{"id":20857,"date":"2026-04-02T08:46:43","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T08:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/republicans-arent-rushing-to-save-trumps-ballroom\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T08:46:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T08:46:43","slug":"republicans-arent-rushing-to-save-trumps-ballroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/republicans-arent-rushing-to-save-trumps-ballroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans aren\u2019t rushing to save Trump\u2019s ballroom"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Hill Republicans so far haven\u2019t needed to weigh in on President Donald Trump\u2019s White House ballroom plans, but a court ruling might leave them no choice but to engage.<\/p>\n

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the administration must pause construction pending \u201cexpress authorization from Congress<\/u><\/a>.\u201d Trump had unilaterally torn down the historic East Wing and has forged ahead with plans to replace it with a $400 million, privately financed ballroom.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s immediate response was to refute, in a Truth Social post, the premise that he needed Congress\u2019 permission to proceed, and his administration is now appealing the ruling in court. Some of his allies in Congress have been quick to offer support while making clear they have no plans to take action.<\/p>\n

Lexi Hamel, a spokesperson for Rep. Mike Simpson, said in a statement Wednesday the Idaho Republican \u201cbelieves the ruling is stupid\u201d and that \u201cnobody raised hell when Roosevelt or Truman renovated the White House (at taxpayer expense).\u201d<\/p>\n

But if Trump\u2019s appeal fails, congressional Republicans will have to choose between trying to pass a bill that would give the White House clear authority to forge ahead or risk allowing delays in the project that already had a target completion date of 2028 \u2014 not long before the end of Trump\u2019s term.<\/p>\n

Mike Davis, a conservative judicial activist who is close to the White House, said in an interview Republicans \u201cneed to\u201d take action.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre they just going to let the ballroom just sit there in disarray \u2026 they\u2019re just going to let the construction zone be a fucking disaster for the next three years?\u201d Davis added. \u201cLike, come on.\u201d<\/p>\n

But most Republicans who sit on committees with direct jurisdiction of White House and public property matters have so far been silent on whether they\u2019ll shepherd through legislation to protect one of Trump\u2019s top priorities. Doing so could put them in the crosshairs of Democrats, who have already made clear they think the ballroom is proof the president cares more about entertaining wealthy donors than passing policies to lower the costs of everyday goods \u2014 and who, in the Senate, have the ability to block any ballroom authorization measure from ever reaching Trump\u2019s desk.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very clear test of Republican priorities,\u201d Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement Tuesday evening. \u201cThey can either bring up the Senate-passed bill to end the DHS shutdown \u2026 or they can bring up a bill to give President Trump permission to build his $350 million ballroom to host his billionaire friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

The House Natural Resources Committee and Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources are responsible for authorizing projects on land operated by the National Park Service, on which the White House resides. Spokespeople for the chairs of these respective committees, Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, did not respond to requests for comment this week.<\/p>\n

The spokesperson for Simpson, the chair of the House funding panel that deals with the Interior Department, said funding for the White House project was not in his purview. Spokespeople for the chairs of the House and Senate appropriations subcommittees with jurisdiction over the Executive Office of the President also did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday. Democrats have made prior, unsuccessful efforts to explicitly ban money from going toward ballroom construction as part of the appropriations process.<\/p>\n

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), a staunch Trump ally who has previously proposed adding Trump\u2019s face to Mount Rushmore<\/u><\/a>, said in a text message Wednesday he was unaware of moves by any of his GOP colleagues to introduce legislation that would authorize ballroom construction.<\/p>\n

Speaker Mike Johnson has previously defended Trump\u2019s decision to build a ballroom, pointing to a number of presidents who have renovated or added to the White House, including former President Barack Obama. Spokespeople for Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune did not return requests for comment Wednesday on the matter.<\/p>\n

But privately, Republicans are not yet convinced they need to get involved now, given it\u2019s an ongoing legal battle and lawmakers already have a full plate of issues to attend to in the immediate future \u2014 including ending the DHS shutdown, reauthorizing controversial spy powers<\/u><\/a> and meeting Trump\u2019s deadline for delivering a GOP-only immigration enforcement bill<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Asked if the administration would push for Congress to pass legislation to remove any doubt or chance of delay, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle offered a statement critical of the court ruling.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump clearly has the legal authority to modernize, renovate, and beautify the White House \u2014 just like all of his predecessors did,\u201d said Ingle in a statement. \u201cWe will immediately appeal this egregious decision and are confident we will prevail.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davis, the judicial activist, suggested that Republicans codify their approval of the project through a budget reconciliation bill, which only needs a simple majority for passage in both chambers. There are talks of putting two party-line policy packages together in the coming months, first to deal with ICE and Border Patrol funding and another encompassing a broader range of GOP priorities \u2014 but it\u2019s not clear green-lighting Trump\u2019s ballroom would comply with the strict rules governing the reconciliation process.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time the courts have restrained Trump for failing to seek congressional approval for his unilateral moves: The Supreme Court recently struck down<\/u><\/a> his unilateral tariffs, and lower courts have forced the ousting of U.S. attorneys who never received Senate confirmation.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s lawyers have argued there are historical precedents for his White House ballroom project, which U.S. District Judge Richard Leon directly addressed in his ruling. But while smaller projects such as Trump\u2019s 2019 tennis pavilion \u201cwere never challenged in court,” major expansions in 1933 and 1942 \u2014 which included construction of the East Wing Trump is seeking to replace \u2014 were authorized \u201cthrough general appropriations,\u201d Leon wrote.<\/p>\n

And a significant White House renovation under President Harry Truman was authorized and funded in a standalone 1949 law that prohibited any \u201cchange of [the] present architectural appearance of the exterior of the mansion or the interior of its main floor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the argument that past presidents have undertaken White House construction work without incident has been popular with the few Republican lawmakers who have so far chosen to weigh in on the ruling. Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) is among those claiming past presidents have used private funds to make additions to the White House without congressional assent.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident FDR built an indoor swimming pool with private funds. President Obama built a basketball court with private funds,” Gooden wrote on X<\/u><\/a>. “Yet a single judge can block President Trump from building a PRIVATELY FUNDED ballroom that would benefit generations to come.”<\/p>\n

Jordain Carney and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hill Republicans so far haven\u2019t needed to weigh in on President Donald Trump\u2019s White House ballroom plans, but a court ruling might leave them no choice but to engage. A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the administration must pause construction pending \u201cexpress authorization from Congress.\u201d Trump had unilaterally torn down the historic East Wing and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}