanently imprint its personal taste.

The East Wing itself was no insignificant appendage. It welcomed visitors, housed the Office of the First Lady, and formed part of the architectural balance that generations of Americans came to know as their White House.

Americans were told that a new ballroom would stand near the East Wing—perhaps adjoining it. Few imagined that “near” would become “instead of” and that what had long stood would be swept away beneath a wrecking ball. To dismiss its destruction as a simple renovation mistakes permanence for convenience.

Future presidents may remove gilded ornamentation from the Oval Office. They may repaint walls, replace furnishings, and alter decorations according to their own taste. Such things are temporary because presidents are temporary. But a demolished wing cannot be restored by merely changing administrations. Once history is reduced to rubble, no election can wholly rebuild it. It is lost.

Republics are not preserved by monuments alone, but neither do they endure when their monuments are treated as private estates. Every generation receives the People’s House in trust. Every generation is duty-bound to hand it forward with equal or greater reverence than it received.

That is the genius of self-government. We inherit; we do not possess. We preserve; we do not plunder.

The White House does not belong to one president, one family, one party, or one moment in history.

It belongs to the American people.