The nonprofit organization National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump on Friday afternoon, mounting the first legal challenge to his construction of a new ballroom at the White House.
Trump has steadily altered the White House decor so far in his second term, including replacing the famous Rose Garden with a new outdoor patio. However, the new ballroom project has become the crown jewel of his redesigns.
The lawsuit was filed Friday morning in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Greg Craig, who was White House counsel under former President Barack Obama and on former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment defense team, is working pro bono on the National Trust’s behalf.
Since breaking ground on the project in October, Trump has repeatedly raised the estimated budget, which now hovers around $300 million. However, he has said it will be entirely privately funded by individual donors, including himself, as well as large American companies such as Amazon and Lockheed Martin.
Though Trump originally billed the project as a small addition to the existing White House, the newly estimated footprint is expected to be 90,000 square feet, nearly twice the size of the main building. Furthermore, the expanded buildout required the complete demolition of the White House’s East Wing.
The National Trust argued that Trump has illegally rushed the construction timeline for the project, skirting regulatory reviews and failing to seek congressional authorization, despite the legislative branch’s constitutional authority to manage properties on federal lands.
“No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever — not President Trump, not President Joe Biden, and not anyone else,” the suit says.
White House officials declined to comment on the lawsuit Friday morning, though they slammed the National Trust for the criticism the organization expressed after the groundbreaking in October.
“The National Trust for Historic Preservation is run by a bunch of loser Democrats and liberal donors who are playing political games,” White House communications director Steven Cheung wrote in a statement on X at the time.
National Trust CEO Carol Quillen told the Washington Post that she isn’t personally opposed to the idea of building a White House ballroom, as long as it does not dwarf the existing flow of the grounds.
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She said the lawsuit is a “last resort” to “preserve American history.”
“We serve the people, and the people are not being served in this process,” Quillen said. “Following the process and enabling public input often results in a better project outcome.”
