WASHINGTON — Construction on President Trump’s prized $400 million White House ballroom project can proceed for at least a few more days because of national security concerns, an appeals court ruled Saturday.
A lower-court judge previously imposed a preliminary injunction against the project late last month, with the stop order set to take effect April 14.
A three-judge panel on a federal appeals court just extended that deadline to April 17 to give it more time to consider the administration’s argument that if the project is stopped now, it will leave the White House vulnerable.
“A district judge ordered the President to halt ongoing reconstruction … leaving a massive excavation and structurally completed site adjacent to the now open and exposed Executive Mansion and threatening grave national-security harms,” Trump’s team argued in court documents to the appeals court last week.
The three-judge panel on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit then ruled 2-1 to give the brief extension, concluding it could not “fairly determine, on this hurried record,” how national security concerns impact the case.
In tandem with the ballroom construction, Trump’s team appears to be working on renovations to the White House “doomsday” bunker that sits below where the East Wing once stood. The intended White House ballroom sits over the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, a nuclear bunker built in the 1940s.
“Now the military is building a big complex under the ballroom, which has come out recently because of a stupid lawsuit that was filed,” Trump grumbled to reporters aboard Air Force One last month.
Since the Trump administration began facing litigation over the new ballroom, it has repeatedly cited national security concerns to justify continued work on the project.
But late last month, Judge Richard Leon, a President George W. Bush appointee, ruled that “unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop!”
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit group chartered by Congress to help with preservation efforts for historic buildings in the US, began suing Trump over his plans for a 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom last year.
The group has complained that Congress was not involved in the decision-making process behind the ritzy ballroom construction plans. It has also shrugged off Trump’s national security concerns.
“Defendants appear to contend that being prevented from illegally constructing a massive ballroom constitutes a national security emergency. It plainly does not,” the National Trust wrote.
The National Trust is also suing the president’s team over renovations to the Trump-Kennedy Center.
The ballroom project has long been a dream of Trump’s, who offered to pay for it during the Obama administration but was turned down. Trump has been making a flurry of renovations to the White House during his second term.
The president has courted private donors, and kicked in money himself, to help foot the bill for the massive complex, which is set to be larger than the White House itself. He’s described the planned ballroom as “impenetrable.
“It’s bulletproof, and it’s ballistic-proof. It’s very thick,” Trump told reporters of the planned structure last month. “It’s going 45 feet high, and every window is covered, every door is covered, the roof is drone-proof. We have secure air handling systems. You know, bad things happen in the air.”
