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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Justice Department on Friday argued that the court system cannot stop President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project, urging an appeals court to overturn a lower-court order halting construction.
Yaakov Roth, a Justice Department lawyer, told a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. that only Congress could decide the fate of Trump’s ballroom — and argued that lawmakers already had authorized the project by setting aside several million dollars for annual White House “improvements.” Roth also said that the project was “well along” in construction and that stopping it now would pose national security risks.
Judge Patricia Ann Millett, an appointee of President Barack Obama, was openly skeptical of Roth’s arguments, interrupting him repeatedly as he argued that Trump’s plan to build an expansive, 90,000-square-foot ballroom did not represent a harmful change to the White House grounds. She also pressed him on his claim that historical preservationists had waited too long to sue.
“So your position is this can’t be stopped by a court?” Millett said, asking whether it would have been appropriate for courts to intervene after Trump demolished the East Wing last year. “When did it become a fait accompli?”
It would have been improper for the courts “even on Day 1,” Roth said.
Tad Heuer, a Foley Hoag attorney representing the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which brought the case, told the panel that they had the authority to halt the ballroom project. He cited Marbury v. Madison, a landmark Supreme Court ruling that established courts’ power to serve as a check on other branches of government.
“The government’s position apparently is that even a lawless action of this type can never be stopped by the court,” Heuer said.
The appeals judges — Bradley Garcia, an appointee of President Joe Biden; Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee; and Millett — will weigh the case and issue a written opinion.
Arguments on Friday largely centered on whether the National Trust for Historic Preservation has standing to bring its case, and whether Trump has authority to build the project and solicit private donations for it without express authorization from Congress.
A contingent of about a dozen government lawyers, including Stanley Woodward Jr., the Justice Department’s third-highest-ranking official, attended the hearing in a sign of the president’s investment in the case.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in March ordered the White House to stop building the ballroom, ruling that Trump needs congressional approval to fund the project, but work proceeded for the past month and a half after a federal appeals court stayed the ruling.
In ordering a halt to construction, Leon objected to the administration’s plan to pay for the project with private donations and a modest White House maintenance fund, calling it a “Rube Goldberg” contraption designed to evade congressional oversight.
Trump has raged about Leon’s ruling on social media and in public remarks, insisting that his facility must be built so presidents can safely entertain VIP guests.
Congress had shown little appetite to authorize the project, which polls have consistently shown most Americans oppose. Fifty-six percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s decision to tear down the White House’s East Wing to make way for the building, while 28% support it, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll conducted in April, the same division another poll found in six months earlier.
Trump says the private funding is designed to protect taxpayers, and lawyers for the administration have consistently argued that continuing construction is a matter of national security. Any pause in work would endanger Trump, his family and White House staff, they say, with the planned building designed to defend against “hostile attacks via drones, ballistic missiles, bullets, biohazards” and other potential threats.
The politics of the project have proved complex for Trump.
A shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner in April rallied some Republicans to his cause. Senate Republicans in the days after the incident proposed folding $1 billion in White House security funding into an immigration enforcement bill — though they insisted the money was for security measures, not the ballroom itself. The White House initially said the legislation would authorize the whole project but then backtracked.
The effort collapsed. The Senate parliamentarian ruled the provision could not be included in the reconciliation bill, and some Republicans privately said there weren’t enough votes to advance it regardless. Trump responded by calling for the firing of the parliamentarian, who nevertheless remains employed.
Justice Department lawyers seized on the shooting to press Leon to dissolve his order, mocking the National Trust as suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” in a brief that resembled Trump’s social media posts.
Construction has pressed forward. What began as underground work – Trump has said the facility extends six stories belowground, with planned military and medical facilities — has since risen where the East Wing once stood. Workers have started building the first floor of the structure, which is designed to include a commercial kitchen and offices for the first lady, with rebar columns visible from outside the fenced-off site. Trump gave selected journalists a 45-minute tour of the site last month, saying the building’s facade would be better than the Supreme Court’s.
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