1. United States
2. Ind.
3. Letter

I am writing to demand that Congress exercise its constitutional oversight authority over the construction taking place beneath the White House. A federal judge has ruled that the ballroom project requires congressional authorization and ordered above-ground construction to stop. Yet below-ground construction of bunkers, military installations, and medical facilities continues without pause, without congressional authorization, and without any public disclosure of scope or cost. The President himself has described the ballroom as “a shed for what’s being built under.” The cost of this underground military complex is classified and paid with public funds. Congress has not authorized it. Congress has not been briefed on it in any public capacity. The American people are funding a project they are not permitted to know anything about. This is a constitutional problem regardless of which party holds the White House. The power of the purse belongs to Congress. If public funds are being spent on a military installation beneath the executive residence, Congress has an obligation to know what is being built, what it costs, who authorized the expenditure, and what its intended function is. The above-ground ballroom raises equally serious concerns. The project has ballooned from $200 million to $400 million in less than a year. The donor list is incomplete, anonymous donations have been permitted, and individual donation amounts have not been disclosed. A government watchdog report found that most publicly identified donors hold billions of dollars in federal contracts or face active federal enforcement actions. Two days after one donor contributed $37 million in steel, the administration cut tariffs that directly benefited that same company. The Stop Ballroom Bribery Act, introduced in November 2025, has not advanced. This is not an abstract ethics concern. This is a documented pattern in which corporations with business before the federal government are writing checks to a project the President personally oversees, personally solicits funding for, and reportedly intends to name after himself. Taken together, this project presents two simultaneous failures of congressional oversight. First, the private funding of a permanent addition to the White House by entities with direct financial interests in federal policy, without meaningful disclosure or conflict-of-interest review. Second, the construction of an undisclosed military facility beneath the executive residence using public funds, without congressional authorization or appropriation. I am not asking you to speculate about intent. I am asking you to do your job. Congress has the authority and the obligation to: 1. Require a classified briefing for relevant committee members on the scope, cost, and purpose of the underground construction. 2. Advance the Stop Ballroom Bribery Act or equivalent legislation requiring full donor disclosure, conflict-of-interest review, and a ban on anonymous contributions. 3. Demand an accounting of all public funds spent on below-ground construction, including the authorization under which those funds were obligated. 4. Assert that no permanent military installation may be constructed beneath the White House without explicit congressional authorization and appropriation. The White House belongs to the American people. It is not a vehicle for private influence, and it is not a platform for unaccountable military construction. If Congress does not act as a check on this, then Congress has decided it no longer serves that function. Every day this continues without oversight is a day the legislative branch concedes ground it was designed to hold.