The future of Donald Trump’s ballroom in the White House is in the hands of the United States Supreme Court. This Friday, the ruling ordering the halt of construction on the ground level of the president’s flagship project in the presidential complex came into effect, as the two-week suspension of the order granted by the judge expired, allowing the Administration to file an appeal with the highest judicial authority.
Read more Purge in Mossad over the failure of the plan to overthrow the Iranian regime
The White House bases its defense of the mega-project, valued at over 400 million dollars, on two strong arguments. The first is that a significant part of the construction has already been carried out, for which the east wing of the building was demolished without consent and the work has been accelerated, especially in recent weeks, during which, according to the administration, 250 workers have been sharing shifts for 20 hours a day, seven days a week. The goal is clear: to complete as much work as possible as soon as possible to make its completion inevitable. According to the document submitted to a court, the ballroom is already 60% built, although the construction on the ground shows a more initial state.
Also read
The second argument is that the ballroom pertains to U.S. national security and, specifically, to the protection of a president who has suffered three assassination attempts in the last two years. Once completed, the president plans to host events there such as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which last April was interrupted at the Hilton Hotel in Washington when an armed man broke through the Secret Service security barrier.
To support this argument, Trump interprets that the ballroom and the military bunker being built underground are one and the same construction. However, the truth is that the court has only ordered the halt of the ballroom construction, not the reinforced security space.
The bunker, officially known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, was built during World War II beneath the east wing. The president’s project consists of enlarging the space and making it deeper, as well as reinforcing its security and military equipment. The declared goal is to make the complex resilient enough to withstand a nuclear explosion.
The White House Director of Management and Administration, Joshua Fisher, argued before the court that a concrete and steel superstructure extending five floors underground had already been built. He stated that 80% of the project’s reinforcing bars have been placed and the concrete poured, and this week he planned to install about 500 tons of reinforcing bars and pour another 2,300 cubic meters of concrete.
Read more The floors of the politicians
The White House argues it has already completed 60% of the work and it is too late to stop it
“Given the current progress, the superstructure has passed the point of no return,” Fisher wrote to the court, adding that even if the Supreme Court orders its demolition, “there would be no way to do it.” On Tuesday, the conservationists who denounced the project, National Trust for Historic Preservation, warned the justices that the White House wants to “get ahead of judicial review” with this accelerated and “illegal” construction.
The court blocked the project arguing that Trump had exceeded his powers and had encroached on those of Congress, a body he neither consulted nor sought authorization from, despite it being responsible for approving major transformations like this. Other changes in the White House, such as paving the old rose garden, installing golden decorations, two enormous flagpoles with giant flags, or a “presidential hall of fame,” are considered minor and have generated less public outcry. But Trump demolished the east wing of the White House overnight to build a ballroom similar to the one he has at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Specifically, the Administration has violated, according to the complainants, several federal laws that establish that Congress must approve the project. One of them is quite explicit about this: “No building or structure shall be erected on any federal government reservation, park, or public land in the District of Columbia without the express authorization of Congress.”
The Supreme Court must rule in the coming days and decide whether to uphold the lower courts, including the appeals court, which ordered the suspension of the work. For now, it will decide whether construction can continue, but the complainants’ goal is that, in the coming months, it will ultimately decide definitively whether the project can proceed.
Read more Ayuso, a controversial tenant
