OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
2:36 PM – Friday, August 12, 2026
President Donald Trump’s administration submitted an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court requesting permission to allow construction of the new White House ballroom to continue.
On Friday, Trump’s Solicitor General D. John Sauer petitioned the high court to suspend a 2-1 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that ordered the $400 million project to be halted. The three-judge panel argued that the president does not have the authority to expand the White House’s East Wing without Congress’s approval. The majority decision was written by Judges Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia, who were appointed by former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, respectively.
“This case involves an extraordinary and unlawful injunction that will halt the ongoing construction of the integrated military complex, including a totally secure ballroom space, at the East Wing of the White House, which is vitally required by national security,” Sauer wrote.
“The knitted, unified, cohesive Project will address glaring security problems with the old East Wing and the White House grounds, as well as update them to serve the modern-day needs and security of all future Presidents,” he said.
He emphasized that “a growing number of recent assassination attempts” against Trump demonstrated the urgency of the project, which would provide a secure indoor venue for state dinners and major events.
Sauer sided with Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, who wrote the dissenting opinion and also cited security concerns, pushing back against the majority opinion that Trump is a “temporary tenant” of the White House.
“The President of the United States of America is not a tenant, but rather the sole, elected head of the Executive Branch, and Congress has authorized him to renovate, secure, and protect the White House and its grounds, as other Presidents have been allowed to do, without exception,” Sauer wrote. “This Project, like its predecessors, should be a matter for the President and the political process, not construction-by-injunction.”
Sauer noted that the 90,000-square-foot ballroom is currently 65% complete and warned that leaving the site unfinished would leave an unsightly structural shell after the original East Wing façade was demolished last fall.
“No bystander could plausibly prefer to view an unfinished 70-foot-tall superstructure to the finished Project,” he wrote.
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