By Mike Scarcella
WASHINGTON, June 5 (Reuters) – A lawyer for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration told an appeals court on Friday that construction of a $400 million ballroom on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing had gone too far to be stopped, in a case testing the limits of presidential authority.
Justice Department attorney Yaakov Roth told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the courts have no role in weighing the project, and that it would have been improper to block it at any point.
“So if this were complete lawlessness by the government, it couldn’t be stopped?” Judge Patricia Millett asked Roth. He said: “On these theories, I think that’s right.”
Roth also said “architectural preference” should not take precedence over national security concerns. “We have evidence here that the old East Wing was not adequate to protect the safety and security of the President and others in the White House leadership of the executive branch,” he said.
Millett suggested that the administration’s argument that the challengers did not sue in time amounted to “move fast and break things and nobody has standing.”
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit group that campaigns to protect significant American sites, sued last year after the Trump administration tore down the East Wing in October 2025 and began building a 90,000-square-foot (8,360-square-meter) ballroom without seeking authorization from Congress.
Trump’s ballroom plan is part of a broader push by the Republican leader to reshape central Washington’s landscape of government buildings and national monuments. The East Wing, part of the White House complex in Washington, traditionally housed the offices of the first lady and her staff.
A lawyer for the preservation group, Thaddeus Heuer, told the court on Friday that the government was “entirely wrong” that the courts did not have a say in the ballroom project. He said the president has no “free-floating” power to build without appropriations.
“They just don’t want to go to Congress,” Heuer said. He urged the court to stop construction and allow Congress to voice its desires for the site. “Congress has the right to determine what happens with federal property,” he told the panel.
CONSTRUCTION BLOCKED IN LOWER COURT
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, appointed by Republican former President George W. Bush, twice blocked above-ground construction on Trump’s ballroom while allowing underground work to continue.
Leon said no federal statute even “comes close to giving the President” the required authority to construct the ballroom without approval by Congress.
The administration’s appeal is being heard by Democratic-appointed D.C. Circuit judges Millett and Bradley Garcia alongside Trump-appointed Judge Neomi Rao. In an order last month, the appeals court allowed construction to continue during the legal battle without ruling on the merits of the case.
The panel, which heard arguments for more than two hours, could issue a more significant ruling in the next few weeks, which could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Preservationists have pushed back against the government’s contention that the ballroom is needed for national security. The National Trust for Historic Preservation contends that the D.C. Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court have never allowed a president to “usurp powers vested in Congress by the Constitution based on nothing more than his claim of necessity.”
Trump also intends to erect a 250-foot (76-meter) arch near the National Mall, the tree-lined strip between the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, and renovate the Kennedy Center performing arts complex.
A federal judge last week ordered Trump to remove his name from the iconic Kennedy Center building and blocked his plans to close it for renovations.
Trump has said his planned ballroom is scheduled to open around September 2028.
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by David Bario, Sanjeev Miglani and Andrea Ricci)
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