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50 State Lawmakers Condemn $1 Billion From Taxpayers for Trump Ballroom as Families 'Squeezed' Nationwide
"Not one of your working constituents, not a nurse in Ohio, not a factory worker in Michigan, not a single mother in Arizona, will benefit from this ballroom."
May 20, 2026
Fifty state legislators across the country, from Maine and Missouri to Oklahoma and Oregon, are condemning President Donald Trump's attempt to spend $1 billion in taxpayer money on his White House ballroom project in a letter reported exclusively Wednesday by Common Dreams.
"Across America, families are being squeezed from every direction," the legislators wrote to the president. "Housing costs have put homeownership out of reach for millions. Healthcare premiums are skyrocketing after Republicans killed the Affordable Care Act's enhanced premium tax credits. Gas prices, groceries, utilities, and basic necessities cost more than ever."
"The affordability crisis is the defining challenge facing our constituents, and they sent us to our state capitals to fight for relief," the lawmakers stressed in the letter, organized by Defend American Action. "That is why we are appalled that you are demanding $1 billion in taxpayer money for a personal White House ballroom."
The ballroom is the feature of a project that has already involved "demolishing the historic East Wing and ripping out Jacqueline Kennedy's Rose Garden," as the letter notes. "It began as a privately funded $200 million proposal, ballooned to $400 million, and is now being billed to taxpayers at $1 billion."
The White House has claimed the $1 billion in taxpayer funding is necessary for security-related enhancements to the ballroom project, including a subterranean bunker. On Tuesday, standing outside the construction site, Trump said the roof of the new wing would be home to a "drone empire," an element not previously disclosed.
Trump's GOP narrowly controls both chambers of Congress and is trying to use the budget reconciliation process to secure the funding. After Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled against Republicans' initial plan on Saturday, Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) pledged to try "a new approach," and is also reportedly under pressure from the president to fire MacDonough.
The president and his allies in Congress have ramped up their push for the ballroom project since a shooting last month at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, DC, for which a man has been charged with attempting to assassinate Trump.
"Your administration claims that your personal ballroom is a national security investment and a major priority. The reality is that it is a vanity project for the wealthiest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, and it will not put a single dollar back in the pockets of working families," the state legislators wrote to Trump. "A clear majority of Americans oppose it, by a two-to-one margin. Not one of your working constituents, not a nurse in Ohio, not a factory worker in Michigan, not a single mother in Arizona, will benefit from this ballroom. Only billionaire donors and well-connected insiders will ever stand inside."
By speaking out against Trump spending $1 billion on this project, Maryland state Del. Adrian Boafo (D-23) told Common Dreams, state legislators are sending a message that "we're trying to focus on how we actually help people live comfortably here in Maryland—and frankly, not just in Maryland, but all across the country."
"His actions have made life harder on everyday American people," Boafo said of Trump. The president's war on government employees has hit Maryland particularly hard, with residents of the state having lost an estimated 25,000 federal jobs.
At the national level, Trump's tariffs and war on Iran have driven up prices of necessities, from gasoline to groceries, as working familes continue to feel the pain of the Republican Party's last budget reconciliation package—the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which gave more tax cuts to the rich while cutting healthcare and food assistance for Americans in need.
"Your budget reflects your values, and what you fight for reflects your values," said Boafo. "And clearly, all this president really cares about is himself and the cronies who are in his administration, and nobody else."
"Reject this $1 billion boondoggle and instead direct those resources toward the affordability crisis your policies have created. Govern for working families, Mr. President, not for yourself and your ultrawealthy donors."
The letter calls on Trump "to reject this $1 billion boondoggle and instead direct those resources toward the affordability crisis your policies have created. Govern for working families, Mr. President, not for yourself and your ultrawealthy donors."
The lawmakers also pointed out how the money could be better used:
That $1 billion could replace more than 200,000 lead pipes in America's drinking water supply, protecting millions of families from lead poisoning. It could fund home heating and cooling assistance for around 1.5 million American families struggling with utility bills. It could cover a full year of food assistance for more than 400,000 working people, low-income families, and disabled Americans. It could buy over 200 million free school lunches for lower-income children, or eliminate waiting lists for WIC food assistance to infants and pregnant women entirely.
