When President Donald Trump tore down the White House’s East Wing last October, the public, members of Congress and even some members of his administration said they were shocked.
Leaders of the White House Historical Association were not surprised. A spokesperson said they had understood since at least the end of July that Trump planned to demolish the East Wing to build his ballroom, but opted not to fight the president. The general public learned of the demolition plan only when the wrecking equipment began work nearly three months later.
Instead of public comment, the historical association’s staff worked to take photos of the decades-old rooms Trump planned to destroy — including the former office of the founder of the association, first lady Jacqueline Kennedy. The group’s leaders said they were cataloguing the spaces for history.
The historical association has remained similarly silent as Trump works to remake much of the White House and its grounds, including paving over Kennedy’s Rose Garden and building a 90,000-square-foot ballroom. Some of Trump’s changes have prompted lawsuits from other associations, and hundreds of preservation groups and assorted allies have denounced the president’s unilateral demolition of the East Wing as illegal and damaging to the nation’s history.
Inside the White House Historical Association, some current and former staff and donors have asked CEO Stewart McLaurin and other leaders whether the group should do more to fight Trump’s changes, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
But leaders of the association — established in 1961 to preserve the building’s character, ensure it remained “the People’s House” and teach its history to future generations — say it is not their place to resist Trump as he remakes the White House to his tastes. Instead, the association has continued to cultivate close ties with Trump, who has publicly championed the organization, helped it with fundraising and previously donated his salary to it.
“We have a lot of things in common. We love the White House, right?” Trump said last year when visiting the association, where, flanked by McLaurin, he touted his renovations to the White House while wearing a hat emblazoned “Trump was right about everything.”
Asked about the White House Historical Association’s posture toward Trump — and what Jacqueline Kennedy would have made of Trump’s changes — the association said its work was nonpartisan.
“We cannot speak for Mrs. Kennedy, but our work remains aligned with the mission she laid out,” a spokesperson said in an email. “The Association continues its work in historical research, education and preservation of the White House collection.”
White House spokespeople declined to comment about the administration’s relationship with the association.
First lady Melania Trump is scheduled to host the association at the White House on Wednesday evening, according to a copy of an invitation obtained by The Washington Post.
Past first ladies, including Jill Biden and Michelle Obama, had also held receptions for the group, the association’s spokesperson said.
“Our mission stays the same no matter who is president, and we are grateful that the majority of Association donors have remained committed to that nonpartisan mission, even while political and media climates have heightened,” the spokesperson said.
The White House Historical Association’s silence on Trump’s changes has irked some past staff and supporters, as well as fellow preservationists and historians. Some say the 65-year-old association has spent decades raising money with the implication that it was protecting the White House and that its leaders are failing to meet the moment now that a challenge has arrived.
“Jackie Kennedy founded the organization because she thought the White House should be treated like a museum,” said Rebecca Miller, the executive director of the DC Preservation League. “The White House Historical Association’s complicity towards this administration’s actions is not in that spirit.”
Ed Lengel, who worked for two years as an historian at the association, said the group is wrongly trying to equate Trump’s changes with past renovations at the White House.
Lengel pointed to a June 2025 essay posted by McLaurin — “the Ever-Changing White House” — which asserted that many once-controversial changes to the White House were eventually accepted.
“Media and Congressional criticisms have often focused on costs, historical integrity, and timing, yet many of these alterations have become integral to the identity of the White House, and it is difficult for us to imagine The White House today without these evolutions and additions,” McLaurin wrote in the essay, which was posted after Trump told reporters he planned to build a ballroom and said he had conducted a site inspection.
Administration officials have cited McLaurin’s essay when defending the ballroom and other changes to the White House.
But, said Lengel, “every president who has made a change — and that includes Harry Truman and his gutting of the interior of the White House — has consulted carefully with Congress, with architects, with historians to ensure that the changes they make were consistent with the founders’ vision of what the White House should be, and to ensure that these changes are an organic growth from from past development.”
“This is is not the same thing.”
The association’s silence on Trump also may be hindering legal efforts to constrain the president’s construction agenda.
