President Donald Trump on Sunday insisted his proposed ballroom is a done deal — even as Justice Department lawyers in court present the plans as flexible and subject to federal reviews.
In a lengthy post to his Truth Social platform, Trump said the project could not realistically be reversed because key materials have been lined up, writing that “there is no practical or reasonable way to go back” and declaring: “IT IS TOO LATE!”
The president’s comments contrast with his administration’s position in federal court, where three days earlier Justice Department lawyers told a judge that the ballroom plans can be modified and that the White House intends to wait for two federal advisory panels to review the project before beginning aboveground construction in April. Judge Richard Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said he intends to rule in the coming weeks on whether the project may advance.
The White House did not immediately respond to questions about how Trump’s ballroom post aligned with his administration’s legal argument. Trump and his deputies have said that the ballroom project is personally important to him, and the president wrote Sunday that it is a national security matter.
“Stoppage of construction, at this late date, when so much has already been ordered and done, would be devastating to the White House, our Country, and all concerned,” Trump wrote in a late-morning note that published as much of the United States was under a weather alert connected to a significant winter storm. He also listed materials that he said had either been ordered or were “ready” to be obtained: “All of the Structural Steel, Windows, Doors, A.C./Heating Equipment, Marble, Stone, Precast Concrete, Bulletproof Windows and Glass, Anti-Drone Roofing, and much more.”
The roughly 450-word statement came in between two posts that referenced Minnesota, the site a day earlier of another fatal shooting connected to immigration enforcement that roiled domestic politics and raised the possibility of a government shutdown. Democrats pledged to block a funding package that must be approved by Friday to keep much of the government open, saying that they could not support continued funding for federal immigration enforcement without changes to its operations.
Trump in October rapidly demolished the White House’s East Wing annex to make way for his planned ballroom addition, prompting criticism from Democrats, watchdogs and some conservatives who said the administration should have sought public comment before making such significant changes to a building long described as the “People’s House.” The White House has begun construction on the underground elements of the project, deploying workers, construction machinery and a tower crane, with administration officials saying the work is necessary to protect the president.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit group charged by Congress to help preserve historical buildings, sued the Trump administration in December, saying it failed to undergo legally required reviews or receive congressional authorization for the project. The group has asked Leon to pause construction until those reviews take place, arguing that every additional day of work locks the project into place.
“We are fully committed to upholding the interests of the American public and advocating for compliance with all legally required review and approval processes — and an opportunity for the American people to weigh in on a project that impacts one of the most historically significant buildings in our country,” the National Trust said in a statement Sunday, following Trump’s post that also took aim at the group.
The Justice Department has argued that Trump has significant authority to make changes to White House grounds. The department also submitted testimony from an engineer working on the ballroom project who said the planned building can still accommodate significant design changes. The National Trust has submitted testimony from architect William Bates, former president of the American Institute of Architects, who said in a sworn statement that a building’s subterranean infrastructure essentially predetermines critical aspects of what can be built aboveground.
“Altering these conditions after the fact would require major demolition and redesign,” Bates wrote last month.
Leon, who is hearing the case at the U.S. District Court in D.C., on Thursday appeared skeptical of the administration’s arguments and pressed the Justice Department to explain how Trump had the legal right to fund the project using hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations. Publicly identified donors, such as Amazon, Google and Lockheed Martin, collectively have billions of dollars in contracts before the administration. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
The two federal panels set to review the ballroom project — the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission — are now led by Trump appointees after the president removed members named by the Biden administration. White House officials have said they hope to win approval from the panels by March, and the panels’ leaders have signaled support for ballroom construction.
“I know the President wants to get on with this, and we need to let him do his job,” Rodney Mims Cook Jr., the chairman of the Commission of Fine Arts, said at a hearing last week.
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