President Trump got a win on his ballroom project today, albeit it is one that was never really in doubt. The Commission of Fine Art voted to approve the project as is. You can tell the Washington Post is not happy about it.
A federal arts commission on Thursday voted to approve President Donald Trump’s planned White House ballroom, even as a federal judge considers whether to halt the project — and outside architects and watchdog groups say it’s too large.
The Commission of Fine Arts — which Trump has packed with allies, including his 26-year-old executive assistant — voted unanimously to approve the design of the nearly 90,000-square-foot building, which would be the most significant change to the White House complex in decades.
“This is a facility that is desperately needed for over 150 years, and it’s beautiful,” Commission Chair Rodney Mims Cook Jr. said.
Thursday’s vote was the first concrete checkpoint in the Trump administration’s nine-week push to get the president’s ballroom building approved by two committees charged by Congress with reviewing designs of federal construction projects.
This became a big issue back in October when Democrats lied through their teeth about an exchange during a White House press briefing. Asked if President Trump was planning on any other changes to the White House beyond the ballroom, Leavitt replied, "Not to my knowledge, no. But he’s a builder at heart, clearly. And so his heart and his mind is always churning about how to improve things here on the White House grounds. But at this moment in time, of course, the ballroom is really the president’s main priority."
Democrats ran with the last 8 words and pretended that Leavitt was saying the ballroom was president's main priority not in terms of changes to the White House but in terms of everything happening in the world.
This lie followed another one which also involved the ballroom and Karoline Leavitt which had circulated a few days earlier. In that instance, social media was full of hacks who claimed they were quoting Leavitt about not tearing anything down to make room for the ballroom. For instance, the head of the DNC:
Trump admin then: “Nothing will be torn down”
— Ken Martin (@kenmartin73) October 22, 2025
Trump admin now: https://t.co/TPXfliPUOG
The problem for all of the many people making this claim is that Leavitt had never said this at all. In fact, the AP made a mistake in an early report, attributing something said by a reporter to Leavitt. Here's the correction the AP eventually published.
In a story published July 31, 2025, the AP incorrectly attributed a quote to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt that “nothing will be torn down” in reference to construction of a new ballroom at the White House. It was a journalist, not Leavitt, who said the quote while asking a question during a briefing Leavitt gave to reporters on July 31. The error was brought to the AP’s attention on Oct. 22.
If you want to see all the details including video of the exchange from the White House press briefing it's here. But the bottom line is that Democrats jumped on these lies one after another to gin up a fake controversy about the ballroom. And it worked. So many people were convinced that Trump and Leavitt had lied or that Trump had made it his most important goal that Democrats were universally outraged.
Dems never waste outrage like that by telling people the truth, they capitalize on it. And so, a group called the National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a lawsuit to block the construction with a little help from Greg Craig, former lawyer for Bill Clinton and White House Counsel for Barack Obama. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that a lawyer connected to two Democratic presidents jumped into this effort. Dems would dearly love to see this effort stopped and to have no progress on it for the rest of Trump's term.
Putting the lawsuit aside, Trump needs approval from two groups. The first is the Commission of Fine Art which voted in his favor today and the second is the National Capital Planning Commission.
Having secured the fine arts commission’s blessing, the president’s team will turn its attention to the second of those committees — the National Capital Planning Commission — with a goal of winning its approval in the first week of March and starting aboveground construction on the ballroom as early as April.
But it's not a sure thing yet, in part because all the lying Democrats did last year left a mark on public opinion.
Polls have found that most Americans oppose the president’s planned ballroom. Twenty-five percent of respondents said they supported tearing down the East Wing to build the ballroom, compared with 58 percent who opposed the project, according to an Economist/YouGov poll conducted this month.
Again, it doesn't matter that the public opinion is based on the lies they helped spread. All they care about is having a polling advantage which they can use to attack Trump. Most of them probably agree this project is a good idea, or at least they would if a Democrat were doing it. But it's Trump so we have to play the resistance game and milk it for whatever it's worth. It really does help to have the media solidly on your side in arguments like this.
Anyway, here's hoping the administration can power through the resistance and get started on the construction. It would be nice to see this finished before Trump leaves office.
