2026-08-08T10:30:29.159Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
唐纳德·特朗普总统给自己挖了个坑。
在分歧严重的上诉法院周五裁定其项目违法施工后，他 sprawling（注：此处译为“规模庞大的”）东翼宴会厅的建设前景充满不确定性。
后续走向可能取决于美国最高法院——特朗普已表示将提起上诉——也可能取决于国会，甚至可能取决于他的继任者。
“在他担任总统期间，此事无论如何都没有明确的解决路径。考虑到政治现实而非施工现实，到他任期结束前，这里留下一个大坑的可能性非常高，”格雷格·韦克海瑟说道。他是一名历史保护主义者兼律师，正就另一项特朗普相关工程与白宫卷入另一桩诉讼：为附近的艾森豪威尔行政办公楼进行涂装的项目。
这座宴会厅和特朗普在华盛顿特区的许多其他建筑项目一样，不受公众欢迎。但它是总统的首要议程之一，他抓住一切机会为其造势，并参与了大大小小的设计细节。
“整个建筑群，包括军事设施在内，基本已经完工、预制并支付了款项。大部分材料已经到场或正在运送中，”特朗普在周五的裁决后在Truth Social上写道，他抨击了法院，并质问为何国家顶级历史保护组织没有在施工开始前提起诉讼。
宴会厅的规划始于特朗普第二任期的最初几个月，白宫于2025年7月31日正式宣布了该项目。
公告中未提及拆除东翼——几十年来，东翼一直是第一夫人及其工作人员的总部，也未将该项目描述为国家安全紧急事项——特朗普直到2026年2月才开始提出这一论点。
2025年10月下旬，东翼被拆除，工人开始了长达数月的挖掘工作，在地面上挖出了一个巨大的坑洞。全国历史保护信托基金于12月提起了法律诉讼。
2026年2月下旬，施工人员开始进行地基工程，用建筑的地下部分填充了那个坑洞。该地下部分将包含一个高度机密的地下掩体综合体，旨在对老化的地下基础设施进行现代化改造。
根据CNN对照片和平面图的分析，截至目前，宴会厅的地上建筑施工仅限于浇筑高强度钢筋混凝土柱、墙体和地板。已完成混凝土框架的区域包括第一夫人的新办公室、部分厨房和一些入口大厅。在一楼上方，施工人员已经建起了四座高耸的墙体，几乎达到了建筑的规划高度，并开始组装模板以浇筑宴会厅实际楼层的混凝土。
施工进度很快，但新建筑远未达到可入住的状态。
随着项目规模的扩大，造价也随之上涨。宴会厅最初的报价为“约2亿美元”，特朗普强调项目将由私人出资，但成本后来涨到了3亿、随后又到了4亿美元。
今年春天，参议院共和党人申请了10亿美元拨款，其中一部分将用于该项目相关的安保工作，但这一努力最终失败了。特朗普所在政党的一些议员担忧，在美国民众生活困难之际拨款修建宴会厅有失妥当。今年6月，《华盛顿邮报》获得的一份项目摘要估计该项目造价高达6亿美元，其中超过一半将来自纳税人，这让资金情况变得更加复杂。
这场法律诉讼的核心并非这座9万平方英尺的建筑、它在南草坪的选址，甚至也不是2025年对历史悠久的东翼的拆除。相反，问题在于特朗普在整个过程中无视了相关程序：绕过国会批准，在 required reviews and assessments（注：此处译为“ required reviews and assessments”）完成前就破土动工。
总统坚称该项目不受任何监管约束。但它已经陷入一场复杂的法律纠纷，前路不明。
韦克海瑟告诉CNN，这种不确定状态“凸显了他在所有这些项目中陷入的泥潭。问题不在于他做不成这些项目，而在于他拒绝依法行事，这比他一开始就遵守规则要困难得多。”
周五，上诉法院表示特朗普必须停止施工，直到国会批准该项目，但法官们将裁决暂停了两周，以便政府有机会向最高法院提起上诉——特朗普已誓言“立即”这么做。一旦上诉请求提交，大法官们将必须决定是否暂时允许下级法院的裁决生效。
除此之外，最高法院还必须决定是否审查针对该项目的下级法院裁决。如果大法官们受理此案，法院内部保守派多数派近期的分歧表明，特朗普胜诉并非板上钉钉。
据一位知情人士透露，一些白宫官员曾质疑如果最高法院拒绝受理此案将会发生什么，但顶级法律顾问的整体态度是政府在这场诉讼中占据上风，目前还不必担心。
如果特朗普胜诉，施工可以继续进行。他曾估计该项目将于2028年夏天完工，也就是他第二任期结束前几个月。
也有可能法院裁定特朗普必须获得国会批准才能恢复施工，这将对总统所在政党构成重大政治考验。如果民主党在11月的中期选举中拿下参众两院任何一院的控制权，获批的可能性将变得尤其渺茫。
公众舆论也并不站在总统这边：在最近的CNN民调中，58%的美国人表示对特朗普在华盛顿特区的项目不满或愤怒，比如宴会厅和林肯纪念堂倒影池的翻新工程。
特朗普在2月底开始将宴会厅宣传为国家安全必需项目。周五的裁决后，他强化了这一论调，称该建筑“是为保护我们的国家而建，此外也是为所有未来的总统”，并强调了地下掩体的一些设施，包括防空洞、医疗设施和顶级机密军事设施。
但上诉法院表示，即使地上宴会厅的施工暂停，特朗普仍可继续进行地下综合体的工作。法官们指出，总统可以“为地下施工和施工现场其他暴露部分安装全面的防护覆盖物”，以确保掩体不会处于无保护状态。
专家告诉CNN，即使宴会厅的施工因法律要求被迫停工，掩体的工作仍可继续进行，以消除特朗普警告存在的国家安全威胁，同时也可填补那个坑洞，消除任何健康和安全隐患。
“假设现在停止施工，你可以重新设计，保留地下设施，然后在上面重建东翼，只需将场地封闭起来。除了完成宴会厅之外，还有其他替代方案，”布莱恩·克拉克·格林说道。他是一名建筑历史学家，曾在国家首都规划委员会任职——该委员会是4月批准该宴会厅的审查机构之一，当时该委员会已被特朗普的忠实支持者填满。
据熟悉特朗普想法的消息人士透露，身为前房地产开发商的特朗普已将建筑施工作为总统任期的第二份工作，他认为这是其遗产的一部分。
“我这辈子最擅长的事情就是建造，”他在5月视察宴会厅施工现场时对记者说道。
周五，特朗普多次抨击上诉法院，强调此事关乎个人利害，他称该裁决是“国家耻辱”、“可怕的、政治动机的且非法的”。
但在周五的多数意见中，哥伦比亚特区巡回法院法官帕特里夏·米利特（前总统巴拉克·奥巴马任命）和布拉德·加西亚（前总统乔·拜登任命）将责任完全归咎于特朗普。