Before joining the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Rep. Arvind Venkat (D-30), another letter signatory, was an emergency physician at a Pittsburgh hospital. He told Common Dreams that he has two problems with spending $1 billion of taxpayer funds on the White House ballroom. "The first is that the White House is the people's house. It's not President Trump's to decide what the architecture or structure should be, and clearly, he disagrees with that—and I think that is very dangerous, in terms of what it means for our governance and democracy."
"The second is with all the challenges we have—and I'm a physician, and I've seen, here in Pennsylvania, over 150,000 people who've lost health insurance," he continued. "I don't think we should be spending $1 billion to put a congressional imprint on what is a vanity project, when that money could be used in so many more productive ways, including to help get people health insurance that they've lost."
While the letter is directed at Trump, with federal lawmakers considering whether to give the president $1 billion for the project, Venkat said that "congressional Republicans should grow a spine. It's not their job to simply be a rubber stamp for the president. It's their job to represent their communities and to be a separate co-equal branch of government. Unfortunately, the Senate Republicans and the House Republicans in DC don't seem to feel that way."
Boafo—one of the Democrats running for the seat currently held by retiring former US House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md)—also said that "the Republican Congress should do their job."
"This president hasn't done anything to try to raise wages, neither has the Congress. They have totally just turned their back on the American people. And instead, put all their effort into a foreign war in Iran, and put their effort into White House renovations," he added. "It is just ridiculous. And frankly, this letter and this message is kind of the message I think Democrats need as we head into the midterms in the next couple months."
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'We're Making Progress!' Says Bernie Sanders as Union Leader Bob Brooks Wins PA Primary
"This November, we're going to unite our party and welcome working people who are ready to come home," said the working class champion.
May 20, 2026
Bob Brooks, president of the largest firefighters' union in Pennsylvania and a champion of working-class politics, came out victorious in the Democratic primary race for the state's 7th district on Tuesday as he vowed to unify voters during the general election and flip a seat currently held by first-term Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie.
"This November, we're going to unite our party and welcome working people who are ready to come home," Brooks told a crowd of supporters, many holding union signs back the candidate, at a victory rally in Bethlehem, the historic steel town in the state's western Lehigh Valley.
Brooks, backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and a long list of national and regional unions but also endorsed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, overcame a crowded field—that included Lamont McClure, Ryan Crosswell, and Carol Obando-Derstine—to win the contest with nearly 48% of the total vote.
As Common Dreams reported, Republican forces launched a mysterious spending effort to thwart Brooks' campaign in the final weeks before the primary, with an outside group called Left PAC launching a $1 million ad campaign against him.
I am honored to be the Democratic nominee for PA-07.
On to November. pic.twitter.com/wsYngHqPrk
— Bob Brooks (@VoteBobBrooks) May 20, 2026
"Bob Brooks just showed what can happen when Democrats run unapologetically as working-class economic populists," said the progressive advocacy group Our Revolution in response to the win. "A firefighter and union voice running in tough political terrain by directly taking on corruption, concentrated wealth, and a system failing ordinary people."
Democratic strategist Lis Smith echoed many who said the fight to flip the 7th District from red to blue will be key in the effort to take the House away from Republicans in the fall.
"We need Bob Brooks and more Bob Brooks’s in Congress," said Smith. "This is one of Dems’ best flip opportunities."
And Sanders also weighed in, placing Brooks in the context of other progressives who won primaries this season and look to change the makeup of Congress come next year.
"Congratulations to Bob Brooks, a retired firefighter and union leader, on winning the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District," said Sanders. "His win follows the recent progressive victories of iron worker and union leader Brian Poindexter in Ohio, and union organizer Analilia Mejía in New Jersey. We’re making progress!"
Also in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, democratic socialist candidate Chris Rabb won his primary race in Pennsylvania's 3rd District, which represents large portions of Philadelphia.
The Working Families Party noted that the Brooks and Rabb victories, taken together, point Democrats toward a very important lesson.
