The East Wing of the White House was a historic building. Constructed in 1902 during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, it stood for 123 years until it was demolished last month under the Trump administration. It is now being replaced with a massive, gaudy ballroom.
Spending $300 million on a ballroom is an idiotic response to solve a “lack of event space” problem that was never really there in the first place. This is money that the administration could spend on various initiatives that directly benefit the American people as a whole. From a political point of view, the intelligence of the move does not improve. In a Yahoo/YouGov poll of U.S. adults conducted in October 2025, only 25 percent of respondents approved of the project, while 61 percent disapproved. It’s easy to see these numbers as encouraging news, especially coupled with widespread election losses for Republicans this past week and the ongoing government shutdown. However, they hint at an unsettling reality of this administration: that it is willing to act on its policies in favor of selfish grandeur while disregarding norms and popular opinion. While it may seem harmless in this case, this mindset has drastic effects on the everyday lives of people living in the U.S.
Perhaps the issue where this is most apparent is immigration, where the Trump administration has repeatedly deported U.S. citizens. This is blatantly illegal, but by acting quickly before the judicial system can protect these people, or by outright ignoring the rulings of the judicial branch, the Trump administration has deported these people anyway.
The right to due process comes from the Constitution, and it should protect not just U.S. citizens but also illegal immigrants from being deported without at least having the opportunity to go through the judicial system. Ignoring a constitutional right is not only concerning for the implications it has now, something we’ve experienced firsthand here in LA, but also for what it could mean in the future.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he would be active in going after his enemies in this administration, going as far as to say, “I am your retribution” while campaigning in 2023. Last month, he went ahead with designating Antifa as a terrorist organization — a designation that has not fallen on groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
The only thing stopping the Trump administration from outright deporting its political enemies is public approval, rather than morality. Of course, I imagine any moral voice in the leaders of the administration is long dead, as evidenced by cases such as the detaining and then deporting of a 10-year-old American citizen with Stage 4 cancer and her family, without medical care, as they rushed to the hospital. I grew concerned while fact-checking the statement, as I found a similar story with conflicting facts. It turns out that entirely separately, a 4-year-old with Stage 4 kidney cancer, also a U.S. citizen, was deported without medical care.
The Trump administration pushed forward with the demolition of the East Wing despite a distinct lack of public approval for the project, a concerning indication that the administration may no longer prioritize public approval or that it is willing to push through topics that may be less important to U.S. citizens.
The aforementioned designation of Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization is a concerning push in the direction of outright political suppression. This administration is both increasingly willing to operate without public approval and is seeking a win following the recent round of local elections. The designation gives it some cover, allowing it to target its political enemies on the left at a grassroots level if it so chooses. Added to the administration’s previous disregard for due process, and a president who has actively discussed attacking his political enemies, it is a downright scary scenario.
However, I find it unlikely that things will play out in that way. For all its threats and bluster, this administration has accomplished very little in the realm of politics recently. With the elections of this week serving as a damning report card for the administration thus far, the current government may well go in the opposite direction of its current trend, focusing less on its more controversial policies and returning to the center as next year’s congressional elections beckon. While the precedent the administration has set for itself in ignoring checks and balances and, to some degree, public opinion, is extraordinarily dangerous, the political climate might prevent things from going too far. Might.
The 2026 congressional elections serve as a deadline for the current government. The Republican-controlled Congress has been relatively impotent so far, failing to end the ongoing government shutdown, despite holding a majority in both houses of Congress. This next year will likely be the last chance for Republicans to push their legislative agenda, with Democrats looking likely to take control of at least one house in the 2026 congressional election — but those elections remain in the balance, and a good or bad move from the Trump administration could make or break that election. In the face of that election math, it seems likely that the current government will begin to shy away from the norm-breaking, power-grabbing actions it has taken in the early months of Trump’s second term.
Contact Whittaker Perrin at wperrin@oxy.edu
