Democrats pitch alternatives for Trump's ballroom: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, a newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s edition, Peter Nicholas surveys Democrats on what they think should happen to President Donald Trump’s ballroom if they take back the White House in 2028. Plus, Kristen Welker dives into where the politics around health care stand with the shutdown resolved. And I answer this week’s reader question on redistricting.

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— Adam Wollner

The East Wing that President Donald Trump tore down last month stood for decades.

The ballroom he’s building in its place could be gone not long after the first wave of guests sit down for dinner, depending on the outcome of the 2028 presidential race.

If elected, a Democratic president would have plenty to worry about aside from White House decor. But a new president may face considerable pressure from within the Democratic fold to do something about a massive new ballroom forever linked to Trump.

Already, Democratic lawmakers and candidates are workshopping ideas for repurposing the space in favor of something that’s decidedly un-Trump. If any of these come to fruition, the $300 million ballroom that Trump birthed could take on a function that he never intended.

Here are some of the proposals:

Convert it into a museum: Saikat Chakrabarti, a Democrat who’s running for retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s seat in California, suggested turning the ballroom into a Smithsonian-run museum. If elected, he said he will introduce a bill aimed at converting the ballroom into a museum focused on “corruption and autocracy.”

A hybrid model: Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., envisions a structure that could accommodate some dinner guests, but would also showcase exhibits related to U.S. democracy.

One side of the space would display the various attempts to “undermine and thwart popular democracy in American life,” starting with King George III during the Revolutionary War era and ending with Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Raskin said. He said he would name the space the “Democracy Matters Ballroom.”

Let the people decide: Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said the ballroom’s future should be decided by way of vox populi. “We need a White House that is not for the tech billionaires, but for forgotten Americans,” he said.

“In that spirit, we should ask Americans — in rural communities, urban centers and hollowed-out factory towns — for their ideas of what to do with the space,” Khanna added.

Get rid of it: Others would prefer to just do away with the ballroom entirely.

“I don’t think it would be a bad idea to tear it down,” Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said. “It’s this gigantic blob there that’s Donald Trump.”

Read more from Peter →

While signing the bill to end the government shutdown Wednesday night, President Donald Trump repeated his call for turning Obamacare subsidies into direct payments for Americans, his latest attempt to flesh out his party’s path forward on health care.

Coalescing around a full-fledged plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act has been a white whale for Trump and his party for more than a decade. The president told me last December, before he took office, “I want to have better health care for less money, and there are ways of doing it, I believe.”

But 10 months into Trump’s second term, with Republicans in full control of Washington, they’ve yet to offer an alternative plan. (Remember, Trump chipped away at the health care law during his first term, but the GOP’s efforts to fully repeal it didn’t win enough votes to pass.)

It speaks to how politically fraught this moment is for the GOP ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a key architect of the Affordable Care Act, told me on “Meet the Press NOW” on Thursday that Republicans have “no ideas” about how to make health care affordable.

Voters made clear in this month’s elections that affordability and the economy were among their top concerns. And while almost everyone agrees that health care costs are moving in the wrong direction, it remains to be seen what Republicans in Washington will do to try to show Americans they’re meeting the moment.

Our recent NBC News poll suggests they have work to do.

That poll found voters were effectively split on which party would do a better job dealing with the economy, the worst showing for Republicans since late 2017 and down from consistent double-digit leads for the GOP from 2018-2023. And Democrats have a 23-point edge over Republicans on the question of which party would handle health care better, tied for their largest lead since 2008.

Trump said repeatedly he would meet with Democrats on health care as soon as the shutdown was over. Will that meeting happen? And after Democrats failed to extract an extension of Obamacare subsidies as part of the deal to reopen the government, how will the issue play into their midterm messaging, both in primaries and general elections?

I’ll unpack all of it this Sunday on “Meet the Press” with Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in! Here’s this week’s reader question:

“Is there any possibility that in the feverish redistricting that has happened and will happen, that some formerly solid Republican districts will become diluted and therefore more competitive and potentially in play in 2026?”

So far, Republicans have appeared to avoid putting any solidly GOP seats in play in next year’s midterm elections with their mid-decade redistricting push.

Let’s look at their biggest effort to this point in Texas. Under the new lines enacted over the summer, no Republican incumbent is running in a district that President Donald Trump won by less than 10 points, according to our own Ben Kamisar.

That also doesn’t mean that all five Democratic districts Republicans targeted will necessarily flip next November. Three of them — Texas’ 9th, 32nd and 35th districts — moved so far to the right that they will almost assuredly be pickups for the GOP. But Trump would only have won the other two districts, the 28th and 34th, by single digits, so Democrats will still have a shot to hold on to them — especially since midterm environments tend to favor the party that’s out of power in Washington.

There’s also one GOP-held seat that largely wasn’t touched by redrawing in Texas but could end up being competitive if the political winds are blowing Democrats’ way. Trump carried Texas’ 15th District, represented by Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz, by 18 points last year, but only by 2 in 2020.

It underscores an important point in all of this: Political coalitions change, sometimes dramatically, from election to election. The new maps this year are generally being drawn using the 2024 election as a baseline. And while we can make broad, informed assumptions about which direction districts are likely to go in, ever-shifting electorates make it difficult to predict exactly how new maps in Texas and elsewhere will play out down the road.

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Owen Auston-Babcock.

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