President Donald Trump has been having a great time building the new White House Ballroom in recent months, but anytime the president is having a good time doing something, a judge comes in and stops him. Apparently, that expands to this $400 million, 90,000 square-foot construction project that is said to be fully funded by private donors.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon determined on Tuesday that no statute comes close to allowing Trump to carry out this project of his own accord, and that construction must be halted until Congress approves the completion. So, I guess we’re just stuck with a half-finished project?
🚨 BREAKING: A federal judge has ruled that work on President Trump’s White House Ballroom “has to stop”
[@CNN] pic.twitter.com/Z5pIFnU0wD
— Politics US (@PolitlcsUS) March 31, 2026
Trump began the project in October after demolishing the East Wing of the White House, something the left in this country seemed to find incredibly offensive for some reason. The New York Times even described the judge’s decision as “the first meaningful setback to the president’s increasingly audacious efforts to redesign the White House and Washington, D.C.” as if nothing is allowed to change, but I digress.
“The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued the Trump administration in December to stop the project until the White House abides by federal law and rules like obtaining congressional approval, going through multiple independent reviews and a public comment period,” according to The Hill.
Judge Leon’s 35-page opinion 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.”
“Under Defendants’ reading, virtually any change to the White House could be framed as an ‘alteration’ or ‘improvement,’” Leon wrote. “Indeed, some might even view tearing down the White House and building a modem skyscraper in its place as an ‘improvement.'”
He continued, “As Defendants have argued it, so long as the White House grounds are ‘developed’ or ‘occupied by buildings and structures,’ the President has complete authority to engage in whatever construction activity he sees fit. How grand!”
But wait, there’s more.
“Unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop!” he wrote, exclamation point and all. “But here is the good news. It is not too late for Congress to authorize the continued construction of the ballroom project.”
With Congressional approval, he continued, the legislative branch 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 continued. “And the American people will benefit from the branches of government exercising their constitutionally prescribed roles.”
“Not a bad outcome, that!” he concluded. Seriously, I’ve never seen a judge use so many exclamation marks, especially on such a stupid decision.
As I said, Trump has stated numerous times that the ballroom isn’t costing the taxpayers and has been funded by private donors. He was aiming to have it completed by 2028, and the goal is to use it for events like galas and official state dinners.
Trump responded to the decision on Truth Social:
The National Trust for Historic Preservation sues me for a Ballroom that is under budget, ahead of schedule, being built at no cost to the Taxpayer, and will be the finest Building of its kind anywhere in the World. I then get sued by them over the renovation of the dilapidated and structurally unsound former Kennedy Center, now, The Trump Kennedy Center (A show of Bipartisan Unity, a Republican and Democrat President!), where all I am doing is fixing, cleaning, running, and “sprucing up” a terribly maintained, for many years, Building, but a Building of potentially great importance.
Yet, The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a Radical Left Group of Lunatics whose funding was stopped by Congress in 2005, is not suing the Federal Reserve for a Building which has been decimated and destroyed, inside and out, by an incompetent and possibly corrupt Fed Chairman. The once magnificent Building is BILLIONS over budget, may never be completed, and may never open. All of the beautiful walls inside have been ripped down, never to be built again, but the National ‘Trust” for Historic Preservation never did anything about it! Or, have they sued on Governor Gavin Newscum’s “RAILROAD TO NOWHERE’ in California that is BILLIONS over Budget and, probably, will never open or be used.
So, the White House Ballroom, and The Trump Kennedy Center, which are under budget, ahead of schedule, and will be among the most magnificent Buildings of their kind anywhere in the World, gets sued by a group that was cut off by Government years ago, but all of the many DISASTERS in our Country are left alone to die. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? President DONALD J. TRUMP
This is a developing story.
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