US President Donald Trump renders his proposed ballroom as he meets with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House on October 22, 2025 in Washington, DC, US.
Kevin Lamarck | reuters
Plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom project rejected a demand on Monday. Department of Justice To drop a legal challenge in the wake of the shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner, from which Trump was fired.
“Your claim that this lawsuit puts the President’s life at ‘grave risk’ is false and irresponsible,” plaintiffs’ attorney Gregory Craig wrote. National Trust for Historic PreservationTo DOJ Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate.
“Simply put, this matter does not jeopardize the President’s security in any way,” Craig wrote in the new letter, which he provided to CNBC.
“And nothing prevents you from asking Congress at any time for necessary authorization as required by the Constitution and federal law,” the lawyers wrote.
“What Saturday’s terrible event does not change is that the Constitution and numerous federal statutes require Congress to authorize the construction of a ballroom on the grounds of the White House, and Congress has not done so.
A model of the new White House Ballroom is placed on a table as US President Donald Trump meets with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US on October 22, 2025.
Kevin Lamarck | reuters
Craig’s response came after two days of new calls by Trump, Republican lawmakers and the president’s supporters for a federal court to dismiss the lawsuit and clear the way for construction of the ballroom.
Trump and others say the proposed 90,000-square-foot ballroom would be safer than the Washington Hilton Hotel, where Saturday’s shooting took place, and other locations outside the White House grounds.
Shumate said in his letter to Craig on Sunday that the trust’s lawsuit “puts the lives of the President, his family, and his staff at great risk.”
“I hope yesterday’s narrow gaffe will help you finally realize the absurdity of a lawsuit that has virtually no purpose other than stopping President Trump, no matter the cost,” Shumate wrote.
“Enough is enough,” Shumate wrote. “Your client must voluntarily dismiss this frivolous lawsuit today in light of last night’s attempted assassination of President Trump.”
The shooting at the WHCD came nine days after a federal judge issued an order halting construction of the ballroom on the grounds that Trump had not obtained approval from Congress for it.
“National security is not a blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity,” U.S. District Judge Richard Lyons wrote in his order.
The DOJ appealed that decision, and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia lifted Lyon’s injunction, but said it would expedite review of the DOJ’s challenge.
At a press conference just hours after the arrest Saturday of alleged gunman Cole Thomas Allen, Trump cited the incident to make the case for his long-sought ballroom.
R.N.Y. “A ballroom is necessary for a number of reasons, it’s one of the many segments in which the conservative network has maintained a group of voices to build that structure,” Rep. Mike Lawler told Fox News in an interview on Monday.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in a separate Fox interview, accused Democratic leaders in Congress of inciting violence with their rhetoric against Trump, and said he was “grateful” that Sen. John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, had supported the effort to build the ballroom for security reasons.
He said, “He is right, the ballroom will be the solution, because it will be in the most secure complex in the world, it will not have hotel rooms above it and it will have 7-inch thick glass on the windows.” “So it will be a very safe environment to hold an event like this.”
“We need a place like this, and the president keeps pointing to it.”
Senator Rick Scott, R-Fla. In his own Fox interview, he described the ballroom protests as an example of “Trump derangement syndrome.”
In addition to media appearances, Republican lawmakers and other Trump supporters used social media to promote calls for the ballroom’s construction.
In return, those social media posts were welcomed Answers from some people who saidWithout evidence, that the WHCD shooting incident was staged to pressure construction of the ballroom.
Other critics of the ballroom call noted that the president regularly visits venues outside the White House.