A federal judge in Washington on Tuesday blocked, for now, construction of the new White House ballroom, which President Donald Trump has heavily touted.
In an opinion explaining the order, District Court Judge Richard Leon said construction of the planned $400 million ballroom “must stop” because no law “comes close” to giving Trump legal authority to build such a structure at the White House without authorization by Congress.
Leon said that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which sued Trump in December to halt the project, was likely to prevail in the case.
The judge enjoined Trump administration officials and the Executive Office of the President “from taking any action in furtherance of the physical development of the proposed ballroom at the former site of the East Wing of the White House.”
Leon, who twice previously declined to block the project, said the order would take effect within 14 days. The delay gave Trump time to appeal the injunction.
The Trump administration, within hours, filed that appeal with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The ruling comes months after the East Wing was demolished to make way for the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom, whose cost is meant to be covered by donations from businesses and other private donors.
“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 a memorandum opinion explaining his ruling.
“President Trump claims that Congress has given him authority in existing statutes to construct his East Wing ballroom project and to do it with private funds,” the judge wrote.
“The plaintiff … claims the President has no such authority under existing statutes and that a preliminary injunction is necessary to avoid irreparable harm.”
“I have concluded that the National Trust is likely to succeed on the merits because no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have,” Leon wrote. “As such, I must therefore grant the National Trust’s Motion for a Preliminary Injunction, and the ballroom construction project must stop until Congress authorizes its completion.”
The White House, when asked for comment on the ruling, responded with a Truth Social post by Trump, in which he called the National Trust “a Radical Left Group of Lunatics.”
The National Trust ex-officio trustees include Attorney General Pam Bondi, according to its website. Bondi oversees the Department of Justice, which is defending the Trump administration against the group’s lawsuit.
National Trust President and CEO Carol Quillen praised the ruling.
“We are pleased with Judge Leon’s ruling today to order a halt to any further ballroom construction until the Administration complies with the law and obtains express authorization to go forward,” she said in a statement. “This is a win for the American people on a project that forever impacts one of the most beloved and iconic places in our nation.”
Trump said the group is suing “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,” Trump wrote.
“I then get sued by them over the renovation of the dilapidated and structurally unsound former Kennedy Center, now, The Trump Kennedy Center … 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,” Trump wrote.
Trump also blasted the National Trust for 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.”
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