A federal district court has blocked the construction of Trump’s ballroom because the president does not have the legal authority to change the White House and must get congressional authorization for any changes because the White House does not belong to any president and sits in a national park.
The White House and its grounds are property of the American people, and Congress must approve any changes.
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The administration tried to get the injunction lifted, but the federal DC Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s appeal.
The ballroom construction has been blocked since the original injunction was issued, which is why Trump has been frantically demanding that authorization for the ballroom project be attached to any must-pass Senate legislation.
However, in its ruling, the appeals court made it clear that the ballroom project was also about the separation of powers.
The court wrote:
The Defendants also emphasize that the ballroom project’s nearly half-a-billion-dollar price tag is being privately funded by “American patriots.” Defs.’ Opening Br. 3. The United States is blessed to be filled with many patriots. But in this case, the Executive Branch’s self-help trenches not only on Congress’s control over federal property and historic sites, but also on Congress’s power of the purse.
The amount of private donations is unprecedented. See Press Release, Nat’l Park Serv., National Park Foundation Receives Historic $100 Million Grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. (Aug. 26, 2024) (celebrating a $100 million grant as “the largest ever received by [National Park Foundation] and the largest grant benefitting national parks”). By way of comparison, the $400 million projected cost of the ballroom project amounts to approximately 8% of the Park Service’s budget for Fiscal Year 2026, see NAT’L PARK SERV., BUDGET JUSTIFICATIONS AND PERFORMANCE INFORMATION FISCAL YEAR 2027, at 4 (2026), and exceeds 1,500 times the level requiring special scrutiny by the Department of Interior for conflicts of interest, see DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, 374 DM 6.10.E(2)(b).
The private donations were a way to get around the Constitution on multiple levels.