“These are two candidates who centered working-class issues," Nicholas Gavio, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Working Families Party, which backed both candidates, told Politico. "They’re obviously from different districts and demographics. But the message of populism—in Philadelphia and in the Lehigh Valley—sells and works."
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The Supreme Court Has Enabled Trump to Become Profiteer-in-Chief
Before Trump v. United States, presidents knew they could be criminally prosecuted if they looted the government, but Chief Justice John Roberts’s ruling all but stops any bribery prosecution before it starts.
May 20, 2026
On Monday, Donald Trump dropped his sham lawsuit against the federal government. In exchange, the Justice Department under his control will establish a $1.8 billion fund for “victims of lawfare,” as Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche put it. This will be a slush fund for Trump’s allies—presumably January 6 insurrectionists and others already rewarded with a pardon.
There is a zone of lawlessness around the Oval Office, erected by the Supreme Court when it granted current and former presidents effective immunity from prosecution if their crimes involved “official acts.” Loot the taxpayers, misuse government power for graft, and you’re off the hook.
Last week, the president filed a report with the Office of Government Ethics detailing the stock trades he made this year. It is a novelistic tale of profiteering, recognizable as insider trading in every way except, perhaps, under the law.
Former US Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer offers a useful guide.
It’s epic corruption in plain sight. History shows that after scandal comes reform—often, but not always.
In recent months, as Paramount and Netflix vied to buy Warner Brothers, Trump bought stock in all three companies. Now the Justice Department is considering whether to approve Paramount’s purchase of Warner Brothers.
As CNBC reported, Trump “scooped up shares” in the data firm Palantir. Soon after, he abruptly praised the firm. “Palantir Technologies (PLTR) has proven to have great war fighting capabilities and equipment,” Trump posted, even highlighting its ticker name. “Just ask our enemies!!!” All this while Palantir was winning big federal contracts.
He invested in Oracle while brokering its deal to buy TikTok.
Just this week, he paraded off Air Force One in China, flanked by the CEOs of Nvidia and Boeing. Trump bought millions of dollars of Boeing stock before the trip, which led to the sale of 200 Boeing airplanes to the Chinese government. Among his biggest purchases has been Nvidia stock, which has seen steep increases after the US government cleared 10 Chinese companies to purchase its advanced chips, in a big reversal from earlier national security concerns.
Altogether, Oyer writes, “You’ll find it hard to avoid the conclusion that, to Donald Trump, governing is synonymous with profiteering.”
This president is constrained by the weakest legal rules in history.
Start with that immunity ruling, Trump v. United States. Before that, presidents knew they could be criminally prosecuted if they looted the government. Chief Justice John Roberts’s ruling all but stops any bribery prosecution before it starts, by preventing any inquiry into the president’s motivations, even when the act looks and smells like a bribe. Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that the ruling would “hamstring the prosecution” in a case such as bribery. (Having critiqued the misguided majority, Barrett then mystifyingly voted with it.)
Insider trading laws are weak, in any case. The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 prohibits using nonpublic information to guide stock trading, but its application to elected officials remains murky. In 2012, Congress passed the Stock Act to prevent insider trading among members of Congress, but the president and vice president remain exempt.
It’s epic corruption in plain sight. History shows that after scandal comes reform—often, but not always.
In January, the Brennan Center published Nine Solutions for Political Corruption. In it, we call for a law to require the president to divest from all stocks and other assets that could generate a conflict of interest. That was the norm, and now it must be a law. Ethics rules should cover presidents and vice presidents too.
And we call for a constitutional amendment to end the unilateral power of a president to issue corrupt pardons.
What about that Trump v. United States ruling? In the past, after the Supreme Court has erred so gravely, we’ve changed the Constitution. The 14th Amendment, for example, undid the Dred Scott decision. Another amendment is needed to clean up the immunity mess.
The sturdiest protection against corruption would be fierce anger from fleeced taxpayers. A few months ago, when asked about his conflicts of interest, Trump said, “I found out that nobody cared, and I’m allowed to.”
