It is the latest setback for Trump’s ballroom plans after the judge temporarily halted the construction project in late March, ruling that proper procedures were not followed before it began.<\/p>\n
That decision came after the White House was sued by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.<\/p>\n
In the lawsuit, the preservation group argued that the White House had broken the law by beginning construction without filing plans with the National Capital Planning Commission, by not seeking an environmental assessment of the project and by declining to seek authorisation from Congress.<\/p>\n
It also alleged Trump was violating the US constitution, “which reserves to Congress the right to dispose of and make all rules regarding property belonging to the United States”.<\/p>\n
Trump wrote in two Truth Social posts on Thursday that the project was being constructed on budget and ahead of schedule. <\/p>\n
He accused the judge of “attempting to prevent future Presidents and World Leaders from having a safe and secure large scale Meeting Place”.<\/p>\n
He also said the underground portion of the ballroom – which he has described as a “shed” for the complex below – “doesn’t work, isn’t necessary, and would indeed be useless, without the above ground sections”.<\/p>\n
The president said the complex would include bomb shelters and medical facilities, along with other structures and equipment, though little is known about the overall plans. <\/p>\n
“It’s all tied together as one big, expensive, and very complex unit, which is vital for National Security and Military Operations of the United States of America!” Trump wrote.<\/p>\n
The East Wing of the White House, which was constructed in 1902, was demolished in October to make way for the multi-million dollar ballroom.<\/p>\n
Since then, the proposed blueprint has expanded from a ballroom with a capacity of 500 people to a space that can fit 1,350 guests.<\/p>\n
The White House has said the project was expected to cost $400m (\u00a3302m) and was being funded entirely by private donors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is the latest setback for Trump’s ballroom plans after the judge temporarily halted the construction project in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-534978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}