{"id":23679,"date":"2026-06-05T12:21:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T12:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/ballroom-blitz-battle-back-in-court-and-argument-will-be-a-matter-of-national-security\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T12:21:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T12:21:20","slug":"ballroom-blitz-battle-back-in-court-and-argument-will-be-a-matter-of-national-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/ballroom-blitz-battle-back-in-court-and-argument-will-be-a-matter-of-national-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Ballroom blitz: Battle back in court and argument will be a matter of national security"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The battle over one of President Donald Trump’s signature projects, the White House ballroom, returns to a federal courtroom Friday as the government hopes tapping into fears after recent attempts on the president’s life can help support its case for the project’s construction.<\/p>\n

The administration is making national security its main argument to continue construction of the White House ballroom and will make the case to three judges in the D.C. Court of Appeals on Friday morning.  Immediately following the April 25 shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, when a gunman stormed a Secret Service security checkpoint and allegedly attempted to assassinate Trump, the president declared <\/a>that such an attack would not have happened in the planned ballroom.<\/p>\n

“It’s drone-proof, it’s bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom,” Trump said. “That’s why [the] Secret Service, that’s why the military are demanding it.”<\/p>\n

In court documents, the government argues, “such unacceptable threats to the President’s life and to the continuity of government will persist, because the President has no secure facility capable of hosting large-scale events on the White House grounds.”<\/p>\n

But the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the nonprofit organization that brought the suit, has pushed back vigorously on that assertion, saying that a new, “massive” ballroom is not a national security necessity.<\/p>\n

“Its absence has not prevented any past president from residing in the White House over the past two centuries, or prevented this President from residing there in the seven months since the East Wing was demolished,” it writes in court documents.<\/p>\n

And the group maintains that regardless of any argument the administration makes, the project requires congressional authorization, which it neither sought nor obtained.<\/p>\n

“[The administration’s] late-breaking assertion that the ballroom itself is necessary for national security does not change the calculus,” they write. “The President may ask Congress for the ballroom. He may ask Congress because he believes that the ballroom is necessary for national security, or simply because he wants it. But the President is a temporary tenant of the White House, not its owner. What he cannot do— what the Constitution, federal law, and equity all prohibit him from doing—is build the ballroom on his own.”<\/p>\n

The national security argument was not a part of the government’s initial legal strategy.<\/p>\n

The argument emerged after U.S. District Judge Richard Leon issued a preliminary injunction<\/a> in March, blocking the administration from continuing construction on the ballroom. This order marked the first major blow to one of Trump’s construction projects.<\/p>\n

While the administration alluded to some general “security” concerns<\/a> as early as December, those concerns related to the construction going on at the White House — the aftermath of the demolition of the East Wing. Lawyers noted that a giant hole in the foundation was a security risk and asked the court to allow “below-grade work to continue.” There was no mention of the ballroom itself being critical to national defense.<\/p>\n

But by early April, when the administration made an emergency appeal<\/a> to the D.C. Circuit, it was now a matter of national security. That court sent the case back to Leon, who updated his order<\/a>maintaining the block on all above-ground ballroom construction but allowing below-ground national security-related construction to continue. The administration appealed that decision, arguing all construction must continue.<\/p>\n

By late April and the Washington gala that saw a third attempt on Trump’s life, the ballroom had become an urgent necessity to ensure the president’s safety, according to the administration. The Justice Department demanded the National Trust for Historic Preservation drop its lawsuit against the construction of the ballroom.<\/p>\n

“When the White House ballroom is complete, President Trump and his successors will no longer need to venture beyond the safety of the White House perimeter to attend large gatherings at the Washington Hilton ballroom,” Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate asserted in a letter to the group immediately after the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.<\/p>\n

One month after the dinner, a gunman<\/a> opened fire at a Secret Service checkpoint outside the White House. The gunman was killed and his motivation is still not known, but the administration seized on it as yet another example of why it says a fortified ballroom is necessary on the grounds.<\/p>\n

There have been at least three attempted attacks on the president’s life by gunmen in just under three years. In addition to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump’s ear was wounded when he was shot at by a gunman at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024. Two months later, a gunman lying in wait with a rifle shot at the president while he golfed at his golf club in West Palm Beach.<\/p>\n

Whether a ballroom like what the administration looks to construct would have prevented the gala attack will never be known. Additionally, the gala, hosted by the White House Correspondents’ Association, has traditionally been held at venues independent of the White House.<\/p>\n

But the appeals court hearing the case today has at least initially appeared sympathetic to the administration’s national security argument, allowing all construction to continue<\/a> for now. Those three judges will now weigh whether the apparent national security risks outweigh constitutional concerns.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Fallon Gallagher is a legal affairs reporter for MS NOW. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jun. 5, 2026, 5:00 AM EDT The battle over one of President Donald Trump’s signature projects, the White House ballroom, returns to a federal courtroom Friday as the government hopes tapping into fears after recent attempts on the president’s life can help support its case for the project’s construction. The administration is making national security […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23679","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=23679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}