Trump’s Ballroom Is Racing Ahead. Its Legality Is Still Being Contested.

Construction of the White House ballroom and bunker complex that President Trump is building in place of the demolished East Wing has progressed since December, when a federal lawsuit first sought to halt it.

The courts have broadly allowed construction to continue in spite of the lawsuit and one judge’s finding that the project required approval from Congress and was unlawful from the beginning.

Now, an appeals court is on the cusp of deciding whether to uphold that ruling. But at every turn so far, the president has managed to continue building.

The photos below illustrate how quickly the complex is being built.

On Dec. 12, seven weeks after the East Wing was demolished, the National Trust for Historic Preservation sued to halt construction of the 90,000-square-foot ballroom. Judge Richard J. Leon of the Federal District Court in Washington, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, expressed concern about how fast the project was moving, but he allowed the White House time to seek approval from two review panels.

In February, one of the panels, the Commission of Fine Arts — whose members Mr. Trump had previously fired and replaced with allies — expedited a vote on the project and approved it. The second panel approved it two months later.

The National Trust returned to court with a variety of legal arguments challenging the project’s use of private funding and the lack of input from Congress.

On Feb. 26, Judge Leon again declined to intervene, urging the organization to refine what he called a “ragtag group of theories” into a more focused case about presidential power.

Even so, he signaled deep doubts that the White House could be irreversibly changed without any consultation with lawmakers.

Judge Leon considered fresh arguments from the National Trust about what he said was the crux of the case: what law, if any, gave the president the authority to rebuild entire sections of the White House to fit his needs. On March 31, the judge reached a conclusion: “No statute comes close to giving the president the authority he claims to have.”

He ordered construction halted, but gave the government two weeks before his order took effect. Hours after the verdict, the Trump administration appealed.

Throwing a new wrinkle into the case at the end of March, Mr. Trump began describing the ballroom as a superstructure sitting on top of a new underground bunker. On April 11, the appeals court sent the case back to Judge Leon to clarify whether the military complex beneath was subject to his order, allowing construction to continue in the interim. On April 16, he clarified it was not, limiting the scope of his decision to the aboveground work on the ballroom.

With that understanding, the appeals court on April 18 again allowed construction to move forward until after it could hear arguments in June and reach its own decision.

During oral arguments on June 5, two judges on a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit appeared to doubt that either the law or the national security justifications behind the bunker gave the president power to redesign the White House.

Judge Patricia A. Millett, an appointee of President Barack Obama, asked whether the Trump administration had adopted a “move fast and break things” approach in which it strategically acted too quickly to be constrained.

The administration has offered an expansive interpretation of federal laws that it argues give the president the authority to alter the White House and control federal property through the National Park Service.

The panel has not yet reached a decision, but even if it issues a second ruling that finds the ballroom unlawful, the Trump administration can approach the Supreme Court. That may provide another avenue for construction to proceed. In the meantime, the work continues.