# D.C. Circuit — "a temporary tenant, not the owner" > [!quote] "Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence. The President has no — and claims no — constitutionally assigned authority over that property." > — U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, **7 August 2026**, 2–1 The panel added: **"Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help."** ## Context The panel — Judges **Patricia Millett** and **Bradley Garcia** in the majority — upheld an injunction halting above-ground construction on the roughly **$400 million** project that would replace the demolished East Wing with a **90,000-square-foot ballroom**. The district court's order permitted below-ground work and anything strictly necessary for White House safety and security to continue. > [!warning] The ruling did not hold — the Supreme Court stayed it > Chief Justice Roberts issued an administrative stay on **21 August 2026**, and on **31 August 2026** the Court granted a full stay **5–4** in [[National Park Service v. National Trust for Historic Preservation]]. The majority held the Trust **likely lacks standing** and expressly declined to decide whether the project is legal. Construction continues. > > The D.C. Circuit's reasoning is quoted here as the appellate holding of 7 August; **it is not the operative state of the law.** Roberts dissented from the stay — see [[John Roberts - what to tear down and what to build up at the Peoples House]]. ## Why This Matters **The sentence names a property relation, and that is the whole argument.** The dispute is not about architecture or taste. It is about whether the White House is an asset the sitting president controls or a public building he temporarily occupies — and the court answers by reaching for the most ordinary category available. *Tenant.* That framing is unusually portable. The vault documents a recurring pattern in which offices and institutions are treated as personal possessions of their current holder: the Justice Department as the president's law firm, the [[FCC]]'s licensing power as an instrument against disfavored broadcasters, [[Karoline Leavitt]]'s briefing-room credentialing moved inside the building. **"Temporary tenant" is the counter-formulation** — a one-line statement of the principle that public office is custodial. The second sentence supplies the remedy: not that the ballroom is wrong, but that **Congress decides**, and unilateral action is "Executive self-help." That is a separation-of-powers holding rather than an aesthetic one, which is what makes the Supreme Court's stay significant. ## Verification Verbatim from the D.C. Circuit's published opinion (linked above), corroborated by ABC News and Reason reporting on the ruling. The HCR 08-07 proposal asked that this be pulled from the opinion rather than from her letter — **it was.** ## The response [[Donald Trump - we are not tenants we are PRESIDENTS]] — Trump answered the metaphor directly two days later, and won the stay. ## See Also - [[White House Ballroom Project]] — the underlying dispute - [[FCC]] · [[ABC and Disney v. FCC]] — the same office-as-possession pattern - [[DC Circuit]] — the court - [[Rule of Law]] · [[Unitary Executive Theory]]