A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s construction of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom to replace the White House’s East Wing.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that a legal challenge brought by a preservation group that sued to block President Trump’s construction project was likely to succeed on the merits, because “no statute” the government used to justify the construction “comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have.”
The ruling takes effect in 14 days.
In December, the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the U.S. sued the administration for allegedly failing to adhere to federal guidelines prior to demolishing the East Wing last fall and breaking ground on a ballroom. The Trust also questioned the $400 million project’s funding mechanism, which is largely from private donations.
In February, Leon ruled that the construction could continue temporarilyfinding that the legal challenge was not comprehensive enough to prove Mr. Trump lacked the authority to renovate the building with private funds and without congressional action.
Leon allowed the National Trust for Historic Preservation to again take its legal arguments for a preliminary injunction to court earlier this month, where he expressed skepticism of the Justice Department’s legal arguments defending the mechanism to pay for the ballroom.
The judge said that the Trump administration’s continued arguments that the ballroom was a legally allowable “alteration” to White House grounds was a “brazen interpretation of the laws of vocabulary.”
“This isn’t any national park,” Leon said. “This is an iconic symbol of this nation.”
“The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!” Leon wrote in his opinion, issued Tuesday, adding that “the ballroom construction project must stop until Congress authorizes its completion.”
This is a breaking story; it will be updated.