A 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court ruled last month that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit charged by Congress with preserving historic buildings, likely lacks standing to challenge Trump’s ballroom plans. The ruling appeared to clear the way for Trump to finish his project.
But the White House Historical Association — with its explicit mission to preserve the White House’s character — could have a stronger case for proving it has been harmed by Trump’s changes to the building and have standing to sue, according to legal experts in historic preservation.
“Under the Court’s ruling, potential plaintiffs may still exist,” Sara Bronin, a George Washington University law professor who chaired the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation during the Biden administration, wrote in a text message, singling out the historical association.
The Post spoke to eight former White House Historical Association staff and supporters, as well as current supporters of the association. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the association, which is led by a board made up of wealthy and influential Washingtonians.
John F.W. Rogers, the White House Historical Association’s current chairman and a Goldman Sachs executive, advised Melania Trump during the recent presidential transition.
The association declined to comment on Rogers’s and other leaders’ relationships with the White House.
Its spokesperson also defended the association’s approach to the East Wing demolition, including its decision to commission photographs.
“Association leadership first learned of the planned demolition to the East Wing when the White House issued a press release on July 31, 2025, announcing the Ballroom plans and citing the chosen location of the Ballroom as the location of the current East Wing,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.
“The photography began about a week before demolition started. The Association learned about the President’s plans to demolish the East Wing the same way that the public did.”
The White House press release on July 31, however, did not say that the East Wing would be demolished. Trump, himself, said during a Oval Office event that day that his new ballroom ”won’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. I love it,” Trump said.
In an October 2025 interview with the Associated Press, McLaurin discussed how the association prepared for the demolition of the East Wing, including embedding a photographer at its start.
“We had known since late summer that the staff of the East Wing had moved out,” McLaurin said.
The White House Historical Association’s leaders and some of its supporters have also drawn a distinction between preserving the White House’s internal furnishings compared with protecting the building’s structure.
“We keep the White House inside in order,” said Marlene Malek, a philanthropist who sits on the association’s board, offering examples such as replacing damaged chairs or purchasing new paintings. “I don’t think it has anything to do with the outside.”
The association was created by Jacqueline Kennedy after President John F. Kennedy took office in January 1961. The new first lady was shocked by the White House’s appearance after decades of different administrations imposing their own styles, and with no one appointed to safeguard the building’s condition — or furniture. Past presidents and their staff had even auctioned off items that they found inside, historians have said.
“She told Letitia Baldridge, her new social secretary, that the place looked like ‘a hotel that had been decorated by a wholesale furniture store during a January clearance,’” author C. David Heymann wrote in his 1989 biography of Jacqueline Kennedy.
The first lady launched a major White House restoration project, which extended to preserving historic buildings in Lafayette Square, the public park across the street from the White House, that were at risk of demolition. She also cultivated donors to fund new furnishings and went on television to promote her agenda in a CBS News special.
Today, the association’s headquarters is located in Decatur House, one of the historic buildings located within the perimeter of Lafayette Square that Trump has fenced off from the public.
Outside the building sits a bas relief rendering of Jacqueline Kennedy, above one of her quotes: “THE WHITE HOUSE BELONGS TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.”
That message has featured heavily in the association’s past promotional materials, including serving as the theme of a 2022 conference.
The association has traditionally funded its operations through donations and sales of White House-related merchandise, but its ambitions have grown in recent years. A new “People’s House” exhibit, offering a life-size recreation of the Oval Office and other White House features, opened in September 2024, across the street from the White House grounds. The $85 million, 33,000-square-foot project was funded by private donations.
Some new Trump appointees, fresh to Washington, soon visited the People’s House, hoping to prepare themselves for the experience of first visiting the Oval Office, according to two administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly. Trump also visited the exhibit last year.
Parts of the exhibit are now outdated. The recreation of a stone path to the West Wing has not been updated since Trump remade the real-life path with black granite earlier this year. The exhibit’s Oval Office lacks the extensive gilding and other golden items that decorate it now.
Staffers at the People’s House said that they expect to update their version of the Oval Office to more closely resemble Trump’s in the coming weeks.
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