Court orders Trump administration to halt construction on demolished White House

The court ordered the Trump administration to halt construction on the damaged part of the White House.

The 2-1 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in Washington said: “Every president is a temporary tenant, not an owner, of the White House. He cannot make any major changes to it without Congress’s approval.”

According to Reuters, the majority of the court concluded: “Whether or not to build a grand ballroom is a matter for Congress to decide. It is not a matter for the executive branch to decide arbitrarily.”

The ruling upheld a preliminary injunction won by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which filed the lawsuit last year after the White House administration demolished the building’s east wing and began building an 89,000-square-foot ballroom without seeking Congress’s approval.

National Trust President Brent Leggs called the ruling “a great day for the American people’s right to have their say about the historic sites they cherish, including the White House.”

The appeals court has stayed its decision for 14 days to allow the Trump administration to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

**Trump to appeal**

The U.S. leader has increasingly argued that the project is a security necessity. In particular, Trump called the facility a “military facility” in a post on Friday and said the administration would appeal to the Supreme Court. He called the ruling “horrible” and politically motivated. Trump said the ruling could “put him, other White House officials, and visitors at risk of attack.”

“This unjust ruling should be completely overturned by the Supreme Court,” Trump wrote. According to him, the ballroom plan includes bomb shelters, medical facilities, drone and missile defense systems, and other security features. All of the above "are combined into one large, expensive and very complex complex."

In addition, Donald Trump is defending the cost of the ballroom, which has doubled compared to the original estimates. In a post in May of this year, he explained the increase in costs by saying that "the ballroom is almost twice as large and of a much higher quality than the original proposal."

According to the publication, the plan for the White House ballroom is the most ambitious in a series of Trump's attempts to change the appearance of government buildings and national monuments in downtown Washington. Recently, in a separate court case, a judge ordered the removal of Trump's name, which was illegally added to the exterior of the Kennedy Center.

**National Security Grounds**

During arguments in the appeals court, Justice Department lawyer Yaakov Roth, who was involved in the ballroom case, said that the courts have no role in assessing the privately funded project. He argued that there was evidence that the former East Wing left the president and other White House officials vulnerable to attack. Roth also argued that the National Trust’s “architectural taste” should not override national security concerns.

The Democratic-appointed appeals court majority said that their order did not completely ban the ballroom, but rather suspended surface work during the trial, until the White House obtained congressional approval.

“National security grounds are not an automatic escape from the law,” the court said in its ruling.

According to the judges, "the bold claim that the executive branch can act with absolute lawlessness and that no court can stop it" is a disregard for the US constitutional order.