“该建筑项目及其多年工期造成的任何风险， overwhelmingly（注：此处译为“绝大多数”）都是被告自身造成的问题，”他们写道。
法官们继续说道：“被告单方面且很可能在没有合法授权的情况下拆除了白宫的很大一部分结构，并在原址挖了一个露天大坑。随后，在启动一项漫长的建筑项目后，他们向全世界公开宣布了这一自行选择的工程所造成的安全漏洞。”
Trump’s unfinished ballroom faces uncertain path after latest legal blow
2026-08-08T10:30:29.159Z / CNN
President Donald Trump has dug himself a hole.
The future of construction on his sprawling East Wing ballroom is uncertain after a divided appeals court ruled Friday that he is unlawfully constructing the project.
What happens next could be up to the nation’s highest court — to which Trump said he’d appeal — potentially Congress and maybe even his successor.
“There is no clear path to this being resolved one way or the other while he is president. The likelihood that we have a hole in the ground because of political realities — not because of construction realities — is very high through the end of his term,” said Greg Werkheiser, a historic preservationist and lawyer who is embroiled in a separate lawsuit with the White House over another Trump pursuit, an effort to paint the nearby Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
The ballroom — like many of Trump’s construction projects around Washington, DC — is unpopular with the public. But it’s a major priority for the president, who has championed it at every opportunity and been involved in design details big and small.
“The entire Complex, Military and all, is largely built, fabricated, and paid for. Much is already on site, or being delivered,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after Friday’s ruling, blasting the court and asking why the nation’s top historic preservation group didn’t sue before construction started.
Planning for the ballroom began in the early months of Trump’s second term, with the White House formally announcing it on July 31, 2025.
The announcement made no mention of demolishing the East Wing, which for decades served as headquarters for first ladies and their staff, nor did it frame the project as a national security imperative — an argument Trump didn’t begin making until February 2026.
In late October 2025, the East Wing was razed and workers began a monthslong excavation effort resulting in a very large hole in the ground. The National Trust for Historic Preservation launched a legal challenge in December.
In late February 2026, crews began work on the foundation, filling in that hole with the below-ground portion of the building, which will house a highly secretive underground bunker complex aimed at modernizing aging underground infrastructure.
