A month ago, the Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump could continue building his White House ballroom. Now, Trump has doubled down on construction projects around D.C. — including a giant arch.
But he is running into more legal hurdles, safety concerns and complaints by the American people.
Here’s what’s going on.
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The Supreme Court allowed the White House ballroom — and potentially more construction
In August, conservative justices on the Supreme Court determined that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has been challenging the ballroom’s construction, didn’t have standing to sue to stop it.
That lawsuit was probably the last real hurdle keeping Trump from building his ballroom on the ruins of the East Wing, The Washington Post’s Dan Diamond and Justin Jouvenal report, mostly because it’s unclear who else would be able to sue if not a nonprofit of historic preservationists set up by Congress.
The Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of whether Trump can knock down a wing of the White House and build a ballroom in its place. The chief justice of the United States has said that Trump’s unpopular White House ballroom is probably illegal because Congress didn’t approve it, and lower courts have blocked its construction for the same reason.
“It’s unexpected, and it’s disheartening,” Brent Leggs, the trust’s president, told The Post’s Dan Diamond this week. His group is setting up a legal fund to try to fight other administration changes to historic sites.
Trump is moving fast to build a triumphal arch alongside his ballroom
In the wake of the ruling, Trump has continued to push forward with building a massive, 250-foot arch in a busy traffic circle just outside D.C. He said this will be a monument to the nation’s 250th birthday; a “gilded arch topped with a winged figure holding a torch, flanked by eagles and lions.” It would easily dwarf other monuments.
“We are living in the Golden Age of America, and this Building will be one of the Greatest ever constructed in Washington, D.C.,” Trump posted on social media about the arch, after the Supreme Court ruled on the ballroom.
To build an arch on federal land (that is not in the White House complex), the administration needs to navigate a lot of bureaucracy. It had been working on a review of how the arch might harm historic sites but dropped that review entirely this week.
There’s evidence it would harm nearby historic sites: it would sit next to Arlington National Cemetery, and the administration previously acknowledged that the arch would negatively affect dozens of nearby sites like the Lincoln Memorial. Veterans groups have asked the administration not to go forward with the project.
The administration has argued the arch doesn’t need to abide by D.C.’s height laws for buildings and that it doesn’t need congressional authorization because Congress authorized something similar a century ago nearby.
The final step is to get approval for the project from a federal commission led by Trump allies, and Dan reports the administration is hoping to start construction by November.
Trump’s speedy push to remake D.C. in his image and likeness has also created problems for him: An architect resigned from the White House ballroom project last year after repeatedly warning that the designs did not provide adequate emergency exit routes or fire-containment measures, The Washington Post reported this week. “I am the code,” Trump responded.
And the Reflecting Pool needed millions in repairs after new paint peeled off the bottom of what by all accounts was a rushed project.
Trump announced this week the arch would be a “military complex” that would house snipers, drones and ammunition. That raises new safety concerns: namely, having ammunition and snipers and drones in a major traffic intersection with a tourist attraction.
Trump has not been winning over the public on these projects
It’s not clear why Trump wants to include a military presence at the arch. Trump said this was at the military’s request, but claiming that the military needs the monument echoes rationale he has used in his legal defense for the ballroom. Before the Supreme Court ruling, a federal judge said construction could continue only on the ballrooms’ underground portion, which houses a military complex.
Then the shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner happened, and Trump started referring to the entire ballroom as a military facility. (National security is also Trump’s argument for banning journalists from the White House, which a judge reversed this week.)
Kimberly Wehle, a law professor at the University of Baltimore, says presidents can get away with a lot by using national security as a rationale, especially in a post-9/11 world. She said citing national security as a reason for presidential action can make courts, Congress and even the public less likely to intervene.
Trump’s construction projects have been unpopular from the start and appear to be getting more unpopular. A majority of Americans oppose the ballroom and his arch, by a 2-to-1 margin, a Washington Post-ABC News poll in April found.
A more recent Reuters poll, conducted in September, finds just 28 percent of Americans support his arch, ballroom and his effort to repaint the National Mall’s Reflecting Pool. Sixty-seven percent said they want these projects to be a low priority for Trump.
Amber Phillips writes The 5-Minute Fix newsletter, a quick analysis of the day’s biggest political news. Send her an email here, or ask a question that could be featured in an upcoming newsletter.
The post Trump is plowing ahead with an unpopular arch appeared first on Washington Post.
