Trump asks Supreme Court to allow White House ballroom construction to continue

“If allowed to go into effect, the injunction would wrongfully install a single district judge as sole arbiter of what further construction is ‘strictly necessary’ to protect the safety of the President, his family, staff members, and visitors to the White House, including foreign dignitaries, and presidents and prime ministers of other countries,” Sauer said, citing the various assassination attempts against President Donald Trump.

While construction on the new East Wing has not been halted since it began last year, under the Aug. 7 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, construction would have to stop on Aug. 21, barring action by the Supreme Court.

“Such an injunction ‘threatens the security and safety of the President of the United States,’ rests on glaring errors as to Article III standing, the merits, and the equities, and creates a needless inter-branch collision,” Sauer wrote. “In upholding it, a D.C. Circuit majority wrongly viewed the President as a mere ‘tenant’ of the White House with the district judge as his de facto landlord.”

“The President of the United States of America is not a tenant, but rather the sole, elected head of the Executive Branch, and Congress has authorized him to renovate, secure, and protect the White House and its grounds, as other Presidents have been allowed to do, without exception. The injunction is ‘judicial overreach … beyond the proper province of the federal courts,’” Sauer added.

The emergency petition to the Supreme Court comes a week after a panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled 2-1 to halt construction of the renovated East Wing. The panel told the administration it needed permission from Congress to go forward with the proposed ballroom and other renovations to the White House.

TRUMP MUST GET CONGRESS’S APPROVAL FOR WHITE HOUSE BALLROOM, DC COURT RULES

Trump’s proposed ballroom project has been met with uproar from Democrats and left-wing activists since it was announced last year. The preservationist group’s lawsuit is the main effort to stop the project.

While Trump had insisted the project would be fully financed by private donations, his administration attempted to secure federal funding from Congress for the security improvements to the White House complex as part of the East Wing project, but has been unsuccessful.