{"id":531512,"date":"2026-03-18T21:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T21:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/531512\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T21:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T21:02:11","slug":"judge-indicates-he-might-shut-down-trumps-400m-white-house-ballroom-plan-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/531512\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge indicates he might shut down Trump\u2019s $400m White House ballroom plan | Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal judge has slammed Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> demolition of the White House\u2019s East Wing and plan to build a $400m ballroom<\/a> where it once stood as \u201cbrazen\u201d, and has indicated he might terminate the project later this month.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m struggling to see this as an \u2018alteration\u2019,\u201d Judge Richard Leon said on Tuesday during a hearing in a lawsuit brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) seeking to halt construction until the president has won congressional approval and passed independent reviews.<\/p>\n

White House lawyers have argued that Trump does not need outside permission to pursue the project, which began with demolition of the East Wing in October, and which he aims to complete by 2028.<\/p>\n

He has frequently boasted<\/a> about the project, which critics have said is a thinly veiled attempt to re-create the opulence<\/a> of Mar-a-Lago, his gilded Florida mansion, in the capital.<\/p>\n

His lawyers have advanced a number of arguments in defense of the 90,000 sq ft ballroom, including that it was needed for \u201cnational security<\/a>\u201d, that Congress had already allocated millions of dollars for alteration and maintenance of the president\u2019s residence, and that it was exempt from congressional scrutiny because it was mostly funded by private donors.<\/p>\n

In October, Trump fired all six members<\/a> of the independent US Commission of Fine Arts responsible for reviewing the ballroom plan, and replaced them with handpicked designees who gave their unanimous consent<\/a> last month.<\/p>\n

The National Capital Planning Commission, a separate federal body reviewing the project, said earlier this month it was postponing its vote<\/a> of approval to April, citing a need to assess a \u201clarge amount of public input\u201d.<\/p>\n

At Tuesday\u2019s hearing in Washington DC<\/a>, Thaddeus Heuer, attorney for the NTHP, accused the Trump administration of a \u201cmonths-long merry-go-round ride\u201d over responsibility for and authority over the project, delaying the legal process until it was too late to stop it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they can\u2019t do here is have it both ways,\u201d he said, reported by the Hill<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Heuer said the administration had \u201cforgotten the proverbial first law of holes \u2026 When you find yourself in one, stop digging,\u201d according to the Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s machinations found little favor with Leon, a George W Bush appointee who is set to rule on the preservationists\u2019 lawsuit by the end of March.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been a case where there have been shifting theories, shifting dynamics, I regret to say, from the beginning,\u201d he said, adding there was \u201cno track record\u201d of the administration authentically following traditional approval processes.<\/p>\n

To justice department lawyer Yaakov Roth\u2019s assertion that the ballroom project had a \u201cdual source of funding and dual source of authority\u201d, and was therefore outside the court\u2019s purview, Leon said it was a \u201cbrazen interpretation of the law\u2019s vocabulary\u201d.<\/p>\n

Calling the White House \u201ca special place\u201d, he added: \u201cThis is an iconic symbol of this nation.\u201d Trump, he said, was not the owner, but a steward on behalf of the nation.<\/p>\n

Leon has previously ruled against the NTHP, which contends that the demolition was illegal, and that Trump lacks the legal authority to impose his private whims on the historic building. The judge denied<\/a> its first request for an injunction last month on procedural grounds, permitting building work to continue, but allowed it to file an amended complaint that he is weighing now.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe [NTHP] should not even be afforded another try,\u201d justice department attorneys wrote in a court filing last week, urging Leon to dismiss the case. Trump posted falsely<\/a> on social media last month that the judge had \u201ccompletely erased\u201d the effort to halt the ballroom\u2019s construction.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Leon appeared skeptical of the Trump administration\u2019s argument that previous presidents had made unilateral alterations to the White House, including Gerald Ford\u2019s installation of an outdoor swimming pool in 1975.<\/p>\n

Leon said in his February order that he expected his decision to be challenged whichever way he ruled, and that he saw the case \u201csquarely\u201d in supreme court territory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge has slammed Donald Trump\u2019s demolition of the White House\u2019s East Wing and plan to build…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-531512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}