A lawyer for US President Donald Trump’s administration told an appeals court that construction of a $400 million ballroom on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing had gone too far to be stopped, in a case testing the limits of presidential authority.
Justice Department attorney Yaakov Roth told a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the courts have no role in weighing the project, and that it would have been improper to block it at any point.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a non-profit group that campaigns to protect significant American sites, sued last year after the Trump administration tore down the East Wing in October 2025 and began building a 8,360sqm ballroom without seeking authorisation from Congress.
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