Mr. Trump said that the $600 million ballroom was necessary because of security requirements, but the White House already had a secret vault that met that need.
US President Donald Trump announced that the White House needs a new large-scale ballroom, because this project will provide him and future presidents with a solid and safe shelter.
This is the argument that Mr. Trump's lawyers made in the lawsuit surrounding the construction of a $600 million ballroom complex at the White House. They believe that the project must be completed due to its importance to US national security.
"The East Wing renovation project is closely tied to the President's security, the White House campus and a number of other important security infrastructure," said White House spokesman Davis Ingle.
Ingle added that the foiled attack plots at the recent UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House are the clearest evidence of why the ballroom project needs to be implemented.
The US Army has also repeatedly affirmed that building a ballroom will help strengthen the ability to protect the White House against the increasingly common threat of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
The ballroom project, which is more than 8,300 square meters large and can accommodate nearly 1,000 people, was proposed by Mr. Trump in July 2025 and started in October of that year, replacing the East Wing of the White House. The project faced litigation because it allegedly did not comply with the necessary review and approval processes.
Although lower-level coaches requested a halt to construction, the Supreme Court allowed Mr. Trump to continue the construction process while considering the appeal.
However, former US officials believe that President Trump's argument about needing a ballroom at the White House to ensure security ignores the fact that the White House already owns a vault with such a protective function.
For decades, the White House bunker was just a small facility in the basement of the East Wing, built during World War II to protect President Franklin D. Roosevelt in an emergency. This facility is called the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), which was once where the US Secret Service took Vice President Dick Cheney and first lady Laura Bush for shelter during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
However, it was the 9/11 terrorist attack that prompted the White House to begin building a much more secure and permanent bunker to protect the president, according to journalist Ronald Kessler, who used to work for the Washington Post.
The project was built under the North Lawn of the White House in 2010 with the public reason of upgrading the electrical and air conditioning systems. This reason is not convincing, because the "electricity and air conditioning upgrade" project has an announced value of up to 376 million USD, more suitable for a modern underground bunker.
"With a depth of at least 5 floors and completed near the end of Mr. Obama's term, the bunker can protect all West Wing personnel indefinitely in the event of an attack with weapons of mass destruction," Kessler said.
The bunker is located more than 18 meters deep under the White House complex, has its own elevator and is specially designed to protect the president against countless threats. Inside the bunker is stored enough food to last for many months and is equipped with an independent air filtration system.
Kessler said the facility helps ensure the president and his team of senior officials have a secure operations center to manage the country in moments of crisis.
"After Mr. Trump took office, senior officials surveyed this bunker, which was classified as classified," Kessler said.
Mr. Trump has faced many assassination plots, most recently when the Secret Service had to use a diversionary plan to avoid the risk of Iran attacking the plane carrying the President back from the NATO conference in Ankara in early July.
Mr. Kessler and other former officials all acknowledged the need to equip the President with a safe base against serious threats.
"This is a serious issue. What's more important than making sure the government can continue to operate?", said Kessler, who supports the Trump administration's effort to expand security facilities at the White House through the ballroom project.
However, two former US officials told the Washington Post that they doubted the White House's argument that the existing secret bunker was not sturdy enough. According to them, the specifications of the old bunker included many of the safety standards that the White House is applying to the new ballroom complex.
They also warned that the government's sudden decision to demolish the East Wing could expose the facilities underneath, thereby creating national security risks. According to them, the PEOC is only about 6 meters deep under the East Wing and may have been destroyed or damaged during construction of the ballroom.
The White House is rushing to complete the project before any court stay takes effect. Officials said earlier this month that construction was about 65 percent complete, with about 250 workers working 20 hours a day, seven days a week to speed up the process.
According to the government, the underground part of the project is about 5 floors deep and most of the underground work has been completed. Some areas of the project now rise about 21 meters above ground level, officials told the Supreme Court.
Joshua Fisher, the White House official managing the project, expressed concern that stopping construction now could cause nearly a year of effort to go down the drain.
"If the suspension is prolonged, we may have to demolish the entire built part, causing disruption and extreme danger," he told the Supreme Court.
