United States presidents usually leave their mark in the White House. And then there is Donald Trump. A builder at heart, he has filled the Oval Office with golden moldings, like the Mar-a-Lago style letters of his Palm Beach (Florida) mansion, which he has placed everywhere. He has paved the Rose Garden area and installed a dark granite path that contrasts with the very white building and a presidential gallery full of insults and lies about his predecessors. In no renovation has he invested as much interest and political capital, however, as in the ballroom he wants to build where the east wing once stood, which he himself decided on a year ago demolish without asking permission.
The importance for him of the construction of a space of about 8,400 square meters (that is, an area larger than the White House itself) with capacity for a thousand people and a budget that has been growing to 400 million dollars, was demonstrated again this weekend. After emerging unharmed from the thwarted attack by a gunman on the White House correspondents’ dinner, which Trump presided in another huge room At the Hilton hotel – the largest in Washington – the Republican told the press in an impromptu appearance that, if there were his own ballroom, which would have, he promised, the best security measures, something like this “would never have happened.”
Since then, a chorus of Republican politicians, MAGA (Make America Great Again) personalities, and conservative Fox News commentators have synced up to help make Trump’s wishes come true. The president of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, told that television that the room will be the “solution” to threats like this weekend. Senator Lindsey Graham promised, for his part, that he will present a bill to “accelerate what America needs: a safe place where the president and others can gather, have a good time and enjoy themselves without putting the nation at risk.”
Trump had written a long message in Truth on Sunday about the construction of the ballroom, whose work would not be completed in any case until 2028, the year in which Trump will cease to be president. The law does not allow him to run for a third term.
“What happened last night (Saturday) is precisely why our magnificent Armed Forces, the Secret Service, law enforcement and – for different reasons – every president of the last 150 years have been DEMANDING that a grand ballroom be built,” wrote the president of the United States, noting that it will be “beautiful” and that it will have “security of the highest level.” It will not have “rooms located above through which people could enter without authorization,” and it will be part, he added, “of the most secure building in the world: the White House.”
Trump also attacked in his message against “the absurd lawsuit”, that managed to paralyze the works last March and that, according to the president, was brought in by “a woman who was walking her dog and who absolutely lacks procedural legitimacy.”
It was actually a nonprofit organization called the National Foundation for Historic Preservation, based in Washington, that took legal action in December to force Trump to submit his plans to a review by Congress, something he did not do before with the East Wing, demolished in October. “No president is legally authorized to build a ballroom without giving the public an opportunity to weigh in,” the lawsuit says.
White House lawyers maintain that these lands are outside the field of action of the National Historic Preservation Act. The lawyers of the foundation, established by Congress, argue that there are other laws that Trump is breaking.
Precautionary measure
In March, District Judge Richard Leon, in Washington, agreed with the latter by approving a precautionary measure to stop the works. On April 16, he reaffirmed that decision after an appeals court asked him to do so in light of the arguments in defense of national security put forward by the White House.
That second ruling unleashed a storm of anger from the president of the United States on his social network. That day, he sent eight messages, some of them repeated, in which he defined Leon as a “Trump-hating judge” who “is going out of his way to undermine national security and to ensure that this great gift to the United States is delayed or never built.” The president insists in his defense of the project that the money for construction will not come from the taxpayer’s pocket, but will be provided by multimillion-dollar donors. Some are personal friends of the president. It is not yet clear what those who contribute funds will get in return.
On Monday, the Department of Justice asked the judge in writing to suspend his precautionary measure so that the works can resume, and Trump published those documents on his social network, whose legal language is at times reminiscent of the rhetoric that the president uses in Truth.
On Sunday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had posted on his X account a letter that the Department of Justice, which he runs until further notice, had sent to the National Foundation for Historic Preservation. The letter describes the lawsuit as “frivolous” and asks for its withdrawal, because “it puts the lives of the president, his family and his staff at serious risk.”
The letter, signed by Brett Shumate, assistant attorney general of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice, continues: “I hope that yesterday’s narrowly avoided incident helps you understand once and for all the folly of a lawsuit that literally has no purpose other than to stop President Trump, no matter what the cost.” Shumate pressures those who filed the lawsuit to stop preventing the construction of a room that would allow the Hilton to stop using it, “which has proven to be unsafe.”
The president of the foundation responded with a statement in which he warned that he did not “plan to voluntarily desist” from his crusade. “It does not endanger anyone; with the lawsuit we limit ourselves to respectfully requesting the Administration to comply with the law.”
Blanche insisted on her request once more. It was in a joint appearance with the head of the FBI to give details about the investigation of the author of the attack, Cole Thomas Allen, whom the Department of Justice He had been accused shortly before of three crimes. The most serious is “attempt to assassinate the president of the United States.” It carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
