A federal judge ordered on Tuesday that construction be halted on President Trump’s proposed White House ballroom, to be built in place of the demolished East Wing, saying work must come to a stop until the project receives a go-ahead from Congress.
The decision delivered the first meaningful setback to the president’s increasingly audacious efforts to redesign the White House and Washington, D.C. It came after months of litigation in front of Judge Richard J. Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, who had previously declined to step in.
In a 35-page opinion, Judge Leon wrote that Mr. Trump likely did not have the authority to act on his own, without consulting Congress, to replace entire sections of the White House — changes that could endure for generations.
He also reiterated concerns he had raised for months in court: that from the start, the administration has provided shifting and questionable accounts of who was in charge of the project and under what authority private donations could be accepted to fund it.
“Unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop!” he wrote. “But here is the good news. It is not too late for Congress to authorize the continued construction of the ballroom project.”
Judge Leon wrote that if the White House sought congressional approval, the legislature would “retain its authority over the nation’s property and its oversight over the government’s spending.”
“The National Trust’s interests in a constitutional and lawful process will be vindicated,” he added. “And the American people will benefit from the branches of Government exercising their constitutionally prescribed roles.”
“Not a bad outcome, that!” he concluded.
The decision suggested that Judge Leon was satisfied that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit organization chartered by Congress to guard America’s historic buildings that had sued over the project, had put together a workable challenge after several misfires.
In December and again in February, he declined to step in and deferred to the Trump administration, which has argued that an order halting the project would leave an open construction site next to the president’s residence, impairing the ability to do basic work at the White House and even jeopardizing national security.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.
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