Construction crews work 20-hour days as ballroom reaches 65% completion

A two-week appeals court reprieve that has allowed construction of President Trump’s 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom to continue expires at midnight Friday. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday morning that the Supreme Court had not yet ruled, and that construction officials could be forced to halt the project if the high court does not act before the deadline.

The legal sequence stretches back to April, when a federal judge ordered the White House to stop construction of the ballroom. An appeals court allowed the work to continue while it considered the case. Earlier this month, that court again ordered construction to be halted — but again allowed it to continue for two weeks so the White House could appeal the matter to the Supreme Court, according to the Journal.

Throughout the legal back-and-forth, construction has only accelerated. The White House said the project was 65% complete, with a large crew working 20 hours a day, seven days a week. Trump is extremely involved in the project, according to the Journal’s Washington coverage chief Damian Paletta, who has covered Washington for 22 years as a reporter and editor.

The 90,000-square-foot ballroom, financed at least in part through private donors, has emerged as one of this year’s most fascinating tests of the legal dispute between the executive and judicial branches, Paletta wrote in his WSJ Politics newsletter.

The project will include chandeliers, bulletproof glass, a military hospital and a “drone port,” according to the Journal. The combination — and the speed of construction — has put the courts in uncharted waters, Paletta wrote. Stopping a nearly complete building would leave a partially built structure on the White House grounds; allowing completion after multiple judicial orders to halt would, he wrote, raise questions about whether future administrations could outpace a slower-moving legal system on a range of construction and policy projects.

Paletta framed the dilemma for the high court in his newsletter: whether to order the White House to halt a structure so far along that it would have to be left as is, or to order it demolished. The newsletter did not detail what the Supreme Court might do if it does not rule before Friday’s end. With the deadline hours away, the Journal’s reporting left open whether construction crews would be required to stop work or whether the appeals court would extend its reprieve.