Main: President Donald Trump speaks to the press outside the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, April 13, 2026, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon). Right inset: Judge Richard Leon (U.S. District Court).
The DOJ swiftly appealed after a longtime federal judge blocked construction of Donald Trump's vaunted, $400 million East Wing ballroom, and now a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has ordered that judge to clarify an accommodation that included in the injunction that brought the ballroom build to a halt.
Citing the Trump administration's changing "representations" in court as the source of the confusion about the "scope of the exception," U.S. Circuit Judges Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia, appointed by Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, formed the majority in the 2-1 decision to kick the case back down to U.S. District Judge Richard Leon on Friday, in the hope that he will "clarify" whether construction of the ballroom itself and security-oriented construction underneath it can be accomplished separately.
The judges wanted Leon to determine whether the injunction adequately addresses the government's stated national security and presidential safety concerns.
The panel recounted that the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States filed a lawsuit to block construction before Leon issued his injunction at the end of March. The judge peppered the ruling with exclamation points — just as he did when he blocked the administration from punishing Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., for encouraging troops to "refuse illegal orders," and just as he did when he smacked down Trump's executive order targeting the late Robert Mueller's former law firm.
Deploying more than a dozen of those punctuation marks for emphasis — four times writing "Please!" when dismissing DOJ arguments — the George W. Bush-appointed judge remarked that he took the government's national security concerns "seriously" while also not taking those "bald assertions" as a reason to "excuse the Government's failure to follow the law and then insulate those failures from judicial review."
"[T]he existence of a 'large hole' beside the White House is, of course, a problem of the President's own making!" Leon observed.
Relevantly, the judge's injunction still permitted "actions strictly necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House and its grounds, including the ballroom construction site, and provide for the personal safety of the President and his staff."
After the plaintiff National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States won the first round, the DOJ appealed to the D.C. Circuit, but on Friday the panel only extended the stay Leon self-imposed on his order until April 17 — believing that more information was needed to determine if the government will be harmed absent a stay pending appeal it sought. After all, the Trump administration's story has already changed, the judges said.
"To start, much of Defendants' discussion of national-security risks concerns security fixtures that are, or will be, installed beneath the planned ballroom. But the district court's injunction runs only against the 'physical development of the proposed ballroom,'" the order said. "And Defendants have repeatedly represented to the district court that any below-ground work was distinct from construction of the ballroom itself and could proceed independently."
"Yet Defendants now seem to suggest that below-ground 'national security upgrades are inseparable from the rest of the Project,'" the majority went on. "As a result, it remains unclear whether and to what extent the development of certain aspects of the proposed ballroom is necessary to ensure the safety and security of those below-ground national security upgrades or otherwise to ensure the safety of the White House and its occupants while the appeal proceeds."
Without downplaying the "importance of ensuring the safety of the White House, the President, staff, and visitors," and supporting Leon's treatment of those claims, the panel wanted to hear more.
"We cannot fairly determine, on this hurried record, whether and to what extent the district court's 'necessary for safety and security' exception addresses Defendants' claims of irreparable harm, insofar as it may accommodate the Defendants' asserted safety and security need for the ballroom itself or other temporary measures to secure the safety and security of the White House, the President, staff, and visitors while this appeal proceeds. We thus remand these cases to the district court with instructions to promptly address the pending motion to clarify how the injunction and its exception will ensure safety and security pending litigation," the court said.
U.S. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, penned the lone dissent to say she would have granted the stay and "allow[ed] construction of the ballroom and related security facilities to continue during the pendency of an appeal." Rao took aim at how Leon found the plaintiff had standing, based on the declaration of one member complaining of monthly "aesthetic harm" of having to look at an eyesore.
"[T]he Trust identifies no member with standing to sue. The declaration of the Trust's sole identified member, Alison Hoagland, relies on the claim that she will suffer aesthetic harm if the East Wing project is completed. Aesthetic harm to a plaintiff's recreational activities may qualify as injury in fact, but 'mere incidental viewership' of an unpleasant sight does not," the dissent said. "[Alison] Hoagland's declaration claims that '[a]s a resident of Washington D.C.' she will walk by and 'be impressed' with the White House (but displeased with the new ballroom) 'about once a month.'"
"Such vague and infrequent viewing supports 'nothing more than [a] generalized grievance[],' which is insufficient for Article III standing," Rao concluded, calling the government's evidence "credible" and of "clearly a weightier interest than the generalized aesthetic harms identified by a single member of the Trust."
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