The Trump administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to allow construction of President Trump’s White House ballroom to continue, arguing that it was too late to stop work on the project and that doing so would raise national security concerns.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a court filing that the project, including the ballroom and military and medical facilities beneath it, is now 65% complete, “with millions of pounds of steel procured, tens of thousands of cubic yards of concrete poured, and miles of conduit laid.”
Sauer said a crew of 250 has been working 20 hours a day, seven days a week. He also said the project is “on time and under budget,” and requires no taxpayer funds, with $400 million in private donations covering the costs. Some estimates, however, indicate that the cost will be considerably higher, upwards of $600 million, and that taxpayers will be required to cover much of the tab.
Whatever the ultimate cost, the Trump administration argues that the project has long since crossed the point where courts could intervene and major changes could be made. Sauer’s filing also warns that stopping work at this point would compromise the integrity of the construction that has been completed so far, leaving it vulnerable to weather damage and creating safety and security risks.
The Trump administration’s legal argument for the project has shifted in recent months to focus more on the military complex, medical facilities and security features being built rather than the glitzy 90-square-foot ballroom that the president has long insisted is desperately needed for state functions.
“The entire ballroom structure is designed to shield the military installation beneath it,” Sauer also writes. “Halting the Project will stall this vital construction, making this President—the subject of recurrent assassination attempts—much less safe, and risking future Presidents’ safety.”
Sauer’s emergency request seeks to have the Supreme Court step in and stay a lower court order that said Trump needed approval from Congress for the ballroom project. It marks the first time that one of Trump’s controversial construction projects has come before a Supreme Court that has taken an expansive view of presidential power in other cases.
A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled last Friday that the administration must halt above-ground work on the site but could continue with security-related construction. “Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help,” the appeals court said in a split decision by a three-judge panel that upheld an April decision by a district court. The appeals court paused its ruling for two weeks to allow the government to take the case to the Supreme Court.
That ruling said that Congress has not ceded its authority over the design and construction of the White House. It said that every president “is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence” and that the president has no constitutional authority over the property, “which is designed and maintained for the use of all Presidents, current and future, and for the American people.”
The Trump administration filing challenges that framing. “The President of the United States of America is not a tenant, but rather the sole, elected head of the Executive Branch, and Congress has authorized him to renovate, secure, and protect the White House and its grounds, as other Presidents have been allowed to do, without exception,” it says. “The injunction is ‘judicial overreach beyond the proper province of the federal courts.’”
New design detail: The administration’s filing also includes new renderings of the ballroom that depict large, golden presidential seals on the façade of the building. Those design details clash with the traditional look of the White House and reportedly could require the project to get approval from agencies overseeing federal buildings.
What’s next: The nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation, which filed the legal challenge to the ballroom project, now has until Tuesday to respond to the government’s petition. Work on the project is scheduled to stop on August 21 unless the Supreme Court intervenes.