Donald Trump

Defending the White House Ballroom, the DOJ Files a Trump Tantrum Masquerading As a Motion

The brief, which asks a federal judge to reconsider an injunction blocking the project, reads like it was transcribed from the president's Truth Social account.

Jacob Sullum | 4.28.2026 5:15 PM

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(White House)

After the Secret Service stopped a would-be assassin at the Washington Hilton on Saturday night, President Donald Trump and his allies said the incident demonstrated the urgent need to complete the enormous ballroom he wants to erect on the site of the White House's demolished East Wing. Since the gunman targeted an annual dinner sponsored by the White House Correspondents' Association, as opposed to the executive branch of the U.S. government, that argument was hard to follow. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche nevertheless reiterates it in a motion he filed on Monday night in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Blanche wants U.S. District Judge Richard Leon to reconsider the wisdom of a March 31 preliminary injunction that barred Trump from completing the project without congressional approval. The practical significance of that motion for an "indicative ruling" is unclear, since the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is already considering Trump's challenge to Leon's decision and has stayed the injunction in the meantime. Nor is Leon, who on April 16 rejected a previous motion asking him to lift his injunction, likely to be swayed by Blanche's over-the-top brief, which reads like it was transcribed directly from the president's Truth Social account.

The motion begins by dissing the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the organization that requested the injunction that Leon granted. "'The National Trust for Historic Preservation' is a beautiful name," it says, "but even their name is FAKE because when they add the words 'in the United States' to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, it makes it sound like a Governmental Agency, which it is........

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