US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Friday allowed construction on President Donald Trump's White House ballroom project to continue while a legal battle plays out.
The Trump administration filed an appeal seeking an emergency intervention from the high court last week, after the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a district judge's ruling, halting above-ground construction while allowing work on an underground bunker and other "national security facilities."
Roberts issued a one-page order announcing the administrative stay, which blocks the appellate court's preliminary injunction, pending further consideration by him and the other justices.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is challenging the contentious project, which is slated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars and has already resulted in workers demolishing the East Wing of the White House.
After Roberts' ruling, a spokesperson for the organization told Courthouse News, "To be clear, this is not a final decision on the merits of the government's stay application, and we await further action."
National Trust's president and CEO, Brent Leggs, said earlier this week that "the executive branch lacks unilateral authority to destroy or transform the White House, and cannot use national security as a justification for ignoring the Constitution."
Various groups and federal lawmakers have echoed the organization's argument that under the US Constitution, "Congress, not the executive, holds the nation's purse strings," and Trump's "plan to fund the ballroom with private donations cannot stand," as the Campaign Legal Center and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) wrote in a Tuesday amicus brief.
Responding to Roberts' decision, Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a statement that "the ballroom is a microcosm of a hundred different issues with the Trump administration. This president has usurped the powers reserved for Congress by the Constitution and flouted the law at every turn."
"The White House belongs to the people, not to the president himself," she stressed. "We call upon the court to hold President Trump accountable and affirm a fundamental principle on which this country was founded: No one, not even a president, is above the law."
Meanwhile, her colleague Jon Golinger, a democracy advocate at Public Citizen, emphasized that "everything Trump demolishes can be rebuilt. Every place he breaks can be fixed. Every space he pollutes can be fumigated."
Golinger vowed that "we will keep investigating and exposing Trump's shady ballroom funding schemes to rake in millions from corporations with billions in government contracts and anonymous donors with hidden agendas."
