President Donald Trump’s planned ballroom on the former site of the White House’s East Wing cannot move forward without authorization from Congress, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Richard J. Leon said when issuing a preliminary injunction on Tuesday.
Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, found that the nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation, the plaintiff in the case, was likely to succeed with its argument that the Trump administration would overstep its statutory and constitutional authority if it moved forward with the project.
Leon said the Trump administration’s arguments assumed that “Congress has granted nearly unlimited power to the President to construct anything, anywhere on federal land in the District of Columbia, regardless of the source of funds.”
