A federal appeals court on Friday ordered the Trump administration to stop building its $400 million White House ballroom, saying President Donald Trump did not have the power to press ahead without congressional approval. The three-judge panel gave the administration two weeks before its ruling takes effect, leaving a short window for a possible appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The decision lands after months of visible work on the project, including construction that was still continuing on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026, on the South Lawn of the White House. The ballroom, a 90,000-square-foot addition, was being built where the East Wing once stood after Trump ordered it demolished.
For the court, the issue was not whether the ballroom would be impressive or even whether it could be built eventually. The panel, which ruled 2-1 in favor of historic preservationists who sued to stop the project, said the question of whether a massive ballroom should exist belongs to Congress, not to what it called executive self-help. That framing cuts to the heart of the dispute: the administration moved first and asked for permission later, if at all.
The timeline matters because the work had not stopped even as the legal fight intensified. Construction also continued on a helipad on the South Lawn on Aug. 5, underscoring that the ballroom was not an abstract plan on paper but an active project already reshaping the White House grounds.
The two-week stay gives the administration a narrow path to the Supreme Court, and the next step will show whether Trump can keep the project alive long enough for a higher court to intervene. If he does not win that relief, the order will stand and the ballroom construction injunction will become the defining legal barrier to the project.
