President Donald Trump and the White House are continuing to insist that Congress should allocate funding for the ballroom and other facilities they want to see built on the site of the East Wing of the White House, which Trump had demolished in October of last year.
The East Wing Modernization Project includes a 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a suite of offices for the first lady, a movie theater, and a drone-proof underground complex.
However, since the demolition of the East Wing on Oct. 23, 2025, polls have shown strong public opposition to Trump’s project. The opponents include architects with expertise in historical preservation, including Alaska’s Sam Combs, a member of the American Institute of Architects.
Combs told the American Independent that he was involved in sending a letter to Shalom Baranes in December, after Baranes was selected to replace Trump’s original pick as architect of his project, James McCrery.
The letter, signed by 29 architects, urged Baranes to decline the commission and said the “questionable action of soliciting donations from wealthy corporations and individuals to finance this out-of-scale, inappropriate ballroom is quid pro quo for those who donate.” The architects said that they believed accepting the commission might put Baranes in violation of rules in the AIA’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.
Combs said in an interview: “I just felt like it attacked our whole country that this president could tear down the People’s House without any warning, and without any permits, without any review, and he was just attacking. The country personally with no care to what was happening. … They’re using, you know, billions of dollars of taxpayer money, and they are not putting this out for requests for proposal for architects and engineers. They’re just going ahead with whomever the the president chooses, and the whole thing is just so dishonest.”
In July 2025, the White House announced in a statement that construction of a ballroom would begin: “President Trump, and other patriot donors, have generously committed to donating the funds necessary to build this approximately $200 million dollar structure. The United States Secret Service will provide the necessary security enhancements and modifications.”
In early May of this year, reports said, Trump announced on his social media platform that “deep rooted studies” had required that the size of the project be doubled: “The original price was 200 Million Dollars, the double sized, highest quality completed project will be something less than 400 Million Dollars. It will be magnificent, safe, and secure!”
“This is a GIFT (ZERO taxpayer funding!) to the United States of America, of 300 to 400 Million Dollars (depending on the scope and quality of interior finishes!), for a desperately needed space,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform in January.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate included in a budget reconciliation package to fund immigration enforcement through 2029 $1 billion “for the purposes of security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House Compound to support enhancements by the United States Secret Service relating to the East Wing Modernization Project, including above-ground and below-ground security features.” Senate Republicans left Washington for the Memorial Day break without having voted on the bill, and may abandon the ballroom money altogether, media is reporting.
Trump’s development interests go beyond the White House. In April, the administration awarded a no-bid contract to a company called Atlantic Industrial Coatings to paint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue. Trump said that the company had done work on a swimming pool at one of his golf clubs.
According to the New York Times, the cost of painting the Reflecting Pool could be $13.1 million, a number that is dramatically higher than the $1.8 million Trump originally said it would cost.
On May 11, the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit education and advocacy organization, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Park Service to halt the work, charging that they had “engaged a swimming pool contractor to resurface the Reflecting Pool a vivid blue coating” that would alter the “historic character of the Reflecting Pool without following Congressionally mandatory procedures.”
“All of a sudden, it went from $400 million being donated by these wealthy donors to a billion dollars paid for by us, and now they’re asking for money for the reflecting pool, this atrocious blue color that they’re putting into the reflecting pool, so the pool won’t reflect anymore, and it’s our house, and he just tore it down,” Combs said.
Journalist G. Elliott Morris said on his Substack site “Strength in Numbers” that a poll it conducted with Verasight of 1,520 American adults between May 18 and 19 found that 68% of respondents oppose spending $1 billion in taxpayer money on the ballroom, 57% oppose it strongly, and only 21% support it.
On Memorial Day, Trump turned to his Truth Social platform to rail against the courts for putting the project on temporary hold, posting a legal filing against the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which sued to stop the project.
“This court’s unlawful injunction has wrongfully cast a cloud of uncertainty around the future of the entire East Wing Project, which is being constructed for the physical safety and security of all Presidents, their families, staff, Foreign Dignitaries, and guests,” the filing reads.