It turns out that Americans do care. In January, a YouGov poll found that “large shares of both Democrats and Republicans think their party focuses too little on corruption.”
Let’s make this a major issue for the campaign trail and press politicians from both parties to provide solutions, not just soundbites. Or else, as Oyer wrote, we risk having future presidents who “loot and pillage our country without a shadow of shame.”
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Establishment Democrats Still Don't Get Why They Lost in 2024
No amount of messaging acumen could have plastered over the gaping hole in Harris’ campaign: a total dearth of popular policies.
May 20, 2026
As the controversy over the Democratic National Committee’s buried autopsy report continues to rage, more Democrats from the party’s establishment wing are offering their two cents. The latest contribution is a column in The Bulwark, written by Rob Flaherty, the former deputy manager of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
Flaherty’s piece “Here’s What I Told the DNC Autopsy” discusses his conversations with DNC operatives tasked with writing the still-unreleased report. He then continues into his own analysis of what went wrong with Harris’ 2024 campaign for president.
To his credit, Flaherty is willing to do what very few mainstream Democrats have done since Harris' 2024 loss: take a long, and public, look at the campaign’s missteps. But, as with so many other analyses from the establishment wing of the party, he believes that tweaks to the campaign’s messaging strategy and media apparatus could have won the race.
Progressives operating inside the party, meanwhile, have long argued that no amount of messaging acumen could have plastered over the gaping hole in Harris’ campaign: a total dearth of popular policies. (At RootsAction, where I’m the political director, we’ve written our own post-2024 autopsy that focuses exactly on this issue, and where Harris’ campaign fell out of step with popular sentiment.)
If Democrats want to present themselves as a convincing alternative to the post-MAGA Republican Party, they’re going to have to articulate what their political differences are.
Flaherty, by his account, was principally responsible for the digital dimensions of the campaign (social media, content creators, etc.) and so his analysis proceeds through that lens. He devotes a lot of time to worrying over message alignment—alignment between earned and paid media, between the campaign and independent expenditures, and so on. What's missing in that analysis, though, is what that message was.
At the tail end of Joe Biden’s presidency, the nation was embroiled in a number of crises. The recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic had been uneven, with many at the bottom of the labor ladder still struggling to find steady work and keep up with runaway inflation. Americans at all income levels, in fact, were reeling from spiking costs in basic consumer goods. And, while Israel’s slaughter of civilians in Gaza unfolded in full view of anyone with a social media account, Biden and his administration continued their unyielding support for Israel. On top of it all, the unpopular Biden broke his promise to be a “bridge” president, ignored the polls showing that most Democrats wanted a different candidate, and unwisely opted to run for a second term—dropping out only after a disastrous debate and massive pressure from inside the party.
His vice president was then thrust into the unenviable position of having just 107 days (as she often reminds us) to mount a presidential campaign that could defeat Donald Trump.This entailed massive logistical challenges, yes—but it also meant reckoning with Biden’s tenure as president. Would Harris continue to argue, as the Biden administration had, that Bidenomics had been a boon for the working class? Would she continue to support Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he laid waste to the Gaza Strip? These questions demanded answers. Harris and her campaign though, seemed loath to provide them.
Flaherty appears to understand that this was a major problem for Harris. He bemoans the campaign's vacillation on its core message, contrasting that with Trump's comms discipline: "Trump's message was much clearer: The economy feels bad and Harris says it's good. Those vibes were tough to argue with."
He is heavily focused on vibes: "The moment the [BidenHQ] account switched from Biden to Harris, the campaign channeled a vibe shift that showed up in polls. We needed to consolidate the base, make the campaign cooler, and have a campaign voice that could be more flexible and nimble than the candidate’s own."
Putting aside how a “vibe shift” appears in polls, it’s clear from the outset that Flaherty’s level of analysis is all branding, no substance. He gets into the weeds of individual social media accounts and their relative impacts with critical constituencies. Was the KamalaHQ online presence too "girls and gays" coded? Did the account turn off men? For someone who devotes a footnote to scolding the “DC crowd” for believing Biden to be broadly unpopular, Flaherty sure seems to have drunk the Beltway insider Kool-Aid when it comes to assessing the impact of an individual social media account on an election in which more than 152 million Americans cast a vote.
