Roughly 150 Democratic lawmakers on Thursday filed a legal brief in the White House East Wing litigation, asking a court to stop construction until the Trump administration gets express consent from Congress. The filing is the latest push against the privately funded $400 million demolition and reconstruction of the East Wing, a project the administration says it can carry out under a statute for routine maintenance and repairs.
The coalition is led by Rep. Robert Garcia of California, Rep. Jared Huffman of California and Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. In the brief, the lawmakers said the president cannot undertake any construction at the White House without clear authorization from Congress and an appropriation of funds, and they argued that Congress has exclusive control over federal property. “Congress does not fund largescale construction projects with drop-in-the-bucket funding,” the lawmakers said.
The filing lands after a federal judge ruled in March that construction could not proceed until Congress approved the project, though an appellate panel has since temporarily allowed work to continue and will hear arguments next week. The dispute also has drawn separate challenges from preservation, ethics and architectural groups, all of them centered on the same question: whether the White House can be remade on the scale the administration wants without a direct vote from lawmakers.
The answer matters now because the work is already moving ahead while the legal fight deepens. Congress has appropriated about $2.5 million for repairs, a figure far below the cost of the East Wing project and the administration’s broader plan for ballroom space, kitchen facilities and secure rooms. The White House says a maintenance-and-repairs law covers the work; opponents say that reading stretches the statute beyond recognition.
That tension sharpened this week after the latest round of filings. On Wednesday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Campaign Legal Center argued in a separate amicus brief that donations from companies and individuals with business before the government create a conflict of interest, calling the money a “check against both Executive extravagance and the risk of corrupting influence.” A consortium of architects and preservationists filed another brief saying the president has no inherent authority to tear down historic federal property inside a national park and then use private funds to build a massive ballroom.
The administration has countered that the project is justified by national security concerns. In recent filings, Todd Blanche said reconstruction of the East Wing is a matter of national security, pointing to the shootings at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building last Saturday as reasons to finish the project sooner. Senate Republicans briefly considered adding a billion dollars for ballroom security, but that provision was later dropped from a larger GOP bill.
The legal fight began late last year, when the National Trust for Historic Preservation sued President Trump over the plan. Since then, the case has become a broader test of how far a president can go on White House grounds when the money is private, the structure is historic and Congress has not approved the project in plain terms. For now, the appellate court’s temporary order leaves construction alive, but the next hearing will decide whether the East Wing can keep changing while the litigation runs its course.
