1. United States
2. Maine
3. Letter

We write to urge your immediate attention to President Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing — a 120-year-old historic structure — to construct what can only be described as the most expensive ballroom since Versailles. Construction began in October 2025 without formal approval from the National Capital Planning Commission, without submitted construction plans, and apparently green-lit on the presidential logic that “you can start tonight, you have no approvals.” A federal judge himself noted that calling this demolition a mere “alteration” requires “some brazen interpretation of the laws of vocabulary.” Now, a federal court has delivered the first meaningful legal setback to the project. In a 35-page opinion, Judge Richard J. Leon — a George W. Bush appointee who had previously declined to intervene — ruled that President Trump likely did not have the authority to act unilaterally, without consulting Congress, to replace entire sections of the White House. The judge further noted that throughout months of litigation, the administration provided shifting and questionable accounts of who was in charge of the project and under what legal authority private donations could even be accepted to fund it. The court has done its part. Now Congress must do its. We call on you to assert proper oversight, demand full transparency on the $300 million price tag — which grew quietly by $100 million since July — and ensure that changes intended to endure for generations receive the congressional scrutiny they constitutionally require. The People’s House belongs to the American people. Not to one man’s ballroom dreams.