Trump Administration Seeks Supreme Court Approval for White House Ballroom Construction

In an unusual convergence of architecture and constitutional authority, the Trump administration has petitioned the Supreme Court to permit construction of a gold-appointed ballroom in the White House East Wing — a dispute that has quietly ascended from renovation disagreement to a question about the limits of executive power over the nation's most symbolically weighted residence. That a matter of interior design has reached the highest court in the land speaks to how deeply contested the stewardship of shared national symbols can become. The outcome may define not only what one administration