Vibes should not be the basis for a campaign. Yes, a sour mood in the electorate requires a particular approach, but it doesn't mean that Democrats can entirely punt on the difficult work of crafting a resonant political message. Coordination and message discipline between social media influencers, independent expenditures, surrogates, and official campaign accounts is meaningless if those voices aren’t making a compelling argument. In 2024, Democrats’ biggest political liability was that voters had no idea what four more years of a Democratic administration would entail. It was like Harris was running back Biden’s infamous campaign promise to donors in 2019: that “nothing would fundamentally change.” Such an approach couldn’t work in 2024, given all the public discontent and anxiety.
When Flaherty steps back from the arcana of digital strategy, he seems to understand this problem quite well. He points out that Democrats, in focusing on picking up comparatively well-off, suburban voters, have shed too many votes elsewhere. "The resulting [Democratic] coalition, which has involved a shrinking share of working-class voters of color, especially men, just isn't big enough to beat a motivated MAGA base." He even goes on to write that Democrats should embrace "economic populism with teeth."
Progressives in the Democratic Party would certainly agree with the last point. Poll after poll confirms that this is popular policy: Most voters support taxing the rich and a more equitable distribution of wealth. Flaherty understands enough to give lip service to this idea, but is either unwilling or unable to continue this line of thinking to its logical conclusion: Democrats should embrace this reality, codify it in their political platform, and let it ring out loudly in all their campaign messaging. Like many in the establishment wing of the Democratic Party, Flaherty shows a remarkable ability to diagnose the party’s political ailments without being able to clamor for a cure.
This trend continues. Flaherty touches briefly on the discord between Harris and pro-ceasefire activists, but he is eager to wave away the negative impact it may have had on her campaign. He writes that the Biden's administration's support for Israel's war in Gaza hurt the campaign "but not in the ways people think." He then goes on to quote another campaign worker who characterizes Biden's support for Israel (and Harris' inability to create daylight between herself and Biden) as a "giant, rotting fish around [the campaign's] neck."
This is actually exactly how progressives think that Gaza hurt the campaign. Those of us who were pro-ceasefire, and who clamored for Harris to reject the policy of unquestioning support that the Biden administration had pushed, worried that the moral stain of US complicity in Gaza would be impossible to wash out, even as the Democrats switched standard-bearers midstream. We worried that critical constituencies—young people, Arab and Muslim Americans—who had been bombarded on social media with an unending stream of carnage from Gaza would be unable to hold their noses in the ballot box when it came time to vote for the Democratic ticket, even against Trump. Harris’ campaign faltered because 6.8 million Americans who supported Biden in 2020 did not support her. With such a stark drop off in support, it makes sense to focus on an issue where the Democratic Party policy was firmly out of step with popular sentiment among the Democrats’ base. This disconnect can’t simply be brushed aside.
Flaherty admits that, by the time the Harris campaign got going, they were “playing around the edges.” That is, campaign staff were permitted only to make marginal tweaks to a campaign that was already underway; the time for grand strategy had passed. Postmortems from insiders about the 2024 election sometimes read like the accounts of survivors struck by some environmental catastrophe. But this was a tragedy of the Democrats’ own making; Flaherty himself was a deputy manager of Biden’s aborted 2024 campaign.
Donald Trump’s political career is nearing its end, but the effects of Trumpism will be felt for decades to come. If Democrats want to present themselves as a convincing alternative to the post-MAGA Republican Party, they’re going to have to articulate what their political differences are. Progressive policy is increasingly popular among Democrats and the broader American electorate: universal healthcare, debt-free public college, AI regulation, and an end to endless war all rank as attractive policy planks with majority support. Any candidate running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028 should have this policy at the core of their platform.
Otherwise, there is no amount of consulting, brand management, influencer outreach, or narrative shaping that can save a campaign with no message at its core. If Democrats can’t internalize the real lessons of Harris’ campaign, they may be doomed to repeat its failures.
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