Trump's Billion Dollar Taxpayer Funded Ballroom
Trump unleashes vituperation, insulting the judiciary, while Republicans seek to throw $1bn at his vanity project. the National Trust for Historic Preservation perseveres.
This post revises an earlier text that went out to paid subscribers, adding reporting on the Congressional proposal of $1 billion for the ballroom, additional detail on the public land grab.
I cannot figure out how Todd Blanche, the acting US Attorney General, can live with himself after signing the brief that demands an end to the injunction that required the White House to stop construction on the President’s ballroom project. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has led a lawsuit that asks the administration to follow the law, holding off on the project until it receives Congressional approval and meets other requirements. Echoing the President’s hysterical posturing on social media, the first sentence of the Department of Justices’s brief calls the Trust “FAKE,” and “very bad for our country.”
Because the Trust will not abandon its lawsuit, the legal brief says it suffers from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Such adolescent babbling in a legal brief? One that cites next to no law? From the highest legal office in the land? Imagine the cringing of responsible lawyers at DOJ.
Wait. Billion dollar ballroom?
It gets worse. At length the filing shamelessly exploits the April 25th assassination attempt at the Washington Hilton, positing it as a safety justification for continuing construction. Hiding behind this rationale, some Congressional enablers hope to appropriate $1-billion “for security adjustments and upgrades” to the ballroom project—which was endlessly promoted as costing the taxpayers nothing, just as Mexico was going to build the southern border wall for free.
The billion is attached to a $70-billion package for customs enforcement and the border patrol that have been operating on almost $200-billion of funds earlier allocated from Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” The package, which require a special approval procedure to get around likely Democratic opposition, will advance the administration’s mass-deportation agenda by enhancing ICE disruptions of blue cities and expansion of a vast and intentionally cruel detention infrastructure that is being resisted by cities and towns across the country.
So what’s another billion dollars if it makes the President happy? The number appears to be plucked out of the air since even Trump did not have the nerve to say the wing would need that kind of money. (The private funds raised could reportedly be used for things like china.)
I wrote the office of Senator Charles Grassley to see if there was any plan or report that identified the need to spend this kind of money. (He has promoted the Congressional funding to deal with Trump’s possible loss in the National Trust case. I have not gotten a response.) There is a masterplan for White House upgrades that does not prominently address security, but it dates from 2000 and also makes no mention of a need for a ballroom.
Even though the ploy to equate the assassination attempt and ballroom security is working for at least some in Congress and the right-wing punditsphere, the security issues around the ballroom and the Washington Hilton have zero in common.
Let me take you through that. Be aware as you read on that I have not seen any non-public plans, and am not a security expert though I have done security research for publication.
Ballroom bomb shelter
The legal brief in the case to stop ballroom construction portrays the building as essentially a bomb shelter surmounted by a ballroom—an inversion of the pitch Trump has been making for months. Upgrading the secure bunker beneath the East Wing was only mentioned when it offered a convenient justification for Trump’s vanity project.
To make the case that bunker and ballroom are inextricably linked (meaning that halting the project would put the President in danger), the brief describes “missile-resistant steel columns, military grade venting, drone proof ceilings [sic, the roof is presumably meant], and an enforced [sic, means reinforced] concrete system.” (Did no one even copy edit this brief?)
That certainly sounds expensive, but it’s not billion-dollar expensive. Some hardening of the wing should be expected, like the projectile and blast-resistant glass, which would protect occupants in the event of, say, an exploding van parked on East Executive Avenue. But these have nothing to do with securing a subterranean bunker, one which is only intended operate briefly as a refuge. To build the entire ballroom resistant to missiles and drone-borne explosive devices would probably mean sacrificing the 20 or so 25-foot-high (my estimate) arched windows along with the fancy columned porticos, which might pull the building down if sufficiently damaged.
The brief speaks of systems shared by ballroom and bunker for heating, ventilating, air conditioning, electrical and security, but such sharing would be highly vulnerable. Harmful gas or smoke from a fire drawn into the ballroom air system, for example, could spread to the bunker. That’s why I hope the brief’s hyperbolic description is inaccurate.
The structure and systems for the ballroom and the bunker need to be separate, redundant, and capable of operating autonomously until people in the bunker can be removed to safety. If this was an embassy in a country rocked by turmoil there might be high walls, dedicated water, sewer and electrical generating capacity. Is that where a billion dollars takes us? Or is it just a Congressionally gifted slush fund?
