Federal judge blocks construction of Trump’s sweeping ballroom project
A federal judge in Washington DC has blocked the construction of Donald Trump’s sweeping $400m White House ballroom project. In his ruling, district court judge Richard Leon said that project would be on hold until the administration receives approval from Congress to continue.
“It is not too late for Congress to authorize the continued construction of the ballroom project,” Leon wrote in his opinon. “The President may at any time go to Congress to obtain express authority to construct a ballroom and to do so with private funds. Indeed, Congress may even choose to appropriate funds for the ballroom, or at least decide that some other funding scheme is acceptable. Either way, Congress will thereby retain its authority over the nation’s property and its oversight over the Government’s spending.”
The president began demolishing the East Wing of the White House in October, to make way for the new construction. In response, the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) launched a lawsuit against the project.
A reminder that Trump also fired all six members of the independent US Commission of Fine Arts responsible for reviewing the ballroom plan, and replaced them with handpicked designees who gave their unanimous consent last month.
The president has frequently bragged about the project as a hallmark of his legacy, and branded it as a much-needed improvement for the White House.
Key events
Trump lambasts ruling that halts construction of ballroom project
The president has railed against a federal judge’s ruling today that blocks construction of his prized White House ballroom project.
Donald Trump targeted the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP), who filed the initial lawsuit against the administration, and claimed the $400m ballroom is “under budget, ahead of schedule, being built at no cost to the taxpayer,” and – he added– “will be the finest building of its kind anywhere in the world”.
He also pointed to the fact that NTHP also sued Trump for his planned renovations of the Kennedy Center, which will result in the performing arts venue closing for two years.
On Truth Social, Trump claimed that he is “fixing, cleaning, running, and ‘sprucing up’ a terribly maintained” building. He also lobbed a familiar insult at the preservation group, and called them a “radical left group of lunatics whose funding was stopped by Congress in 2005”.
Trump also claimed that NTHP launched a politically motivated lawsuit against the president by not suing Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell over the ongoing renovations to the central bank. A project which the president used as grounds to prosecute Powell – who he frequently targets in person and on social media – to little avail.
In response to today’s ruling, Trump added:
So, the White House Ballroom, and The Trump Kennedy Center, which are under budget, ahead of schedule, and will be among the most magnificent Buildings of their kind anywhere in the World, gets sued by a group that was cut off by Government years ago, but all of the many DISASTERS in our Country are left alone to die. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?
Federal judge blocks construction of Trump’s sweeping ballroom project
A federal judge in Washington DC has blocked the construction of Donald Trump’s sweeping $400m White House ballroom project. In his ruling, district court judge Richard Leon said that project would be on hold until the administration receives approval from Congress to continue.
“It is not too late for Congress to authorize the continued construction of the ballroom project,” Leon wrote in his opinon. “The President may at any time go to Congress to obtain express authority to construct a ballroom and to do so with private funds. Indeed, Congress may even choose to appropriate funds for the ballroom, or at least decide that some other funding scheme is acceptable. Either way, Congress will thereby retain its authority over the nation’s property and its oversight over the Government’s spending.”
The president began demolishing the East Wing of the White House in October, to make way for the new construction. In response, the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) launched a lawsuit against the project.
A reminder that Trump also fired all six members of the independent US Commission of Fine Arts responsible for reviewing the ballroom plan, and replaced them with handpicked designees who gave their unanimous consent last month.
The president has frequently bragged about the project as a hallmark of his legacy, and branded it as a much-needed improvement for the White House.
According to the New York Post, representatives for Kristi Noem’s family, say the former homeland security secretary has been “blindsided” by a report from Daily Mail which alleges that Noem’s husband Byron communicated with only fetish models.
The Mail claims that Byron Noem was in touch with three women from the ‘bimbofication’ scene. This, the outlet notes, is a subsection of performers who transform themselves into real-life Barbie dolls by inflating their breasts with saline.
The report also states that Noem’s husband also took selfies where he appears to have stuffed two balloons inside his shirt to resemble breasts.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) leapt on to the revelations, and re-shared the photos of Byron, with screengrabs of Kristi Noem’s now-infamous Department of Homeland Secrurity (DHS) advertisements. “That’s cute they both like to dress up,” the DNC wrote of the couple in a caption.
Richard Luscombe
While many Trump supporters praised the video he shared of the presidential library rendering on social media, other posts were swift and more brutal.
The press office of Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, posted photographs of giant shining effigies of other world leaders with the mocking words: “The gold statue in Trump’s new library (of himself) looks awfully familiar to a few others from around the world.”
