A federal judge in Washington on Tuesday temporarily blocked construction of President Donald Trump’s much-touted new White House ballroom.
In an opinion explaining the order, District Court Judge Richard Leon said construction of the planned $400 million ballroom “must be halted.” That’s because the law giving President Trump the legal authority to construct such a building at the White House without Congressional approval is “close to that.”
Leon said the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which sued President Trump in December to halt the project, is likely to prevail in the case.
The judge ordered Trump administration officials and the White House to “take no action to facilitate the physical development of the ballroom planned for the former White House East Wing site.”
Leung, who has twice previously refused to block the project, said the order would take effect within 14 days. The delay gave President Trump time to appeal the injunction.
Within hours, the Trump administration filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The ruling comes months after the east wing was demolished to make way for a planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom, the cost of which will be covered by donations from businesses and other private donors.
“The President of the United States is the custodian of the White House for future generations of the First Family, but he is not the owner,” Leon said in a memorandum opinion explaining his ruling.
“President Trump argues that existing statutes authorized Congress to construct the East Wing Ballroom Project and to finance it with private funds,” the judge wrote.
“Plaintiffs … argue that the president has no such authority under current law and that a preliminary injunction is necessary to avoid irreparable harm.”
“I conclude that the National Trust is likely to succeed on the merits because there is no law that comes close to giving the president the powers he claims he has,” Leon wrote. “Accordingly, I must grant the National Trust’s motion for a preliminary injunction and the banquet hall construction project must be halted until Congress approves its completion.”
Asked for comment on the ruling, the White House responded with a post on President Trump’s Truth Social, in which he called the National Trust a “radical leftist group of lunatics.”
According to the National Trust’s website, its ex-officio trustees include Attorney General Pam Bondi. Mr. Bondi is overseeing the Justice Department, which defends the Trump administration against the group’s lawsuits.
National Trust President and CEO Carol Quillen praised the ruling.
“I am pleased with Judge Leon’s decision today, which orders a halt to further banquet hall construction until the government complies with the law and receives explicit permission to proceed,” she said in a statement. “This is a victory for the American people in a project that will have a lasting impact on one of our nation’s most beloved and iconic places.”
President Trump said the group is suing me for a “ballroom that will be built on budget, ahead of schedule, at no cost to taxpayers, and will be the finest building of its kind anywhere in the world.”
“Then I am being sued by them over the renovation of the dilapidated and structurally unsound former Kennedy Center, now the Trump Kennedy Center… All I am doing there is repairing, cleaning, operating, and ‘sprucing up’ a building that has been badly maintained for many years, but is potentially a very important building,” President Trump wrote.
President Trump also accused the National Trust of “failing to prosecute the Federal Reserve for a building that was vandalized and destroyed inside and out by an incompetent and potentially corrupt Fed chairman.” The once-grand building is billions of dollars over budget, will never be completed and may never open.
