Judge orders Trump administration to halt White House ballroom construction unless Congress OKs it

WASHINGTON (AP) — A national justice connected Tuesday ordered the Trump medication to suspend its operation of a $400 cardinal ballroom wherever it demolished the East Wing of the White House, barring operation enactment from proceeding without legislature approval.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon successful Washington granted a preservationist group’s petition for a preliminary injunction that temporarily halts President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project.

Leon, who was nominated to the seat by Republican President George W. Bush, concluded that the National Trust for Historic Preservation is apt to win connected the merits of its claims due to the fact that “no statute comes adjacent to giving the President the authorization helium claims to have.”

“The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for aboriginal generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!," helium wrote.

Leon suspended enforcement of his bid for 14 days, acknowledging that the lawsuit “raises caller and weighty issues, that halting an ongoing operation task “may rise logistical issues.” He besides recognized that the medication is apt to entreaty his decision.

The justice ruled that immoderate operation enactment that's indispensable to guarantee the information and information of the White House is exempt from the scope of the injunction. Leon said helium reviewed worldly that the authorities privately submitted to him earlier concluding that halting operation wouldn't jeopardize nationalist security.

The White House did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

The preservationists sued to get an bid pausing the ballroom task until it undergoes aggregate autarkic reviews and receives legislature approval.

The White House announced the ballroom task implicit the summer. By precocious October, Trump had demolished the East Wing to marque mode for a ballroom that helium said would acceptable 999 people. The White House said backstage donations, including from Trump himself, would wage for the planned operation of a 90,000-square-foot (8,400-square-meter) ballroom.

Trump proceeded with the task earlier seeking input from a brace of national reappraisal panels, the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts. Trump has stocked some commissions with allies.

On Feb. 26, Leon rejected the preservationist group’s archetypal bid to temporarily halt the ballroom’s construction. He said the privately funded radical had based its situation connected a “ragtag group” of ineligible theories and would person a amended accidental of occurrence if it amended the lawsuit, which it did.

The medication has said above-ground operation connected the ballroom would statesman successful April.

“We are 2 weeks away,” plaintiffs’ lawyer Thaddeus Heuer said during a March 17 hearing. “The imminence is present imminent.”

During the hearing, Leon sounded skeptical of what helium referred to arsenic the government’s “shifting theories and shifting dynamics” for its arguments successful the case.

“I don’t deliberation it’s a caller theory,” Justice Department lawyer Jacob Roth told the judge.

Leon expressed vexation astatine Roth’s attempts to equate the monolithic ballroom task with comparatively humble operation enactment astatine the White House nether erstwhile administrations.

“This is an iconic awesome of this nation,” the justice said.

The medication argued that different presidents didn’t request legislature support for erstwhile White House renovation projects, ample and small.

“Many of those projects were highly arguable successful their clip yet person since go accepted — adjacent beloved — parts of the White House,” authorities attorneys wrote.

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.