The Trump administration is urging a federal appeals court to allow construction of the White House ballroom to continue on grounds of national security, underscoring the implications if the addition is halted by a lower court’s ruling.
The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit late Friday, asking for the federal appeals court to halt a lower court’s order pausing construction on the new East Wing of the White House, where the proposed ballroom is set to be built. The DOJ asked the appeals court to act by Friday, ahead of when the district court order would go into effect April 14, arguing that President Donald Trump has the authority to make changes to the White House without congressional approval. The DOJ’s filing also highlighted the “grave national-security harms” that pausing construction would have.
The filing discussed the security concerns for the president and administration officials that would arise if the renovations being made to protect the White House from potential attacks are not completed, especially at a time when tensions around the world remain high.
“This order is untenable and must be stayed in that the building is under construction, with deep Top Secret excavations, foundations, and structures, already built, and ready to receive heavily fortified, for security reasons, steel, bullet, ballistic, and blast proof glass, and drone proof roofing materials, which must be finished quickly, and not allowed to be exposed to the conditions and elements of an open construction site,” the DOJ filing said. “Time is of the essence!”
“The old East Wing was in very dangerous and poor condition, and totally vulnerable to attack by even the most basic of Military weaponry, but especially now with the new advanced technologies of drones, missiles, much more powerful rifles, and other emerging national-security technologies and threats,” the DOJ brief to the appeals court added.
The DOJ also urged the appeals court to pause the lower court’s ruling for other reasons, arguing that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the nonprofit organization that sued the administration over the East Wing project, does not have standing to sue. The filing claimed that “feelings do not confer standing, let alone confer a heckler’s veto over critically important White House renovations and national security improvements.”
“There is no world in which equity elevates idiosyncratic architectural likes or dislikes of a single passer-by over the security of the President and the functionality of the White House complex,” the DOJ filing said.
The appeals court has ordered lawyers for the National Trust for Historic Preservation to file their response to the DOJ by Wednesday at 5 p.m., and then allowed the DOJ until Thursday at 5 p.m. to respond to that filing.
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If the appeals court declines to grant the DOJ’s request to lift the pause on construction of the revamped East Wing, the Justice Department could go to the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, where it has had overwhelming success since Trump’s return to the White House.
The East Wing renovation is one of several construction projects the Trump administration has ongoing across the nation’s capital. Another Trump proposal facing scrutiny in a D.C. federal court is his plan to build an arch on a plot of land owned by the National Park Service between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial.
