The East Wing of the White House is demolished during construction of US President Donald Trump’s proposed ballroom, seen from the reopened Washington Monument after the longest government shutdown in Washington, DC, on November 15, 2025.
Jessica KoscielniakReuter
A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration’s controversial above-ground construction work on the White House Ballroom in a revised order.
However, Judge Richard Leon’s order allows the government to proceed with underground work, including work related to national security facilities.
Leon’s order also allows above-ground construction that is “absolutely necessary to cover, secure, and protect national security facilities,” as long as such construction does not “limit the size of the ground and the size of the banquet hall,” according to his injunction in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
The Trump administration immediately appealed the order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Leon had suspended the order from taking effect for seven days.
President Donald Trump raged about Leon’s order in a post on Truth Social.
“The man who hates Trump, the judge in the District Court of Washington, D.C., who has gone out of his way to undermine national security and ensure that this great gift to America is delayed or not built, is trying to prevent future presidents and world leaders from having safe and secure mass gathering and banquet halls with bomb shelters,” Trump wrote.
The order came five days after the appeals court told Leon to clarify a March 31 order blocking the Trump administration from taking any action toward the construction of a $400 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom planned for the site of the former East Wing of the White House. The east wing was demolished last year to make way for the project by order of President Trump.
The appeals court specifically directed Leon to reconsider the potential national security implications of blocking construction.
The administration told the appeals court that Leon’s injunction “threatens serious national security harm to the White House, the President and his family, and the presidential staff.”
“The court has taken seriously defendants’ national security and presidential safety claims throughout this case, which is why it included the safety and security exception in its original order,” Leon wrote in his opinion Thursday.
“But national security is not a blank slate for proceeding with illegal activity, and the belated assertion that the above-ground banquet hall is ‘inseparable’ from a range of security functions is not an opportunity for this court to reconsider the fairness or reconsider the preliminary injunction!” the judges wrote.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is suing the Trump administration to block construction of the ballroom.
Leon had rejected the group’s request to halt the project in two previous decisions.
However, in his March 31 ruling granting the injunction against the ballroom, Leon said the law that gives President Trump the authority to build such a facility at the White House without Congressional approval does not come “even close to that.”
The injunction excluded work “strictly necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House and its grounds, including the ballroom construction site, and to ensure the personal safety of the President and his staff.”
“The President of the United States is the custodian of the White House for future generations of the First Family, but he is not its owner,” Leon wrote in an opinion explaining that day’s ruling.
In an amended order Thursday, the judge dismissed the Trump administration’s argument that the entire ballroom project could proceed on national security grounds.
“Defendants argue that the entire ballroom construction project, from tip to tip, falls within the safety and security exception and, therefore, may proceed without loss of momentum,” Leon wrote in an opinion issued Thursday with the amended injunction. “That’s not a reasonable or correct interpretation of my orders!”
Leon pointed out that the accompanying opinion letter stated, “The banquet hall construction project must be halted until Congress approves its completion.”
“It is incredible, to say the least, if not disingenuous, that the defendants are now claiming that my order will not stop construction of the ballroom due to safety and security exceptions!”
The judge said the new order preventing above ground construction from proceeding directly addressed the risk that the National Trust would be irreparably harmed by the construction of the ballroom.
And “the underground national security facility exception does not include the proposed banquet hall,” the judge said, because the defendants themselves distinguished between underground and above-ground construction, stating that “underground construction is driven by national security concerns independent of above-ground construction.”
