President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to allow him to continue construction on his 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom, urging the justices to intervene before a court-ordered block on the project takes effect.
Trump’s emergency application comes a week after a federal appeals court in Washington ruled his $400 million ballroom construction project unlawful because the administration bypassed congressional authorization.
That upheld a lower court’s ruling that ordered the president to stop all aboveground work on the ballroom — but allowed belowground national-security-related construction to continue — until Congress approves the project. But the appellate court’s Aug. 7 ruling was not set to take effect for two weeks, allowing the administration to appeal to the Supreme Court before the construction block kicks in.
Now the fight over the future of the ballroom is headed to the high court. Until the justices intervene or until Aug. 21, when the order would take effect, construction on the ballroom can continue.
The White House argued that the project is “vitally required by national security” in the 45-page emergency appeal.
“The district court’s order transgresses basic limits on judicial power to superintend a critical national security project that is being built at the White House and is personally directed by the President,” Solicitor General John Sauer wrote in the appeal.
Trump began using national security as his lead argument for continuing construction on the ballroom after the April 25 shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, when a gunman stormed a Secret Service security checkpoint in an alleged attempt to assassinate the president. Trump said such an attack would never have happened if the event had taken place in the ballroom he hopes to build.
In its emergency application to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration also cited other, more recent threats to the president’s life, including a July 8 threat that forced him to switch planes from Air Force One using a catering cart.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon issued an initial preliminary injunction on all ballroom construction in March. The Trump administration began making the argument that the complex was necessary for national security, filing an emergency appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The appellate court sent the case back to Leon to reconsider his ruling, in light of the national security concerns. Leon updated his order, which maintained his block on all aboveground ballroom construction while allowing national security work to continue belowground. His order was informed by a private viewing of the administration’s national security plans.
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