I DID NOT CONSENT TO THIS BALLROOM BEING PAUSED

I would like it noted, for the record, right here in sentence one, before anyone has had the chance to explain a single fact to me, that I am currently on the phone with the manager of the United States federal court system and I am not hanging up until someone tells me why a BALLROOM — a ROOM, for BALLS, or whatever a ballroom is actually for, I don't have time to look it up right now because I AM TOO ANGRY — has been HALTED. Blocked. Frozen. Stopped dead in its tracks by a federal judge who woke up one morning, looked at a $400 million construction project at the West Wing, and decided that HE was the one who got to have an opinion about it. Not me. Him. A judge. With a robe and a gavel and apparently nothing better to do than personally reach into my life and take something away from me that I never even knew I wanted until it was announced and then immediately taken.

This is not about a ballroom. I need everyone reading this to understand that up front so we don't waste each other's time. This has NEVER been about a ballroom. This is about the fact that somewhere in this country there exists a permitting-and-injunction industrial complex that can, on a random Tuesday, simply DECIDE that a major architectural undertaking does not get to continue, and nobody called me first. Nobody sent a letter. Nobody sat me down and said, "Ma'am, before we halt this ballroom pending a Supreme Court appeal, do you have any thoughts?" I had thoughts! I have ALWAYS had thoughts! And they went and teed up a Supreme Court review WITHOUT ME.

Let's talk about the sequence of events, because I have been tracking this closely and I am, at this point, essentially a paralegal. A federal court blocked work on the West Wing's new ballroom project. Blocked it. As in: stopped. As in: there were presumably men in hard hats, standing around, holding blueprints, ready to pour a foundation for what I am told — and I want to be very precise here because facts matter to me, unlike to certain FEDERAL JUDGES — is a $400 million ballroom, and some robed individual somewhere said "no." No! Just like that! And the case is now expected to advance toward a review by the Supreme Court of the United States. The SUPREME COURT. The highest court in the land is going to spend its precious calendar time — time that could be spent doing literally anything else, including personally calling me back about several other matters I am currently disputing — deciding the fate of A ROOM.

I want to speak to whoever is in charge of ballrooms in this country. I am dead serious. There has to be a person. A department. An Undersecretary of Ballroom Affairs. Because if there is not a single, identifiable human being whose job it is to say "yes, actually, you may build the room for the balls," then this country has a management problem, and I am the one who is going to have to point it out, apparently, because no one else seems to be taking this seriously enough. I have called. I have been placed on hold. I have been transferred between three different departments who all insisted this was "not really their jurisdiction," which, frankly, sounds like exactly the kind of thing someone says when they do not want to take responsibility for HALTING MY BALLROOM.

Do you understand what it is like to watch an institution — and I mean THE ENTIRE FEDERAL JUDICIARY here, not any one person, I want that on the record, I am a reasonable woman who directs her fury exclusively at SYSTEMS and POLICIES — simply reach out and stop something that was already IN MOTION? There is a construction crew somewhere right now standing next to four hundred million dollars of unused ballroom potential, staring at each other, and somewhere else there is a judge sipping coffee, completely unbothered, having just RUINED EVERYTHING, and going about the rest of his day like it's NOTHING. Like halting a ballroom is just a Tuesday for him. I am sure it is. I am sure this man halts ballrooms before breakfast the way other people do the crossword. Well, it is not nothing to me, and it is not nothing to the eventual attendees of galas that will now, because of THIS INJUNCTION, potentially never happen, or happen LATE, or happen in some inferior, non-ballroom venue like a "tent" or a "gymnasium," and I want everyone to sit with that horror for a moment before we move on.

I am also, and I say this with the full weight of a woman who has been personally inconvenienced by an appeals court in a state she does not even live in, EXTREMELY concerned about the precedent here. If they can halt a ballroom, a BALLROOM, a thing that is, and I cannot stress this enough, JUST A ROOM WITH GOOD ACOUSTICS, then what can't they halt? My weekend plans? My Amazon deliveries? The very fabric of scheduled events as we know it? This is a slippery slope and I am already halfway down it, and I did not pack for this trip, because NOBODY CONSULTED ME.

I have begun documenting everything. I want that on the record too. I have a folder. It is titled, in all capital letters because that is the only font size my feelings currently come in, "BALLROOM INJUSTICE." It contains printouts. It contains a timeline. It contains, as of this morning, a strongly worded letter to an appeals court that I have not yet sent because I am still deciding whether "unacceptable" or "beyond unacceptable" better captures my mood, and honestly some mornings it's both.

And don't even get me started on the fact that this is now teed up — TEED UP, like it's a golf outing and not a matter of urgent ROOM JUSTICE — for Supreme Court review. Do you know how long that takes? Do you know how long a ballroom can sit half-built, exposed to the elements, judged and re-judged by man after man in robe after robe, while the rest of us are expected to just... wait? I am not a waiting person. I have never been a waiting person. I was not built by whatever manufacturer builds people to wait around while a construction injunction wends its way through an appellate process that, frankly, no one asked my opinion on, DESPITE the fact that I have several.

Here is what I am owed, and I will say it plainly because apparently plain language is the only thing anyone in the judiciary responds to: I am owed an explanation. I am owed a timeline. I am owed a formal, written apology from whichever body is ultimately found to have needlessly delayed a room that, again, I remind you, cost FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS, a figure I did not choose but which I am now emotionally invested in as though I personally selected the chandeliers. And when — WHEN, not if — this eventually gets resolved, I expect to be the first call. Not the press. Not the construction crew. Me. Because I have been HERE. I have been WATCHING. I have refreshed more court-filing trackers this week than any person should, and I did it because SOMEONE has to hold the line while the rest of the country shrugs and goes back to whatever they were doing, unbothered, as if ballrooms halt themselves.

This is being escalated. I want that understood. This is not over. Someone, somewhere, in an office with a nameplate and a title that includes the word "Chief," is going to be hearing from me, and when they do, they are going to wish they had simply let the ballroom be built in the first place, because at least then I would have had somewhere nice to stand while I yelled about the next thing.

— Alice, unconsulted, unballroomed, and absolutely not done here