Appeals court halts construction of Trump’s $400m White House ballroom

A US federal appeals court has ordered the Trump administration to halt construction of the US president’s $400m White House ballroom, in a fresh blow to the controversial project.

Donald Trump, who demolished the historic East Wing of the White House last year to make way for planned ballroom, has repeatedly touted it as “a gift” to the US people.

But in a major setback in a case testing ⁠his presidential authority, the Washington-based US ⁠court of ​appeals for the District of Columbia circuit upheld a preliminary injunction in a divided 2-1 order on Friday.

The appeals court put ⁠its ruling on hold for two weeks, allowing the administration to appeal to the ​US supreme court. Writing on social media, Trump described the ruling as “totally wrong” and said an appeal would be filed.

Explaining their majority decision, Judges Patricia Millet and Bradley Garcia wrote: “Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence.”

The judges also said it was for US Congress to determine whether the ballroom could ultimately be built. “Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help,” they wrote.

“This holding has nothing at all to do with whether the proposed ballroom is desirable, or not, as a matter of policy,” the judges added. “This ruling does not even necessarily mean that the Defendants may not ultimately construct the ballroom.

“What it does mean is that the Defendants may not do so during the district court’s expeditious litigation without securing Congress’s authorization, as the constitution and laws require.”

Trump criticized the decision, which he argued “severely jeopardizes the lives and welfare of the people who work, and will be working”, at the White House. “This unjust decision must be overturned by the Supreme Court in its entirety.”

A third judge on the panel, Neomi Rao, who was appointed by Trump, dissented and sided with the president’s assertion that the ballroom project was within his authority. Her position earned praised from the president in his social media statement on Friday.

The injunction was won by the National Trust for Historic ⁠Preservation, which sued last year after the Trump administration tore down the East Wing and began building a 90,000 sq ft (8,360 sq meter) ballroom without seeking authorization from Congress.

The latest decision supports an earlier ruling issued by a US federal judge in April, which limited the construction project only to the undergound part of the project deemed necessary on national security grounds while blocking the hospitality facility envisioned by Trump for entertaining guests.

At the time, Trump lambasted that decision, by Judge Richard Leon – appointed to the bench during George W Bush’s presidency – as the work of a “Trump Hating” judge who he alleged had “gone out of his way to undermine National Security, and to make sure that this Great Gift to America gets delayed, or doesn’t get built”.