The White House Now Belongs to Trump. You’re Not Invited.
In 1939, someone’s parents strolled onto the White House lawn, rolled out a blanket and enjoyed a picnic lunch. That is not a detail from an alien civilization. That is living memory — the White House as a public place, belonging to the public, accessible to the people who pay for it and whose government is supposed to operate within it.
The Trump administration wants to install fences on Pennsylvania Avenue NW to provide additional security for the president. Once the fences are installed at the intersections of 15th and 17th Streets NW, the White House and Secret Service will be able to close them off and stop pedestrians from walking in front of the White House if they believe there is a security risk.
The Trump administration is also planning to put up permanent fencing around Lafayette Square, a public park across from the White House and another historic protest space.
Trump, 79, is also eyeing the park’s brick walkways. He has told aides he wants them repaved to remove loose bricks he fears could be picked up and hurled during protests.
The president of the United States wants to remove loose bricks from the public park across from the White House so that protesters cannot throw them. He is not removing the protesters. He is removing the bricks. And when the bricks are gone, he is building permanent fences so that if protesters come back, he can close the gates.
A Washington Post contributor who recently walked from East Capitol Street to K Street wrote: “The entire area between 17th and 15th streets running from H Street to Constitution Avenue was enclosed in a chain-link fence. I did catch a glimpse of the White House from the far side of Lafayette Square, but otherwise I saw only the empty public spaces of the park and the Ellipse.”
“This would mean that residents and tourists alike would be unable to see the White House from any reasonable distance, especially if Trump plants more trees in the park,” said Michael McGill, a former General Services Administration official who also served on the National Capital Planning Commission.
Cannot see the White House from any reasonable distance. In a park named for the French general who helped win the American Revolution. With 47 trees planted to honor the man currently living inside. With permanent fences installed so he can close the view whenever he decides the public has gotten too close.
Lafayette Square has long welcomed First Amendment demonstrations, vigils and public gatherings. It serves as a place where Americans can peacefully assemble within sight of the White House and engage directly in a democratic tradition,” said Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington D.C.’s nonvoting House delegate, who introduced a bill that would prohibit permanent fencing in the park.
Within sight of the White House. That phrase is the point. The First Amendment right to petition the government is meaningless if you cannot get close enough to see the building where the government works. The right to protest is diminished when the protest zone is moved far enough away that the people being protested cannot hear, see, or be inconvenienced by the protesters.
Construction crews began work on a previously unannounced helipad on the White House’s South Lawn last week. The White House sped up construction on the $13 million project and added $875,000 to the bill in anticipation of an “upcoming state visit.” The East Wing is demolished. The Rose Garden is paved over. The ballroom costs $400 million. The helipad costs $13 million. The fences on Pennsylvania Avenue will cost whatever they cost. The 47 trees cost whatever they cost. An estimated $1.2 billion in 18 major construction projects Trump has launched across Washington, D.C. will transform the capital of the United States into a monument to the man currently occupying it.
And the public — the citizens who own the White House, who fund every brick and fence post and palm tree, who have a constitutional right to assemble in its shadow and tell the people inside what they think — will be able to glimpse it, if the trees aren’t too tall, from behind a permanent fence, at a distance the president has decided is safe enough.
The house belongs to the public. The public has been fenced out. The man inside is planting trees with his number on them.