Foreign News
Trump slams court ruling on White House ballroom as ‘national disgrace’
“Congress has not ceded unfettered authority to the Executive Branch to dramatically redesign, reshape, and reconstruct the White House — the People’s House — to fit a particular President’s desires.”
The appeals court placed its ruling on hold for 14 days to allow the Trump administration to appeal to the US Supreme Court.
Trump’s ballroom defence
The ballroom plan, which the administration has described as necessary for large formal functions and to preserve the safety of the White House, is the grandest of several Trump efforts to reshape central Washington’s landscape of government buildings and national monuments.
A judge in a separate lawsuit recently said Trump’s name was illegally added to the exterior of the Kennedy Center performing arts center and ordered its removal.
In the ballroom case, Justice Department attorney Yaakov Roth said during DC Circuit arguments on June 5 that the courts have no role in weighing the privately funded project and that it would have been improper to block it at any point.
Roth said the National Trust’s “architectural preference” against the ballroom shouldn’t take precedence over national security concerns, claiming evidence that the former East Wing left the president and others in the White House vulnerable to attack.
“They just don’t want to go to Congress,” countered Thaddeus Heuer, a lawyer for the preservation group.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social last month that the cost rose because “it is approximately twice the size, and a far higher quality, than the original proposal” and promised “it will be magnificent, safe, and secure!”
