But now no one talks to them. Everyone who talks to the press is either some shitcon talking to Fox News, or it's some shitlib leaking to Politico, Washington Poast, NYT.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5788437&forum_id=2#49364820)

How Trump Barreled Through D.C.’s Bureaucracy to Get His White House Ballroom

The president realized his longtime dream by remaking a planning board and taking advantage of permitting oddities; ‘you have zero zoning con

By Annie Linskey

, Josh Dawsey

and Will Parker

Oct. 25, 2025 9:00 pm ET

WASHINGTON—Anybody who has remodeled a home knows that building regulations can slow down even the most minor projects, especially when a property has historic significance.

Yet President Trump managed to tear down the East Wing of the White House with little notice in just a few days to make way for a new ballroom he has long coveted. How did he do it?

The story starts in July with a terse email from the White House to three members of a 12-person planning board who were appointed by former President Joe Biden: “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as Commissioner of the National Capital Planning Commission is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service.”

In their place, President Trump installed his own panel of loyalists, including senior White House officials, giving Republicans control of a little-known body that has outsize influence over the historic White House complex. The National Capital Planning Commission has raised no public objections to his plans to remodel the most famous residence in the world. Its website now informs visitors that the commission’s work has been halted due to the government shutdown.

It was a classic example of the former real-estate developer in action: bulldozing through norms, exerting control over groups that might stand in his way, taking advantage of oddities in permitting rules and acting so quickly that nobody could stop him.

As it turned out, despite its central role in more than 200 years of American history, the White House is exempt from much of the zoning, permitting and regulatory structure that governs most real-estate projects in the country.

“There is extraordinary flexibility to do whatever the president wants to do,” said Anita McBride, chief of staff to first lady Laura Bush from 2005 to 2009.

Sept. 2025

To his supporters, Trump is showcasing the skills that got him elected: irreverence, expediency and unconventional thinking. To critics, the demolition represents a visual embodiment of how Trump is remaking—or even destroying—the federal government by imposing his will on the country.

Photos of part of an iconic symbol of American power being demolished have gone viral, drawn criticism from preservationists and lawmakers, become the subject of hours of cable television commentary and dwarfed some of the other news Trump has made—including new sanctions on Russian oil. Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about the project, even first lady Melania Trump, who privately raised concerns about tearing down the East Wing and told associates it wasn’t her project, according to administration officials.

Trump himself grimaced at the initial photos, as he thought they appeared to show the Executive Mansion being demolished. He quickly issued a statement to clarify only the separate structure of the East Wing was coming down. The Treasury Department instructed employees who overlook the site not to share photos.

The ballroom is set to add at least 90,000 square feet to the White House complex. It will be nearly twice the size of the White House’s main building, which is 55,000 square feet. White House officials say they will also rebuild East Wing offices, which included workspace for the first lady and her staff.

https://i.imgur.com/cuAd6AG.png

Renderings that Trump has held up at public events show a cavernous room with gold trim along window arches, a coffered ceiling with gold trim and chandeliers throughout. The estimated price tag has shifted, starting around $200 million and growing to $300 million. On Thursday, Trump said he has raised $350 million.

“President Trump is a builder at heart. Make no mistake: the newly improved East Wing and brand new ballroom will make the People’s House more useful and beautiful for generations of presidents, and Americans, to come,” said Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman.

The dream

For at least 15 years, Trump had tried and failed to build a grand ballroom at the White House that could host extravagant dinners for world leaders, lawmakers and celebrities. In early 2010, President Barack Obama’s top strategist David Axelrod got a call from Trump, then a real-estate developer and reality television star. They were connected via MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, who had closer ties with Trump at the time.

“He said, ‘You have these state dinners in sh—y little tents,” Axelrod recalled in an interview. “He said, ‘I build ballrooms. I build the most beautiful ballrooms in the world. You can come to Florida and see for yourself.’ ”

Trump offered to build a modular ballroom at the White House that could be deconstructed. “I was thinking, we’re in the middle of a recession, I’m not sure about this,” Axelrod said. Axelrod suggested that Trump get in touch with Obama’s social secretary about the ballroom. They didn’t connect.

In Trump’s first term, he mentioned building a ballroom, former administration officials said, but got waylaid by other priorities. This time, it was one of his first goals. He talked about the need for a ballroom on Jan. 20, his first afternoon in the White House, administration officials said.

Presidents over the years have put their mark on the White House complex. Barack Obama added basketball lines and hoops to the tennis court. And during his first term, Trump refurbished the court and built a tennis pavilion. But his ambitions were far more limited. He consulted various oversight boards for the project and kept the appointees to the National Capital Planning Commission from the previous administration on board.

here are typically three separate review processes for federal historic projects in Washington: a review under the National Historic Preservation Act, submission to the National Capital Planning Commission and an evaluation by the Commission of Fine Arts.

The White House, along with the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court, are exempted from review under the National Historic Preservation Act, even though they are among the most iconic structures in the country.

That means that a less famous building, such as the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, would have to deal with more oversight governing changes than the White House. Such a review would assess how a proposed construction project might adversely affect the historic qualities of a property.

