Shortly after being evacuated from an assassination attempt during Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, President Donald Trump highlighted the need for his embattled East Wing ballroom project to continue without delay.
Trump, the first lady, Vice President JD Vance, and several other administration officials had attended the annual event at the Washington Hilton hotel for roughly 20 minutes before U.S. Secret Service agents rushed the main stage and took up defensive positions with weapons drawn. The crowd, mostly news media professionals and their companions, reacted with confusion to the chaos and reports of gunfire as the dais was evacuated. Outside the hotel ballroom, Cole Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from Torrance, Calif. armed with a long gun and knives, had allegedly charged through the secured area’s screening checkpoint, shooting a Secret Service agent in the chest before being neutralized himself. That Secret Service agent is expected to recover, the president reported during an impromptu late-night press conference at the White House shortly after the incident.
The president’s ambitions for a modernized East Wing ran into legal obstacles beginning in December 2025, when the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States filed a lawsuit over the demolition at the Executive Mansion and concerns Congress should have authorized the $400 million modernization effort. Though the 89,000-square-foot project’s design was eventually approved by two court-mandated federal review processes, Judge Richard J. Leon, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, amended his March 31 blanket work injunction on April 16 to only allow below-grade construction activities to proceed without Congressional approval. Dismissing the Administration’s argument that it was a national security priority that the East Wing be completed according to Trump’s intention, Leon stated “national security is not a blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity.”
In response to the initial injunction, the Trump administration immediately filed an appeal, which was taken up by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit: Obama-appointee Patricia A. Millett, Biden-appointee Bradley N. Garcia, and Trump-appointee Neomi Rao. The judges set June 5 as the date for oral arguments; until then, an administrative staying of Leon’s orders permits construction to continue while the panel considered the case before them.
“This court will not gainsay the importance of ensuring the safety of the White House, the President, staff and visitors,” the panel stated in its April 11 order.
Trump, meanwhile, has criticized the lawsuit as both politically motivated and absurd with respect to the concerns about historic preservation.