MIKE DAVIS: Secure the White House and build the ballroom before someone gets killed
We all watched in horror as President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, many Cabinet secretaries, dozens of members of Congress and others scrambled for their safety at the Washington Hilton Hotel for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, an annual D.C. tradition. Deranged leftist Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old California man who donated to Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign, tried to barge in armed with multiple guns and the alleged purpose of assassinating Trump administration officials. Allen came quite close to accomplishing his alleged mission, and we must never allow another Allen to strike. Such events should occur at a secure White House ballroom, not a hotel that is open to guests and the public.
Allen appeared to have had a simple plan. He checked into the Hilton and allegedly brought along a shotgun, handguns and knives. He went to his room and waited. Then, he took a stairwell down to the floor where the dinner was underway. Authorities say he charged at a Secret Service checkpoint near the ballroom where 3,000 people were jammed in like sardines. The checkpoint was the location of magnetometers designed to screen for guns and other weapons. Allen allegedly began firing, apparently intending to shoot his way through the checkpoint so that he could enter the ballroom and cause mass casualties. The courageous Secret Service agents stopped him, and one heroic agent was shot in his vest. That agent will recover and deserves the eternal gratitude of the American people for his sacrifice.
It is a miracle that other injuries did not occur. Aside from the gunfire, people could have been injured in the rush to flee the room. Law enforcement whisked dignitaries away when the shots began, and many people ducked under tables. With 3,000 people, however, it is easy to imagine how many could have run for safety, trampling each other in the process. Continuing these events at hotels is untenable, and Trump-deranged individuals must grasp this simple point before fatalities occur.
President Trump plainly understands the point. That is why he has begun construction on a ballroom at the White House, the most secure building in the world. Many events have occurred in White House tents, making attendees susceptible to sniper fire like that which occurred in Butler, Pennsylvania, during a Trump rally in July 2024. The proposed ballroom would have an underground bunker and bulletproof glass to add to the elaborate security measures that already are in place at the White House. There would be no risk of another murderous hotel guest’s barreling toward a checkpoint and shooting at Secret Service agents. If Allen had begun his alleged rampage earlier, he could have committed a mass murder by shooting attendees as they waited to go through the magnetometer. None of this lunacy would have occurred at a ballroom in the White House.
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Alison Hoagland is a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and a Trump-deranged individual who thinks that she can dictate White House construction procedures. The proposed ballroom is privately funded. Construction crews have already torn down the area where the ballroom will sit. Hoagland, however, has decided to attempt to stop the construction in court. She claims that she occasionally walks by the White House and that viewing the area harms her personally and professionally. This lawsuit should have been dismissed, but Judge Richard Leon, one of President George W. Bush’s worst appointees, shockingly let it proceed and issued an injunction against further construction.
Article III of the Constitution requires that a plaintiff have standing to bring a lawsuit. A plaintiff must show that she either has been injured or that she will be in a concrete way, that the defendant has caused or will cause the injury, and that a court can redress the injury. Hoagland’s only supposed injury is her displeasure at having to look at a construction site whenever she occasionally walks past the White House. Leon incredibly accepted this farcical claim as sufficient for standing. If Hoagland’s risible assertion suffices, we may as well get rid of standing because anyone can be offended over anything. Courts would be deluged with lawsuits from gadflies who want to whine over any perceived slight, no matter how petty, if Hoagland’s theory becomes the law of the land.
The Trump Justice Department appealed Leon’s laughable injunction to the D.C. Circuit. Two leftist judges asked Leon to clarify the scope of it. Judge Neomi Rao, a potential Supreme Court justice, correctly dissented, brilliantly articulating why the case should fail on standing grounds. After Leon’s clarification, the appellate court unanimously put his asinine injunction on hold pending a decision on the merits. The panel will hear oral argument in June, but Hoagland’s silly suit should stop now. To that end, the Justice Department has written to request that the National Trust for Historic Preservation drop the case. If it does not, the government will seek dismissal.
Especially after the horrific events of Saturday night, the Trump-deranged leftists should drop the suit. If they do not, Leon should dismiss it. Given how shameless these people are, however, the odds of either event occurring are slim. The D.C. Circuit should rule rapidly after oral argument that Hoagland’s claim falls far short of what is necessary to establish Article III standing. Judge Rao correctly opined that existing law authorizes the construction of the ballroom. Congress should leave no doubt. As Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman—seemingly the only Democrat left in Congress who possesses some common sense and decency—urged, it is time to build the ballroom.
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Congress could authorize the construction explicitly in short order. Congress had no trouble acting swiftly to order the release of the Epstein files. Disgracefully, many Trump-deranged congressional Democrats likely will obstruct any effort to authorize the ballroom because they have no regard for the safety of President Trump and anyone in his orbit.
In not even two years, Trump has faced three assassination attempts: the Butler event; the attempted assassination at his Palm Beach golf club by Ryan Routh, who is now serving a life sentence thanks to brilliant Judge Aileen Cannon; and the near-massacre on Saturday night. Leftists have tried to imprison, bankrupt, de-bank, de-platform and murder Trump. Insane rhetoric, such as baseless and malicious allegations that Trump is a pedophile anda grave threat to democracy, has caused people to lose their minds. These radicals have caused a culture of assassination; no other president has been targeted in this way. It is time to stop the lunacy, and a good start would be to facilitate the building of the White House ballroom. Given their past disgraceful behavior, however, Democrats likely will continue their dangerous resistance. The task thus falls to constitutionalist judges like Judge Rao to stop this insanity. Failure to do so eventually will lead to fatalities perpetrated by future Democrat assassins in the mold of Allen, Routh, and Matthew Crooks, the Butler shooter.
Stop the insanity once and for all. Enough is enough. Build the damn ballroom.