WASHINGTON – What was once the East Wing of the White House is now a big hole in the ground. And barring a judicial bailout of President Donald Trump’s plans, the hole could be there for quite a long time.
Trump tore down the East Wing to build a big ballroom, but a court has said he needs to get approval from Congress. Republicans wrote a bill with $1 billion for the “East Wing Modernization Project,” then abandoned it this week and left town in a huff over both the ballroom plans and Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund to pay off the likes of Jan. 6 rioters.
If Congress won’t authorize ballroom construction, and the courts won’t either, it’s hard to see how the giant hole on the White House grounds becomes a gilded banquet hall anytime soon.
“That’s what happens when you don’t plan, and when you don’t consult, and when you don’t have a clear direction,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told HuffPost. “I can’t think of a better representation of the chaos and the corruption of this White House than having our 250th celebration happen while there’s a great big hole in the ground because he couldn’t get his own party to hand him a billion-dollar slush fund to build a golden ballroom.”
Trump’s unfinished White House makeover is wildly unpopular, and the construction site could easily become a symbol of the unfinished self-aggrandizing and authoritarian ambitions of his second term. Right when Trump needed Republicans in Congress to help him out, he infuriated them by endorsing challengers to key incumbent members in a show of dominance.
“Maybe the next president will just keep it as a hole in the ground to remind us to never ever elect somebody this corrupt and this reckless again,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said. (Murphy, it should be noted, may have ambitions to be the aforementioned next president.)
Illustration: HuffPost; Photos: Getty
Trump’s failure to provide formal notice to the commissions tasked by Congress with guiding development in the capital with an eye toward historic preservation when he started his ballroom project is beginning to look like a critical error.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit chartered by Congress to encourage public awareness of threats to the country’s architectural heritage, sued in December, pointing to the administration’s failure to consult the commissions or get legislative approval, contrary to a law requiring “express authority” from Congress for erecting buildings on federal land in Washington.
The administration argued Congress already gave its blessing in a 1948 law allowing the White House to draw funds for things like “maintenance, repair, alteration, refurnishing, improvement, air-conditioning, heating, and lighting” at the executive residence.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, sided with the National Trust, noting Congress has previously authorized major upgrades to the White House, and saying it can easily do so again, either by appropriating a pile of money or greenlighting Trump’s scheme to use private donors. Leon mocked the government’s claim that a “large hole” in the ground would expose the president to harm, writing that “the existence of a ‘large hole’ beside the White House is, of course, a problem of the President’s own making!”
An appeals court stayed Leon’s injunction blocking construction until the court hears arguments over the ballroom in early June. In the meantime, workers are laying its underground foundation.
Carol Quillen, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said her organization is not inherently opposed to a ballroom. She said it’s actually worth it for the president to get buy-in from stakeholders, including Congress, even if it takes a while.
“It’s not just bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake,” Quillen told HuffPost. “The process required by law often results in a better project, a project that both satisfies every modern need and also respects our nation’s historic resources, and also a project that has more support from the public, and so is likely to have a longer legacy.”
While it fights for the ballroom in court, the White House asked Republicans in Congress to add $1 billion for ballroom construction to an immigration enforcement bill they’d planned to pass, claiming the money is needed to make the project more secure in light of an assassination attempt on Trump at a press gala. Republicans have not responded favorably to the request.
“To think that it’s going to cost a billion dollars — I mean, that’s a thousand millions,” Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) told HuffPost earlier this month.
This week, Republicans appeared poised to drop the ballroom money from their immigration bill, but they wound up dropping the bill altogether after the Justice Department announced a new fund to compensate victims of government “weaponization,” including rioters who’d attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
It’s not clear how any sort of ballroom approval could get through Congress this year. Of course, it’s entirely possible that higher courts could side with Trump, and he gets his ballroom without Congress.
Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over national parkland, including the White House grounds, suggested courts could be the way. They’re Trump’s judges, after all.
“There’s always the appeals process in the courts, so that’s certainly not settled,” Westerman told HuffPost. “So I think there’s a lot to play out.”