Politics

When the president of the United States decides to demolish the East Wing of the White House to construct a ballroom, all that stucco and molding and wood has to go somewhere. So I tried to find it.

I’d heard that the dirt from the East Wing demolition was being deposited three miles away, on a tree-lined island next to the Jefferson Memorial called East Potomac Park. So yesterday I drove around until I saw trucks and men in construction gear. They were congregating at an entrance to the public East Potomac Golf Links, where rounds of golf carried on as usual, except every few minutes, dump trucks entered the green.

The trucks would cut across the course to a cordoned-off site in the middle, where the grass had been torn away and replaced with piles of dirt. It did not look like much, but several employees at the site confirmed: This was not just any dirt. This was White House dirt.