The author and media personality Rutger Bregman also seized on an AI-generated image of Trump’s statue on a stage in front of a large audience of supporters. “A golden statue in a temple where the faithful gather to worship their idol. But enough about the Book of Exodus – here’s Trump’s Presidential Library!” he wrote.
The video was set entirely to music and gave no indication of a timeline for its construction after Trump is set to leave office in January 2029. But the valuable tract of waterfront land on which it will sit already belongs to Eric Trump’s foundation after it was gifted by Miami-Dade College (MDC) in a highly controversial transfer last year.
A federal judge initially blocked the transaction after opponents argued the college did not give enough advance notice for a public meeting at which the deal was approved, but the ruling was later overturned and college trustees voted again to cede the land to the state of Florida, which in turn handed it on to Eric Trump.
“It’s a land giveaway to the Trump Library Foundation,” Marvin Dunn, a local historian and retired MDC professor who brought the lawsuit, told CBS News at the time.
“Who is the Trump Library Foundation? Eric Trump, his wife, and some dude lawyer.”
A day ahead of blockbuster oral arguments at the supreme court, the line to get a seat has already started forming in Washington DC, according to local journalist Andrew Leyden.
Justices will hear a case challenging one of Donald Trump’s most controversial actions since he returned to the White House – an executive order preventing babies born in the United States from being granted citizenship if their parents are in the US either illegally or temporarily.
Lower courts have ruled Trump’s executive order unconstitutional in legal challenges over the last year, saying that the attempt to gut birthright citizenship violates a key clause of the fourteenth amendment, which guarantees American citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States”.
In Trump v Barbara, the challengers also argue that the administration’s efforts run afoul of the citizenship clause, codified after the Civil war, to overturn the supreme court’s Dredd Scott decision. The ruling which stated that enslaved people were not citizens of the US, and therefore were not entitled to protection from the federal government.
Last year, initial attempts to block Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship were limited by the supreme court. In a 6-3 decision the bench ruled that federal judges could not issue universal injunctions that would obstruct executive orders.
On Wednesday, the judges will hear arguments on the merits of the case. The administration argues that the president’s executive order is meant to return to the original meaning of the citizenship clause, which ensured citizenship to formerly enslaved people, instead of “the children of aliens who are temporarily present in the United States”. In a brief to the court, US solicitor general D John Sauer argues that “aliens who are just passing through the United States, and those who cross our borders illegally, lack ties of allegiance and do not obtain the ‘priceless and profound gift’ of citizenship for their children.”
Joseph Gedeon
When US federal workers were missing paychecks and the partial government shutdown entered its seventh week, Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, was doing what any responsible lawmaker would do: riding Space Mountain and carrying a bubble wand at Disney World in Florida.
Naturally, TMZ had photos of the vacationing senator on its homepage a few days later.
The celebrity tabloid empire – better known for staking out actors and artists outside restaurants, gas stations, courthouses and their palatial estates – has turned its paparazzi prowess on a new and maybe equally chaotic subject: the US Congress. And America’s lawmakers may find themselves uniquely ill-equipped for the Hollywood experience.
The outlet last week put out a public call for tips on lawmaker sightings as the partial government shutdown dragged on, leaving thousands of Department of Homeland Security employees without pay.
Graham’s Disney World excursion earned him the headline: “Living in Fantasyland as Government Shutdown Drags On.” Senate majority leader John Thune, Senate majority whip John Barrasso and senator Ted Cruz also appeared in the outlet’s dispatches, with Cruz sitting as the lead story on the site.
But TMZ doesn’t play sides: it highlighted how Seth Magaziner, a Democratic congressman of Rhode Island, is headed to a Real Housewives watch party this week during the shutdown. The outlet also photographed Robert Garcia, a Democratic California representative, at a Las Vegas casino, which he addressed on X: “Actually I don’t mind what TMZ is doing here,” Garcia wrote, noting he had been visiting his father, and blamed Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, for sending everyone home in the first place.
Read the full report here:
Reuters now has more on that ruling, which came in a class-action lawsuit filed in August by three people from Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti and the advocacy group Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts. They argued the Trump administration’s action constituted an abrupt, unlawful move to strip immigrants of their parole status and work authorization.
Per my last post, such immigrants had been generally granted two-year terms of humanitarian parole after using the Biden-era app CBP One to schedule an appointment to cross the US-Mexico border. Biden’s homeland security department had begun requiring many asylum seekers to use the app in an effort to alleviate chaos at the border.
Donald Trump, shortly after returning to the White House in January 2025, moved to shut down use of the app, as his administration began to implement his hardline immigration and mass deportation agenda.
