Today's Poll Question: The White House East Wing has already been demolished. Should the Trump Ballroom now be built?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Get ready to vote on today's daily poll question at smerconish.com.

**Michael Smerconish** (0:05)
But first, Michael explains it for you right here.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:08)
Welcome to The Smerconish Podcast from SiriusXM.

**Michael Smerconish** (0:11)
For Independent Minds.

**Michael Smerconish** (0:14)
Hey, I looked at this headline in The Washington Post today, and I said, now, therein lies a good poll question. Trump says White House needs military complex as courts block his ballroom. Dan Diamond wrote it, the lead says this, President Trump initially insisted that he needed to build a White House ballroom to entertain VIP guests. The president and his deputies have lately focused on a different argument. It's crucial for national security. That brings us to today's poll question at smerconish.com. The White House East Wing has already been demolished. Should the Trump ballroom now be built? Over the weekend, lots of voting, especially Saturday. Friday, in follow-up to our conversation on Thursday about the University of Michigan and moving to a pass-fail grading system for the first semester freshmen only, many have distorted that story. 28,274 voted. Should grades still matter? 92.39% said yes. How about Saturday?
57,056 votes recorded. What caused so many to vote? Do Luigi Mangione's grievances with the health care system mitigate his crime in any way? I wanted to see how high would the yes votes be.
12.68% is the final number, which I think is pretty alarming.
Pretty alarming. I'll talk more about that on radio today. Yesterday license plate readers, safety or surveillance, this is the whole flock and deflock story. 61.23% said surveillance, 38.77% said safety of 28,569 who cast their ballots.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:05)
This is The Smerconish Podcast from SiriusXM.

**Michael Smerconish** (2:08)
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**Michael Smerconish** (3:44)
The Daily Poll Question at smerconish.com.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:46)
A non-scientific social political question designed to spark broader discussions about current issues.

**Michael Smerconish** (3:52)
Get ready to cast your ballot. And leave a rating and review of this podcast on your favorite podcast app.

**Michael Smerconish** (3:58)
Okay, so The White House has five days. The White House has five days. On August 7th, three-judge panel of the DC Circuit, they voted two to one to uphold an injunction blocking above-ground construction. And the order takes place this Friday unless Congress authorizes the project. Here's the deal. Congress is on recess. Lawmakers have no plans to return before the end of the month. Nobody on Capitol Hill is pushing for them to do so.
And the majority, two Democratic appointees, they put it this way in one sentence. Whether or not, that's, by the way, unnecessary. It could just be whether. Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide. There was a dissent from a Trump appointee who argued that the preservation group that sued lacked standing, but that's where we are. So on Friday night, the administration went to the Supreme Court. Solicitor John Sauer filed an emergency application asking the justices to lift the injunction. And Chief Justice Roberts gave the challengers until tomorrow to respond. So that's the clock that we are on. And as I said from that Washington Post headline at the outset, remember why we were told the building was necessary. Initially, it was entertaining. It was heads of state. It was state dinners instead of under tents with heels squishing into the dirt on the south lawn. That was the pitch. The Supreme Court filing barely mentions social. Sauer's framing was an extraordinary and unlawful injunction that will halt the ongoing construction of the integrated military complex, including a totally secure ballroom space. It's just like the Greenbrier in reverse, only this time we're disclosing it. Like, hey, we have to build an underground bunker. That's what we're doing. But notice the word order. The ballroom is now a feature of the military complex, not the other way around. And the president in a Truth Social post on Friday night never used the word ballroom at all. He called it the desperately needed national security structure. He called the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is a nonprofit that Congress chartered to protect historic buildings, treasonists who revealed top military secrets.