Aboveground construction on President Trump’s White House ballroom must halt until lawmakers authorize the project, a judge ruled Thursday, saying the president appeared intent on skirting a previous order by redefining the ballroom project as a critical national security upgrade.
The ruling escalated the legal standoff over the president’s plan to overhaul the White House grounds, which Judge Richard J. Leon had previously decided exceeded what a president can do at a historic building like the White House without approval from Congress.
Judge Leon said that adding features like bulletproof windows and other standard security features that exist throughout the White House did not exempt the ballroom project from his directives.
“National security is not a blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity,” Judge Leon wrote.
Judge Leon paused his order for a week, giving the president until April 23 to lodge a new appeal. And he wrote that his new order would allow the administration to continue to work below ground, including construction on a bunker that Mr. Trump has said is necessary for national security.
Judge Leon had previously agreed to allow work on the project to continue but only temporarily to allow for an appeal. An appeals court then agreed to work could continue but only until April 17 to allow time for Judge Leon to weigh in again on arguments the Trump administration made that the project is necessary to make national security improvements at the White House.
In October, President Trump abruptly tore down the East Wing to make space for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom that he is financing with at least $350 million raised from corporate donors and political allies.
In April, after nearly four months of litigation, Judge Leon sided with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, an organization chartered by Congress to protect historical sites and buildings, which had sued to stop the sudden redevelopment of the White House.
But almost immediately after Judge Leon concluded that the president had bypassed Congressional oversight, the president and his staff began to describe the project to the court in new ways.
Mr. Trump had previously complained about a lack of indoor space for major events at the White House, proposing the ballroom as a practical solution for a longstanding logistical constraint past administrations have had to work around.
But this month, his lawyers told the court that the project is less about adding event space and more about overhauling the security of the White House compound. In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has said that the proposed ballroom is only the aboveground portion of a sprawling bunker complex that the military has helped plan as a replacement to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.
To pre-empt concerns that his order could jeopardize safety around the White House, Judge Leon allowed a narrow exception to his April order permitting work on security infrastructure that may have been torn out in the hurried construction. Yet at that time, Judge Leon said he would block the construction because most of the concerns about security at the complex had been created by launching construction hastily.
“While I take seriously the Government’s concerns regarding the safety and security of the White House grounds and the President himself, the existence of a ‘large hole’ beside the White House is, of course, a problem of the President’s own making!” he wrote.
Mr. Trump has seized on Judge Leon’s narrow national security exception to argue that he was allowed to proceed with almost every element of the ballroom plan, from installing windows and a roof to the construction of a new bunker beneath the building because all include security features.
On Thursday, Judge Leon stressed that he had, from the beginning, sought a reasonable solution that addressed the National Trust’s concerns. He lamented that Mr. Trump’s tactics had forced him to unnecessarily scrutinize every detail of the project, when the spirit and scope of his order seemed clear.
“I have no desire or intention to be dragooned into the role of construction manager,” he wrote.
The National Trust has described the ballroom as a vanity project that sacrificed a large portion of the historical structure to satisfy the president’s whims and leave his personal imprint on the building.
Now, the National Trust argues the administration has shifted the goal posts with its security arguments and had urged Judge Leon to hold firm on blocking most construction until Congress allows it.
“The defendants believe they can ignore this court’s injunction and continue constructing a project they very much do not want to stop,” the organization wrote on Tuesday. “This court should not abide such subterfuge.”
The Trump administration has asked the appeals court to block Judge Leon’s order entirely, which a three-judge panel has so far declined to do. The administration has also indicated it plans to ask the Supreme Court to weigh in if the lower courts block construction.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.
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