Trump renews petition for White House ballroom, highlighting nearby shooting | Donald Trump News

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has renewed efforts to lift a court order barring progress on construction of a new ballroom at the White House, once again citing gun violence as a reason for continuing construction.

In a court filing Sunday, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche argued it was “urgent” that the ballroom be completed.

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“This is a terrible matter and extremely damaging to the United States of America and everything it stands for! » Blanche wrote, denouncing the lawsuit that halted construction.

To justify herself, Blanche pointed to the events of last Saturday, when a 21-year-old suspect named Nasire Best approached a White House security checkpoint in Washington, D.C., pulled out a gun and began shooting.

A passerby was injured. The suspect was killed after an exchange of gunfire with Secret Service agents. The sound could be heard on the White House lawn, where reporters were seen running for safety.

Blanche argued that the incident represented the second time in the space of a month that Trump’s life had been threatened.

On April 25, Cole Tomas Allen, 31, attempted to breach security at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which was attended by Trump and his top aides. After an exchange of gunfire with security, Allen was taken into custody.

“This second attack on the President this month underscores the critical need for high-level, state-of-the-art security at the White House, including in the ballroom,” Blanche wrote in the filing.

He added that the ballroom “is being constructed to ensure that the President can carry out his constitutional duties in a safe and highly secure facility.”

The Justice Department, led by Blanche, made a similar argument after the incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

And Trump himself made a nearly identical statement on Saturday, using his Truth Social platform to connect the recent shooting to the ballroom.

“This event comes one month after the White House Correspondent’s Dinner shooting. [sic]and it shows how important it is, for all future presidents, to obtain, what will be, the safest and most secure space of its kind ever built in Washington, D.C.,” Trump wrote.

“Our country’s national security demands it!”

Obstacles to construction

But Trump faces an increasingly uphill battle as he pursues his ballroom plan.

On March 31, a federal judge, Richard Leon, issued a temporary injunction against any new construction at the ballroom.

Although Leon proposed an exclusion for any work “necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House,” the judge said “mere assertions of ‘national security'” would not be accepted as a way to circumvent his ruling or the law.

He called on the Trump administration to ask Congress to approve the project. Until then, Léon ruled, “construction must stop.”

In recent weeks, Trump has asked Congress for additional funds for the ballroom, but has not sought approval for the construction itself.

But even members of his party balked at the price tag. Trump demanded that $1 billion earmarked for the ballroom project be added to a bill intended to fund immigration control, but last week Senate Republicans agreed to drop that provision.

Some people opposed this expense. Others pointed out that with $1 billion in unrelated spending, the immigration-related funding bill would no longer be eligible for the process called budget reconciliation, which allows bills to pass the Senate with a simple majority.

US President Donald Trump speaks to the media near the construction site of his ballroom on May 19. [Kent Nishimura/AFP]Rising Ballroom Costs

Trump previously maintained that the ballroom would be funded entirely by private donations.

But the associated costs have exploded. Last year, Trump estimated construction would cost $200 million. Then, in December, he increased the expected price to $400 million.

However, in the past month, the total has now jumped to include the $1 billion in public funds that would be earmarked for security improvements.

Yet as Trump gave reporters a tour of the construction site on May 19, he insisted that the costs for the ballroom project would come from private pockets.

“All of this was paid for by me. We’re making this a gift. It’s a gift. It’s not going to be paid for by the taxpayers,” Trump said, pointing to the site.

He repeatedly claimed the construction project was ahead of schedule and under budget, a claim Blanche repeated in Sunday’s court filing.

But on May 12, when confronted with journalists about the dizzying rise in prices, Trump appeared on the defensive.

“I doubled the size of it, you idiot. I doubled the size. You’re not a smart person,” he told a reporter.

Workers are seen near the construction site of Trump’s proposed ballroom on May 19 [Kent Nishimura/AFP]New details emerge

The project has also been criticized for its lack of transparency and failure to obtain outside approvals.

Even this month, new details have still emerged about the structure, which is expected to span about 90,000 square feet (about 8,360 square meters), dwarfing the White House executive mansion.

Trump also recently revealed that the new ballroom would feature six floors of underground facilities, including a military hospital. Its completion is scheduled for September 2028, shortly before Trump’s term expires in January 2029.

Some of the newly proposed features were detailed in Blanche’s recent court filing.

The ballroom, Blanche writes, “includes bomb shelters, state-of-the-art hospital and medical facilities, top-secret military facilities, structures and equipment, protective partitions and other features.”

Additionally, the “heavily secured” roof is expected to contain “a major drone port and government sniper facilities.”

Blanche argued in Sunday’s filing that he was forced to reveal these security features in order to seek lifting of the court injunction.

“The longer this frivolous litigation persists, the more our national security will be at risk as the government continues to be forced to justify – through disclosure of these security facilities, their layout and other construction specifications – the need for a secure addition to the White House,” Blanche wrote.

The plaintiffs argued that the Trump administration acted largely without oversight.

In December, the National Trust for Historic Preservation filed its suit, alleging that the law requires approval not only from Congress but also from the National Capital Planning Commission.

Additionally, he argued that “no adequate public environmental assessment” was conducted before the Trump administration abruptly demolished the East Wing of the White House in October to make way for large-scale construction.

“No president is legally allowed to demolish parts of the White House without any review – not President Trump, not President Biden, not anyone else. And no president is legally allowed to build a ballroom on public property without giving the public an opportunity to provide input,” the lawsuit states.

“President Trump’s efforts to do so should be immediately halted. »

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