A US judge has ordered a halt to work on Donald Trump’s controversial new White House ballroom, declaring bluntly that “construction has to stop”.
Mr Trump started to demolish the East Wing of the White House, which had for decades housed the offices of the American first lady, last year. He actually began on the day Anthony Albanese was visiting.
It is currently a hole in the ground, teeming with construction activity.
Mr Trump has said the White House is too small for state dinners. He has also claimed that the new ballroom – a grander version of the one at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, which will be far bigger than the East Wing it’s replacing – will be paid for by private donations. Its budget is somewhere in the region of $US400 million.
There’s a new hurdle though.
Today a federal judge in Washington D.C. ruled that Mr Trump did not have the authority to start unilaterally demolishing parts of the White House, and needed the approval of Congress, the (rough) equivalent of our parliament.
Judge Richard Leon has heard arguments for and against the project for several months but had, up until this point, declined to bring construction to a halt while he deliberated,
Now he has declared that: “Unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorisation, construction has to stop!”
He added that “the good news” was “it is not too late for Congress to authorise the continued construction of the ballroom project”.
Should Congress play a role in approving the ballroom, Judge Leon said, “the American people will benefit from the branches of government exercising their constitutionally prescribed roles.”
“Not a bad outcome, that!” he said.
It’s a preliminary injunction, which means it could be reversed. But Judge Leon concluded that the body suing to stop the construction, the National Trust, was “likely to succeed on the merits” of the case, because “no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have”.
“The President is the steward of the White House for future generations of first families. He is not, however, the owner!” he said.
Mr Trump, for his part, reacted with a lengthy post on social media, saying the ballroom project was “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”.
He expressed annoyance with the aforementioned National Trust, an organisation whose job is to protect US landmarks, for repeatedly stymieing him in court.
A wider legal battle
Mr Trump’s persistent efforts to bypass Congress – whether on his tariffs, military action overseas, the defunding of government agencies, or any number of other issues – have been a running theme of his second presidency.
And they have consistently sparked legal challenges. At issue in each case is whether Mr Trump has sought to usurp powers explicitly given to Congress, not the President, by the US Constitution. The ballroom thing is probably the most trivial example, but it’s part of that broader argument.
We’re going to get nerdy here.
The American political system was designed to have three coequal branches of government, with each restraining the power of the others. Those three branches are the executive, which includes the President and all the federal agencies under him; the legislative, which is Congress; and the judicial, which is the court system.
They call it a system of “checks and balances”. So, Congress passes laws, but the President has the power to veto them, and the courts can rule them unconstitutional. The President runs all the government departments, but Congress has to approve the people he nominates to lead those departments, and has oversight powers to keep them honest.
The whole thing is set up to work in that manner, with no one branch ever becoming too powerful on its own.
The ingredients here are a President, in the form of Mr Trump, who would rather not bother with getting things passed through Congress, and simultaneously, a Congress under his party’s control, whose leaders seem happy to let him do pretty much whatever he wants.
For example, the Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power to declare war. Mr Trump did not consult it before starting his war with Iran.
You’ll recall the flurry of cuts to government programs and agencies implemented by Elon Musk’s DOGE operation early in Mr Trump’s term. Those programs and agencies existed, and were funded, under laws passed by Congress, which holds all power over the public purse. Mr Trump decided he could gut or even disband them unilaterally.
Technically the President’s job is to ensure the laws are executed. Congress writes them, and he executes them. Mr Trump prefers a model of government where he can do almost anything on his own, through executive fiat.
The courts keep telling him that is not how it works; this is merely the latest example.
Mr Trump can absolutely build his ballroom, by the way, nothing in today’s ruling says otherwise. He just needs to get Congress, which as mentioned is under the full control of his own party, to pass a law authorising it.
