This is Executive Dysfunction, a newsletter that highlights one under-the-radar story about how Trump is changing the law—or how the law is pushing back—and keeps you posted on the latest from Slate’s Jurisprudence team. Click here to receive it in your inbox each week.

Before we get started, I wanted to draw your attention to Slate’s coverage of what might just be the Supreme Court’s worst ruling in a century, and how the gerrymandering wars are just beginning.

President Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear he really wants a ballroom at the White House, so much so that, after experiencing his third assassination attempt since 2024 over the weekend, he took the opportunity to plug his pet project: “This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom,” he said on Truth Social. Two days later, the political theater continued with Justice Department lawyers filing a motion basically written in the voice of Trump himself. It accused the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the group suing to stop Trump’s ballroom, of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” while also touting Trump as “a highly successful real estate developer” who obviously knows what he’s doing, and demanded the injunction be lifted so construction could resume.All of this fresh momentum even convinced Congressional Republicans to introduce legislation to fund the ballroom.

What should one make of all this? A new White House ballroom is a hill Trump is willing to die on, despite a tanking approval rating and the looming possibility of losing his House and Senate majority. A YouGov survey from October showed 61 percent of U.S. adults did not approve of the ballroom construction, while the National Capital Planning Commission, a government group that oversees planning of federal buildings and land in Washington, received over 32,000 comments from the public that overwhelmingly opposed it. Some commenters likened the ballroom’s aesthetic to a “brothel” or “Vegas casino.”

Since the start of 2026, the White House ballroom has become a topic Trump is so fixated with that he can’t seem to stop talking about it. Trump has mentioned the ballroom on about the same number of days as other topics like health insurance and affordability, according to a Washington Post analysis. And during a meeting in early January with oil and gas executives that was supposed to be about rebuilding Venezuela’s oil industry, Trump apparently digressed yet again into talking about the ballroom. “This is the door to the ballroom,” he said, pointing to the future entrance to the $400 million addition to the White House, elaborating on all the bells and whistles the building will have.

He first announced the project last summer, claiming it would solve the pesky problem of hosting large groups of guests at the White House, to the supposed benefit of “future Administrations and the American people.” The ballroom will be roughly 90,000 square feet “of ornately designed and carefully crafted space” that can seat about 650........

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