The Trump administration has ordered federal employees not to share photos of the East Wing of the White House being demolished to make way for the president’s $250 million vanity project
The Treasury Department’s headquarters, which are located next door to the East Wing, look out on the construction site for the 90,000-square-foot ballroom Donald Trump is building with private donor funds.
Treasury employees received an email Monday evening telling them not to document the demolition, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“As construction proceeds on the White House grounds, employees should refrain from taking and sharing photographs of the grounds, to include the East Wing, without prior approval from the Office of Public Affairs,” a Treasury official wrote.
Crews began tearing down the East Wing’s covered entrance on Monday, with dramatic video showing cranes and backhoes smashing up windows and ripping away the façade.
The building has long housed the office of the first lady and is connected through the east colonnade to the Executive Residence, where presidents and their families have traditionally lived.
Trump’s new ballroom was originally billed as a $100 million project but has since ballooned into a $250 million behemoth that will dwarf the existing structures.
The original East Wing, which has existed in its current form since 1942, is 12,000 square feet, while the residence is 50,000 square feet.
The demolition work comes despite Trump insisting during an executive order signing in July that his ballroom renovations wouldn’t “interfere with the current building.”
“It won’t be. It’ll be near it, but not touching it and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of. It’s my favorite, It’s my favorite place,” Trump said.
That same month, however, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “the necessary construction will take place” to “modernize” the East Wing.
As of September, the White House had not even submitted plans to the National Capital Planning Commission, which by law must approve construction for most federal buildings, the Associated Press reported.
The president and his allies have claimed that Trump doesn’t need approval for the demolition and building.
During a dinner last week attended by some of the ballroom’s donors—which include tech giants, defense companies, and crypto investors who have been requesting carve-outs to the president’s tariff policies and seeking favorable regulatory treatment—Trump bragged that he had been told there were “zero zoning conditions” set for the project.
“I said, ‘How long will it take me?’” he recalled. “‘Sir, you can start tonight, you have no approvals.’ I said, ‘You gotta be kidding.’ They said, ‘Sir, this is the White House, you’re the president of the United States, you can do anything you want.’”
Meanwhile, Trump’s appointed head of the NCPC, Will Scharf, has claimed the commission doesn’t need to approve “demolition and site preparation work,” just vertical construction.
The federal law that governs the NCPC, however, says the commission was created to “preserve the important historical and natural features of the National Capital” and defines it as the government’s “central planning agency.”
Its LinkedIn page says it’s responsible for planning, policymaking, and project review, which would seem to include demolition, but its website has been taken down during the government shutdown.
Websites for other agencies that are closed during the shutdown are still intact, but the NCPC’s site now redirects visitors to the Office of Personnel Management.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House, Treasury Department, and NCPC for comment.
On Monday, images of sections of the “People’s House” being torn down to accommodate a ballroom funded by megadonors infuriated the president’s critics.
“Seeing the White House torn apart is really emblematic of the times we’re in,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) wrote on social media.
“Ripping apart the White House just like he’s ripping apart the Constitution,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote in a post.
The White House’s official RapidResponse47 X account called out the outcry “FAKE OUTRAGE” and pointed out that President Barack Obama had converted the tennis court to a basketball court in 2009.
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