In April 2025, many non-citizens who received parole through the CBP One process got an email from DHS saying it was exercising its discretion to terminate their parole. The email said:
Do not attempt to remain in the United States_the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.
Trump administration unlawfully terminated status of migrants using Biden-era app, US judge rules
A federal judge has ordered Donald Trump administration to reverse the revocation of the legal status of thousands of migrants who had been allowed to temporarily live in the United States by using an appointment app utilized by his predecessor Joe Biden’s administration.
US district judge Allison Burroughs in Boston ruled that the US Department of Homeland Security acted unlawfully when it sent mass emails in April 2025 notifying up to 900,000 people who had entered the country using the CBP One mobile app that it was “time for you to leave the United States”.
The app – a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s strategy to create and expand legal pathways to enter the country in an attempt to discourage illegal border crossings – allowed people to make appointments to request legal entry to the US.
Since January 2023, more than 900,000 people were allowed in the US after using the app to schedule appointments with immigration officials and apply for asylum. They were generally allowed to remain in the US for two years with authorization to work under a presidential authority called parole while awaiting their cases to be heard.
The sudden shutdown left thousands of people with scheduled appointments left in limbo at the border, while the DHS sent emails to those already living in the US temporarily urging them to “abandon the US” and “self-deport”.
The White House has added a 5pm ET executive order signing to the Donald Trump’s official schedule today. This will be open to the press, and we’ll bring you the latest lines.
We’ll be keeping an ear out for the any comments about the war on Iran, the ongoing partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the scheduled arguments at the supreme court in the case challenging the president’s executive order that seeks to end birthright citizenship.
On Truth Social, Trump posted a nearly two-minute video rendering of his proposed presidential library in Miami.
Set to dramatic music, the mock-up showed an enormous mirrored skyscraper emblazoned with his name and the American flag. The video uses AI to show guests mingling in the entrance of the library, with golden escalators, a replica of what appears to be Air Force One, and reconstructions of Trump’s prized ballroom – that remains under construction.
There’s also a replica of the Oval Office, rooftop gardens and a large gold statue of Trump.
A credit says the design comes from Bermello Ajamil, a Miami-based firm. Trump posted the video with no explanation beyond a link to a new website for the library. The website says, “coming soon”, with a link to donate money.
On Monday, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill directing the Palm Beach international airport to be renamed to the President Donald J Trump international airport.
Trump’s family business filed a trademark application for the airport name in February. If approved, the name change would take effect on 1 July. Before the airport’s name can be changed, a formal request must be submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration, which then must process the change in various flight charting and navigation databases, and the airport signs must be changed.
Supreme court rules against Colorado ‘conversion therapy’ ban
The supreme court did, however, issue an opinion today, ruling against the state of Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” – a practice that seeks to change minors’ sexual orientation or gender identity.
In an 8-1 decision, the justices reversed a lower court’s decision that had upheld the law in a case brought by psychotherapist Kaley Chiles, who argued that the ban violated her first amendment right to free speech. The law applies to licensed mental health clinicians who seek to change a patient’s gender identity or sexual orientation, discredited tactics that major medical associations have said are ineffective and harmful.
In a lone dissent, Ketanji Brown Jackson – one of the three liberal justices on the bench – issued an opinion rebuking her colleagues’ decision.
“The majority has failed to appreciate the crucial context in which Chiles’s constitutional claims have arisen. Chiles is not speaking in the ether; she is providing therapy to minors as a licensed healthcare professional,” Jackson wrote. “It cannot also be the case that Colorado’s decision to restrict a dangerous therapy modality that, incidentally, involves provider speech is presumptively unconstitutional.”
Colorado is one of more than 20 states in the US that have banned conversion practices. The ruling in favor of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian legal group, now makes these laws across the country vulnerable to similar challenges.
A reminder, we were watching for opinions in three highly anticipated cases today.
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Louisiana v Callais: A high-stakes voting rights case in which the court’s conservative majority appears poised to gut one of the most powerful provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
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Trump v Cook: Donald Trump’s case for firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, as he continues to exert greater control over the US central bank.
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Trump v Slaughter: A case which examines the legality of Trump’s firing of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member, Rebecca Slaughter.
None of these opinions were issued, so we’ll make sure to bring you the latest when the court sets its next decision day.
Supreme court set to issue decisions
It’s another decision day at the supreme court, and we’re watching for rulings in key cases we’ve covered throughout this term.
The court has brought out one box of decisions, which typically means one or two opinions.
