By Janay Kingsberry
When Donald Trump gathered news crews and administration officials at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool earlier this week, it was obvious that he wanted to offer a strong closing pitch ahead of Election Day. But that message, which involved a long digression about the pool’s pipes, fit a pattern that has come to define his second term. While everyone else talks about the Iran war and the cost of groceries, Trump remains focused on what he knows best: real estate.
That didn’t change following Tuesday’s Republican wipeout. Yesterday, he gave reporters a tour of the White House ballroom site, talking up a “special vein” in the marble and waving off questions about the election.
The president’s aspirations for remaking the nation’s capital have never been popular among voters. To realize his architectural ambitions, he has skipped legislative approval, moved around federal funds, and had Justice Department lawyers test the patience of federal judges. The embarrassment of the midterms is unlikely to slow him down—on the contrary, Trump seems focused above all on speeding up his construction projects. He is more than halfway through building the ballroom, plans to start construction soon on the United States Triumphal Arch, intends to break ground this month on a championship-grade golf course on public land, and continues to effectively hold the Kennedy Center hostage. (And that’s just a partial list. The administration has yet to unveil design plans for a National Garden of American Heroes in D.C., for example, but they’re probably coming.)
Democrats have loudly complained about these projects, but until now, they haven’t had much power, outside of the courts, to stop them. The next Congress, however, is poised to use its strongest weapon against the president’s building spree: a few lines tucked into a spending bill.
Legal experts told me that although Democrats will likely try to use legislation, oversight hearings, and appropriations to rein in Trump’s Washington, D.C., makeover, they are most likely to succeed by focusing on spending. (This approach carries its own drawbacks. It could lead to a standoff that culminates with a government shutdown.) How the fight plays out could test just how much Trump believes that his projects will define and outlast his presidency, as well as what he might be willing to risk in that process. The White House did not respond to my requests for comment.
“He clearly thinks that this is how he wants to be remembered, as building these projects,” David Super, a Georgetown University law professor, told me. But defending them could be costly.
Trump has already threatened to become “Mr. Veto” in January, so it’s probable that he’ll block any legislation that tries to restrict or terminate his projects. Yet Paul Schiff Berman, a law professor at George Washington University, told me that the Kennedy Center generally receives bipartisan support and could be the rare case in which enough lawmakers would back “common-sense” statutory amendments that strengthen protections for the institution.
When Democrats control congressional committees and have the ability to subpoena witnesses, they may choose to overwhelm Trump with oversight hearings that could probe who is paying for Trump’s ballroom, the amount of money federal agencies have spent on the arch, and how the projects were approved in the first place. But as he is likely to do with investigations into corruption and other Democratic targets, Trump could stop administration officials from testifying, forcing that matter to go to court. Ultimately, there’s only so much that hearings can accomplish: They can help expose collusion or mismanagement, but an oversight hearing can’t send a construction crew home or halt funding for a building project.
The appropriations process is where Democrats have a real opening. They could add language to spending bills that restricts how federal money is used for these projects. Trump had previously told a group of donors that his planned 250-foot arch was fully paid for, suggesting that remaining private funds donated to his White House ballroom project could be diverted to the arch’s construction. But officials plan to use $15 million from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the structure, which is estimated to cost $100 million. The ballroom has also required hundreds of millions of federal dollars to support its ballooning costs.
Even if private donors were paying for every stone of the triumphal arch, the government still must review plans, supervise construction, and ultimately operate the site. “All of those are expenditures of federal funds,” Super said, “and if Congress says those are all impermissible, then the archway can’t move.” Then again, writing a restriction would invite another question: What happens if the Trump administration ignores it? That could mean yet another court fight.
Democratic House appropriators are already discussing ways to halt or restrict Trump’s projects, Representative Chellie Pingree, the top Democrat on the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, told me. Pingree said that those efforts would be among the priorities for Democrats when they assume the House majority in January, along with efforts to restore the Kennedy Center’s integrity and independence.
At the arts institution, where $257 million has already been appropriated for renovations, lawmakers have the option to claw back whatever portion hasn’t been legally committed to contractors, Super, the Georgetown professor, told me. The catch: Trump could veto a spending bill, too, over that or any other issue. In normal times, a government-funding fight probably wouldn’t focus on a monument or arts center. Now there’s a decent chance that the building projects will figure into negotiations with the White House. “That depends on the willingness of Trump on the one hand and Democratic leadership on the other hand to shut down the government over one of these pet projects,” Berman said.
The first chance for a fight could come in December, in the lame-duck period, when the current funding measure is set to expire. The outgoing Congress could negotiate some of these issues then, but Super thinks that lawmakers could extend funding into February or March, leaving the bigger disputes for the new Congress. And Democrats may conclude that to make progress on important issues, letting Trump build a golf course or sculpture garden is a worthwhile trade.
“Nobody really likes shutting down the government,” Berman said.
Trump has every incentive to speedrun his projects before the new Congress begins. And he is.
This afternoon, the triumphal arch is expected to get its final approval from the National Capital Planning Commission, one of several federal bodies that Trump has packed with allies as he has pursued aesthetic changes in D.C. The administration has indicated that the Department of the Interior could sign off on the project today, too, and that construction preparations could begin immediately after that. Two lawsuits over the work are playing out, so a federal judge could potentially stop it before it begins. In one of these cases, the judge recently pressed the administration about why it felt so rushed to start construction. But the answer is obvious.
At the Kennedy Center, Trump and his allies are still seeking a two-year shutdown as the institution fights a lawsuit brought by Representative Joyce Beatty, an ex-officio member of its board who is challenging the president’s overhaul. A federal judge has set a hearing for later this month to consider lifting the preliminary injunction that has temporarily blocked the institution from closing for renovation. But because Trump has threatened to not proceed with construction unless he’s allowed to put his name on the building, this fight has taken on an existential quality: Beatty and others are worried that Trump may leave the Kennedy Center an empty shell, and he has said that it might need to be “ripped down” without his help.
The golf course’s closure is imminent. The Trump administration announced that East Potomac Golf Links will shut down on November 15 for redevelopment, a move that would close a federally run park near the National Mall to locals who jog, fish, cycle, and picnic there. Normally, a plan like Trump’s would take years, for better and for worse. But the administration already intends to present its plans to the National Capital Planning Commission next month, even as it fights a lawsuit filed by golfers and preservationists in federal court.
Some observers are wary of what else might happen from now to January. Notably, the administration is trying to water down historic-preservation rules that would apply to—and likely slow down—most of these building projects. Charles Birnbaum, the president and CEO of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, which is suing the government over Trump’s renovations to the Reflecting Pool, told me he believes that the next few weeks could bring a “tsunami” of activity from the White House to speed through as much construction as possible before January. He brought up the example of the D.C. golf course, where the administration has strained to convince a judge that recent tree removals were part of already-planned maintenance and not related to Trump’s redesign. “In the way that the administration went in and felled trees on the Columbus Day weekend, I think based on past performance, we should expect this to be a rough ride between now and the end of the year,” he said.
Whether they’re complete or not, Trump’s projects will likely be an issue for the next president. A Democratic administration could take down the arch (although Trump could sue as a private citizen), remove Trump’s name from buildings (ditto), and turn the ballroom into offices (ditto again)—all while invoking the same expansive view of presidential power that Trump has relied on to remake the city without securing congressional authorization. “If we teach the Democrats that lesson,” Super told me, “they will do exactly the same thing in reverse.” If the rules didn’t apply to the builder, should they apply to the demolition crew?
