Trump Demolishes the East Wing of the People's House Without Any Public Review to Build a Ballroom

Oct 21, 2025

The coverage of Donald Trump’s demolition of the East Wing of the White House has generally been vague and evasive about the legality of the actions. But a Washington Post report provides a little more detail about the illegality of this process:

Photos of construction teams knocking down parts of the East Wing, first revealed by The Washington Post on Monday, shocked preservationists, raised questions about White House overreach and lack of transparency, and sparked complaints from Democrats that President Donald Trump was damaging “the People’s House” to pursue a personal priority. …
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit created by Congress to help preserve historic buildings, sent a letter Tuesday to administration officials, warning that the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom “will overwhelm the White House itself,” which is about 55,000 square feet.
“We respectfully urge the Administration and the National Park Service to pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review processes,” Carol Quillen, National Trust’s CEO, said in a statement, citing two federal commissions that have traditionally reviewed White House additions.

This, plus Trump’s grandiose plan for an imperial triumphal arch, raises a fundamental question: Who owns the White House? Who owns and controls the Capitol, the Mall, and other federal property in D.C.? Obviously, the answer is: the people do. Neither the White House nor the presidency is any one man’s personal property, to be disposed of however he wishes.

That Trump treats it this way is not the worst abuse of power in his administration—but it is a highly visible symbol of his assertion of absolute, unchecked power.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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