Some Republicans are done trying to sell President Donald Trump’s growing list of vanity projects.
Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, already expected to be a bloodbath for the GOP, several Republicans are bucking the president in his quest for various design projects, including his White House ballroom and his triumphal arch.
“There’s this realization … if no one’s looking out for me, I have to look out for myself,” one senior GOP aide told CNN.
Republican strategist Doug Heye slammed Trump for holding a press conference in front of the demolished East Wing, which will soon be home to his beloved new ballroom.
“When you are holding press gaggles in front of a ballroom construction site that no one asked for, you’re proactively sending the signal to voters: ‘I don’t know what’s important to you, but here’s what’s important to me,’” Heye, a former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, told The Hill.
More than a dozen Senate Republicans took a symbolic vote against his ballroom this week, and its construction has been blocked by a federal judge for now.
The cost of Trump’s vanity projects across Washington, D.C., also has the supposedly pro-small-government GOP worried about optics.
The ballroom’s price has ballooned from Trump’s original $200 million to $400 million, and some Congressional Republicans even floated $1 billion in federal funding for “security adjustments and upgrades” at the White House and ballroom site. The arch is estimated to cost around $100 million, and the administration’s upgrades to the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall are expected to cost more than $13 million.
Republicans are reportedly seeking to distance themselves as Trump digs himself in deeper with his war in Iran, while seemingly caring more about vanity projects that most Americans do not see or enjoy frequently, let alone every day.
Four House Republicans voted this week to limit Trump’s Iran war powers, including Michigan GOP Rep. Tom Barrett, whose seat has been described as vulnerable in the midterms. He pointed to the cost-of-living crisis as his reason.
“I think that people are frustrated, certainly,” Barrett told CNN.
“I definitely feel what people are experiencing back home,” he added. “I fill up my gas tank too. I have four kids, we’re taking them to practice, we’re taking them to school, we’re driving throughout my district. I see it as well.”
But Trump, for his part, said he could not care less about the results of the midterm elections.
“They thought they were going to outwait me, you know, ‘we’ll outwait him, he’s got the midterms,’” Trump told reporters last week. “I don’t care about the midterms.”
