No Kings: Defending the People’s House
“The People’s House was never meant to be a palace. It was built for belonging—brick by brick, story by story, promise by promise.” — Mary Coughlin
No Kings: Defending the People’s House
The Anatomy of Power Without Relationship
Secondary Harm: Ignoring Safety Is Violence by Neglect
From Desecration to Stewardship
On a quiet Monday morning, while most of us were getting children to school or settling into work, the East Wing of the White House began to fall. Crews moved in without public notice, stripping away 123 years of history and nearly five decades of space where First Ladies finally had rooms of their own, rooms where women who had no salary, no title, and often no recognition led programs that changed the nation.
To watch those offices reduced to rubble feels like a slap in the face to every woman who has fought to be seen, to every caregiver who has led from the margins. The East Wing was the first architectural acknowledgment that women’s labor and leadership are essential to this country’s story. Its destruction is not just a construction decision, it is a symbolic retraumatization, echoing the old message that women’s contributions can be built upon and then quietly erased.
What’s being demolished is more than architecture. It’s a covenant.
It isn’t his house.
It never was.
It belongs to the people—to the generations who built it, served within it, and believed it stood for all of us.
Every wall of that historic home holds stories: suffragists seeking justice, civil-rights leaders welcomed at last, nurses honored for service, children in awe of the nation’s promise.
To destroy it in secrecy and vanity is not modernization.
It is erasure.
The Anatomy of Power Without Relationship
In trauma-informed care, the hallmark of trauma is disconnection, power wielded without relationship, voice, or consent. We are witnessing that pattern on a national scale: a capricious act of dominance masquerading as renovation.
This is what happens when a leader mistakes stewardship for ownership, when democracy’s sacred trust is replaced with a monarch’s impulse. The White House was never meant to be a palace.
It is the People’s House. And in a republic born from the cry no kings, any act that exalts self over service re-opens our deepest collective wound.
Secondary Harm: Ignoring Safety Is Violence by Neglect
Reports indicate that no formal environmental or preservation permits have been filed for this demolition. Experts warn that exposed foundations and unreviewed structural changes could cause flooding, instability, and long-term weather damage.
This isn’t just reckless, it’s relationally violent. When those entrusted to protect the commons act without transparency or care, the trauma spreads: to workers endangered, to communities silenced, to a nation once again watching power disregard process.
A Pattern of Desecration
This moment didn’t appear from nowhere. For decades, the Trump family’s approach to property has blurred the line between development and desecration. Fred Trump razed Brooklyn’s beloved Steeplechase Park in the 1960s, reportedly hosting a “demolition party” that turned destruction into spectacle. Years later, Donald Trump demolished Manhattan’s Bonwit Teller Building, discarding the Art Deco friezes that had been promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The details vary, but the pattern is consistent: profit and ego outweigh stewardship and shared heritage.
Now that same disregard for collective belonging has reached the nation’s symbolic home. When walls are treated as disposable, so too are the stories and people they shelter. The White House East Wing is not just another project, it is the People’s House itself.
(Sources: The New York Times, Washington Post, historic-preservation archives; commentary by Andy Borowitz, 2025.)
From Desecration to Stewardship
The demolition of the East Wing is not only a political act, it is a relational one. It exposes how far we have drifted from the ethics of stewardship that sustain both healing and democracy. Trauma-Informed Developmental Care teaches that every environment either supports or disrupts connection; the same is true of civic life. When leaders act without transparency or consent, they recreate the conditions of trauma: confusion, helplessness, and betrayal of trust.
TIDC offers a living alternative. Its Principles—Safety, Trust & Transparency, Empowerment, Voice & Choice, Healthy Relationships & Interactions, and Equity & Cultural Affirmation—map directly onto the moral architecture a democracy requires.
Safety means the People’s House must remain structurally and symbolically secure for all.
Trust & Transparency demand open process and lawful oversight.
Voice & Choice ensure citizens have agency in what happens to the spaces that represent them.
Healthy Relationships remind us preservation is not nostalgia but continuity of care.
Equity & Cultural Affirmation insist every American story—not just the powerful—has a place within those walls.
In the NICU, we know healing cannot occur in an environment of chaos or disregard. Every gentle touch, every pause to honor an infant’s cues, is an act of restoration. The same is true here: deliberate slowing, insistence on transparency, collective demand for ethical process—these are acts of civic co-regulation. They are how we transform desecration into stewardship, possession into service, and despair into determined care.
From Outrage to Organized Care
Outrage alone will not save the East Wing. Organized, lawful care will.
Support the National Trust for Historic Preservation – preparing emergency filings under the National Historic Preservation Act.
👉 https://savingplaces.orgContact your Senators and Representatives – demand an immediate congressional inquiry and a temporary halt to demolition until full environmental and historic reviews are complete.
👉 https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-memberAmplify transparent journalism – verified reporting from
Write locally – letters to editors, professional associations, and preservation boards build a public record that pressures decision-makers to act lawfully.
Reclaiming Our Covenant
Through the lens of B.U.F.F.E.R.™, our collective response must embody what power without care denies:
Belonging: the White House is our house.
Understanding: this act mirrors centuries of exploitation that value image over integrity.
Forgiveness: grief must not become hatred; channel it into action.
Frameworks: law, transparency, and preservation are democracy’s trauma-informed boundaries.
Equanimity: hold outrage and hope in the same breath.
Respect: for history, for process, for each other.
The People’s Response
We have cared for premature infants, grieving parents, fragile systems. We know how to hold complexity without collapse. Now that same skill is needed for our democracy.
The People’s House is not a palace; it is a promise.
We built it together. We will not let it be demolished in darkness.
This is our pause.
Our presence.
Our repair.
With steadfast defiance and abiding care,
Mary
P.S. If this reflection moves you, consider deepening your practice of relational leadership and advocacy through the Trauma-Informed Professional (TIP) Program — where science, soul, and skill meet to transform care in every system we touch.
👉 Learn more about TIP 2.0
