LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on whether President Trump can continue construction of his ballroom.
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
A nonprofit group sued the administration. An appeals court ruled in the nonprofit's favor earlier this month and said construction needed to stop. But the court paused its order, until today.
FADEL: NPR White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram is with us now to discuss. Good morning, Deepa.
DEEPA SHIVARAM, BYLINE: Good morning.
FADEL: So catch us up on what the Supreme Court is deciding on exactly.
SHIVARAM: Yeah, it's been a lot of start and stop with this. But to put it simply, last fall, Trump knocked down the East Wing of the White House to construct a 90,000 square foot ballroom. It's costing hundreds of millions of dollars. And while Trump has said that taxpayers will not have to pay for any of it, The Washington Post has reported that some of the cost will fall on the public. NPR hasn't independently confirmed that, though.
And so, after he starts construction, a nonprofit group called the National Trust for Historic Preservation sues the Trump administration and says that Trump needs congressional approval in order to build the ballroom. Lower courts have hashed out this lawsuit for months and now the Supreme Court will decide what happens next. The Trump administration is arguing that the ballroom was needed to create a, quote, "integrated military complex" that houses medical care, a drone port and bomb shelters. On the other hand, the National Trust for Historic Preservation is saying that the executive branch doesn't have the authority to transform the White House like this, even for national security purposes.
FADEL: Does the president think the court will rule in his favor?
SHIVARAM: Yeah, so earlier this week, he said that he can't imagine that the Supreme Court is ruling against the ballroom. And he said that while he took the press out for a tour of the ongoing construction on the South Lawn of the White House. This is different than the ballroom, by the way. There's generally a lot of projects Trump has going on at once, and he really likes talking about them. But he's building a new helipad on the South Lawn. And when he was showing that off to reporters, he was describing the ballroom being used to host foreign dignitaries, like China's Xi Jinping, who's expected to visit the U.S. soon.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They get out of the car, and they walk down this path onto that. And they can have cocktails and everything outside of the White House. And then they go into the ballroom. Even the military, they can use it like that. And we have so - the ballroom is so much a military component, with the drones and the bomb shelters and everything else that we have in there.
SHIVARAM: And that pivot of referring to it as a ballroom/military complex and really putting the security part of this, you know, on the forefront has been something Trump started doing when the courts started weighing in on this construction and saying there was a possibility of this getting shut down. I will just point out though, Leila, it's not just the courts Trump is having to contend with here. His ballroom is really unpopular in the public eye. A poll from ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos shows that 56% oppose the ballroom. At the same time, polling also shows that a vast majority of Americans also think the president isn't focusing on the most important issues. In addition to Trump's construction projects not being popular, his economic policies aren't popular, and his war with Iran isn't either.
FADEL: I mean, construction of the ballroom, though, has been going on since last October. So what happens to a not quite finished ballroom/military complex if construction has to stop?
SHIVARAM: Yeah, this is kind of a logistical nightmare, right? Because the ballroom is already getting built. Millions of dollars have already been spent. The areas near the White House have been closed off for months because of the construction. So if the court says that Congress needs to come in and approve this, it's not like Congress moves at lightning speed either, right?
FADEL: Right.
SHIVARAM: So having an unfinished ballroom/military complex that completely razed over the old East Wing of the White House, it's complicated. And the whole situation sort of speaks to Trump's decision-making process and how he treats the courts because now the Supreme Court's kind of in an awkward position here.
FADEL: That's NPR's Deepa Shivaram. Thank you, Deepa.
SHIVARAM: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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