{"id":181590,"date":"2026-04-01T00:22:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T00:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/181590\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T00:22:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T00:22:20","slug":"trumps-400m-white-house-ballroom-renovation-halted-by-fed-judge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/181590\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s $400M White House ballroom renovation halted by fed judge"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 A federal judge<\/a> on Tuesday ordered construction halted <\/a>on the\u00a0ritzy $400 million White House ballroom<\/a>\u00a0project until Congress gives its approval \u2014 but President Trump said he won\u2019t stop the renovation. <\/p>\n

The order from Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, marks the first consequential setback Trump has endured in his quest to construct the\u00a090,000 square feet\u00a0ballroom where the East Wing once stood.<\/p>\n

Follow The Post\u2019s live coverage of President Trump and national politics for the latest news and analysis<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately for Defendants, unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop! But here is the good\u00a0news.\u00a0It is not too late for Congress to authorize the continued construction of the ballroom project,\u201d Leon wrote in a\u00a035-page opinion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

President Trump has pushed to build a ballroom at the White House for well over a decade. AP<\/p>\n

\u201cThe American people will benefit from the branches of Government exercising their constitutionally prescribed roles. Not a bad outcome, that!\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump said he will appeal the decision and will continue to build his ballroom. Leon\u00a0delayed the implementation of his injunction by 14 days to give Trump time to file the legal objection. <\/p>\n

Trump, reading from the ruling, pointed to passages where it stated the president is allowed to ensure the \u201csafety and security\u201d of the building and the grounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re doing, because everything\u2019s bulletproof glass,\u201d he explained in response to a question from The Post in the Oval Office. \u201cIt\u2019s bulletproof and it\u2019s ballistic proof. It\u2019s very thick. It\u2019s like that, and it\u2019s going 45 feet high, and every window is covered, every door is covered, the roof is drone proof. We have secure air handling systems. You know, bad things happen in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n

Based on that, he said construction can continue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have all of these things. So that\u2019s called, I\u2019m allowed to continue building as necessary. So think of that for the safety of the president. So we have all these things so on that we\u2019re okay,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Earlier, Trump bemoaned on\u00a0Truth Social<\/a> the litany of organizations the National Trust for Historic Preservation didn\u2019t sue, such as California for the controversial high-speed rail project or the Federal Reserve for its over-budget renovations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe National Trust for Historic Preservation sues me for a Ballroom that is under budget, ahead of schedule, being built at no cost to the Taxpayer, and will be the finest Building of its kind anywhere in the World,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoesn\u2019t make much sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Trump unveiled the latest renditions of the White House ballroom design on Sunday. REUTERS<\/p>\n

The National Trust is also suing him over renovations of the Trump-Kennedy Center, which is being litigated separately from the ballroom case.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the East Wing, the historical domain of the first lady\u2019s office, was demolished last October, the National Trust slapped a lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking to stop construction of the ballroom. It argued the project was pursued without any input from Congress.<\/p>\n

The National Trust is a private group Congress chartered and tasked with preserving historic US sites.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Leon repeatedly allowed construction to continue in December and February, though he did caution that the administration should be prepared to have to knock down what it builds amid the litigation.<\/p>\n

Judge Richard Leon previously declined to pause construction on the White House ballroom project. AP<\/p>\n

Last month, Leon\u00a0suggested the National Trust<\/a>\u00a0would need to rework its lawsuit in order to get ballroom construction paused, which it ultimately did.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s team previously argued in federal court that pausing construction on the ballroom project would pose a threat to national security, alluding to work being done on the doomsday bunker that sits below where the East Wing used to be.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, Trump alluded to the \u201cmassive\u201d military complex being worked on in tandem with the ballroom project. The president also showcased the latest renditions of the design for the new ballroom, something that came on the heels of a scathing New York Times critique of the project.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Prior to the setback from Leon,\u00a0Trump had overcome numerous hurdles to build the ballroom. Last month, for example, he got the green light from\u00a0Washington, DC\u2019s Commission on Fine Arts, which he staffed with loyalists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ballroom is designed to eclipse the\u00a0size of the White House.\u00a0Trump has publicly pushed for the White House to add a ballroom for well over a decade,\u00a0having offered\u00a0to pay for one when Barack Obama was president.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 A federal judge on Tuesday ordered construction halted on the\u00a0ritzy $400 million White House ballroom\u00a0project until…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1527,419,153,9,11,10,58,5561],"class_list":{"0":"post-181590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-construction","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-us-news","15":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}