Trump administration cleared to continue construction of White House ballroom , court rules

The Trump administration can continue building a $400m White House ballroom at the site of the former East Wing, a US appeals court ruled on Friday. The three-judge panel of the US court of appeals for Washington DC granted the administration a stay of an order days earlier that had aimed to halt most aboveground construction. That earlier order had resulted from a lawsuit filed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which challenged whether Donald Trump had the authority to raze the East Wing and construct the ballroom without congressional approval. The US district judge Richard Leon had initially halted construction of the ballroom in March – because of that lack of congressional approval – before an appeals court ordered him to reconsider the national security implications of the pause.