President Donald Trump initially insisted that he needed to build a White House ballroom to entertain VIP guests. The president and his deputies have lately focused on a different argument: It’s crucial for national security.
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The “desperately needed National Security structure” must be completed, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Friday night, hours after administration officials asked the Supreme Court to let them finish the controversial project.
The lengthy post never mentioned the word “ballroom.” Instead, it focused on the military complex being constructed underneath it, and it and called the preservation group that brought the suit that blocked construction “‘TREASONISTS’ who revealed Top Military Secrets!”
On Sunday, Trump followed up with an AI-generated video depicting himself walking with the nation’s first president, George Washington, through the planned ballroom, stocked with dining tables. “Thank you, George, for some of your brilliant ideas on this great Military Complex/Ballroom!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, again conflating the two projects.
An appeals court ordered administration officials to halt construction on the ballroom by Aug. 21 unless the project is authorized by Congress — which will not happen, given that lawmakers are on recess with no plans to return before the end of the month. Congressional leaders have also shown little interest in prioritizing the project ahead of the midterms, and the White House has not pushed the issue on Capitol Hill.
Instead, Trump has sought to press his case in court, arguing that the ballroom is necessary to protect him and future presidents. He and his lawyers have contended that the ballroom is inseparable from the underground military complex, which the appeals court said Trump is allowed to continue building.
“The lower section does not work without the upper section and, likewise, the upper section does not work without the lower,” Trump wrote Friday night, reversing the administration’s argument from last year that the ballroom and the military complex could be constructed separately. “It is all one highly integrated unit.”
Trump’s deputies have sought to help him bolster that case. The leaders of the FBI, CIA, Secret Service and other agencies told the Supreme Court on Friday that the ballroom was needed to provide a secure meeting space for the president and other leaders, referencing threats from Iran, potential drone attacks and other risks. They said,the ballroom was part of a broader push to fortify the White House grounds.
If there was ever a drone attack on the White House, the ballroom would even be a “sacrificial outer cover” to protect the people and military complex underneath, Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll wrote in an affidavit.
The administration also divulged new information about potential threats to the president. A senior Secret Service official told the Supreme Court on Friday that security incidents involving the White House complex have prompted officials to elevate their internal emergency-response condition 12 times so far this year.
Democrats, preservationists and other critics of the ballroom have said that arguments over the president’s security should remain separate from questions about whether Trump had the authority to demolish the East Wing, solicit hundreds of millions of dollars of private donations and begin building a 90,000-square-foot ballroom addition without getting approval from Congress. A U.S. district judge and a divided federal appeals panel this year have both ruled that Trump must halt construction on the ballroom but could continue building the underground military complex.
“Each court has seriously and carefully considered the Administration’s asserted national security concerns,” the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit that sued to stop ballroom construction, said in a statement Friday. “And each court has ruled that while underground bunker construction can continue, Ballroom construction must stop.”
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Trump has repeatedly attacked the National Trust, which Congress charged with helping preserve historic buildings. In his Truth Social post Friday, he also claimed that the trust was shown confidential plans of the military complex and that they were told not to file suit.
Trust officials have said that they were never shown confidential documents about the military complex, that they received no requests from the administration before filing their lawsuit, and that the only person to publicly disclose information about the military complex has been Trump. The president has repeatedly discussed the military project in public remarks and on social media, including posting AI-generated images of a potential drone facility atop the ballroom.
The administration has also sought to shore up criticism of the ballroom’s design by invoking national security.
Architects and preservationists have complained that Trump’s decision to build the ballroom as tall as the White House mansion itself will detract from the iconic structure. Even some of Trump’s appointees on federal arts and building panels that reviewed the ballroom project questioned whether the original design was too large and could impede the public’s views of the White House.
Administration officials on Friday told the Supreme Court that the hulking ballroom would shield the White House grounds and reduce the threat of sniper and drone attacks. In his affidavit, Driscoll argued that the ballroom height should not be changed.
“From a civil engineering perspective, this outer layer forces the detonation to occur at a designated distance, creating a critical air gap known as standoff or ‘attic depth,’” the Army secretary wrote. “Any reduction in this depth will fundamentally compromise mathematically validated blast-attenuation parameters and lead to catastrophic structural failure of the underlying node.”
Trump and the administration have not abandoned arguments about needing a lavish ballroom to entertain guests. In his own affidavit, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that a new, expansive White House ballroom is necessary because of diplomatic protocol.
“In my work with heads of state and foreign ministers, I am frequently hosted in reception facilities that are visually impressive and reflective of the wealth and beauty of the nations I am visiting,” Rubio told the Supreme Court on Friday, contrasting those trips with the confined quarters of the White House. “Instead, we must currently host such visits in plastic or canvas tents on the South Lawn with unsafe and unsanitary portable bathrooms and accommodations unbecoming our national stature.”
Trump also has repeatedly touted the aesthetics and trappings for his planned ballroom, which he helped design. Trump on Friday night first posted images of him giving George Washington a tour of the ballroom, although the images inadvertently raised their own questions about diplomatic protocol; the U.S. flags hanging in Trump’s ballroom posts only had 11 stripes, not 13.
Legal experts have said it is unclear if Trump’s arguments will sway the Supreme Court, given the novel issues surrounding the demolition of the East Wing, the construction of a new ballroom and the invocations of executive authority. The White House’s arguments about the urgency of completing the project have also been rebuffed by lower-court judges.
“While I take seriously the Government’s concerns regarding the safety and security of the White House grounds and the President himself, the existence of a ‘large hole’ beside the White House is, of course, a problem of the President’s own making,” U.S. District Judge Richard Leon — who first blocked work on the ballroom — wrote earlier this year.
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