So far, according to a CNN analysis of photos and floor plans, the above-ground construction of the ballroom has been limited to pouring heavily reinforced concrete columns, walls and floors. The areas where the concrete frame has been completed include new offices for the first lady, some of the kitchen and some entry halls. Above the ground floor, crews have built four towering walls, almost to the planned height of the building, and begun assembling formwork to pour the floor of the actual ballroom.
Construction has progressed at a rapid pace, but the new structure isn’t close to being occupiable.
As the scope of the project has evolved, so has the price tag. The ballroom was initially introduced at “approximately $200 million,” with Trump emphasizing it would be privately paid for as the cost ticked up to $300 and then $400 million.
Then this spring, Senate Republicans requested $1 billion that would go, in part, toward security related to the project, although that effort ultimately failed, with some in Trump’s own party worried about the optics of funding a ballroom while Americans are struggling. The funding picture became more complicated when a project summary, obtained by the Washington Post in June, estimated its price at $600 million, more than half of which would come from taxpayers.
The crux of the legal challenge isn’t the 90,000-square-foot structure, its placement atop the South Lawn or even the 2025 demolition of the historic East Wing. Instead, it’s the processes Trump ignored along the way: bypassing congressional approval and breaking ground before required reviews and assessments were completed.
The president maintains the project isn’t subject to any oversight. But it’s become mired in a complicated legal battle without a clear resolution ahead.
This state of uncertainty, Werkheiser told CNN, “illustrates that the morass he’s gotten himself into with all these projects. It’s not that he can’t do them. It’s just that he refuses to do them legally, and that makes it that much more difficult for him to execute them than they would be if he just followed the rules in the first place.”
On Friday, the appeals court said Trump must stop construction until Congress approves the project, but the judges paused their ruling for two weeks so the administration could have a chance to appeal to the Supreme Court — which Trump vowed to do “immediately.” Once that request is in, the justices will have to decide whether they will let the lower-court ruling take effect for now.
Separately, the Supreme Court will also have to decide whether it will review the lower-court ruling against the project at all. Should the justices take up the case, recent divisions within the court’s conservative supermajority suggest that a win for Trump isn’t guaranteed.
Some White House officials have questioned what will happen if the Supreme Court declines to take up the case, but the overall sentiment from top legal advisers is that the administration is winning the case and it’s not time to be concerned yet, according to a person familiar with the matter.
If Trump secures a victory, construction could continue on a project whose completion he’s estimated by summer 2028, a few months before the end of his second term.
It’s also possible that the court finds Trump must secure congressional approval before the project can resume, which would set up a major political test for the president’s party. Approval would become especially unlikely if Democrats gain power of either chamber in the November midterms.
And public opinion isn’t on the president’s side: In a recent CNN poll, 58% of Americans said they were dissatisfied or angry about Trump’s projects around DC, like the ballroom and renovations at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Trump began messaging the ballroom as a national security necessity in late February. He zeroed in on that message after Friday’s ruling, saying it’s “being built for the protection of our Country and, additionally, all future Presidents” and highlighting some of the features of the underground bunker, including bomb shelters, medical facilities and top-secret military facilities.
But the appeals court said Trump could continue work on the below-ground complex even while construction of the above-ground ballroom is paused, with the judges noting that the president could, for example, “put a fully protective covering over the underground construction and other exposed portions of the construction site” to ensure the bunker isn’t unprotected.
Experts suggested to CNN that even if ballroom construction is legally forced to come to a halt, work on the bunker could proceed to eliminate the national security threat Trump has warned exists and also shore up the hole from any health and safety hazards.
“Hypothetically, if you stop construction now, you could redesign this and have an underground facility and reconstruct the East Wing on top of it and just close off the site. There are other alternatives beyond completing the ballroom,” said Bryan Clark Green, an architectural historian who previously served on the National Capital Planning Commission, one of the review boards that approved the ballroom in April after being stacked with Trump loyalists.
Trump, a former real estate developer, has made construction his second job as president — one he believes is part of his legacy, sources familiar with his thinking have said.
“The thing I do best in life is build,” he told reporters during a May field trip to observe the ballroom construction.
The president lashed out at the appeals court repeatedly on Friday, underscoring the personal stakes as he cast the ruling as “a National Disgrace” and “horrendous, politically motivated, and unlawful.”
But in Friday’s majority opinion, DC Circuit Court Judges Patricia Millett, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and Brad Garcia, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, placed the blame squarely on Trump.
“Any risk caused by the construction project and its multi-year timetable is overwhelmingly a problem of the Defendants’ own creation,” they wrote.
The judges continued: “The Defendants unilaterally and likely without lawful authority destroyed a large portion of the White House structure and dug an open pit in its place. Then, after commencing a lengthy construction project, they publicly announced to the world the vulnerabilities that self-chosen endeavor has created.”
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