What to Watch for
The federal appeals court will now deliberate on whether to allow the construction of Trump’s ballroom to move forward, after previously allowing construction to continue in the meantime. The Trump administration has argued construction is already too far along to reasonably be stopped by the courts, and has instead said any directive to halt the ballroom project must instead come from Congress—where a proposal to halt construction has already failed to pass. It’s unclear how long it could take the appeals court to rule.
Read more Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker And Jon Wertheim Staying At Embattled ‘60 Minutes’
Chief Critic
Critics of the Trump administration expressed outrage on social media after Politico first reported the DOJ’s exchange with Millett over the Statue of Liberty. “There is nothing left of the Justice Department I worked at,” former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance, a prominent Trump critic, said on X on Friday.
Read more Gold And Silver Hit Lowest Prices In Months After Strong Jobs Report
Key Background
The litigation at issue Friday was brought against the Trump administration by the nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation, which argues the executive branch does not have authority to construct the new ballroom without congressional approval. The lawsuit also brings claims from Patricia Hoagland, a National Trust member and scholar on historical preservation who regularly gives walking tours around the White House. She argued the visual changes to the White House cause “permanent and irreparable harm to the White House and President’s Park” and hurt her own “aesthetic, cultural, and historical interests.” Judge Richard Leon in March that Hoagland likely had standing to sue on those grounds, writing the plaintiff had “adequately described the “specific ways in which” her “interests in … [the] aesthetic … use and enjoyment” of the White House’s grounds would “be irreparably injured” without construction being stopped. The judge also ruled against the ballroom’s construction more broadly and ordered the administration to stop construction while litigation moved forward, writing the National Trust was likely to succeed in the case because “no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have.”