The Commission of Fine Arts evaluates design and aesthetic matters for new projects. Plans for any new construction are supposed to be submitted to the commission for its “comment and advice” according to executive orders issued by William Taft in 1910 and Woodrow Wilson in 1913. No such submission has been made.

That leaves the National Capital Planning Commission which, according to law, would weigh in on the construction of the new ballroom. Scale and site selection are among the issues that the NCPC typically considers in its review, alongside historic preservation concerns, according to guidelines on the commission’s website.

With Trump’s July changes, the board now includes six Trump loyalists: his three appointees, and representatives from three of the biggest landowning agencies: the Interior Department, the Defense Department and the General Services Administration.

In addition, chairs of House and Senate panels with oversight responsibilities for D.C. are also on the board—bringing the total GOP representation to eight. They include Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) Both are keeping their views on the project quiet. “I don’t really have anything on the issue right now,” Paul said in a brief interview with the Journal. Comer, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment on his views of the White House project.

While the NCPC has authority over new construction, White House officials contend that the commission doesn’t have any say over demolition. The White House plans to submit its construction plans to the panel for review, according to an administration official.

The Trump administration has referenced 2022 and 2023 opinions from the commission’s former general counsel, Anne Schuyler. Schuyler wrote that the demolition of historic structures in Washington, D.C., didn’t fall within the commission’s purview. “If the applicant chooses to treat demolition as a stand-alone project in the District, because the Commission lacks authority over demolition, the applicant is not required to apply to the Commission,” Schuyler wrote.

Bryan Clark Green, an architectural historian and Biden appointee to the NCPC who was fired by Trump in July, said that carrying out major demolition without any form of review or input was nonetheless unheard of. “I can’t think of an example of a federal agency that’s torn down, just straight demolished historic fabric without going through the process in some way,” Green said.

The last major exterior alterations to the White House building were the East Wing expansion in 1942 and the Truman Balcony in 1948. In the last couple of decades, the Capitol complex and the Supreme Court have built additions, but they were underground, raising fewer preservation concerns, said architect Priya Jain, a Texas A&M University professor and chair of the Heritage Conservation Committee at the Society of Architectural Historians.

The White House Historical Association, a charity with a mission to “protect, preserve, and provide public access” to the executive mansion, didn’t respond to a request for comment. A person close to the association said they didn’t want to speak out because they were concerned about criticizing Trump—and had no control over what the president does anyway.

Some wealthy individuals and companies were happy to donate to the ballroom project, according to several lobbyists who facilitated donations to the Trust for the National Mall, a charity that serves as the philanthropic arm of the National Park Service. The group—which had a budget of $9.5 million in 2024, according to its tax forms—has now become the middleman for Trump’s ballroom ambitions, taking in hundreds of millions of dollars in donations that will then be used to fund the project.

Some business lobbyists said that donating to the Trust for the National Mall was a good way to curry favor with the administration without giving to an explicitly political committee. When YouTube recently settled a civil lawsuit that Trump brought against the company in 2021, Trump’s team suggested the charity as the place to send $22 million, the president’s portion of the $24.5 million award.

Trump told business leaders and lobbyists at his golf club in Virginia that the project was important to him personally, and they could write it off on their taxes, people who heard the pitches said. There have been discussions about donors being recognized via a plaque or names carved into a wall in the new building, according to a person familiar with those talks. Companies that have made donations to support the ballroom include Comcast, Lockheed Martin, Micron Technology and T-Mobile, according to the White House.

“In the entire time I have been involved in raising money in the world of politics I have never found donors more excited and proud than they have been to be associated with the DJT ballroom,” said Brian Ballard, a prominent Republican lobbyist who raised money for it. One of his clients, the Dallas-based Aecom, was awarded the main engineering contract for the project.

The fundraising, and events for donors, has triggered ethical concerns. “It looks like pay to play,” said Richard Painter, who was the chief ethics lawyer for George W. Bush’s White House. “This undermines the integrity of our government.”

For now, the president runs a weekly meeting about the ballroom in the Oval Office—which also bears his decorating touches, including gold onlays and gold trim along the fireplace and other surfaces. The sessions feature his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and have included discussions with architects, residence staff, the White House maintenance team, the military office and the White House Historical Association.

He is involved with every aspect of planning, asking granular questions about the floor color, the height and width of the windows and the precise positioning of the building on the White House grounds, according to administration officials. Companies have brought product samples to the Oval Office for Trump to review, and he has kept materials in the dining room off the Oval as he weighs design choices.

The president himself has marveled at his own ability to move forward, telling donors to the ballroom about a conversation he had with officials involved with the project.

“They said, ‘Sir, you can start tonight,’ ” Trump recalled during a recent dinner at the White House. “I said, ‘What are you talking about?’

“ ‘You have zero zoning conditions. You’re the president.’

“I said, ‘You got to be kidding.’ ”

Appeared in the October 27, 2025, print edition as 'How Trump Barreled Through Red Tape to Get His Ballroom'.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5788437&forum_id=2#49377542)