Judge Orders Construction Stopped on Trump’s White House Ballroom

 

Judge Orders Construction Stopped on Trump’s White House Ballroom

 

A federal judge required the president to seek lawmakers’ input and pursue traditional approvals before proceeding with the $400 million replacement for the East Wing.

 

Zach Montague

By Zach Montague

Reporting from Washington

March 31, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/us/politics/trump-white-house-ballroom-construction-ruling.html

 

A federal judge ordered on Tuesday that construction be halted on President Trump’s proposed White House ballroom, to be built in place of the demolished East Wing, saying work must come to a stop until the project receives a go-ahead from Congress.

 

The decision delivered the first meaningful setback to the president’s increasingly audacious efforts to redesign the White House and Washington. It came after months of litigation in front of Judge Richard J. Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, who had previously declined to step in.

 

In a 35-page opinion, Judge Leon wrote that Mr. Trump likely did not have the authority to act without consulting Congress to replace entire sections of the White House — changes that could endure for generations.

 

In an opinion punctuated by 19 exclamation points, Judge Leon also reiterated concerns he had raised for months in court: that from the start, the administration has provided shifting and questionable accounts of who was in charge of the project and under what authority private donations could be accepted to fund it.

 

“Unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop!” he wrote. “But here is the good news. It is not too late for Congress to authorize the continued construction of the ballroom project.”

 

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Judge Leon wrote that if the White House sought congressional approval, the legislature would “retain its authority over the nation’s property and its oversight over the government’s spending.”

 

“The National Trust’s interests in a constitutional and lawful process will be vindicated,” he added. “And the American people will benefit from the branches of government exercising their constitutionally prescribed roles.”

 

“Not a bad outcome, that!” he concluded.

 

The decision is technically temporary, a preliminary injunction barring further construction while the litigation continues. And Judge Leon paused his own ruling for two weeks to allow the government to appeal.

 

The Trump administration filed that appeal on Tuesday, within hours of the ruling.

 

During a public event at the White House shortly after, Mr. Trump delivered a lengthy defense of the project, insisting that it was no different than previous renovation projects at the campus that were completed without consulting lawmakers, and that it was necessary to make national security improvements.

 

“Congressional approval is not necessary to put up a ballroom,” Mr. Trump said.

 

Judge Leon’s ruling suggested he was satisfied that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit chartered by Congress to guard America’s historic buildings which had sued over the project, had put together a workable challenge following several misfires.

 

In December and again in February, he declined to step in and deferred to the Trump administration, which has argued that an order halting the project would leave an open construction site next to the president’s residence, impairing the ability to do basic work at the White House and even jeopardizing national security.

 

Lawyers representing the government have also asserted the project falls within the president’s personal authority to modernize or improve the White House grounds. Mr. Trump began construction of the project shortly after demolishing the East Wing in October, arguing that a ballroom was needed to host larger events indoors, without spilling onto the South Lawn.

 

But at every turn, Judge Leon had disagreed with Mr. Trump’s position.

 

At several hearings, he implored Yaakov Roth, a senior Justice Department lawyer, to “be serious” and back off claims that the project was comparable to minor renovations of presidencies past, including the addition of a swimming pool or a tennis pavilion. He repeatedly referred to the project’s planning and execution as a “Rube Goldberg machine.”

 

By March, Judge Leon appeared to have lost patience with what he described as shifting positions by the government, particularly surrounding the role the National Park Service has played in approving the project and acting as a financial conduit for private donations supporting it. President Trump has forged ahead with design work as the litigation stalled, working with an architect and periodically showing off renderings of the project. On Sunday, the president flashed the most recent revisions to reporters on Air Force One after a review by The New York Times highlighted elements that architectural experts said appeared careless and betrayed how little the project has been scrutinized.

 

In a winding post on social media reacting to the ruling, Mr. Trump lobbed criticisms at the National Trust, which is also involved in a lawsuit over the president’s attempts to seize control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

 

“The National Trust for Historic Preservation sues me for a Ballroom that is under budget, ahead of schedule, being built at no cost to the Taxpayer, and will be the finest Building of its kind anywhere in the World,” he wrote.

 

The National Trust has argued that the project was rushed through with no warning to or input from Congress. It also contended that the way Mr. Trump proposed to pay for it was legally problematic.

 

The president says he has raised more than $350 million from personal backers and around two dozen tech, cryptocurrency and defense corporations to fund the building of the structure without government support. A report in November by the group Public Citizen found that two-thirds of the publicly identified corporate donors had received government contracts, collectively valued at more than $275 billion.

 

Judge Leon repeatedly told lawyers involved in the case that he believed the issues would ultimately be settled by the Supreme Court.

 

He waved away one issue raised by Mr. Roth at a hearing last year with a prediction: “You’ll get your chance at the court of review,” he said.

 

Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.