Trump mobilises 250 workers to push ahead with construction of ballroom

US President Donald Trump has enlisted 250 workers to accelerate construction of a ballroom, with crews working 20 hours a day, seven days a week to complete as much work as possible as quickly as possible, The New York Times reports.

According to the report, although the fate of the ballroom is tied up in court, the Trump administration argues that the project is too far along to be stopped now.

This week, there are plans to install one million pounds of rebar and pour 3,000 cubic yards of concrete for a project that is now two-thirds complete, the administration said in a court filing.

Now, with the matter pending before the Supreme Court, the Trump administration is making a practical appeal to the justices: The ballroom is simply too far along to be stopped now.

“His strategy clearly is to change the reality on the ground so that instead of preserving the status quo, those who rightly invoke the law against what he’s doing are put in a position of having to undo something that is already a fait accompli,” remarked Laurence H. Tribe, an emeritus university professor of constitutional law at Harvard.

For years, Mr Trump has argued that the White House should have its own ballroom, saying it was a matter of prestige on the world stage. A ballroom, he said, would allow officials to hold big events for special guests without needing to erect a tent on the South Lawn.

In recent months, as preservationists and other critics have tried to halt or at least slow down the project, Mr Trump has offered a new justification: national security. Essentially, Mr Trump is treating the ballroom and the military bunker underneath it as the same.

The bunker — officially known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Centre, or PEOC — was built during World War II beneath what was once the East Wing, which Mr Trump tore down last year to make way for his ballroom.

Now, he speaks about the two projects in the same breath.

After an armed man rushed the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April, for example, Mr Trump wrote on social media that the mayhem had proved the need for “the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House.”

Mr Trump demolished the East Wing last October without seeking any approvals or submitting construction or demolition plans to Congress. While he did bring the project before two review panels whose leaders he had appointed, Mr Trump has continued to change the plans from the designs they authorised.

Several federal court rulings have found that the president exceeded his authority by moving ahead without congressional approval, but the decisions have been paused pending appeals — which means the construction can go on at least until Friday, when an appeals court order to halt the aboveground construction goes into effect.

By Bakhtiyar Abbasov