Given the administration’s disingenuousness, U.S. District Court judge Richard Leon should continue to be highly skeptical of claims that the ballroom project needs to go forward on security grounds.
If the security facilities and procedures would be rendered inadequate by a halt in construction—as the White House has argued—then it is a failure of the Trump team, as Judge Leon has noted, since it is obligated to maintain those facilities to acceptable levels because the project has always been at risk of running aground because the required approvals were not secured before demolition began.
An elaborate interception infrastructure protects Washington’s airspace. That is why the White House and—as far as I can tell—the ballroom wing have not been designed to survive aerial weapons. Should the airspace protections fail to stop such an attack, a fortified White House wouldn’t be good for much.
Are we headed there? We should expect answers from the White House and Congress.
Land grab?
On the ground, the security perimeter of the White House (permitting no unscreened public access) already comprises the equivalent of 12 city blocks. (At the Washington Hilton, by contrast, a cordon of human officers standing just outside the venue comprised the event’s primary protection. They risked their lives, and succeeded in stopping the gunman.)
Large additional tracts are newly off limits to the public. In January, an obscure notice announced the closure of Lafayette Park, the seven-acre square to the north of the presidential residence that was not only a recreational resource for the city but was often the site of protests including one in 2020 that was forcibly cleared by federal law enforcement so that Trump could do a photo op with a bible.
Ostensibly the January closure was for the purpose of fixing two fountains but the entire park is under construction for a revamping of its landscape. There is no information as to whether public access will be restricted when the work is complete. (The National Park Service did not address queries submitted to it.)
The administration has not shown the project publicly, nor taken it through the usual approval process. There are no publicly available images nor specific description of the work. (Might a a floral bust of Trump be added? I wouldn’t be surprised. I am told by The Cultural Landscape Foundation, which advocates for America’s important landscape legacies, that a Section 106 review has been initiated, which is an assessment of the impact of projects on designated historic resources. It can be quite rigorous and entails public comment, but it may not be completed until after construction is done.) Flouting such rules seems to be business as usual with this imperial White House.
Visitors may also be restricted from viewing the White House along E Street through a high fence which is about 1,000 feet south of the residence. It encircles the southern edge of the 18-acre south lawn. Now the 52-acre Ellipse, the park landscape south of E Street that draws the White House greensward to the cross axis of the National Mall, has been gated-off as well, its fate unannounced.
There is a 2011 competition-winning masterplan by Rogers Partners, architects, to upgrade the Ellipse, but it never moved forward. The design thoughtfully reconciles security needs with a visitor experience that would have made necessary barriers invisible through strategic plantings and topographic manipulation. A welcoming checkpoint design would reduce the visually chaotic accretion of structures and barriers visitors and White House staff now encounter. The E Street vantage would be enhanced with a generous pedestrian viewing terrace that visually unites President’s Park with the Ellipse.
If the E Street sidewalk remains closed, the presidential residence could only be viewed from twice as far away, where it looks like little more than a hut in the distance.
The wisdom of this White House land grab of a vast public landscape should be debated, especially as the billion dollars that Republicans want to throw at the White House could be used to bring much of this public space into the fortified environs. The language says the money can be spent “within the perimeter fence of the White House compound,” but those imprecise words could be interpreted as the entirety of President’s Park, which encompasses Lafayette Park, the immediate White House grounds and the Ellipse.
Right now projects like the ballroom’s proposed visitor screening facility and the Lafayette Park work already are affecting the security perimeter piecemeal—all without a comprehensive plan. Hundreds of millions may be spent yet fatal vulnerabilities may slip through as a patient, thorough and consultative process is skipped.
Unlike the president and his acting attorney general, the rarely controversial National Trust has kept its collective head in spite of the enormous political pressure being applied to it. The Trust is apolitical, drawing people from across the political spectrum to resist heedlessly trashing places and structures important to America’s history and identity.
“We are not planning to voluntarily dismiss our lawsuit, which endangers no one and which respectfully asks the Administration to follow the law,” wrote Carol Quillen, the Trust’s president and CEO, noting that Trump could seek approval from Congress “at any time.”
Concerned about the scattershot vandalism of monumental Washington? You could become a member, as I have.
Thanks to Nord Wennerstrom, of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, for insight and assistance.